Honorable Indian – National Prestige

“My father came. No ‘pan’. No ‘tamak’. Resign Sir resign.” That was the Raj days. At first the ‘company Raj’ i.e. the rule of the British east India company. And then the country was usurped by the British monarch making India into a colony of England. The Indian servant of an English employer is resigning the job in his inimitable Indian English of those days because his father has felt insulted. When the father has come looking for the son he was not offered a pan [betel] to chew or tamak [tobacco] to smoke. The right honorable Indian cannot serve under such humiliation conditions.

How careful about their honor and dignity the Indians are. They are always on their guard lest anyone humiliate them or make fun of them. What else can they do when it seems to them the entire world is always on the look out to find the slightest pretext to puncture their prestige? Why else would it be said that India is very low on the education graph but very high on the child labor graph or in corruption and Indian should mend their ways without realizing that these remarks are not at all insulting or derogatory to an Indian. Now, corruption is something most of the world does not understand the true meaning of. The Indian will say with a condescending and sly smile “there is very little corruption in the traditional Indian society”. Taking or giving commission? The cut money or speed money or hush money? No no, these are not corruption. These are things one has to take into ones stride to get on in this world. What then is corruption? The Indian will patiently explain, corruption is pre-marital, extra-marital and ex-marital amorous affairs of an upper caste woman. That is corruption and that only is corruption to an Indian. About universal education it will be explained how will it spread when the people do not want to learn there alphabets and children somehow or other dropouts from school getting engaged in some profitable jobs like carpet manufacture, washing dishes in restaurants, shoe polishing or plan and simple begging.

The Indian need not also feel insulted when the tourists jocularly say that all of India is a big open-air toilet. What else can they say when they see early in the morning on both sides of the railway track or road side or river banks or ponds or any water holes people in gay abandon oblivious of any on looker ‘mooning’ them. But what is there to be ashamed of about that? Is it not better, nay best to be in the lap of nature when attending to the natures call? And the Bengali saying goes, “the defecator is not ashamed but the onlooker is”. The home minister, though not of the cabinet rank, himself has shown the way by using a wall of the helipad in Jammu and Kashmir as the men’s room.

What else is there to be ashamed of or feel insulted? So the Indians head is still held high except for the activities of some of his own countrymen like the champion of the celebrity big brother of UK. Performing a rather deep courtesy before the queen of England. Why did she bend her knees before the queen? That certainly was very humiliating and all of India felt very insulted. She should not have done that even though the queen is probably older than her grandmother. Some year ago one Indian diplomat in the USA stooped down to take the measurement of feet of another diplomat’s mother. And all of India was aghast, there was a future in parliament even, though one will wonder when one clerks mother like another clerks mother why one diplomat’s or one president’s mother can not be like another diplomat’s/president’s mother.

The Indian also felt very humiliated when during the height of the agitation against the Mondal Commission Report [the commission to identify OBC, other backward community and recommend percentages to be reserved for them in the government jobs etc.] an upper caste youth was seen polishing shoes of people on the road side wearing a ‘Namabali’ [a peace of cloth printed with the names of God] ostensibly to put the onlookers to shame and they were while they never found anything wrong with an original cobbler boy polishing shoes wearing only a brief and hardly a sleeveless vest torn at many places.

However something that was published many years ago, probably during the 60s or 70s of the last century still pricks the heart of the unknown Indian [who is not so charmed with everything English as the auto biographer was]. The occasion was prince of walesing of the Charles of England as the custom there is when the heir to the throne comes of age. The news item appears in an English language daily. The small report ended with this sentence, “who will one day become the beloved emperor to his – million ‘subjects’ of the common wealth”.

Article author: Udayansen

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