Shouldn’t it be Britishery?
The question here is where does the reference thuggery
come from? How did it get into English? Thug in hindi means cheating, and is
commonly used. There is no word as thuggery in hindi it’s a british
creation. Thug gets its reference from medieval times when small time highway
robbers looted and strangulated travelers. When Britishers started to colonize
the region through East India Company they exaggerated these and portrayed them
as blood thirsty monsters in the process the racist colonizing exploiters were
positioned as benign protectors. Many of these highway murderers were
classified as criminal tribes and the tribe members prosecuted for no reason. Studies
points to these portrayals as mostly a construct -based on no empirical
evidences, by cunning britishers with narrative control ably helped by caste
cannibals -playing the traditional role of enthusiastic sycophants to power. Britishers
therefore created Thug Department (the irony!) in 1830s to demonize and contain
these threats. These small-time criminals were isolated from their socio-economic
conditions into monsters who believed in divine sanction for killing as some
kind of ritual. It’s quite obvious that the myth of divine sanction can only succeed
socio-economic factors, it can easily be understood as an attempt to moralize their
transgress. Thug narration was worked as metaphor of other -the unpredictable
sinister natives. This gave colonizers a moral authority to justify acquisition
and exploitations. After transfer of power Castetva forces instead of
rectifying these grievous mistakes continued with these brutalities. Ganesh
Devy (in a study conducted in as late as 2000) notes that some of these tribes continue to suffer from human right violations that in many
cases go unchecked by the law enforcement authorities -the police, the continued
teaching of the Criminal Tribes Act in the curriculum for police training is
cited as a major reason. He claims that the police are “taught” to believe that
they are born criminals, leading to their continued persecution in spite of
legal safeguards against the same.
In a much reasonable narration thugs can be
viewed as those who rebelled against the system of exploitation and exacted
what they thought appropriate in their circumstance. Thugs did in open what
squatters did inside sanctum. Thugs sacrificed humans while squatters
sacrificed souls. The audacity of colonizers to classify thugs as criminal
tribes while they themselves were racist murderous exploiters spanning the
globe needs special attention. All these elaborate ruses were hinged on
something called justice system that they conceived. These were meant to
streamline exploitation while giving the semblance of propriety -which was to
be taken as justice. These famously harmonized with squatter’s cannibalistic framework.
Therefore, the critical and common-sense question of how justice can prevail in
injustice system was never confronted. There is a reason why Indians took up to
becoming lawyers and ended up serving the colonizers with gusto (one fellow
even went all the way to South Africa). Even now the tardiest and one of the
most incompetent judicial system on earth has lawyer luminaries many of whom
control power at the top most level while the society suffer.
The question that bothers me though is why the
word thuggery was accepted into English without any challenge. It shows amazing
level of moral vacuum among Indian elite who actively connived to normalize these
(ofcourse there are worst references from putrid pit into English which is as worse
as racism but still normalized, these should be expunged at the earliest). Why is that racist colonizer Britain doesn’t have any reference in English that is concomitant
with its past brutalities?
Why is thuggery a word in English while britishery isn’t? Boris Johnson represents the britishery.
It is in this milieu of depravities that one reads about abuse of
children in Churches. Then you read that the topmost functionary of the system
i.e. Pope was involved makes you sick. The fellow Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict
from 2005-2013) was fully aware of the atrocities. He was incapable, indeed
incapacitated, to do what even a normal person would do in such circumstances. A
grievous matter like child abuse should shudder any human being and instigate immediate
remedial action. Unlike “woman abuse” which can be subjective and needs
investigation since it involves adults -who can be scheming, children are
innocent to the darker ways of humans. There really cannot be any crime worst
than what is committed on children. It’s a crime on human conscience. That a
religious head couldn’t make himself cognizant to even this basic human value
speaks volume of the system.
Christianity in putrid pit: like erstwhile colonies Christianity spread
with brutalities of colonialism. It was in a mission to civilize. Indian
society being amazingly depraved that even brutal racist colonizers did end up
giving contexts of civilizational values. Though flawed in many ways it did
provide framework for democracy and help underpin alien values of equality and
liberty into a ruthless society. Christianity -in its vigor to spread, opened
up many educational institutions thus nurtured unanticipated values of
knowledge to a primitive society. That ends there. Kerala is a prime example of
how religions can severely degrade society -it’s a meeting ground for lowest
denominator of every religions (even communism -which has become another
religion with well-defined rituals of power) to cannibalize the herds while
charlatan politicians squeeze benefits. It’s a putrefying pit that Indians -as
they gain literacy, are heading to. Limited by their own limitations.
To be fair Kerala had religions landing up much before
the other parts in the region. These are seen as some kind of achievement but
the reality is they worked to segregate an already despicable bunch. In the early
part of 20th century there were many positives, and I am not here to elaborate these, it’s the contemporary concerns that matters. There is nothing
charming about religions in contemporary world. Christianity in Kerala is
nothing but another bunch of power broker haggling for their herds. They
construct ugly monstrous structures in already densely populated region to awe
the herds indicating lack of concern for contemporary reality and evolved
nuances of living (huge temples and mosques are
equally cringey and nauseating) and drill in miracle book that contains
regressive anachronistic values and isolate from realities of life. Kerala had the advantage of literacy that can
be easily traced to Christianity but now its presence is regressive. As with
everything in a primitive society religion has a control over media hence
charlatans in political parties. Media outlets effortlessly identified caring
interests of respective religion. Christian controlled media is quite powerful and influential meanwhile equally
regressive for market driven concerns of putrid pit. They play beleaguered minority
at the national level and pose as some exotic savior of secularism. These are the worst
kind of people taking advantage of cannibalistic value systems that permeated
into every aspect of sickening lives of herds from sanctum irrespective of religion.
Christian media vehemently promotes caste organizations as part of news and shows
enthusiasm for squatter’s world view as they assuage Christian herds of their special
place in diversity. Degraded media is habituated to pose inanities as news. Wonder
whether to call herd controllers and power brokers as journalists. They are known
to openly align with Castetva congress working the narration of liberal secular
saviors. A party essentially of bickering feudals. It must be reminded that it
is such a deviant society that it was the only state in India that voted Congress even after brutalities of Emergency (now Hindutva has nurtured such
deviant herd vote bank in north India). Such is the level of degradation. A congress
“leader” (byproduct of nepotism) was quoted recently “Gandhi only said
when somebody hits you on the left cheek show them the right. He never said what
happens when somebody hits you on the right cheek. We will break their jaw”. It’s
a veiled threat to Left party on campus violence wherein the ideas of awareness
of politics in youngsters through education system is diverted by charlatans
into puppets for political vendetta. Kerala finds the lowest denominator on every
egalitarian attempt. Literacy is ineffectual to extricate humans out from herds.
Meanwhile the 'communist' CM is in 'imperialist' USA for treatment. Now that the Kerala
model has collapsed. Kerala capitalized on christianity and communism to rise spectacularly
in 1960s and 70s but the primitive society just couldn’t work on itself. It now
spews grandeur of putrefying pit to rally the herds.
