‘Big Guy’ vs. ‘Short Guy’ & the ‘Little Master’ – Are “educated” Indians Really That Different & Why?

Now can you imagine the reaction had Liesman called Santelli ‘Little Guy‘?  There is no culture on earth in which calling a man “little” is anything but a put-down, a severe put-down. Sorry, no culture on earth with one solitary exception.

That solitary exception, of course, is that of ‘educated’ Indians. Why? Consider their favorite compliment to a great Indian – ‘Little Master’.

The Little Master

The greatest Cricket player of this generation is India’s Sachin Tendulkar. He holds just about every record in the book, including the previously unimaginable 100 centuries in International Test Cricket. In fact, Sachin Tendulkar is now regarded as the greatest batsman ever, even greater than the previous great Don Bradman of Australia who played in the 1930s-1940s. 

But a compliment, even a left-handed one, from an Englishman is totally different to ‘educated’ Indians.  The fact that an Englishman paid a “masterly” compliment to an Indian player was so thrilling to this tribe that they began calling Sachin Tendulkar the ‘Little Master’ themselves.

Don Bradman, the previous all time great, was also a short, compact player and he considered Tendulkar’s batting style as similar to his own. But no Britisher ever called Bradman the Little Master and had they done so, no Australian would have tolerated that left-handed compliment.

But to ‘educated’ Indians, a compliment from an Englishman is the ultimate glory. So Sachin Tendulkar, the greatest batsman of all time, is stuck with a half-derogatory nick-name.

The ‘educated’ Indian species

The ‘educated’ Indians will not use old Indian names that were changed by the British. And they will absolutely not use the names now being restored to their Indian origins. The ‘educated’ Indians will not use the old and now reestablished name Mumbai, for example. They insist on using the anglicized ‘Bombay’. The name “Mumbai’ to them is a name associated with the local Indian language, the language of the ‘non-educated’, of a class lower than themselves.

How stark is the difference? Just look at two daily print publications of the Times of India. One, Mumbai Mirror, has a shoddy, dark look and prints stories of local people. The other, Bombay Times, is bright, colorful, fashionable and mainly prints stories about the elite, the stars, fashionistas and the who’s who of the city. Just one look at the front pages of Mumbai Mirror and Bombay Times tells you what ‘educated’ Indians think of the difference between Mumbai and Bombay.

The ‘educated’ Indians don’t just look down on core Indians. They are also contemptuous of America and American way of speaking. We know people who still use the old line from My Fair Lady, “And in America, they haven’t used it [English] for years‘. These ‘educated’ Indians still speak the way the British spoke 50-60 years ago. Call an Indian call center and you will hear old British phrases like “we will do the needful“, or “we will revert back to you“. The ‘educated’ Indians look down on American directness, and call American style as “crude” meaning too blunt, too direct and without class.

But the most visible symbol of their slavish devotion to the British way of speaking is their pronunciation of Sanskrut words. When they speak in Indian languages, they pronounce revered names the right way, “Ram”, “Shankar”, “MahaBharat”. But when ‘educated’ Indians say the same names in English, they use the femi
nized English versions, “Rama”, “Shankara” or “MahaBharata”.

But this is restricted to Hindu names only. Just try calling CNN’s Zakaria as Fareeda on his show instead of Fareed and see his reaction. Call a Christian in India as Carla instead of Carl, or Roberta instead of Robert and see their nasty reactions. But Hindus happily call themselves in the feminized versions of their names, happily because they are speaking the way the British did.

There is enough historical evidence to demonstrate that the British deliberately and persistently tried to emasculate Hindus to minimize the only threat to British rule. Converting masculine Hindu names to feminized versions was one easy way to emasculate Hindus. The other was the constant exhortation to ‘educated’ Indians to not behave like ordinary Indians, but to emulate the British ways.

So Sachin Tendulkar is lucky. Being called the Little Master by the British is so much better than being called “Sachina”.

Today’s “educated” Indians – just like their ancestor class?

Many of our relatives and friends are ‘educated’ Indians. They are nice people. They have done well economically and socially by hiding their pride within their homes while acting ‘educated’ in their business and external lives. Frankly, acting ‘educated’ is the ticket to social respect in Indian society today. We don’t blame them because frankly, they are doing what their ancestors did during the past 1,000 years or so.
 
The reality is that Indian states, barring a couple of exceptions, have no history or even any conscious memory of being victorious, or of conquest of another culture. So they cannot inspire themselves in any fight, in any struggle by remembering an Indian victory.  Northwestern India was first subjugated by Afghan Muslim invaders in the 10th century. Delhi and much of North India was conquered in the 12th century. The rest of north India was conquered and invaded in the late 13th century. The Mogul rule began in the 15th century, the British rule in the late 18th century.

All these invaders conquered India in the same way, one local kingdom at a time. The invaders were always single-minded in their purpose. But they could never rule India themselves. They were too small in number and the Indian population was too large. So they co-opted a class of Indians, bright Indians who could learn the invader’s language and customs. These ‘educated’ Indians were then made into an elite class who would help the invaders rule the rest of Indian society.

Those classes of ‘educated’ Indians learned Persian and helped the invading dynasties to rule India. In the Mogul rule, they learned Urdu & Persian and helped Mogul rulers in administering India. The “Persian-educated’ or “Urdu-educated’ Indians behaved much like ‘English-educated’ Indians behaved during the British rule. 

Strangely, this remains true even after 60 plus years of Indian independence. Not so strange, when you realize that ‘educated’ Indians still administer India. They simply have no understanding of a fight, no inner memory of victory. This is why most Indian prime ministers have always tried to surrender territory for hopes of peace. This is why every single Indian prime minister has given up territory won by the Indian military. This is why no Indian prime minister has ever tried to add territory to India, even territory that was previously seized from India. This is why no Indian prime minister has ever tried to build a dominant Indian military.

This is why India still does not have a concrete counter-terrorism plan. This is why, despite so many terrorist attacks, India has not built a national anti-terrorism group. This is because such thinking is utterly foreign to ‘educated’ Indians, just as it has been to foreign to their ancestors for the past 1,000 years. This is why the entire world considers India a sissy country.

This is why they are so happy to hear Englishmen praise their greatest cricket hero as the “Little Master”.  So Rick Santelli should be glad he is not in India. There, an ‘educated’ Steve Liesman would have called him ‘Little Guy’  or even Ricka Santelli.