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Mother India has always been a respectful country. And I find it is turning more and more respectful, if not respectable.
I was born at the height of World War II in 1943 and my schooling in 1947 was coeval with India gaining its freedom.
Now I am in my hoary seventies and hope to die peacefully in this Gated Community in Hyderabad where, as of now, 600 families live peacefully, sort of. Most of them are young software couples in their thirties with their kids in the kindergartens proliferating here by the day. They hail from all parts of India but most of them from the North.
And I always hear words like:
Mummyjee, Daddyjee, Unclejee, Auntijee, Dadajee, Nanajee, Mamajee, and, of all things, Sirjee...
Even our gods are not spared the jee syndrome:
Ganesh is Ganeshjee and Hanuman is Hanumanjee; and Shiva is Shivjee and Paru is Parvatijee.
At school we had a subject called Social Studies. It was a khichrijee of History, Geography, Civics and Politics...but not Morals, which was a science called Moral Science (neeti shashtram).
And I recall the authors of this Social Studies were very respectful of our Indian Greats, high and mighty.
Gandhi was always Mahatma Gandhi (not to be confused with the Gandhijees of all hues).
Nehru was Pandit Nehru and his sister, by a quirk of fate, the other way round, Vijayalaxmi Pandit.
We had another pandit called Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya but he was an altogether different sort of Pandit (learned in Sanskrit, like our Lal Bahadur Shastry who was actually a Shrivastava, a learned kayasth, unlike the ignorant brahmin called GP Sastry).
Patel was always Sardar Patel (not to be confused with Sardarjees like Khushwantjee).
Rajendra Prasad was always Babu Rajendra Prasad (he was not a modern babu like the IAS chaps).
Subhash Bose was always Netajee Subhash Bose (not to be confused with the other Netajee of modern UP).
Jagdish Bose, for some reason was Sir JC Bose (like the Southee Brahmin, Sir CV Raman).
Vivekananda was always Swami Vivekananda (unlike the modern Swamis who are making a beeline to jails).
Ramakrishna Deb was a Paramahamsa (a thing I never understood, since Hamsa meant for me a swan or duck, till I heard about the 7 stages of Tantrik Sadhana much later in my life)
Ishwar Chandra was a Vidyasagar although born a Banerjee (more of these Bengali jees later).
Rabin Babu was always Gurudeb (not to be confused with the Gurujee of RSS, more of which later).
Azad (of the Hall of Residence at IIT KGP) was always a Moulana (not to be confused with the Mullas of modern history...he was secular, although dubbed psedo-secular nowadays).
And so it went on...
When it came to foreigners though, we were disrespectful, mostly because of our ignorance of foreign culture.
Hitler was Hitler...never der Fuhrer.
Stalin was Stalin, never Comrade Stalin...so was Lenin and Mao (though the latter's wife was a Madam, to top all madams of our own recent history).
Churchill was never a Sir.
Roosevelt was Roosevelt (never President so and such).
Lincoln was Lincoln (although we had to mug up a whole book titled Abe Lincoln the Frontier Boy...we were never told what was frontier about him unlike the interior).
Our own Mughal Rulers were simply Babar, Humayun, Akbar, Shaja Jahan et al till Aurangzeb (although our own Maratha was a jee...Shivajee, not to be confused withe the later day Shivjee).
And Christians fared no better...Jesus Christ was just Jesus Christ without a title to his name (not even a Prophet which he was not nor a Martyr to begin and end all Christian Martyrs).
God was simply God and Allah merely Aallah.
But Raam was Bhagwan Shri Raamjee...not to be confused with the famous Baba Ramdev in collusion with Annajee (not to be confused with the Anna of AIADMK)...
...Posted by Ishani
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Mother India has always been a respectful country. And I find it is turning more and more respectful, if not respectable.
I was born at the height of World War II in 1943 and my schooling in 1947 was coeval with India gaining its freedom.
Now I am in my hoary seventies and hope to die peacefully in this Gated Community in Hyderabad where, as of now, 600 families live peacefully, sort of. Most of them are young software couples in their thirties with their kids in the kindergartens proliferating here by the day. They hail from all parts of India but most of them from the North.
And I always hear words like:
Mummyjee, Daddyjee, Unclejee, Auntijee, Dadajee, Nanajee, Mamajee, and, of all things, Sirjee...
Even our gods are not spared the jee syndrome:
Ganesh is Ganeshjee and Hanuman is Hanumanjee; and Shiva is Shivjee and Paru is Parvatijee.
At school we had a subject called Social Studies. It was a khichrijee of History, Geography, Civics and Politics...but not Morals, which was a science called Moral Science (neeti shashtram).
And I recall the authors of this Social Studies were very respectful of our Indian Greats, high and mighty.
Gandhi was always Mahatma Gandhi (not to be confused with the Gandhijees of all hues).
Nehru was Pandit Nehru and his sister, by a quirk of fate, the other way round, Vijayalaxmi Pandit.
We had another pandit called Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya but he was an altogether different sort of Pandit (learned in Sanskrit, like our Lal Bahadur Shastry who was actually a Shrivastava, a learned kayasth, unlike the ignorant brahmin called GP Sastry).
Patel was always Sardar Patel (not to be confused with Sardarjees like Khushwantjee).
Rajendra Prasad was always Babu Rajendra Prasad (he was not a modern babu like the IAS chaps).
Subhash Bose was always Netajee Subhash Bose (not to be confused with the other Netajee of modern UP).
Jagdish Bose, for some reason was Sir JC Bose (like the Southee Brahmin, Sir CV Raman).
Vivekananda was always Swami Vivekananda (unlike the modern Swamis who are making a beeline to jails).
Ramakrishna Deb was a Paramahamsa (a thing I never understood, since Hamsa meant for me a swan or duck, till I heard about the 7 stages of Tantrik Sadhana much later in my life)
Ishwar Chandra was a Vidyasagar although born a Banerjee (more of these Bengali jees later).
Rabin Babu was always Gurudeb (not to be confused with the Gurujee of RSS, more of which later).
Azad (of the Hall of Residence at IIT KGP) was always a Moulana (not to be confused with the Mullas of modern history...he was secular, although dubbed psedo-secular nowadays).
And so it went on...
When it came to foreigners though, we were disrespectful, mostly because of our ignorance of foreign culture.
Hitler was Hitler...never der Fuhrer.
Stalin was Stalin, never Comrade Stalin...so was Lenin and Mao (though the latter's wife was a Madam, to top all madams of our own recent history).
Churchill was never a Sir.
Roosevelt was Roosevelt (never President so and such).
Lincoln was Lincoln (although we had to mug up a whole book titled Abe Lincoln the Frontier Boy...we were never told what was frontier about him unlike the interior).
Our own Mughal Rulers were simply Babar, Humayun, Akbar, Shaja Jahan et al till Aurangzeb (although our own Maratha was a jee...Shivajee, not to be confused withe the later day Shivjee).
And Christians fared no better...Jesus Christ was just Jesus Christ without a title to his name (not even a Prophet which he was not nor a Martyr to begin and end all Christian Martyrs).
God was simply God and Allah merely Aallah.
But Raam was Bhagwan Shri Raamjee...not to be confused with the famous Baba Ramdev in collusion with Annajee (not to be confused with the Anna of AIADMK)...
...Posted by Ishani
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