CHANGING NAMES AND INFERIORITY COMPLEX
COLONIAL BRITISH ON RAMPAGE

The derogation of regional society

A Deputy Director of LDA was looking at the files in front of him. He shared his views with me with a smirch. He said Pakistanis are strange people. Touch a building of British period and they are ready to die for it. Touch any other ancient building and they care nothing for it. He was very serious and I realized how active the NGOs lobbies were in protecting the interest of their Colonial Masters to this day. So much has been repeated and said that there is no need to rub salt on old wounds. But many things are quietly forgotten in time and a reminder is in order. A society in which the word ‘Mecca’ stands for a Gambling den, casino, and a strip -tease joint, cannot be offering goodwill to others. And no NGO has complained of this word still in use for same, nor for that matter any Maulvi of any kind.

While Lahore was weeping for the break up of the Ottoman Empire and Dr Allama Iqbal was consoling the masses, the British were naming their dogs as ‘Turk Sahib’. lts exhibiting real inferiority complex in those people. Today we resent the CHANGE OF NAMES being done, but what did the British do, change names to whatever suited them, like Lyallpur, Montgomery and what not?  Colonel Abdur Rasheed has written a memoir on Sultan Shaheed, Tipu Sultan of Mysore, who turns out to be as having migrated as a family from Punjab itself, was by ethnic race a NAIK and the British to affirm their poor complexes named the lowest rank in their Army as being a ‘NAIK’. But there is a lot more!

Take royal titles and names like Khansaman (cooks named as Khansamas), Mahtar (cleaners named as Mahtars), in fact all names of any worth degraded as nobodies. And take the costume. The dress of the Royal Courtiers and Nawabs made into the dress of chowkidars. The doormen were seen wearing Royal Mughal dresses. Funny isn’t it, with grand Turbans on their heads, opening doors for men in three piece suits. There is so much more.The Persian, Arabic and Urdu language degraded beyond recognition to this day.  The birth of Urdu-medium and English medium took place all at once.

But one summing up is even more acute. The well known English writer Michael Edwardes writes about the aftermath of the Mutiny in Delhi (our war of Independence):

“Perhaps the most revolting aspect of the violence was that the excecutioners seemed to enjoy what they were doing. Within a few days of the capture of the city, the provost marshal had officially hanged  between four and five hundred, and it as said on good authority that the soldiers had bribed the executioners ‘to keep them a long time hanging, as they liked to see the criminals dance a ‘PANDIES’ HORNPIPE, AS THEY TERMED THE DYING STRUGGLES OF THE WRETCHES. WHEN  GREAT MULTIPLE GALLOWS WAS ERECTED IN A SQUARE IN THE CITY, ENGLISH OFFICERS USED TO SIT BY IT, PUFFING AT THEIR CIGARS, AND LOOK ON AT THE CONVULSIVE STRUGGLES OF THE VICTIMS.’

And to beat it all tea parties were held and bets were made as to who will blow his hornpipe the longest. Can such callousness ever be repeated?

The whole nation is in turmoil right now and their hornpipes are shrieking with pain of struggle to survive. Is anyone listening!