Literate chauvinism
“The
man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read",
wrote Mark Twain. Yet the man who can read but does not, considers
himself superior to someone who cannot read. That is Literate
Chauvinism, which extends to Linguistic Chauvinism, when "my language is
superior to yours", and onto Cultural Chauvinism.
Chauvinism, after the mythical French soldier Nicholas Chauvin, means
prejudiced belief or unreasoning pride in any group to which one
belongs.
We cultivate our chauvinist ideas from our very young days. In our
days, classes were grouped according to the students "abilities" and the
kids in class "A", would always look down on those in class "C", and
then in grade nine, only the kids who get "good" marks are selected to
do 'science', others are dumped into the 'arts' stream, and chauvinism
continued. When it comes to exam results and sports "our school is
better than yours".
"Our school is THE school", was the theme in Sundara Nihahamani de
Mel's 'Mahinde Tamai Iskole', launched last week. There was not even
standing room at the Sri Lanka Foundation auditorium. Most of those
present were proud Mahindians, proud of their 'Alma Mater', and the
children produced by her. There were also a large number of Old Boys and
Old Girls from other schools, who did not agree with Sundara and with
the other Mahindians present and the discussion arranged as a school
debate 'Mahinda Vs. other schools'. Proposed by Dr. Nihal Somaratne and
opposed by Prof. Sunanda Mahendra (Ananda), Prof. Dhammika Ganganath
Dissanayake (Dharmaraja), Sumana Saparamadu (Vishaka), Dr. Ariyasena U.
Gamage (Richmond), Saman Wickramarachchi (Central Colleges), Saman
Athavudahetti (Royal). Chauvinism disguised as nostalgia, 'going down
memory lane'.
This is Literate chauvinism, and Sundara has planted a new virus in
the minds of all other literates from other schools. 'Mahinde Tamai
Iskole' could lead to a plethora of 'Ape Tamai Iskole' to try to
establish the superiority of one's own school, and also tempted by
possible demand for such books among their school chauvinists, another
golden opportunity for publishers.
It is literate chauvinism, which makes us feel so superior to a
farmer in a remote village who has to place his thumb print because he
does not know how to sign his name. Superior to a child who had his
education in a village school, or even a Maha Vidyalaya. Superior to a
person with just a high school education, or only a bachelor's degree.
Superior to a person who had not read Kafka and Sartre and Plato. While
others show their superiority by dropping names like Coelho and Allende
and Murakami.
Would the chauvinist who parades his 'Honorary' doctorate and insists
on been addressed as 'Doctor', be considered a 'Literate' or a
'Pseudo-literate'? We should admire and respect the real literates who
still prefer to use the title Mr. instead of Dr. even though they have
earned the title the hard way, who have not been touched by the
chauvinist virus. When Somapala, a seagenarian farmer in a remote
southern village, who had dropped out of school in grade one, writes a
novella, we have to accept him as a literate too.
Like the Male Chauvinist, who lives in a dream world believing he is
superior to women, all forms of chauvinistic behavior is a disillusion
created by man's own ego. Literacy is really nothing to be proud of. The
pre-historic man who did his symbolic paintings in his cave were able to
express with a few lines, what would take a thousand words for us to
convey now. But still we think of them as "primitive", as "barbarian",
as "subhuman", even though they would have been more intelligent, more
capable and would have had superior memory capacity.
These pre-literate humans had a memory capacity far greater than all
the capacity available in today's computers. They had to store all their
data in their brain and process them and store the processed knowledge
in their own brains, and also be able to pass it on to the next
generation. They did not have digital storage devices, or cloud storage
facilities, or backups.
The ancient Vedic scholars, who were caste chauvinists perhaps did
not bother to develop writing, because once written, the knowledge could
be acquired by those of other castes. All orally transmitted knowledge
could be easily restricted on a real 'Need to Know' basis. Illiteracy
was the 'firewall' they used to protect their knowledge.
Even among the literate, a 'hyperliterate' group emerged, mainly
among the elite and the religious institutions and they used the most
elaborate language possible in the religious writings, to keep them out
of reach of the less literate. Chauvinism takes many forms among
mankind.
Some of us feel superior because we have mastered the 'white man's
language' and anyone who does not speak English is a semi-literate. In
multilingual countries, those who believe their language is superior to
that of others, would look down on the other languages used in their
country. They would also look down on the 'link language', which often
happens to be English, thus taking chauvinism to create greater
conflict.
Mel Gussow said about V. S. Naipaul in the New York Times, "..he has
bitter feelings ...India is unwashed, Trinidad is unlearned, England is
intellectually and culturally bankrupt".
If 'male chauvinists' are 'pigs' what do we call all other
chauvinists?
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