C P Brown: Was Telugu dying

17. WAS TELUGU DYING

One of the aims of this book is to show how the colonialists deliberately spread vicious ideas that our languages were dying under the stranglehold of Brahmin Scholars even though they were vibrant and the whole Indian Nation was culturally supreme in the world till the treacherous colonial advent.

The biographers quote CPB saying ‘Telugu literature was just glimmering in the socket’ and that he a foreigner ‘revived it single handed’. Who gave him this authority to pronounce on a great language with a 1000year history? He hardly could learn the rudiments of the language in 3 years in Madras College. As Caldwell said he is ‘illogical and unreliable in his judgements and changes his opinions like a chameleon’. Such is the person whose statement the authors, repeat. Telugu was very much alive. On the contrary, by his interference and wily statements he caused a lot of damage from which it has yet to recover.

CPB was the product of a college, established primarily as a counterpoise to the Orientalist dominated Fort William College. The products of this Hailebury College, an Occidentalist joint were trained to demolish the self-esteem of Indians and make people forget their glorious cultural unity and past. We have seen all that in Chapter on, Education In India. Let us see his LIES.

CPB: “In each district of the Telugu country I have these agents ‘Preposterous’ is the word for this statement. Coastal and Ceded Districts came under the British only 20 years before CPB arrived in Kadapa in 1821. His work in 12 years was in 3 towns Kadapa incl. Cumbhum; Rajahamundry and Masulipatam while the area he was talking of having his agents is twice as big as England.

How did he get the agents everywhere? Why? When? Were they under his pay? Was the network created as a spy set up? What for? And how did he set up his agents for literary work, when there were no roads, buses, trains, and telephones, not even bullock carts! Movement from Madras to Masula takes 26 days as gathered from a book on SATI. [After the first edition of this book, Dr. S. Krishna Murty Ex. GOML, and University of Madras wrote “One new aspect that emerges from your book is whether CPB was engaged in gathering Intelligence? Intelligence for whom? For the East India Company? If so why was CPB not favoured by EIC?” My considered view is CPB’s origin of FW, his mother, father as a captain in the Army - not a small rank in those days; his brother in Civil Service in Bengal, and the fact EIC got into the coastal area of Vizianagaram etc are vital facts to be kept in mind. Bhimlipatam, Kalingapatam, Balasore were all British dominated. Information in interior areas was of importance. The ‘Poor Brahmins’ are the only source of information about the Zamindars / Palaigars etc. one and one very indirect threat from KR does surface in this matter”. As a Police Officer CPB is best suited for this. EIC did not rewarded probably because he fell foul with all his officers.

CPB: “I had a complete establishment in Cuddapah”. A building was purchased in 1828 and in 1829 itself CPB was posted out. We find only 6 names of authors in all the 32 letters. They were paid from rents, were irregular in attendance, very little work on hand, and starving, sick and begging. One occupant of the Bungalow in 1831 threw out the pundits. Knowing all these facts, how can the author say that it was a flourishing literary factory?

CPB: In 1825 I found the Telugu Literature dead.It is a shame that intelligent writers like Bangorey, Rao and Arudra accept this from a person who himself says he did not have any interest in Telugu till 1827;that he did not read or own a single Telugu book in 7 years. CPB knew that what he says will be believed by the natives whose slavishness he could bank on.

When do you say a “literature is dead”

Strictly speaking is there a ‘death’ of a language? How can a Literature of the Andhras, TWO crores of vibrant people be dead? The man who said this hardly learnt any Telugu. How and where did CPB get this idea? How many ‘dead’ languages did he know? How much travel did he do? At what knowledge level can one make a devastating statement of this nature about the language of a people who number more than all of the British Islands put together? A language, which evolved the very finest blend of the Deva Bhasha and the 1000year old Telugu, a language loved and spoken in most of the Dakshina Patha? Due to their own narrow vision these miserable biographers repeat CPB’s statements fully knowing how untrue they are.

What is resurrection of a language?

To add insult to injury, Bangorey says that the statement is not a hyperbole! Note the statement that CPB raised it to life – like the resurrection of CHRIST?

Walking on the semi dead starving carcasses of Telugu pundits, paying them less than subsistence allowance, from the rents of the bungalow, calling them names, pedants, scoffing at them, putting their pathetic letters in ‘Readers’ to teach Telugu to the British, – this is the service he had done to raise a language from the dead languages into a living language? This is what Bangorey the votary of CPB, abusive of the academic fraternity, tells us and expects us to believe it.

Do CPB’s publications amount to resurrection?

Four Prabandhas, which CPB published for the erotic content that titillated him, and the dictionaries based on a host of those that were already in existence is all that the resurrection Bangorey talks of. It is not a hyperbole, but just a Lie.

A class struggle in literature?

Why then does Bangorey accept these lies that the language is dead! He says this heritage of literature though great is with a class of Pundits. It is not a lover of literature speaking. It is a votary of class struggle, a Mao Tse Tung who sent university professors to work in rice fields who is speaking through Bangorey.

Are Poets a class? A caste? A Race?

CPB says he learnt Telugu in his Police Office! Bangorey upholds that view. Bangorey's intellectual pretensions have to be dealt with as his hatred of Brahmins, is at the root of it. The question is where does literature / philosophy / art / culture live? In the gutters? In the Bazaars? In the battlefields? In slums? In bars? In brawls? In slaves? In concubinage? In nautch parties? In Police headquarters? At all these places also words are used. Rhymes / concepts / emotional out bursts / original tuneful songs are made. A Siddi Sani and a White Horse can make CPB an Omar Khayyam in no time. But is that philosophy?

Is that where the language of creative literature to uplift the human society live? The pernicious seed that CPB sowed is that the literature of that period was confined to the Pundit class (varga). Bangorey knows full well that this ‘class’ as he calls was in much more misery than Krishna Reddy, whose pride and sense of honour comes through while all the Brahmins had not even an iota of self esteem or pride and yet were somehow living and partly living. How then can he assert that the literature were in higher classes?

As one writer says, it brings ‘tears’ to see their plight and our Mao says that literature was confined to the “Pundit class” which parrot like, is repeated by other writers today. The result is there for all to see Telugu is dying NOW. As against 50 different subjects in which books were written by Andhras in 18th century, I wonder if we write even in 10 of them. The vocabulary of the Bazar, the Music from Michael Jackson,and the philosophy of the cinema, are blended and proliferating today. Bangorey repeats CPB’s statements of pedantry etc but adds puerile incoherent descriptions to say that literature went out of “the people’s life” “fallen pillars” “Kavyas in mud” “hacked out Banyan Trees’.

The Reality

The ‘Sabdartha Prapancha’ – a world of creative writing, which needs societal sustenance and in turns sustains the society’s cultural level, was at the lowest ebb due to grinding poverty of the entire society. There were neither leaders of stature or fighters with valour, or Poets with honour. There were only sycophants and bootleggers. But yet there were some pundits howsoever poor, the patrons howsoever poor as evidenced by the libraries and thousands of Mss. that were available. People had to be coaxed to part with them –since they loved them! And Rao, foolishly, calls that conservatism. The literature therefore was living and nowhere near extinction.

Spoken language

Bangorey puts his hero CPB on another pedestal as an advocate of spoken language!! A language that had nearly 50% words of Urdu/ Hindi/ Parsi / Persian/ breed introduced by the ruling Rajakars and every single word is for day-to-day transactions. THERE is nothing else and what difference does it make what language is used in shops or bars? To day don’t we find English having replaced Telugu all over? Even a Father is called DADDY! And every other person is either an Uncle or an Aunty! This is the Vyavaharika Bhasha Bangorey advocates and garlands CPB for advocating it.

Literary service

Bangorey hails Brown’s service to the Telugu Literature for merely correcting, a few odd Mss, getting four of them printed, and throwing the rest in a library since they have no monetary value in Britain. CPB’s cultural background is such that he cannot even conceive that literature lives in creative poets not in Palm-leaf Manuscripts .He derided the poets, called them pedants, ignorant of their own trade, and used them to copy, paying them subsistence allowance. Kings like Rajaraja or merchants like Thippaya Shetty have done a trillion times more service than this self-styled saviour of Telugu literature.