To "Sir" with crap!

When I was a rebellious teenager, which did not always outwardly manifest itself because I was a quiet fellow, there were many aspects of life that I routinely criticized.  One of those was about those who served with distinction in the Bastard Empire.  I could not understand how eminently qualified people could have licked the bastards' boots and claimed that  the act was something superior.

Thus, when people in the extended family boasted about "he was an ICS," I snickered within.  Had I known the phrase that I later came to know, I would have yelled--only within me, of course--a huge "fuck you." ;)

I couldn't care about the Indian government's honors as well.  The "Padma" awards.  Who cares!

Even funnier and incongruous is the UK continuing to hand out its various titles that refer to the British Empire.  Talk about people in denial, who can't even accept that the sun set on the empire a long time ago!

Anyway, back to the Bastard Empire.  The rulers figured out that it might to be their advantage to bestow honors on some of the colonized as well.

The British Crown used honours in the empire as a way of ranking and appealing to the local elites. The Crown particularly bestowed them in South Asia to the puppet rulers of the Indian princely states. The expansion of honours began to include more members of middle-class elites from the mid-19th century.

And, hence, people like "Sir" Rabindranath Tagore.

Of course, as the independence movement gained strength, the browns started tossing back the honors.  Including Tagore.  But, the bastards refused to recognize this.

Tagore paired ‘badges of honour’ with shame, and elevated humility above special distinction. British-Indian honours and titles, Tagore implied, were worse than worthless because they highlighted the shame of India by patronising and coopting individual heroes. The fact that he remained ‘Sir Rabindranath’ in the eyes of the imperial state was an embarrassment. Indian nationalists later used the knighthood against Tagore, for they too agreed that British honour could not be separated from Indian shame.

MK Gandhi, who perfected the non-cooperation movement as a powerful political weapon, launched his own battle against these fake honors.

Gandhi was one of the 20th-century’s great masters of political symbolism. He understood that the dismantling of the British system of social distinction amounted to a step toward disengagement with imperial rule. The symbolism of British imperial honours mattered. It reinforced a deferential, hierarchical relationship that bought consent from Indians to the ‘will’ of the empire with a shallow currency that lacked true value.

Shallow currency, indeed!

The practice of handing out shallow currency continues in the old country.  The government bestowed the highest civilian honor of "Bharat Ratna" (Jewel of India) on unqualified people like MGR and Rajiv Gandhi!

I continue to snicker.  But no longer within--I blog about it ;)