I was watching an old classic with grandparents - Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, possibly the funniest movie ever made. Anyhow, there comes the scene when the villain’s villainous uncle tells everyone that the villian is returning from ‘Vilayat’ in a few days - Vilayat being what I have always taken to be a reference to ‘the West’.
Having heard the word Vilayat after a really long time, I was suddenly puzzled by its etymology; where on earth was the word from? And what did it realy mean? In conversation over dinner, I raised the question, and my mom said, ‘Vilayat is from Blighty.’ So like ‘go down’ became the hindi word, godaam; drunk Britishers ‘off to Blighty’ gave the sepoys their ‘Vilayat’; and Vilayat is hence a specific reference to The British Isles; like ‘Vilayati Pani’ is a specific reference to Scoth whiskey…(I exaggerate here..)
But I was suspicious. If vilayat was a reference to Britishness, was it possible for people to be called ‘England’ Khan, for example. (I am referring to Ustad Vilayat Khan here). Well, Amreeka Singh is a name I have heard, so…
Could Blighty possibly be a derivation from Vilayat? The first google i did gave the following…
Blighty (1) England. (2) A wound sufficiently serious to necessitate the recipientís removal to an English Hospital. Hindustani, Vilagaty, bilate, provincial Europe and English.
(1) General army. Probably pre-World War I (Green).
This sense was probably first used by those in the Indian Army, but gained wide currency in World War I. B&P allude to how great meaning was attached to the word: ëIn this one word was gathered all the soldierís home-sickness and affection and war-weariness.í ëBlightyí was derived from the Hindustani ëbilayatií meaning ëforeign, and especially Europeí. The Hindustani came ultimately from the Arabic ëwilayatií meaning ëprovinceí (Elting).
But Wilayat does not mean ‘province. That’s a rather provincial reading. Further googling gives us the following.
“Wilāyat,” derived from wilā’, means power, authority or a right of certain kind. In ShÌ’a theology, “wilāyat” is the authority invested in the Prophet and the Ahlul Bayt as representatives of Almighty Allāh on this earth.
Wilayat also means State/Power. So the use of the term Vilayat for England shows a keen awareness of power relationships in nineteenth century India, from where the subalterns of the British Indian Army picked up their ‘Blighty’.
“In this one word was gathered all the soldierís home-sickness and affection and war-weariness.” Next time I pass the War Memorial Arch, and see the people eating ice-creams in the lawns, i will look closer at the names of the dead of the British Indian Army which cover all the surfaces - seventy thousand of them - who died in the Two Afghan Wars, and the First World war, all died for the sake of ol’ Blighty.
Not completely unrelated:
Siegfried Sassoon’s protest against the great war, at the beginning of Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy.
bulleyah: OED credits Rudyard Kipling with the first usage in 1886: “From Sea to Sea (1899) II. 358 Let the town hear of the wonders which I have seen in Belait.”
Wilayat is a very common word in Oman. It means town/province. Once you drive out of Muscat, the capital city, you’ll find it appearing on sign boards a lot as you drive through different towns. The signs will say ‘Wilayat (Nameoftown) Welcomes You’.
And (what appears to me to be) the plural of the word, Awliyaat, or however you pronounce it, is used to refer to the States that make up the US… at least in all the Arabic news bulletins I’ve seen…
b: Fascinating philological investigations, it never occurred to me that blighty and vilayat were related. I always thought calling England ol’ blighty was based on the same principle as the word we use for decaying cities - urban blight - and the degenerative disease that hits orange orchards - citrus blight. Little did I know that this was my own personal folk etymology (England was certainly a blight on South Asia for a while there though, so it works).
Funnily enough, the title of my last post includes another related word, Wali (or Vali, ‘w’ and ‘v’ are pretty much interchangable), which taken literally means the person who has the Vilayat (or power). In the Sufi context the appellation means someone who is sort of a spiritual governor (mapping political upon religious authority), or also a friend or dear one (Valiullah=friend of God).
If you check out Hobson-Jobson, in addition to Bilayut, they also have an entry for Bilayutee Pawnee, which literally means ‘water from Vilayat’, but refers specifically to soda water, which presumably was not in India before the limeys came over from blimey. (This all makes me thing of the fine institution of marble soda that continues in South Asia, upon which I will write a post at some point).
A godown is a warehouse or store for goods, from the Malay gadong.
Ref:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/malay.htm
All this from watching K N Singh in one of his best villain performances (matched only by his stint as the evil Jack in An Evening in Paris)! Sachmuch, yahaan jo chalti hai use gaadi kehte hain pyaare! Wonderful post, from blighty to vilayat to valiullah and back.
thanks for the fascinating link, samir. i was under the misapprehension, thanks to a teacher in junior school, that ‘godown’ actually came from the english ‘go down’, when they told the ntaives to get stuff up which was stored in the teh-khanas…
it’s wrong i know, but very very charming.
further on malaysia, i just finished reading this fascinatingbook called ‘the consumption of kuala lumpur’, by ziauddin sardar. you might like…
There is nothing wrong with a smile and they could certainly use lots of them back home. It took me some time to learn to smile back. But, I still find it creepy even to the point of feeling dirty when a complete unkown whitey smiles at me for no good reason. And knowing they are all fake smiles(at least most of them), I even get a little pissed because I have to show the same fakeness back.
Seriously, It’s bad enough enduring their oppresive ways and now they want us to smile at them? We’re not your monkies! We don’t dance for no one White-Devil! ;-)
freedomshock.blogspot.com
All that from a boring old hindi movie?!!!
[...] the origin of “Blighty” in “vilayati” (also pronounced “belayti”) is pretty funny, because “vilayati” [...]