On India – (You may call it jingoism if it makes you happy to brand it so :P)
Of late, i have been listening to various arguments from multiple friends online and offline about this whole idea of “we were living dark ages .. the colonialists came and enlightened us“, “india missed out on the industrial revolution lets not miss out on the knowledge revolution” (this was by a ceo), “we are backward .. they are forward” so on so forth. Now, i get irritated when i listen to this. No, i am not saying india was a near perfect civilisation.. we had our negatives we also had our positives. That is the case with every civilisation. But i have this thing for blanket statements like that above.
I tried to understand why we are like this from a longgg time .. 2006 shud i say?
Like i have mentioned “macaulay” a couple of times before .. in my 2007 post on viswanatha’s “veyi padagalu” and more recently when i wrote about wenin pereira’s book .. I think the british deserve a pat on their back for ruining India ;) (and for creating India as well ??) .
I think the argument is very clear .. one side quotes text from macaulay’s minute on education … “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” and says .. “look this is how India got ruined”. The other side says.. this is all RSS propaganda .. infact it is good that they came and enlightened us. (I am simplifying arguments here.. but i think the reader gets the idea)
I have read some criticisms about the pro-pre-colonial India school of thought and i just can’t understand how anyone in their sane mind can support ludicrous ideas like colonialism .. Manifest destiny or The White Man’s Burden.
I would put myself close to the former school of thought .. i believe every land in the world is unique and has its own local needs and history .. so there is no point propagating a mono-culture for the entire world. I also feel as people from this land.. we need to have some respect for its science, its history, its culture .. what not. Again, i am not saying we were perfect.. no one is.. from time to time there were reforms and they will continue to be so. But that is no reason to assume that we lived in dark age and india before british was charectarised by legions of ignorant masses.
It is in this context that i would want to write about this very interesting series of articles that i read a couple of days ago. These are articles from the “Economic and Political Weekly”.
So the first article is titled “A critique of eurocentric social science and the question of alternatives” by Claude Alvares .. to describe it in very simplistic terms.. the article is about “academic slavery”… It is about how most of the social science curriculum is uncritically imported from the west. I think one of the followup articles also says clearly that this import is not limited to social science alone and the case is the same with maths or physics or biology as well.
This takes me to my recent reading of wiki page on “Indian Mathematics“
This was my complaint with my schooling for long .. I still dont know why my maths textbooks never spoke about the math in Bhaskara’s Lilavati . If ever there was one book that made learning maths fun it had to be this! .. the idea of teaching maths with puzzles embedded in poems is fantastic. I go straight to this section in wiki on Indian Mathematics .. not a single one of these was taught to me anywhere in my 12yrs of school mathematics or 2yrs of engineering mathematics! Who is to blame? ..It is easy to blame Macaulay :P .. but what about post independent India :D ?
Now, it is easy to understand the attitude of present day educated urban intelligentsia .. if from childhood you are barely taught anything about Indian Science or Indian Social science.. and every bloody axiom or theory you studied was an import.. then you are bound to think that .. “okie .. we indians were just a bunch of fools” . I am not giving a “holier than thou” discourse here .. i am as much a party to this culture as anyone of you are .. we are all just a bunch of fools :P ( *joke* )
And btw this is not so much about “Hindu” sciences .. the wonder called “Seamless celestial globe” invented in Mughal India is just as much an Indian invention as anything else. This is again a fascinating story though i don’t understand the full technicalities of it .. but it is about casting big large spheres without any seam. There are two ways in which big globes could be made .. one way is to cast two metal hemisphere and soldering these to produce a big sphere… it is the other way which surprised the west and by and large the rest of the world when it was discovered. I have already written about India’s legendary “wootz steel” before here.
Moral of the story is we have done a great job in forgetting to teach the new generation about everything that was ours and teaching only imported stuff. This has a direct impact on the lack of cutting edge research in India today.. if every single line of what you studied was imported .. and had a built-in dependency .. then how can “original” research spring up?
And by no means am i saying that cultures shouldn’t interact.. way back in the 5th century Varahamihira was influenced by Romaka Siddhanta ( Doctrine of Romans) .. all i am saying we shouldn’t let all the original works of the land erode .. and accept whatever is taught to us as holy gospel.
So coming back to the article..
“The question few people ask is: Why do Indians or Iranians or Chinese for that matter allow themselves to continue to be fed a diet of what Europeans or Americans decide is social science? Is it possible that they could survive for thousands of years without intensive know-how about social, political, scientific or military organisation ? Why are we unable to resist the notion that European sociology or anthropology or American political science or psychology is some kind of absolute which cannot be questioned? Or as we simply too lazy to surrender this colonial inheritance and rethink anew?“
Totalllyyyyyyyy Agree :) .. I dont know if this can be applied to MBA curriculum also.. but definitely if the idea of “management” can be extended to non-industrial societies also (coz humans were humans then also :P) .. then i am sure there will be something we can learn from Indian knowledge systems as well.
The author later quotes a far more powerful passage from a african writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o :
“The biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism against that collective defiance [was] the cultural bomb.The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves; for instance, with other peoples’ languages rather than their own. It makes them identify with that which is decadent and reactionary, all those forces which would stop their own springs of life”
The author goes on to say:
“It is truly amazing to discover that so many educated segments in practically every colonized society could be so convinced eventually of their own – and their civilization’s – worthlessness, that they would allow themselves to be robbed of everything that their civilizations had to offer and then meekly submit to remould themselves in the manners and thinking of those who came from far outside their borders”
It is truly amazing Sir.. It is :( And the article goes on in this tone.It is a wonderfully well written article (tats my fav phrase btw :p)
Infact there is another one titled “Steeped in eurocentricism” which is a far more scathing criticism of the whole thing.. some passages will actually hit your straight on ur face :D
Btw no offense meant to any of my friends who were party to these arguments. Afterall we are argumentative indians.. it is our birth right to argue :D
SuperTramP
December 13, 2011 at 3:30 pm
very nice post! Will have to give it a more careful reading later :)
krishna kanth
December 13, 2011 at 5:20 pm
Planetary diameters
The Surya Siddhanta also estimates the diameters of the planets. The estimate for the diameter of Mercury is 3,008 miles, an error of less than 1% from the currently accepted diameter of 3,032 miles. It also estimates the diameter of Saturn as 73,882 miles, which again has an error of less than 1% from the currently accepted diameter of 74,580. Its estimate for the diameter of Mars is 3,772 miles, which has an error within 11% of the currently accepted diameter of 4,218 miles. It also estimated the diameter of Venus as 4,011 miles and Jupiter as 41,624 miles, which are roughly half the currently accepted values, 7,523 miles and 88,748 miles, respectively.[2]
LMAO!!!
krishna kanth
December 13, 2011 at 5:21 pm
if u click on each of the fields in Math, almost all the basic foundations of the present science are laid but they are recognized as invented by Europeans or Persians. LMAO!!
krishna kanth
December 13, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Bhāskara’s work on calculus predates Newton and Leibniz by half a millennium.[5][6] He is particularly known in the discovery of the principles of differential calculus and its application to astronomical problems and computations. While Newton and Leibniz have been credited with differential and integral calculus, there is strong evidence to suggest that Bhāskara was a pioneer in some of the principles of differential calculus. He was perhaps the first to conceive the differential coefficient and differential calculus.[7
oBelIX
December 13, 2011 at 6:07 pm
could we have some of the old halley posts as well – the pointless ones, the ones with randomness?
Sriram
December 13, 2011 at 11:58 pm
Hard hitting post Halley. Here is an example of a superb institutional effort (founded by Nandan Nilekani and others) towards new urban settlement solutions for India:
http://www.iihs.co.in/
An institution that promotes inter disciplinary interaction, research and new approaches towards planning, development and architecture in the context of urban India drawing on the best historical/cultural frameworks such as chowk. The vision is to be able to create students that will create desi solutions.
krishna kanth
December 14, 2011 at 5:29 am
Reason why we dint make advances/innovations for society with this knowledge could be because of CASTE system. The knowledgeable people do not interact with other parts of work in their daily life. hence, never tried to apply these knowledge for making life easy. Ex:: some of the Differential calculus principles were found Bhaskara only to be able to solve his astronomical calculations; if these people are involved in some menial works in day to day life, they would have probably tried to make some inventions like the west . :) [ cons in Indian civilization ]
halley
December 14, 2011 at 10:36 am
The degeneration of indian caste system might be a con. But the system itself may not be so.
Swami Vivekananda on Caste:
The older I grow, the better I seem to think of caste and such other
time-honored institutions of India. There was a time when I used to
think that many of them were useless and worthless, but the older I
grow, the more I seem to feel a difference in cursing any one of them,
for each one of them is the embodiment of the experience of centuries.
A child of but yesterday, destined to die the day after tomorrow,
comes to me and asks me to change all my plans and if I hear the
advice of that baby and change all my surroundings according to his
ideas I myself should be a fool, and no one else. Much of the advice
that is coming to us from different countries is similar to this. Tell
these wiseacres, “I will hear you when you have made a stable society
yourselves. You cannot hold on to one idea for two days, you quarrel
and fail; you are born like moths in the spring and die like them in
five minutes. You come up like bubbles and burst like bubbles too.
First form a stable society like ours. First make laws and
institutions that remains undiminished in their power through scores
of centuries. Then will be the time to talk on the subject with you,
but till then, my friend, you are only a giddy child.”
krishna kanth
December 26, 2011 at 4:34 am
oh common Halley…all these are good for “it-gave-me-goosebumps” kinda things. but, the truth is that other nations have gone forward because there is no caste discrimination. u call a society stable only if it can withstand against its enemy. one good example is from the author GURU CHARAN DAS. read his “the elephant paradigm” book. one anecdote of the battle BTW Alexander the Great and the Indian king “purushotham” will tell you the instability caused by caste system to the whole of kingdom and race. the battle could have been easily won by our king but for stupid caste system. if you read some more of inner details, you will only be surprised.
krishna kanth
December 26, 2011 at 4:35 am
if u cant find the anecdote in “elephant paradigm” u might find it in his other book “india unbound”. both of these books are really worth a read, considering ur reading abilities and fetish. :)
halley
December 26, 2011 at 11:50 am
he was on campus sometime back.. and i wasnt really impressed :p . he is a great success story in business world.. great learnings on that front. but books.. i’d like to keep for my own preferences.
and caste system had its own loop holes.. but going by your logic.. if u think the west had a clean and green system till industrial revolution then you should read your history books 10 times again :P . every society had their own ways of stratifying .. and slave system and colononialisation were far worse than caste system IMHO. Secondly, when you say it was a “stupid” system.. remember it stood the test of time as opposed to all other systems across all other civilisations. So don’t dismiss it that easily. It is a big time case study in various sociology courses :)
diablo
December 14, 2011 at 11:28 pm
India is not bad but mmost indians are hypocritic buggers. Its time to change minds … Halley for. President
Ghost Runner
December 15, 2011 at 4:54 pm
1)
“The question few people ask is: Why do Indians or Iranians or Chinese for that matter allow themselves to continue to be fed a diet of what Europeans or Americans decide is social science?”
People follow the successful :) … that’s how best practices and benchmarks are established!
We gave the world zero, we had our aryabhatta and bhaskra and who not !
But the problem, ***we always got it wrong the part where ‘the innovation/concept translates to success/fame/visibility’***
This is what the industrialists of Europe and the capitalists of US got right most of the time while India was busy with its communal / regional/ caste wars during the 14-17th centuries. The talent is in the sale macha , not the product alone.
Too bad by the time Indians realized this, they first got sodomized by the British and now by our very own superstition/social system/ bueracracy/ corruption overshadowing whatever is ‘orginal-Indian-good’ :|
2)
Anyway putting it more generically, *** most Indians somehow prefer short cuts **** :(
They don’t work hard like their fore fathers did :( Maybe its because of the weather or something, but we don’t create anything other than short cuts and corruption.
3) ***Most of us don’t have the heart to face challenges.***
IN the present world, Resurrecting Indian ism concomitantly with the domination of western paradigms in the things you mention requires what some call ‘Jigar’ ! That (maybe because of wrongly-interpreting Hindu-ism or half-interpreting Gandhian ism) is almost absent in India, or should I say in Indians who (most if not all) are cowards
Aryabhatta
December 25, 2011 at 10:19 pm
A great mathematician. Without the inventions the world would be different.
krishna kanth
December 28, 2011 at 2:26 am
its not about our society being able to survive or not. in that sense even other societies survived. i do not know how people compare two different worlds.
in India, there is no individualism for a common man. girls live a conventional life and gain happiness from their sons or husbands or father or relatives success. only through empathy. no first hand experience. (talking about a common girl in india) ….so u dont see much violence in their lives. they do not gain knowledge by doing things in life; (this is true even in many gents life)
scenario is much different in western world. violence is there out to be seen. but, if u eliminate the pub culture, drugs out of western world, it would be a perfect life any girl or boy wanting to be in.
problem with caste is, even if u get rich by lottery or sth; u will still be treated the same in a society. ur son does not have access to education even if u can afford it unlike in the west.
BUT DO READ HIS BOOKS. VERY PRAGMATIC APPROACH. he might not be impressive in looks. :P. but do read his books.
ALSO, it is due to caste system that the knowledgable (brahmins) never did any daily choirs of their life and hence did make any inventions to make their work easy. it does not matter who is the pioneer in a field unless u make and take advantage of the lead you got.
CONCLUSION:: there may be some pros in caste system but whoever takes side of caste system exclusively is being a chauvinist, with or without his knowledge (:D)