[MannoFr]

Aravindhan said:

It's pretty clear that India is very far from being the world's centre of sciences today

Not true at all...we are today emerging as a major hub of development in Asia, and if the current trend is kept up, we would soon make a major impact in the world scenario as well.

There is no call to turn a blind eye towards the problems that India is facing, at the same time, there is a real need to be aware and make other Indians aware of the glory that was once India - if nothing else, it might atleast make us feel ashamed of the state we are in today in comparison, and might prompt at least some Indians to work towards bringing that lost state back again. Badri,

That was very well said! Being a Malaysian Indian myself, I am always amazed at what our ancestors had achieved. A chinese friend of mine told me he that he was captivated by the beauty and the uniquness of Angkor Wat, built by Indians. He said "how can the first ever civilized people end up like this today? I can't believe it! I am sure you guys have something hidden in you and you just need some tweaking!! " .....I think what he said is true... and I don't think we are far from achieving it. I don't know what the media in India says but in Malaysia, the news mentioned, in a few years, India will be among the top 3 nations in the world - China, America and India - will rule the world economy!!
My Thai friends respect the Indians and are amazed when they find out Indians are tops in the cyberworld! A lot of "non-indians" are thinking that India/ Indians are heading in the right directions.... If Indians in the US or UK or elsewhere can do it, why can't the Indians in India?? I am sure we can do it!

[Paul Bunyan]

Dear Badri
Beautiful post. Tamil is indeed a great language. Please do post like these words of wisdom. Instead of keeping these words of wisdom in ourknowledge bank, let us put them into action.

[Drugmachine]

I have seen wherever Indians get together we talk only bad about indian culture.

Pradheep,
Um....just wondering- r u sure its our culture itself they talk bad abt, or perhaps the lack of it (among our own ppl.)??
Altho I've lived outside India (Singapore), I personally haven't met ne Indians who bad mouth our own culture! In fact I've heard tat most of the NRIs try to show themselves as more 'Indians' than the Indians in India itself??
Of course, my sister (who lives in the US) also once told me tat many of the Indians who go to settle in the US r initially scornful and negativistic abt being Indians & from India!
And they mix around freely- sumtimes too freely- w/ the locals & adopt their social life/all their ways, until finally, after getting the Green card, they suddenly rem. their roots and turn a new leaf, re-adopting our culture/values and striving to maintain them within their families!

Taking bad of India is not the solution to overcome social problems. Social problems can be abolished if each one of us strive to remove it. Talking about our glorious past is a postive attitude giving us hope that we can make ourlives better and abolish social evils.

A good point! However, unfortunately, in today's scenario, the present gen. r under the misconception tat glorifying our glorious past and spreading our culture is the root cause of the social problems in our spciety! Which is y they r found to be going aginst it in ne way possible!

So ultimate message...is it wrong to be positive and have a positive attitude?

Nothing wrong w/ tat! But IMO its also necessary to call a spade a spade wherever need be! Or else we wudn't know where to develop ourselves!

[NeroASERCH]

Originally Posted by Surya That's not the Discovery Channel known to us in the US.

Our discovery channel is not biased...but it only shows programs about non-controversial stuff and it is ussually pretty accurate. It never talks about cotnroversial topics in Indian history like the AIT. I haven't seen anything on India that's positive on the disc channel. Now-a-days it's mostly things like "Motorcycle Mansion" or something.

Also the History Channel. They never show non-white history. Occatinally, I see things about the Civil Rights Movement. But other than that....not really.

[HedgeYourBets]

Sri Surya wrote:
I haven't seen anything on India that's positive on the disc channel. Now-a-days it's mostly things like "Motorcycle Mansion" or something.

Also the History Channel. They never show non-white history. Occatinally, I see things about the Civil Rights Movement. But other than that....not really. we may be getting out of the main topic; so please write to me seperately if you like. I did watch a little bit here in Michigan which I have been visiting every year for the last ten years. The selection of topics seems to be different from that in Australia. When I go back, I can post a selection from there. I do get the impression that compared to Europe and Australia, the mainstream TV channels and newspapers in USA give more selective information. This is only an impression since I found the TV here boring and have not been watching much. Regards,
Swarup

[tgs]

the vast majority is still reeling under the feeling of an apologetic embarassment of being Indian. I have seen wherever Indians get together we talk only bad about indian culture. Both of these are peculiar to NRIs, as far as I can see. People in India certainly do not have a feeling of "apologetic embarassment" and we most certainly do not diss India when we get together. Sure, we rant about current problems and frustrations, but that's not the same thing as denigrating Indian culture. We certainly don't do the latter.

if nothing else, it might atleast make us feel ashamed of the state we are in today in comparison, and might prompt at least some Indians to work towards bringing that lost state back again. This is a fundamental point of difference between us. I see nothing to be ashamed about the state we're in today, and plenty to be proud of. The point I was trying to make in my previous post was that people need to overcome this irrational shame, not heighten it - and constantly running back to ancient history instead of looking to the many things in present India we can be proud of isn't helpful at all. What we end up doing is using the past to "apologise" for supposed inadequacies in present-day India, rather than standing up for the fact that present-day India is an amazing place in its own right - not because of what our ancestors did 25000 years ago, but because of what we are doing today. There is no need to feel inadequate or ashamed of being Indian, because India today is a place to be proud of.

For example, the new Airbus 380 is an amazing feat of engineering. But the next-generation backup navigation systems for this and future aircraft which Airbus will develop are being designed and developed by none other than HCL, Bangalore. This is the sort of cutting-edge work we Indians are doing today. I personally find such things infinitely more inspiring - and much more relevant in overcoming the challenges that our country still faces - than exalting the supposed achievements of our ancient ancestors.

All too often, the preoccupation with the glories of ancient India hides a sense of shame with modern India (not that I'm accusing anyone here of that). This upsets and angers me. Thevaram pugazh paduvarkal, aanaal sivan kovilai ikazhvarkal.

dont you tell your kids the greatness of your family or do you only open only your family's rotten can of worms? Actually, my parents told me very little about my family's history until I was quite old. Instead of telling me how my great-grandfather gave away all our fields to his tenants and turned the ancestral house into a free hospital (or, for that matter, how the next generation squandered all the goodwill he had created), they tried to set an example by the way they lived and treated others. In my opinion, they did the right thing, and I try to raise my children the way they raised me. Family heritage is something to be proud of all right, but it is much better transferred in adulthood than in childhood - what we do today is much more important than what we were in the past.

[Big A]

Hindustani Ladka, Exactly!

Did u know that in the ancient somanathapuram temple, the Indian architects had a Shiva Lingham floating in mid air, due to the position of certain magnetic pillars inside the shrine? Unfortunatly the temple was raided by invaders, and doesn't excist anynmore.
One of the Gopuram's shadow in the Thanjai Periya Kovil built by Raja Raja Chozan never falls on the ground. There is a Shivan temple in Mayavaram I think, (one of the better infromed hubber maybe could help me out on the exact location,) when Thean (honey) Abishegam and honey abishegam only is done to a Shiva Lingham, Parvati can be seen inside the Lingham. She cannot be seen if it's a milk Abishegam, or anything. This only works with Honey. These are just some, there are hunderds of tempels in India that are architectural/scientific miracles!

But these things are never mentioned here, outside of India, on...say the Discover Channel! Most of the things that the discover channel shows here, are programs like, 'THE ABOLA VIRUS BREAKS OUT IN AFRICA' or 'INDIA, THE BIGGEST AIDS CARRYING COUNTRY' or 'THE BUCKINGHAM PALACE, A MODERN WONDER!' But when it coems to this, it's just easier for them to pass if off as "Just Stories" and "They did not have enough Knoledge to pull it off, therefore it's not true!"

[brraverishhh]

I hate how historians around the world try ot make people think that Europeans, Arabs and the CHinese developed all science, math, etc. and that Indians did nothing even though in realiy, Indian civilization was the first to develop advanced math and science. Even today, scientists do not understand some of the concepts that ancient Indian civilization used or knew about.

[doctorzlo]

Aravindhan wrote
And that, I think, is the biggest danger in the current trend of constantly exalting ancient works. Science (and any other field of inquiry) progresses best when it is most open and least dogmatic. Which is why (in my opinion) Indian science didn't progress beyond a point - and why even mathematicians as obviously gifted as Aryabhatta and Bhaskara made such glaring errors.
_________________
I tried raising this question in two other forums and I have not received any response as cogent as Sri Aravindhan's. I think that Bronkhorst does identify one of the reasons that Sri Aravindhan mentioned namely the respect for received truths (see bottom of page 54 in Bronkhorst's artcle). Perhaps Bronkhorst is trying to see the influence of Panini in these attitudes instead of that of the whole culture of those times.
What is surprising is that some eminent scientists even now are trying to glorify the ancient achievement of Indians without trying to see reasons for stagnation. Recently, there is an artcle in EPW (September, 2003) entitled "Axiomitization and Computational Positivism" by Roddam Narasimha, FRS. Narasimha's theory is that the Indian astromers were not partcularly interested in theories but predictions. They seem to have been remarkably successful in this ; the accuracies of some of the predictions of Aryabhatta and others have not been surpassed until the 18th century. He calls this computational positivism. When I wrote to him saying that Aryabhatta and Bhaskara could have easily verified their farmulae by a few crude experiments, there has been no response.
I hope that Sri Aravindhan will write on a longer article and publish it.
Swarup

[Beerinkol]

Pradheep,

Thats a good article, thanks...

Now, lets all start stocking up our turmeric supply..

[Lillie_Steins]

* Why are we becoming so obsessed with trying to prove that everything that is good or laudable originated from India?

* They may or may not have - I'm not going to open that can of worms - but does it really matter? It's pretty clear that India is very far from being the world's centre of sciences today, and that it isn't going to magically become so just because it may have been at some point in the past.

* Isn't it more important to focus on our problems today (lack of a scientific temper, galloping overpopulation, superstition, casteism, communalism, illiteracy, child labour, people dying of starvation, and so on)?

* How is proclaiming our ancient greatness going to change any problems that plague modern Indian culture and society?

I get the feeling sometimes that we are just running to our ancient past because we are ashamed of our present. I wish we wouldn't be - if we should take pride in our country, it makes a lot more sense to me to take pride in our country for what it is today, not for what it may have been in 8000 BC.

Aravindan! Bravo!

"pazhamperumai pEsuvathu" part of our culture!

We have to be proud of what we are and we are no inferior to anybody. I wish it is true.

Are we going to prove that in science and technology?!

If so, When?

[doctorzlo]

An article in this direction is written by a Swiss Samskrit scholar Johannes Bronkhorst : "Panini and Euclid:Reflections on Indian Geometry", which appeared in Journal of Indian Philosophy, 29, pp 43-80, 2001. I do not have a URL to this but if anybody is interested, I can send a pdf file of the article.

I've read Bronkhorst's paper. I think he identifies an important problem, and does it well, but misidentifies its cause. He seems to suggest that the problem could have been that science was influenced by grammatical methodology (though there is no clear evidence for this). In my opinion, it was much deeper than that.

Panini's grammar, from a methodological perspective, embodies two trends. The first is the trend towards the primacy of exegesis in scholarly discourse. For some reason, texts by renowned scholars came to have a very special status, eventually becoming a source of knowledge equal to or superior than observation. The second trend is the increasing importance of inductive reasoning, where you used specific examples to derive generalised rules. Taken together, these are capable of producing devastating errors.

But Panini's grammar did not create these trends, nor were they confined to grammatics. You find them equally in philosophical works of the period which - unlike earlier texts - only try to interpret, expound on and clarify the meanings of existing texts; and even the original work that is done still seeks support in interpretation of existing texts.

We see exactly the same disease in the mathematics of the period. Bhaskara tries to argue mathematics using rules of mimamsa. Mimamsa, for heaven's sake! And proofs - where they are provided - tend to be anecdotal, rather than deductive. Bronkhorst argues that philosophy in that period understood the concept of proof. He's right, technically speaking, but the form of proofs they used lacked rigour and routinely accepted exegetic and anectdotal evidence as "proof". Just as the mathematicians did.

So I don't think Bronkhorst adequately looks at what was happening in other disciplines. I think there is a readily available explanation for why the problems he identifies happened in Ancient India, as I've tried to outline above.

There is also a clear parallel with certain modern trends (not just confined to India), where ancient knowledge is being venerated without much independent inquiry. I would like to quote one passage from Bronkhorst's paper:

Aryabhatta is wrong where he gives the volume of a pyramid as: "Half the product of the height and the [surface of the triangular base] is the volume called 'pyramid'." The correct volume of a pyramid is a third, not half, of the product here specified... The same is true of Aryabhatta's incorrect rule for the volume of a sphere. These errors are discussed in greater detail in a 1985 paper published in a French journal. It tends to flabbergast people because the idea that Sanskrit texts might actually be wrong is not something people think about (which is absurd - no human science can ever be wholly right about everything at any point of time).

And that, I think, is the biggest danger in the current trend of constantly exalting ancient works. Science (and any other field of inquiry) progresses best when it is most open and least dogmatic. Which is why (in my opinion) Indian science didn't progress beyond a point - and why even mathematicians as obviously gifted as Aryabhatta and Bhaskara made such glaring errors.

[Ifroham4]

I've pm'ed u!

[brraverishhh]

That's not the Discovery Channel known to us in the US.

Our discovery channel is not biased...but it only shows programs about non-controversial stuff and it is ussually pretty accurate. It never talks about cotnroversial topics in Indian history like the AIT.

[brraverishhh]

buy organically grown turmeric because in our experience we found that it is more potent. In USA find them in health stores that are imported from india.

Don't you think 'organically grown' is just a gimmick, just to get a few more bucks for a bag?

[HedgeYourBets]

Dear aravindhan
very good question and insight about the present Indians.
Why do we sing about past glory?. It is history. why do we learn history?. Because it tells us who we were and what was ourglory and also our mistkes.

Look into your own personla life, dont you tell your kids the greatness of your family or do you only open only your family's rotten can of worms?. Of course we should caution our kids the mistakes but should give more importance to impart our family tradition so that they also know their heritage. But just advising would notbe enough , we have to live and be an example.

India had been the cradle of civilzation and knowledge. In every culture people with wisdom had been killed, crucified or posioned. But India had nurtured great men and women.

Here I know Indian kids do not even know to speak their mothertongue. It is shame to the kids mother and dad. if a kid does not know "Mother Tongue" , then the kid's mother has failed in her first step of motherhood. How can culture come without mother tongue. Just wearign Indian clothes and eating Indian food is not Indian culture.

I have seen wherever Indians get together we talk only bad about indian culture. How can their kidsthen like to go to india even for a visit?. we give a bad impression of our own mother-land that has nurtured us.

India is a mother though poor and has starving kids and different cultural background is still great compared to all other cultures. There is civil war in countries with one single language, life style. Indian with more than 300 dialtects and multi cultural is about to home "peace".


Taking bad of India is not the solution to overcome social problems. Social problems can be abolished if each one of us strive to remove it. Talking about our glorious past is a postive attitude giving us hope that we can make ourlives betterand abolish social evils.


So ultimate message...is it wrong to be positive and have a positive attitude?

[doctorzlo]

We measure success with materialistic progress and that is a blind measurement. There is more than that in life.

Never was a true'r word spoken!
In fact I was once told tat the development of a country is measured not just by its technology but also the desire for materialistic satisfaction among its ppl.!
This made me understand the law of diminishing marginal utility, ie, the more u hav of sumthing, the less u want to hav of it and the more u want of sumthing else & so on....!
Its a pity tat evn ppl. in our society r giving up the best of our culture in satisfying this law!

Infact modern world is slowly progressing that the ancient values of life is the correct way of life. This is now seen in all fields, including medicine, psycology and other feilds. I understand your point...you look at technology aspect, but i am looking at life, which is not a technology based.

True. As Swami Vivekananda said, we need to adopt only the technology of the West and the Philosophy of the East (in this case India) in order to truly make progress!

[brraverishhh]

This article (which I read) brings up something that has puzzled me for quite some time. Why are we becoming so obsessed with trying to prove that everything that is good or laudable originated from India? They may or may not have - I'm not going to open that can of worms - but does it really matter? It's pretty clear that India is very far from being the world's centre of sciences today, and that it isn't going to magically become so just because it may have been at some point in the past. Isn't it more important to focus on our problems today (lack of a scientific temper, galloping overpopulation, superstition, casteism, communalism, illiteracy, child labour, people dying of starvation, and so on)? How is proclaiming our ancient greatness going to change any problems that plague modern Indian culture and society?

I get the feeling sometimes that we are just running to our ancient past because we are ashamed of our present. I wish we wouldn't be - if we should take pride in our country, it makes a lot more sense to me to take pride in our country for what it is today, not for what it may have been in 8000 BC.

[Beerinkol]

It is because we have forgotten the glory of our past during the last few centuries that we are where we are, perhaps. As long as Indians were proud of their heritage, they had a motive to better themselves. It is human nature. If your father earned a four figure salary, you would want to better it and earn a six figure one. Even as children, we do this, and continue it as adults.

It is only when we forgot the glorious past, and pandered to the British rulers that we lost our self-confidence. Today, the greatest drawback most Indians face is a lack of confidence. I have been in "foreign" countries, and this is so evident there. Some of course, have been able to break that inferior feeling and have consequently emerged successful, but the vast majority is still reeling under the feeling of an apologetic embarassment of being Indian.

In times like this, it would help to recount the days of yore and step up our confidence levels as Indians.

Aravindhan said:

It's pretty clear that India is very far from being the world's centre of sciences today Not true at all...we are today emerging as a major hub of development in Asia, and if the current trend is kept up, we would soon make a major impact in the world scenario as well.

There is no call to turn a blind eye towards the problems that India is facing, at the same time, there is a real need to be aware and make other Indians aware of the glory that was once India - if nothing else, it might atleast make us feel ashamed of the state we are in today in comparison, and might prompt at least some Indians to work towards bringing that lost state back again.

[NeroASERCH]

badri, "peRRa thaayum piRantha ponnaadum naRRava vaaninum nani siRanthanavE"

Yes, Mrs PP. I did not know this Tamizh equivalent, but had in mind this same thing that Rama says to Lakshmana after defeating Ravana when I wrote that part. Vibheeshana offers the throne of Lanka to Rama. Lakshmana who sees the beauty of Lanka says,

"Anyway Bharatha is on the throne in Ayodhya. And Lanka is quite beautiful and properous. Why not accept this offer?"

Rama replies "Janani Janma bhoomischa swargaadapi gareeyasi"
meaning, "Mother and motherland are better than heaven itself. Just because another woman is prettier than your mother, would you abandon your own mother and call the other one your mother? Lanka may be more beautiful than Ayodhya, still, that is our motherland, and that is where we belong."

Thanks, Mrs PP for enlightening me on the Tamizh quote. Is it perhaps from Kamba Ramayanam then?