[Ilugc] Fwd: [ILUG-BOM] Interview of Linus Torvalds; He Also Speaks Of Sad Situation Of India
- From: technocraze@xxxxxxxxx (technocraze)
- Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:08:10 +0530
On 11/4/2011 11:30 AM, Roshan Mathews wrote:
On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 11:26, Vigneshwaran<vigneshwaran2007 at gmail.com>
wrote:
On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Ravi Kumar Tenneti<rktenneti at
gmail.com>wrote:
In continuation to Senthil's mail, I would like all the members of ILUGC to
go through the Macaulay's speech in British Parliament in 1835. Sorry for
attaching an image but I think this will be apt here. Regards Ravi Kumar
A fake quote that lots of people like to pull out from time to time -
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/hinduism/macaulay.html
I had read this article by KE long back.. but i would like to quote
another phrase of Macaulay, which is authentic..
-----quote---
?I have never found one amongst them [the orientalists] who could deny
that a single shelf of a
good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and
Arabia. It is, I believe,
no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has
been collected from all the
books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be
found in the most paltry
abridgment used at preparatory schools in England.?
--Minute of Lord Macaulay on the 2nd of February 1835
--end of quote ---
The above clearly shows the extreme contempt of macaulay over oriental
education.. The reason is that, the nature of indian education was
different from european variety..
In india, focus of schools was primarily for literacy and iculcating
good character.. The technical, and professional education was contained
within the Jaathi Setup. ie, there is no equivalent of engineering
colleges, but since each community collectively did a profession, they
innovated, and invented, technologies, as per their requirement. More
importantly, these technologies are NOT documented.. It was a living
knowledge, which continued to successive generation..
For eg, in the same dharampal website www.dharampal.net , there is a
description of how plastic surgery was practiced by a particular
community for thousands of years.. a team of doctors from england, tried
to know how it was done, but they were able to crack only 60 years
later.. and this was the starting point of plastic surgery field..
Like the same website describes about how small pox was contained with
simple techniques, how high quality steel was produced cheaply, and so
many arts and technologies being professed in india..
And all of these was destroyed by this education system.. otherwise,
where were the people, who built magnifient temples, where were the
people who professed plastic surgery in india?
Coming back to sanskrit, Please read this article by Rajeev Malhotra, on
how europe misappropriated sanskrit..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rajiv-malhotra/how-europeans-misappropri_b_837376.html
------ Quote---
"Sanskrit and Indology entered most major European universities
between 1800 and 1850, challenging if not replacing Latin and Greek
texts as a source for "new" ideas. Many new disciplines were shaped by
the ensuing intellectual activity, including linguistics, comparative
religion, modern philosophy and sociology. "
---end of quote---
I dont know how far these debates on non-technical things like history
is going to shape our mind.. but in my view, technical cannot be dealt
isolated.. Science and Technology is always part of a civilization.. and
Claude Alvares, from Goa, had beautifully explained this in his book
"Decolonising History".. it can be downloaded from the below link..
http://www.indianscience.org/essays/29-%20E--F-Decolonising%20History.pdf
So, i hope, we should be by now, having a perspective of our patetic
state of today's education, and the root cause.
If we want to try any solution, we need to analyse those root causes.
Regards,
Senthil
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