On 11/4/2011 11:30 AM, Roshan Mathews wrote: > On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 11:26, Vigneshwaran<[email protected]> wrote: >> On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Ravi Kumar >> Tenneti<[email protected]>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 _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
