Alcove

Science, culture, complexity

Tag: Vedas

  • Marginalia: Romila on textbooks, Rapido ad, Nobel nonsense

    We may go on deleting sections of our history but in the world outside where there are multiple centres of research into the Indian past, and many scholars, there these expunged sections from books used in India will continue to be studied. They will be subjected to new methods of analyses, will be commented upon, will enrich the understanding of India with new knowledge, and all this will be incorporated into the history of India that will be taught everywhere except in India. We in India will not know anything about that section of Indian history which has been deleted from our books.

    Outside India, the multiple cultures of India and their achievements will be studied as part of Indian history and Indian culture, irrespective of the religion of the dynasties that may have presided over the achievements. They will be studied in universities, libraries and museums dedicated to the study of India, as a continuation of not only the Indian past but also of the past pertaining to happenings current in various parts of the world. These will have pride of place not only in the history of India but in the history of human achievements. But we in India will be entirely ignorant of their significance since we shall not know them as a part of Indian history nor as a part of other histories of the world. These would have been cultures that we once recognised as those to which we once contributed, and with which we once had exchanges, when we created the Indian civilisation of past times.

    ‘If NCERT Has its Way, the Study of Indian History Will Move Entirely Outside of India’, Romila Thapar, The Wire

    Well written by historian Romila Thapar, on the NCERT’s decision to excise some important parts of Indian history from school textbooks. First, it’s hard not to come away after reading this being struck by how reminiscent this ‘moving out’ of scholarship is of what colonialism inflicted on India, especially in terms of the natural resources that were transferred from India to the United Kingdom, never to be returned – resources that both the left and the right like to thump their chests over. Self-inflicted colonialism is worse than tragedy. I did think the “we in India will not know anything about that section of Indian history which has been deleted from our books” part was a bit of a reach because I know from experience that as long as you have access to uncensored information on the internet and a few people in your familial or social circles to nudge you to access it, it’s possible to start questioning ideologies, privileges, faith, assumptions, etc. This said, I don’t claim to understand the consequences of depriving relatively very young people of a wholesome history education, which only heightens the risk of ignorance if the people around them agree with their syllabus. Third, while alt-history edits to school textbooks have really brought the problem home, they have been preceded in time by, among others, the Vedas and Ayurvedic texts. They weren’t literary edited; however, the government changed what most people believed their contents to be. And I suspect it will be possible to see in the textbooks’ fate parallels to what befell the Vedas and Ayurveda: one fed Hindutva myths about the mythical achievements of ‘ancient India’ while the other helped pro-party businessmen commercialise these myths.

    Rapido’s ads continue to be nonsensical, or appeal to sensibilities that on the face of it have nothing to do with public transport and commuting. Last time, the ad with Allu Arjun and Ranbir Kapoor (among others) took a cynical view of road traffic, asking commuters to opt for Rapido’s ‘bike taxis’ because they could cut through traffic and wouldn’t “mince” them up like public buses might, effectively discouraging encouraging unsafe driving on roads and discouraging, to quote myself, “civic disengagement from the task of improving public transport”. A new ad that’s been airing for a week or so has the tagline, “bike-wali taxi, sabse saxi“, to the accompaniment of visual narratives in which there is a long queue of people waiting to catch an auto and a bus packed to the rafters with people. So… I’m to take bike taxis because they’re “sexy?” I don’t get it. Maybe the purpose of the new ad is to be an ad for an ad’s sake, to let people know that such a thing exists, but I’m not sold. It’s still a lot like the first ad, and both of which are like Elon Musk’s comments in the context of his Hyperloop idea: that we should desist from using public transport because we might be travelling with a serial killer (and his hope that someone else will build a Hyperloop provided a high-speed rail line in California, and its higher carrying capacity, is cancelled). In all cases, we have people being asked to take the easy way out, in favour of corporate entities invested in people being concerned only with their own comfort, over forcing the government to do better. The latter is always only going to be hard, requiring public organisation and mobilisation, but never opting for this path just opens the door wider to self-serving companies and further undermine the centrality of public transport to a healthy democracy. If India’s status as a democracy is fading, as even The Lancet noted earlier today, we’re contributing, too.

    Also how much are these bike-wali drivers paid?

    “This is embarrassing,” [Charles Lieber] said at his trial. “Every scientist wants to win a Nobel Prize.”

    ‘Charles Lieber, Ex-Harvard Professor, Sentenced in China Ties Case’, Gina Kolata, The New York Times

    An obligatory reminder that the Nobel Prizes influence how science is practiced – rather than being a completely isolated entity that just selects some arbitrarily defined “best scientific endeavour” and gives it a medal, a certificate, and lots of money. We’ve seen this before with Brian Keating, who made a big mistake before acknowledging it and coming clean. Now that Charles Lieber has committed his blunder, I hope he’ll stop pursuing a Nobel Prize as well and just pursue good science instead. But the ideal, but seemingly also very unlikely, thing to happen would be for scientists at large to understand a) why trying to win a Nobel Prize is not trying to do good science even though the former claims to exclusively reward the latter and b) that almost all ‘prestigious’ honours concerned with scientific work – including the universities to work at, the grants to win, and the journals in which to publish – will over time distort the desirability of different fields of study (and even scientists’ estimate of which questions are worth answering), the contents of the scientific literature, what constitutes ‘success’ (e.g. positive results v. negative results), and who can be considered to be successful. (Pseudo-prestigious awards might be even more dangerous.)

  • Unless the West copies us, we’re irrelevant

    We have become quite good at dismissing the more asinine utterances of our ministers and other learned people in terms of either a susceptibility to pseudoscience or, less commonly, a wilful deference to what we might call pseudoscientific ideas in order to undermine “Western science” and its influence. But when a matter of this sort hits the national headlines, our response seems for the large part to be limited to explaining the incident: once some utterance has been diagnosed, it apparently stops being of interest.

    While this is understandable, an immediate diagnosis can only offer so much insight. An important example is the Vedas. Every time someone claims that the Vedas anticipated, say, the Higgs boson or interplanetary spaceflight, the national news machine – in which reporters, editors, experts, commentators, activists and consumers all participate – publishes the following types of articles, from what I have read: news reports that quote the individual’s statement as is, follow-ups with the individual asking them to explain themselves, opinion articles defending or trashing the individual, an editorial if the statement is particularly pernicious, opinion articles dissecting the statement, and perhaps an interview long after to ask the individual what they were really thinking. (I don’t follow TV news but I assume it is either not very different in its content.)

    All of these articles employ a diagnostic attitude towards the news item: they seek to uncover the purpose of the statement because they begin with the (reasonable) premise that the individual was not a fool to issue it and that the statement had a purpose, irrespective of whether it was fulfilled. Only few among them – if any – stop consider the double-edged nature of the diagnosis itself. For example, when a researcher in Antarctica got infected by the novel coronavirus, their diagnosis would have said a lot about humankind – in their ability to be infected even when one individual is highly isolated for long periods of time – as well as about the virus itself.

    Similarly, when a Bharatiya Janata Party bhakt claims that the Vedas anticipated the discovery of the Higgs boson, it says as much about the individual as it does about the individual’s knowledge of the Vedas. Specifically, the biggest loser here, so to speak, are the Vedas, which have been misrepresented to the world’s scientists to sound like an unfalsifiable joke-book. Extrapolate this to all of the idiotic things that our most zealous compatriots have said about airplanes, urban planning, the internet, plastic surgery, nutrition and diets, cows, and mathematics.

    This is misrepresentation en masse of India’s cultural heritage (the cows aren’t complaining but I will never be certain until they can talk), and it is also a window into what these individuals believe to be true about the country itself.

    For example, consider mathematics. One position paper drafted by the Karnataka task force on the National Education Policy, entitled “Knowledge in India”, called the Pythagorean theorem “fake news” simply because the Indian scholar Baudhayana had propounded very similar rules and observations. In an interview to Hindustan Times interview yesterday, the head of this task force, Madan Gopal, said the position paper doesn’t recommend that the theorem be removed from the syllabus but that an addition be made: Baudhayana was the originator of the theorem. Baudhayana was not the originator, but equally importantly, Gopal said he had concluded that Baudhayana was being cheated out of credit based on what Gopal had read… on Quora.

    As a result, Gopal has overlooked and rendered invisible the Baudhayana Sulbasutra as well as has admitted his indifference towards the programme of its study and preservation.

    Consider another example involving the same fellow: Gopal also told Hindustan Times, “Manchester University published a paper saying that the theory of Newton is copied from ancient texts from Kerala.” He is in all likelihood referring to the work of G.G. Joseph, who asserted in 2007 that scholars of the Kerala school of mathematics had discovered some of the constitutive elements of calculus in c. 1350 – a few centuries before Isaac Newton or Gottfried Leibniz. However, Gopal is wrong to claim that Newton “copied” from the work from “ancient texts from Kerala”: in continuation of his work, Joseph discovered that while the work of Madhava and Nilakantha at the Kerala school pre-dated that of Newton and Leibniz, there had been no transfer of knowledge from the Kerala school to Europe in the medieval era. That is, Newton and Leibniz had discovered calculus independently.

    Gopal would have been right to state that Madhava and Nilakantha were ahead of the Europeans of the time, but it’s not clear whether Gopal was even aware of these names or the kind of work in which the members of the Kerala school were engaged. He has as a result betrayed his ignorance as well as squandered an important opportunity to address the role of colonialism and imperialism in the history of mathematics. In fact, Gopal seems to say that unless Newton copied from the “ancient texts,” what the texts themselves record is irrelevant. (Also read: ‘We don’t have a problem with the West, we’re just obsessed with it’.)

    Now, Madan Gopal’s ignorance may not amount to much – although the Union education ministry will be using the position papers as guidance to draft the next generation of school curricula. So let us consider, in the same spirit and vein, Narendra Modi’s claim shortly after he became India’s prime minister for the first time that ancient Indians had been capable of performing an impossible level of plastic surgery. In that moment, he lied – and he also admitted that he had no idea what the contents of the Sushruta Samhita or the Charaka Samhita were and that he didn’t care. He admitted that he wouldn’t be investing in the study, preservation and transmission of these texts because that would be tantamount to admitting that only a vanishing minority is aware of their contents. Also, why do these things and risk finding out that the texts say something else entirely?

    Take all of the party supporters’ pseudoscientific statements together – originating from the Madan Gopals and culminating with Modi – and it becomes quite apparent, beyond the momentary diagnoses of each of these statements, that while we already knew that they have no idea what they are talking about, we must admit that they have no care for what the purported sources of their claims actually say. That is, they don’t give a damn about the actual Vedas, the actual Samhitas or the various actual sutras, and they are unlikely to preserve or study these objects of our heritage in their original forms.

    Just as every new Patanjali formulation forgets Ayurveda for the sake of Ayurveda®, every new utterance about Ancient Indian Knowledge forgets the Vedas for the sake of the Vedas®.

    Now, given the statements of this nature from ministers, other members and unquestioning supporters of the BJP, we have reason to believe that they engage in kettle logic. This in turn implies that these individuals may not really believe what they are saying to be true and/or valid, and that they employ their arguments anyway only to ensure the outcome, on which they are fixated. That is, the foolish statements may not implicitly mean that their authors are foolish; on the contrary, they may be smart enough to recognise kettle logic as well as its ability to keep naïve fact-checkers occupied in a new form of the bullshit job. Even so, they must be aware at least that they are actively forgetting the Vedas, the Samhitas and the sutras.

    One way or another, the BJP seems to say, let’s forget.

  • Poor Sanskrit

    ‘BJP MP Says Speaking Sanskrit Beats Diabetes, Boosts Nervous System’, The Wire, December 13, 2019:

    In a debate in the Lok Sabha on December 12 about the Sanskrit University Bill, Ganesh Singh, the BJP MP from Satna, Madhya Pradesh, cited studies conducted by some American research institution to claim speaking Sanskrit every day “boosts the nervous system and keeps diabetes and cholesterol at bay”, PTI reported. He also said, “according to a [study] by US space research organisation NASA, if computer programming is done in Sanskrit, it will be flawless.”

    It is ironic that a Bill mooted to improve the status of three educational institutions is accompanied by irrelevant, unsupported rhetoric, that too in the Lok Sabha.

    Pratap Chandra Sarangi, the minister of state for animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries and micro, small and medium enterprises, also reportedly said during the same debate that “promotion of this ancient language will not impact any other language”, implying that there is no opportunity cost to valorising Sanskrit.

    But misguided associations between Sanskrit, the Vedas and the claims therein, as well as other unfounded ideas, will only encourage low-quality scholarship that won’t preserve knowledge of Sanskrit in its proper historical context. So there is a very real, and very important, opportunity cost for Sanskrit itself.

  • ‘Mantra sciences’ is just poor fantasy

    I don’t know how the author of a piece in the Times of India managed to keep a straight face when introducing a school based on Vedic rituals that would “show the way” to curing diseases like cancer. Even the more honest scientific studies that are regularly accompanied by press releases proclaiming “the paper is a step in the right direction of curing cancer” tend to be unreliable thanks to institutional and systemic pressures to produce sensational research. But hey, something written many thousands of years ago might just have all the answers – at least according to Jaya Dava, the chairperson of the Rajasthan Sanskrit Academy. Excerpt:

    Proposed in 2005, the Rajasthan government’s research institute to study the science of ancient Hindu texts, the first-of-its-kind in the country, is all set become operational soon. On Monday, the Research Institute of Mantra Sciences (RIMS) or the Rajasthan Mantra Pratishtan, under the Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Rajasthan Sanskrit University (JRRSU), called for applications from eligible candidates for various posts, including that of teachers. The then education minister, Ghanshyam Tiwari, had first proposed the institute in 2005. While presenting the concept, inspired by ‘Manusmriti’, the ancient Hindu book of law, Tiwari had quoted a verse from the text, ‘Sarvam vedaat prasiddhyati’ (Every solution lies in Vedas), in the state assembly.

    So the RIMS is being set up to further the ideals enshrined in the Manusmriti, the document that supposedly also talks about the caste system and how anyone trapped in it has doomed all their descendants to never being able to escape from its dystopian rules. Second: apart from having been mooted by a state’s education minister, the Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Rajasthan Sanskrit University is a state institution utilising public taxes for its operation. Don’t the people get a say in what kind of magic-practising institutions their government is allowed to set up? Hogwarts was at least entertaining and nicely written.

    I’m just anguished about the Hindutva brigade’s poor imagination when it comes to epic fantasy. For example, according to Dava, “reciting verses such as ‘Achutaya Namaha’, ‘Anantaya Namaha’ and ‘Govindaya Namaha’ have helped in treating cancer patients.” Helped in what way? If we had a quantifiable measure that other people could try to replicate, we’d be working towards having an internally consistent system of magic – but no.

    Also, in a world without cancer, is anybody even thinking about the numerous emergent possibilities? For starters, by 2020, we’re going to have $150 billion left unspent because cancer drugs are going to be useless. And India’s B-grade film industries are going to have to come up with new ways to make forlorn ex-lovers spurt blood and die. And David Bowie and Alan Rickman would still be alive. And chanting hippies would be the new millionaire oncologists. The possibilities are endless. More, according to Rajendra Prasad Mishra, who headed RIMS for a decade from 2006,

    “The answer as to how a simple line drawn by Lord Ram prevented the mighty king Ravana from crossing over lies in Vedic science. This ancient wisdom, if discovered, can safeguard India from our enemies by drawing lines across the borders. The chanting of mantras, with the right diction, pronunciation and by harnessing cosmic energy, can help in condensing vapours and bringing rain. This can solve the major problem of water scarcity.”

    But conveniently, this wisdom is considered “lost” and has to be “found” at a great cost to a lot of people while the people doing the finding look like they’re doing something when they’re really, really not. Maybe its writers wrote it when they were 20, looked back at it when they were 40, figured it was a lot of tosh and chucked it into the Saraswati. I’ve no issues with magic myself, in fact I love fantasy fiction and constantly dream of disappearing into one, but I sure as hell don’t want to exist in a realm with infinite predictability shoved down everyone’s throats.

    Notice also how people are completely okay with trusting someone else who says it’s a good idea to invest a lot of money in a scheme to make sense of which very few people are supposed to possess the intellectual resources, a risk they’re willing to take anyway because it might just them more powerful – while they actively stay away from cryptocurrencies like bitcoins because they suspect it might be a Ponzi scheme? Indeed, the powers that be must be vastly more resourceful in matters of the intellect than I to be able to resolve this cosmic cognitive dissonance.

    Featured image credit: stuarthampton/pixabay.