As a computer scientist, mathematician and lover of Hindu myths, I am
surprised that you don't see the reasons. Referring to your article "The
Zero That Was India" – You are playing checkers on a board where
Kaplan and many of his western cohorts are playing chess. You play by
one set of rules and they play by a different set of rules which they
make and change to suit their objective. Let me enumerate the logical
fallacies that we Indians commit.
Because Kaplan has impeccable academic credentials it does not lead to
the conclusion that he is either infallible, telling the truth or not
motivated to lie for reasons known or unknown. Integrity is not to be
confused with knowledge and character is malleable by motivation. Why
else would Dharmaraja Yuddhishthira say "Ashvatthama hato -Narova
kunjerova"?
Jeff Faux in his book The Global Class War mentions that he was giving a
lecture to steel company executives and with facts, figure and chart
slides showed how Reagan policies had priced American steel out of the
market and decimated the industry. A vice-president of a major steel
company interjected, "You don't have to detail the damage Reagan did, we
know and lived through it'. Faux asked, "Then why do you guys support
him". The executive smiled and replied, "You have to understand, he cut
our taxes, we are a country club crowd and he is one of us"
It is the firm general belief of many elitist white people that true
civilization began with them. They are unwilling or unaware that if they
now stand so tall it is because they have positioned themselves on the
shoulders of others as Newton said. This is not to deny either their
inventive genius or their merciless exploitation by colonization and
slavery. It is because of this obsessive desire to attribute every
discovery to Europeans just like the Soviet propaganda to claim every
discovery ever made to Russia and Communism, they have consistently
tried to rewrite history by bending, twisting, cajoling or breaking
truths. As victors of the last half a millennium of history they feel
they have earned the right to write it and have done so and keep doing
it.
Another case in point is Egypt, the probable starting point of Greek
Civilization. From looking at Egyptian monuments and sculpture predating
the sculptures of Cyprus exhibited in the New York Metropolitan Museum
and then looking at Crete and Greek sculpture one can discern the origin
and progress of the art. While the refinement of Greek sculpture is
beyond doubt, the West has stubbornly denied any credit to Egypt for
being the motherlode. Martin Bernal in his scholarly two volume study,
"Black Athena" goes into more detail and proof but has been unfairly
relegated to obscurity by partisan hacks without merit or truth, to
dissociate the origins of Greek Culture from Egypt which in part of the
first millennium BCE was ruled by (black) Nubian Pharoahs, when Greek
myths figured incest, cannibalism and infanticide by mother as in
Oedipus, the house of Atreus, and Medea. Similar biases have been
pointed out by Edward Said and Amartya Sen in their respective books
"Orientalism" and "The Argumentative Indian". There are however many
good and honest scholars in the West and I would recommend to you a
thoroughly researched detailed book with pictures, notes and references
by Georges Ifrah, called "The History of Numbers'. It leaves not a
shadow of a doubt about the Indian origin of the decimal system and
placement value of numbers. A form of zero was invented earlier by the
Sumerians and much later but independently by the Mayans. In the middle
was the true invention of zero and the decimal system by India around
the fourth century AD.
Finally to end on a humorous Indian anecdotal myths on as to how to
combat the false propaganda. King Bhoja had announced a prize of hundred
gold coins for a poet who recited a new shloka in his assembly.
The shrewd but miserly king had in his court entourage three pundits
with a prodigious memory. That should appeal to an EMC scientist! The
first needed to hear a shloka once and he could recite it forever
from memory. The second needed to hear it twice before it became
permanently engraved in his mind. The third needed to hear it thrice.
Any poet reciting a new poem was unable to claim the prize as the three
pundits would serially claim that they knew the poem and could recite
it. Kalidasa heard of this and coached an itinerant poet to recite a
poem that gave evidence that the king's father had borrowed a million
gold coins from the poet's grandfather. After the young poet recited his
poem, the pundits with phenomenal auditory memory were in a quandary.
For them to confirm that they also knew about the debt would make the
king liable for a million gold coins. They opted to say that this poem
was new and the young poet claimed his hundred gold coins.
Thus in dealing with such flagrant chicanery, one follows Krishna's
example in the Mahabharata. One can ignore it like the lying insults of
Shishupala upto a point or indulge in a Dharmayuddha at Kurukshetra. But
always keep in mind his words to the desisting chivalrous Arjuna when
Karna tried to pull out his sinking chariot wheel -"Shatthaam
Shatthyam" and follow the guileful example of the West and Krishna
by temporarily hiding the sun while advising Arjuna to use his most
powerful and lethal weapon not only to sever the head of Jayadratha but
make sure that it landed in the lap of Jayadratha's father so that he
would be the victim of the curse.
Last but not the least, one must not forget to look in the mirror
through the fog of past glory and present vanity and seriously question
ourselves, "What have we done lately"? It means little to invent zero if
you become one. Q.E.D
April 10,
2006
Kamesh Aiyer Replies to the
above
I don't think
we disagree about the existence of the "blind spot"– the question I
raised was a rhetorical one. Mind-sets (or paradigms, if you will) are
not changed by little proofs or dis-proofs. All the evidence is that the
only way paradigms change is when all the people who were born in the
old paradigm die. Sometimes even their immediate descendants (natural or
intellectual) have to pass on before a paradigm can change.
Even Indians (!), argumentative or not, have their blind spots. The
Mahabharata could, after all, be described as the story of the blind
spots of many men as they deal with their offspring and their spouses.
But, that's grist for another article.
Boloji.com is owned and managed by
Boloji Media Inc Privacy Policy |
Disclaimer No part of this Internet site may
be reproduced without prior written permission of the copyright holder.
