"Science" in India

[V.C.Vijayaraghavan]

I agree with Steve Farmer that the educational system is so abysmal that it
does not produce much originality or creativity.


The Indian record in humanistic subjects is much like their performance in
Olympics.  In subjects like Indology or linguistics not many creative people
arounnd. I once mentioned in soc.culture tamil that it is odd that the
foremot Tamil linguistics scholor should come from Czech republic where the
knowledge of Tamil is not excatly widespread, and not from Tamilnadu itself
with a population of 70 million. The only response I got was that this
situation was due to the machinations of Tamil Brahmins.

The main reasons as I see it for the relative sparsenes of creativity in
India is due to

1. Learning is by rote

2. There is a cultural and intelectual dependece on the west. Hence whatever
theories come from the western countries is applied mechanically without
studying it critically. Since many humanistic subjects like Indology,
Anthropology, history, etc have origins in the west, there has been no
creative absorption of these concepts by Indian universities and students

3. because of this severe dependence on west for inputs in  theories,
agenda, methology, data collection and interpretation, students are not
encouraged to seek primary data.

4. The Indian parents generally put pressure on their sons and daughters to
seek secure and what they consider prestigious jobs and not something which
they like