Dalit activist Chandrabhan Prasad just celebrated the 206th birthday of Lord Macaulay, with a party in New Delhi [via Shashwati]. Why celebrate the face of English imperialism? Because for some groups domination by a foreign overlord was better than domestic oppression. 
…. Prasad … hails Macaulay as the Father of Indian Modernity, for it was after the introduction of his English system of education in 1854, that Dalits got the right to education, he says. [Link]Bhan has three reasons for revering Macaulay – his insistence to teach the “natives” English broke the stranglehold of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic teaching, a privilege of only the elite castes and, he argued,for the European kind of modern education, with focus on modern sciences. “Imagine, if we had only followed indigenous study,” said Bhan, “we would be like Afghanistan or Nepal today.”… [Link]
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p>These activists go further than celebrating Macaulay’s role in the past, however, and call for English to be central to Dalit education in the future. They unveilled a portrait of “English, the Dalit Goddess”:
Dalit poet Parak sang a couplet to the portrait – a refashioned Statue of Liberty, wearing a hippie hat, holding a massive pink pen, standing on a computer, with a blazing map of India in the background – Oh, Devi Ma/ Please Let us Learn English/ Even the dogs understand English, to cheers and laughter, …Bhan … declared … “Hereafter, the first sounds all newborn Dalit and Adivasi babies will hear from their parents is – abcd. Immediately after birth, parents or a nearest relative will walk up to the child and whisper in the ear – abcd,’… [Link]
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p>Is English a tool of liberation? Are indigenous Indian languages oppressive?
The remedy … is to … become English speaking at the earliest. Goddess English is all about emancipation. Goddess English is a mass movement against the Caste Order, against linguistic evils such as Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telgu and Bangla for instance. Indian languages as more about prejudices, discrimination and hatred and less about expressions and communications. [Link]
Or is this just a PR stunt, to stick a finger in the eye of the local intelligencia? Is the best path for Dalit advancement to reject Indian languages in favor of English? Lastly, should they learn International English or Desi Hinglish?
I think some Rajput muslims are also Singhs.
Like Malik, you can be a Hindu Malik or a Muslim Malik.
“The 400 years or so that British had control over India are the years where the whole world made huge progress.”
I concur. To have missed out on the industrial revolution is like a country, today, missing out on the internet revolution. Where would the country be 100 years from now?
The so-called civilizing institutions credited to the British while they ruled India, such as the penal code, the education system, a civilian rather than a military government, were all self-serving inventions to rule the country in the most profitable manner. At the heyday of the British Raj, it is said that less than 150,000 British civilians ruled a country of several hundred million. That sort of exponential leveraging of British manpower could be possible only by teaching Indians how to rule themselves, for the benefit of the Empire, of course. Stuff that is taught in B-schools – how to leverage resources for maximum gains.
ABD??
Yes. Brownz.
CinamonRani I would really like to know if the caste system in still prevalent in India?
Just look through any “matrimoial” advertisements in any Indian newspaper. The words Kayasth, Iyer, Iyengar, Brahmin, Jat etc., just pop out. Heck why go all the way to India, just look at the classifieds in India Abroad.
Wow, easy there. You can’t be comparing a country of the size of India to those mentioned and claim it as an answer to the question raised.
An incredibly simplistic and ignorant assessment of our history. In fact, these customs have waxed and waned throughout the history of the subcontinent. Arguably many social ills were actually exacerbated and magnified by the ravages of British colonialism. It’s been shown time and time again that the damage colonization does to a society can actually set it backwards and make customs that may or may not have been marginal more prominent.
In any case, this argument that the British civilized us reflects an absolute ignorance of the complexity of history. Not to mention a brown-sahib mindset. We’ve had plenty of indigenously-generated rebellions against the oppressive status quo in India. The British were a far more destructive presence. Just look at the legacy of Partition. That alone has been a horrendous tragedy of our collective peoples.
In 104 the word is matrimonial
“Among ABD Hindus, in my experience 50%+ of marriages are across caste/regional lines. But what has that to do with India? So long as the state recognizes caste as an organizing category, there is little hope it will disappear. The Supreme Court ruled that in “mixed” marriages, the father’s caste prevails.”
Desitude, that’s my point exactly. Read my Post #77.
Apparently so did Korea, South-East Asia and other non-european regions of the world. So again: why has the world overtaken India since it gained independence from the British?
Only sub-saharan Africa remains comparable to the Indian subcontinent in poverty, hunger, backwardness etc.
Plenty of Sikh Maliks too.
Desitude:
Correct. In fact, if the experiences of my cousins are anything like typical, the longstanding Christian community in Kerala is still practicing caste. Which is just as bad as Hindu casteism, if not worse, since Christianity is supposed to have that whole thing about being all people being equal in the sight of God. But the argument was whether evangelical missionaries were “destroying Indian culture.” I gotta say, if caste is an “essential” part of Indian culture (I don’t think it is, by the way) then good riddance to bad rubbish.
CS
Only sub-saharan Africa remains comparable to the Indian subcontinent in poverty, hunger, backwardness etc.
I don’t believe India is in the bottom fifty countries, and, unlike virtually every other country, is growing at 9%. Do you think the asserted rate is a sham? Certain indicators are terrible, viz. child malnutrition, for which bad governance is squarely to blame.
“Apparently so did Korea, South-East Asia and other non-european regions of the world. So again: why has the world overtaken India since it gained independence from the British?”
not an expert, but didn’t many european countries benefit from the marshall plan? also the u.s. helped japan and korea recover. also india was stifled by 50 years of socialist policies, and its incredible diversity, whilst culturally a boon, makes it an unwieldy and more difficult country to rule via democracy. china, singapore for example, esp. the latter, benefited from draconian policies and very little political freedoms. china liberalized its economy long before india did. countries like japan and korea are also more homogenous than india and were never systematically colonized to the extent that india was. the better comparison for india now would be latin america, which tends to be diverse, and which (as a whole, but it varies from country to country) is doing better than india at the moment in attaining many of its millennium development goals. but it would be interesting to compare latin american countries colonized by different powers (brits vs. spaniards vs. portuguese) and see how they are faring.
“Apparently so did Korea, South-East Asia and other non-european regions of the world. So again: why has the world overtaken India since it gained independence from the British?”
A better question, in light of India Shining, should be,”Why had”, not “Why has.”
But you are right. India could have done a lot better a lot faster. I think India took the wrong turn by embracing planned economy rather than free economy. Planned economy, whether in its extreme form as in communist Russia or in its lite version as in post-Independence Nehru-ruled India, has doomed every nation that has ever subscribed to it.
Until the Nineties, most Indians firmly believed that free market capitalism was economically wasteful in a country as poor as India, and globalization was going to be another form of colonization, except this time by the US rather than Britain. India simply did not want to be another Taiwan, a country derided for serving its western corporate masters through screwdriver technology. So India followed the path of government managed five-year plans, which killed enterprise and bloated bureaucracy and corruption, now jokingly called the License Raj.
But it was not entirely India’s fault. It was a different time. Even the US had a Galbraith back then, and economists were winning Nobel Prizes for preaching large scale government planning. Let’s not forget. Free market capitalism, though it has been around since ancient times, is a very recently validated principle in the modern times. In the fifties and sixties, an Indian would have had to be absolute nuts to see anything positive coming out of free markets. Today, there is no other way.
Nonsense. Japan for example did not even begin modernizing until a century and a half ago. As others have pointed out, in 1947 India was in better shape than a large portion of the non-western world. Yet now it finds itself near the bottom with subsaharan africa. Why?
What we are seeing is the usual desi drone excuses in response to this question:
We was robbed by the lousy brits. Sure, but they also left an India that was better set than many other regions of the world. So that still begs the question: why has most of the non-western world overtaken India since the British left?
India is too big. Well then break it up into manageable pieces. In any case, that ignores the fact that smaller subcontinental nations, even tiny Nepal, aren’t doing so well either. Sri Lanka is the best off nation in the subcontinent and it isnt exactly prosperous either.
Who says we are behind? This ostrich-like mentality is unfortunately widespread among too many desis. Call them the deluded “India Shining” jingos.
Who are you referring to here ? You are using exceptions to argue against the general. There are a number of local lower caste saints who had higher caste devotees all over India, but none of those devotees got their daughters married to ppl outside( forget lower or dalit) the caste.
There have been many upper castes who were generous(to the point of penury) towards the dalits, but still practiced untouchability, did not allow them to enter temples or get educated because that is what their religion told them. Think Inspector Javert in Les Miserables. Great reformers needed to be reminded of futility of caste by higher entities e.g. adi shankara.
Valmiki and Vyasa and their literature (if real) are from the pre-vedic period, when caste wasn’t hereditary or rigid according to secular scholars.
Denying caste is major factor in their oppression is revisionism. Class certainly complicates it, but doesn’t explain it. Does anyone remember the scene from Hazaron Khwaishe aise where dalits are protesting against the oppressive landlord. The landlord has a heart attack and the dalits rush to get the doctor, who turns out to be a dalit. The son refuses to allow dalit doctor treat his father (early succession), while the father is ready to get treated.
Macacacroach,
True, India has a long, long way to go. However, India is moving ahead collectively – recent IT boom is driven from South, and wheat revolution was through Punjab, milk from Central India. So breaking is a disaster.
A lot of progress is offset by population increase in India.
Simple Question: Have you been to India recently?
I have been to 20 odd countries, and yes, the poverty I see in India is disheartening but I never seen a society changing faster. I am told China is faster by an order of magnitude. The acceleration in itself is noteworthy.
So that still begs the question: why has most of the non-western world overtaken India since the British left?
Have you heard about Marshall Plan? This is not take credit from those countries though but…….
I don’t believe India is in the bottom fifty countries, and, unlike virtually every other country, is growing at 9%. Do you think the asserted rate is a sham? Certain indicators are terrible, viz. child malnutrition, for which bad governance is squarely to blame
India is ranked 127 out of 177 nations in the Human Development Index. Namibia, Guatemala and Palestinian Territories are higher on the Human Development Index. To say that India is ridiculously poor would be a gross understatement.
That would be excuse number 4. I forgot to include this one.
The problem with this excuse is that socialism/planned economy did not prevent the Soviet Union from becoming a global super power, while India under its License Raj was a beggar nation dependent on foreign handouts. Why?
India is ranked 127 out of 177 nations in the Human Development Index. Namibia, Guatemala and Palestinian Territories are higher on the Human Development Index. To say that India is ridiculously poor would be a gross understatement.
So its not in the bottom fifty, is it, macaca. I don’t deny India is ridiculously poor. Again, as I asked macacroach, do you think its current growth rate is a sham?
Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, West Indies etc regressed to feudalism? Where the heck did you learn that?
Politcally, quite a few countries of the West Indies regressed to dictatorship. ALso, Singapore, like it or not, is a one-family country. It pretends to be otherwise, but we all know about what happens to “those-that-oppose-Lee-Kwan-Yew”. [I have read his autobio. Impressive self-gratification]. Hong Kong? You must be joking, right? Malaysia is a feudal dictatorship ruled by a former Malayalee. 🙂
None of those countries are by any measure considered as large. On the other hand, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the former Brit colonies of Africa have unfortunately regressed. This has nothing to do with religion. Iran was a diverse, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, highly cultured country as well.
But we’re diverging totally from Ennis’ post (English as a language to benefit Dalits) vs benefits of a colonial legacy. Please, let us get back to the original topic. 🙂
India is ranked 127 out of 177 nations in the Human Development Index. Namibia, Guatemala and Palestinian Territories are higher on the Human Development Index.
Now, ALM, do you really believe in these “goofy” attributes. I once worked for year and half with 8-9 Palestanians (a fairly significant sampling) here in US. None of their families (except 1 whose father was a dean and an ultra-elite) were even getting paid. Sometimes even for months. Dude, there is no growth rate, industry, etc. Nothing.
I was in Botswana in 2004 (next door to Namibia, and one of the shinning stars of Southern Africa). Sure, it is not densely populated as India, and therefore, not widespread poor. But calling India poorer compared to Namibia et al. is humor.
Sure, India has lots, lots of poor people.
But these indexes are GIGO = Garbage In, Garbage Out
Great reformers needed to be reminded of futility of caste by higher entities e.g. adi shankara.
Adi Shankara upheld varnashrama dharma.
“The problem with this excuse is that socialism/planned economy did not prevent the Soviet Union from becoming a global super power, while India under its License Raj was a beggar nation dependent on foreign handouts. Why?”
as far as i know the soviet union was not a true global economic superpower, only a political one. and any power on their part came at a high price to their constituent parts and citizens. its citizens enjoyed a minimum level of state-provided security in exchange for giving up most of their rights. india tried socialism and democracy at the same time. if you think 50 years of socialist rule is an excuse, so be it. looking for one clear-cut reason for india lagging other countries is difficult. there are many reasons why – colonialism, corruption, discrimination, socialist policies, diversity, nepotism, naipaul’s a million mutinies, a rapidly growing population in the years after independence etc etc. etc. instead of asking why, why don’t you tell us then? you seem to be fishing for a particular reason. just spell it out then and put us all out of our misery and ignorance:)
Cinamon Rani
They do that sort of thing in Maharashtra by taking Brahmin last names. Some get more creative. There’s a famous dalit author named Texas Gaekwad. Don’t have any data on positive impact. It does manage to irritate some people though.
Re: your other question, about current state in India check Shivam Vij’s blog. It has some interesting links and really scary stuff.
Macacaroach,
What is your answer to your own question?
“The problem with this excuse is that socialism/planned economy did not prevent the Soviet Union from becoming a global super power, while India under its License Raj was a beggar nation dependent on foreign handouts. Why?”
The Russian economy was growing rapidly the entire decade preceeding the revolution, and had a much higher base in the early twentieth century than did India. The result of the planned economy was subsistence farming and a split of the ’empire’ into constituent bits, organized crime oligopolies and demographic collapse. Thats not even counting the gulags. Hardly good stuff. The planned economy benefitted neither.
Denying caste is major factor in their oppression is revisionism.
Who did? I didn’t. In fact, I have repeated in my posts that there was discrimination in institutions. There was lack of mobility even amongst castes, but I want to know if there is a study done on the correlation between class and education. That may throw some interesting answers.
And btw, people throw sati etc as if every region of India praticised them. A comparitive analysis of discrimination in India is useful (akin to say 1950s Alabama vs 1950s New York City). Even now, UP and Bihar obssess far more about these things on a day to day basis than some other states.
And Ennis seems to regard caste as evil. Caste-based discrimination certainly is. But there are people (like Gurcharan Das) who postulate that casteism was an outcome of a benevolent accomodation of migrating populations/emigres/refugees by older emigres’/native populace whilst trying to keep their both traditions intact. The example of Shanwar Telis typifies the creation of at least some castes. So it would be good for Ennis to know his caste and therefore, his roots! He could be a Sumerian king for all you know!
This is the sort of lies/ignorant nonsense that too many indians feed their delusions with. Both Botswana and Namibia have nominal per capita incomes many times higher than India’s.
The palestinians look far better fed, clothed and housed than India’s middle classes.
The truth is that all four of macacaroachs “excuses” have some validity when not caricatured – and there are probably others. India, by all accounts, is growing rapidly, and thats a heck of a lot better than what it was doing before. OTOH, some indicators are just terrible and need redressing, e.g., malnutrition.
There are all sorts of advocates for every possible scenario from “absolute oblivion” due to global warming/nuclear holocaust/name your hell to “global superpower.” They are all in the realm of prognostication. We shall have to wait and see twenty years out, but I’m with the optimists.
Cheers y’all.
Both Botswana and Namibia have nominal per capita incomes many times higher than India’s.
Do you even know why?
Botswana has the second largest diamond mines in the world, and massive wild life tourism. Namibia is massive tourism and mining. Small countries (in Botswana – AIDS has ravaged them in terms of population density) with huge cash cow. There is no human capital, I am sorry to say.
Simple Question: Have you ever known a Palestanian (even the average, and supposedly middle class) and the hardships they go through. Read today’s newspaper or yesterday’s or day before yesterday’s
So Macacaroach, what’s the answer?
kush,
educate yourself!
yeah, what’s the answer macacaroach?
You are grabbing at straws. There are dozens of countries in Africa.
Compare the nominal per capita income of the Indian subcontinent to any non-western region of the world: ASEAN, East Asia, Latin America and Africa. What did you discover?
oh great educated macacaroach, tell us what the answer is.
“The problem with this excuse is that socialism/planned economy did not prevent the Soviet Union from becoming a global super power”
The Soviet Union during its superpower days can only be compared to a circus freak – with an unusually powerful arm in a body that was otherwise puny and dying of malnutrition. That’s the problem with communism. You can hyperdevelop certain sectors, such as science, technology and military, while bankrupting an entire nation. Even during the glory days of Soviet Russia, the cupboards of Russian homes were very bare indeed.
Getting back to India, the rate of growth is certainly not a sham. The growth is very much viral and completely sustainable given the current set of fundamentals, though not as fairly distributed as it should be. Even using the most practical metrics for growing nations – food and hunger – it is completely true that India has gone from a food-deficit nation that received food from the US under the PL 480 program to a food-surplus nation. It is true that today deaths due to starvation in rural India are very rare indeed, whereas just 25 years ago, the extremely poor in India did die of starvation. I said starvation, not malnutrition. That will have to be the next battle.
I don’t think any reasonably rcaring person can gloat over India’s 8%+ growth rate when the country is still so poor. I would even go so far as to say that India’s current and future wealth needs to be more fairly distributed, and in that, free market capitalism will have to be balanced by responsible, albeit hands-off, government. There we go again – bring the government back. If you look at American economic history, it is indeed a melding, if not a collaboration, of two very opposite forces – free market capitalism and social programs. The minimum wage law, food stamps, welfare, social security, a strong public education system funded by real estate taxes and government subsidy, trade unions (yes, it virtually created the American middle class) – these 20th century social programs were a nice counterbalance to America’s rapacious free market economy.
India will certainly pass the free market test. It will have to work harder on the social reform.
India will certainly pass the free market test. It will have to work harder on the social reform.
excuses. nonsense. educate yourself!
What do mean educate ourselves? is that supposed to do us any good, make us better people, make love not war?
Yes, that proves my point. I believe it is 200 years after the shogun era in Japan. It was an industrialized country well before its recent electronic riches and one of the primary reasons sited for its incredible success in the second half of the last century (apart from their brilliant work ethic). So India missed the boat during industrial revolution in the 19th century.
Yes, breaking India up is one solution that our gracious neighbor to the west really wants. The solution has its merits but I believe in the long run a bigger country will be able to better leverage its resources. IT revolution may not have been possible unless people are able to move across states freely. I can’t argue for the other countries you mention because I have not read much about the political and social situations. But you bringing up those countries is neither there nor here.
So you are saying that India is behind because of caste or religion instead of the above?? Atleast I am not the one suggesting desis have ‘low IQ’ as you did. Self-loathing is worse than false positiveness.
My argument is that there are multiple reasons and jumping on the caste issue leads to intellectual laziness. There were historically a few positives of caste system (Jared Diamond says in his latest book that the caste system made people not to exploit natural resources too much like other societies) but that does not mean it is/was justified. Same goes for British raj.
I’m really waiting for Macacaroach to educate me with the answer to this question, my application to become paraguyan mestizo is just waiting to be sent into the mail depending on the answer.
Are you denying that the Soviets accomplished far more under socialism than India did under democracy and the license raj?
Brother, I need your answer. I need education. Please enough teasing; Speak Zarathustra Speak!
People that castigate Indian society for caste system tend to forget that there were similar structures in almost all civilizations (serfs, slaves etc..) The worse thing in Indian caste system is that it is impossible to move from one strata of society to other and it is being practiced far longer than other civilizations (and also formally codified and the intelligencia tried to justify it theoretically). But I think the idea itself is not unique to subcontinental culture (or Hindu if you prefer).
Importance of English can not be overstated. Even if it is a PR stunt, it is for a good cause. However, access to English education and access to quality affordable primary education, in general, are not Dalit-specific problems. Historically caste has played a big role in blocking access and even today it is definitely a factor, but I do not see what we gain by hammering on that alone when economic class, rural-urban divide, differential growth and opportunities in different regions of India and overall abysmal standards of primary education are more significant.
Blocking access to English education for protecting their own elite privilege is not unique to Hindu Brahmins and upper-castes in India. Godless caste-less atheist communists of West Bengal, who never miss a chance to express their solidarity with dalits and oppressed, have pursued “ingreji hatao” (get rid of English) policy in West Bengal public primary education for twenty years. That policy affected everyone in West Bengal, not just dalits, except of course the private and expensive English-medium school-going urban elite including the ‘friends and family’ of CPI(M) ministers. This division did not correspond to caste lines. I was in the first batch of students when the ‘ingreji hatao’ movement started as I went to a small-town bengali-medium government school in West Bengal. The resentment against that foolhardy move was intense and a few of our old-school primary school teachers tried to teach us English secretly if we promised not to tell the headmaster and the teacher in charge of running the school.
I do not think the parallel drawn between the ‘oppression’ and upper-caste exclusivity of ‘old’ languages like Sanskrit, Arabic and Farsi and the modern Indian languages holds. I know at least in Bengali — and I am sure it is true for other modern Indian languages as well — there are rich and diverse literary traditions: rural folk, urban leftist and yes, dalit literature, too. Why not continue to co-opt, enrich and subvert those traditions instead of rejecting them altogether? Learning modern Indian languages and English(US) does not have to be mutually exclusive.
amen brother sahej! amen! let the truth be told to those who are rebuked!
praise mendel brother razib!
Not to make light of India’s poverty, let’s not use statistics to condemn a country. All statistical rankings are based on medians and averages, and these are valid comparisons only when comparing countries of similar size and similar stratification. In other words, you can have a small and homogenous country with 50% of the population dying at child birth rank very high on average life span. What does that prove? Again, not to minimize India’s poverty, comparing India to Botswana and Namibia is something on which only a UN bureaucrat would waste precious time.
that country that is without statistics, let that country cast the first stone!