Category: Alternative Viewpoint

Hopelessly Disorganized Immensely Selfish Mobs?

What do we want in India? If foreigners want these things, we want them twenty times more. Because…in spite of our boasted ancestry of sages, compared to many other races, I must tell you that we are weak, very weak. First of all is our physical weakness. That physical weakness is the cause of at least one-third of our miseries. We are lazy, we cannot work; we cannot combine, we do not love each other; we are intensely selfish, not three of us can come together without hating each other, without being jealous of each other. That is the state in which we are — hopelessly disorganized mobs, immensely selfish, fighting each other for centuries as to whether a certain mark is to be put on our forehead this way or that way, writing volumes and volumes upon such momentous questions as to whether the look of a man spoils my food or not! This we have been doing for the past few centuries. We cannot expect anything high from a race whose whole brain energy has been occupied in such wonderfully beautiful problems and researches!

And are we not ashamed of ourselves? Ay, sometimes we are; but though we think these things frivolous, we cannot give them up. We speak of many things parrot-like, but never do them; speaking and not doing has become a habit with us. What is the cause of that? Physical weakness. This sort of weak brain is not able to do anything; we must strengthen it.

First of all, our young men must be strong… You will understand the Gita better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger. You will understand the mighty genius and the mighty strength of Krishna better with a little strong blood in you. You will understand the Upanishads better and the glory of the Atman when your body stands firm upon your feet, and you feel yourselves as men.

I am deliberately leaving the quote above anonymous. Who is this guy who speaks of Indians being weaklings, physically and mentally? This passage was pointed out to me by a visiting friend. (The book is in my library and like scores of others sitting there, I have all sorts of good intentions about reading them but never seem to find the time.)

Gratuitous fault-finding is silly. Looking unflinchingly at reality, on the other hand, is absolutely required if you want to have any hope of solving the problem. This I believe is the first mistake that we make in India. The Mera Bharat Mahan attitude will ensure continued poverty and irrelevancy.

We are an underdeveloped poverty-ridden over-populated nation of over a billion people. Does anyone ever ask the question: Why is India the way it is? No. If we cannot ask this question because the answers may be unpleasant, I don’t see much hope for India. If we do not ask this question and answer it honestly, we may continue to blunder as we have done at least since independence 57 years ago under the flawed policies of the Nehruvian socialism and cargo-cult democracy.

When was the last time you ever heard of a conference where serious people with lots of knowledge and understanding got together to examine that question? Here is a suggestion for the movers and shakers of the great nation of India: commission a series of lectures by accomplished sociologists, economists, historians, philosophers, etc, which will examine the causes of India’s failures and what can be done to fix them. That lecture series can form a good counterpoint to the over-optimistic, rose-colored glasses-wearing, rocket-weilding India-superpower shouting, pyramid-power cult-worshipping, internet-surfing digital village hyping craziness so much in vogue.

PS: So who do you think is the author of the opening extended quote? Fabulous prizes for the correct answer. Please don’t cheat by using google.

The Unbearable Silliness of Loving One’s Enemy

Anant in a recent comment on this blog concluded with the seemingly wise statement “to revenge is pleasure, to forgive divine.” I say seemingly wise because it does not withstand any level of scrutiny. Forgiving an enemy may or may not be a very wise principle if you are dealing with an individual. Being magnanimous towards someone who in a momentary lapse of reason has harmed you could be a good strategy if the person realizes his folly and is genuinely sorry about his aberrant behavior. But it could be counterproductive if a priori a person knows that forgiveness will be forthcoming irrespective of how badly he behaves. In such cases, pious hopes that forgiving someone is divine only leads to less than desirable social outcomes.
Continue reading “The Unbearable Silliness of Loving One’s Enemy”

Now for something entirely different

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Oh, alright. I was getting tired of posting only development related stuff. So I thought that I would intersperse stuff that I write with stuff that I like written by others. Here is a perspective piece written by a Canadian and published by a Canadian newspaper. (I hope that I am not stepping on too many copyright toes.)

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Source: ‘The Province’ (Tuesday, May 1, 1990)

ADOLF HITLER IN GOOD COMPANY

by Crawford Kilian

My Lawyer friend Nick Mephisto took me out for a celebration lunch yesterday, which worried me. He is a Devil’s advocate, the infernal version of a Queen’s Counsel. What he likes to celebrate usually appalls any normal person.

‘It’s the 45th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s death,’ Nick explained. ‘My client has been hosting him-and roasting him-since April 30, 1945.’

‘I suppose your Client is very proud to have such a monster,’ I said.

‘Oh, Hitler was no monster.’

‘What! The cause of World War II, the author of holocaust, not a monster?’

‘Don’t forget my client has known them all. Hitler was just a garden variety politician.’

‘Absurd! He was inhuman.’

‘Well, what was his big offence? He believed in racial and cultural superiority. And he thought superior races and cultures were entitled to invade other people’s countries, enslave them, and even exterminate them.’

‘I said he was a monster.’

‘But isn’t that exactly what other Europeans have been doing since Columbus? In the 80 years after the Spanish conquered Mexico and South America, the native population fell by 90%. That was about 40 or 50 million people. Hitler was faster, but he wasn’t responsible for any more deaths than Spaniards were.’

‘Aw, come on Nick-‘

‘The French conquered parts of Africa and South East Asia, not to mention Quebec. The English thought they deserved to rule what Kipling called ‘the lesser breeds,’ all over the world. The Belgians ran the Congo like a big concentration camp. The Dutch and the Portugese-‘

‘Sure, the old colonial empires were bad, but they weren’t as bad as the Nazis.’

Nick Mephisto shrugged. ‘The Europeans believed that their supposed superiority justified slavery, massacres, deportations and suffocating of other people’s cultures. And Europe has flourished on that basis for centuries. In my client’s opinion, Hitler made just one mistake.’

‘Which was?’

‘He picked on Europeans.’

‘True enough, but-‘

‘If he’s massacred native Indians, African blacks, or Asians, his neighbors wouldn’t have minded much. After all, they’d all done the same thing. But treating his fellow-Europeans that way was simply unforgivable.’

‘That’s enough! If Hitler had won, we’d have centuries of horror.’

‘Just as native Indians have had since 1492, and the Africans for almost as long. Oh, my Client gives full marks for effort, but he saves his real respect for the successful conquerors, the ones who commit genocide and become national heroes.’

‘So you are saying that we’re as bad as the Nazis?’

‘Tut-tut, we’re much more genteel. My Client does point out, though, that Canadian defence policy is based on inflicting nuclear genocide on any nation that threatens to keep us from shopping in the mall of our choice. And the vast majority of Canadians frimly support that policy, no matter how many peace marchers turn out in Vancouver every year.’

Something began to dawn on me. ‘Does this mean Hitler has a lot of company?’

The Devil’s advocate grinned. ‘Plenty, and more coming all the time. You wouldn’t believe the housing crisis created by dead racists. It’s absolute hell.’

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Update (Jan 25th, 2006): See this article by George Monbiot “How Britain Denies its Holocausts“

On Localization of Linux

An interesting press release was forwarded to the India-Gii mailing list this morning by Venky. He wrote:

IndLinux.org has launched a Hindi Interface for GNOME, the GUI for the GNU/Linux operating system. We request users to download the software from http://www.indlinux.org and give us their comments and feedback. Those interested in volunteering are requested to go through the web site–we need volunteers with technical skills as well as volunteers with skills in translating from English to Hindi, Gujarati, Telugu, Kannada and other languages.

I responded saying that it was a commendable effort. I had a look at the screen shots. I suppose that it is a work in progress and therefore the screen shots show a hybrid of Roman and Devnagri fonts.

Also, upon reading the press release I thought that the operating system was being localized by changing the language from English to Hindi. Upon viewing the screen shots, I realised that I was mistaken. It appeared to me that Devanagari is being used for transliteration of English words (mainly technical words) and held together in a sentence with Hindi syntax and structure. For instance, one information pop-up says:

“is folder ki sabhi executable files script menu mein dikhai degi. menu say koi file chunnay pur vuh chalnay lageygi…”

It feels as if our dear departed Rajiv Gandhi is speaking directly to us

“is country ki development kay liye, humay bahut effort laganey ki necessity hai”.

Hey, that’s a thought. Since Indians love to name every bloody thing after their idiotic leaders (Rajiv Gandhi this, and Indira Gandhi that, and Jawaharlal Nehru the other), perhaps this IndLinux should be named “RajivLinux.” And if and when a Hindi language OS (as opposed to a Devnagri font OS) comes about, it should be called “DesiLinux” or some such thing.

Seriously though, it is a great beginning and I hope this effort is successful in lowering some of the many barriers to entry to the world of IT for some Indian non-English speakers.

To which Rishab responded with

perhaps you would like to suggest a “truly hindi” alternative to this sentence? i don’t know if there is an extensive usable vocabulary among hindi-speaking computer users that has hindi alternatives for most technical words. after all, there’s no point inventing words of the kanth-langot variety.

I am neither a linguist nor do I play one on the usenet/internet/web. So I cannot suggest a ‘truly Hindi’ alternative to English technical words. But that does not mean that no one has the expertise to do so. Indian languages — Hindi included — have rich vocabularies and I am sure a rich mine of roots from which one can derive all the specific words that one needs to describe concepts that are new. What we have to do is to intelligently use the roots to create appropriate equivalents now.

It is important that we don’t repeat the idiocy of kanth-langotisms. That is a braindead attempt at translation of specific words into descriptive phrases. Such as translating the word steam-engine into the Hindi equivalent of the phrase humongous iron machine that runs on iron roads while puffing clouds of vapor and making loud clanking noise as it pulls wagons behind it.

There are alternatives to wholesale importing of English words on the one hand, and the silly unimaginative direct translations of descriptions into hindi on the other. For instance table tennis in Hindi should not be table kay upar, batti kay neechey, lay thaka thak, dey thaka thak. It could be a word that is constructed from some Sanskrit root (probably) or could be an entirely new word that enriches the language and is invented out of the blue but has some resemblance to the existing set of words in the language. Import the concept but localize it to fit into the existing scene, so to say.

Hebrew is an entirely reconstructed language and it not only serves the Israelis well, it creates a sense of belonging and ownership among them.

The time is now when we can have a discussion about what to do regarding this issue. The vast majority of Indians have little or no access to computers. We don’t have the burden of a legacy of the sort that is represented in the qwerty keyboard. We can, after due deliberation, decide to go one way or the other. It will be too late to change once about 100 million users with Hindi as their mother tongue come on board.

I cannot agree more with Mahesh when he wrote in the ensuing discussion that:

“I think there is a need to comment, to praise and condemn, to discuss and decide, to change opinions if we can. That’s why we’re here. Because we have this medium. And regardless of whether we can actually change things or not, we HAVE to try.”

The question of whether we can burden people with new words or not is not really relevant. If the made up Hindi word for ‘file’ is ‘limi’, then to a person who is learning the concept of a file, it does not matter whether the concept is called file or limi. It is too late to change the qwerty keyboard now. But it is not too late in the life cycle of the Hindi or other Indian language OS to discuss what should be done regarding technical words.

To which Venky wrote back to say

The challenge for us with localization is–How far do we go with keeping the language pure? If we take this to the extreme, we should call the computer “sanghanak” but even Hindi speaking people would wonder what a “sanghanak” is. At the same time, the example that Atanu pulled out from one of the Indlinux Hindi dialog box veers to the other extreme!

Always willing to help, I dug up an old piece that I had first seen in 1997 on the usenet. So here it is — for the record.

Windows Commands in Hindi version shoonya bindu shoonya ek (0.01). 

 
Phile = File 
Kholo = Open 
Bandh Karo = Close 
Naya = New 
Khatara = Old 
Bachao = Save 
Aise Bachao = Save as 
Paise Bachao = Save money 
Bhaago = Run 
Chaapo = Print 
Dekh Ke Chaapo = Print Preview 
Paise Deke Chokri Dekho = Pay Per View 
Phirsay = Edit 
Kaapi = Copy 
Kaato = Cut 
Kato = Stupid Houseguest 
Chipkao = Paste 
Payshul Chipkao = Paste Special 
Goli Maaro = Delete 
Nazaara = View 
Bakwaas Nazaara = View From My Apartment 
Hatyaar = Tools 
Hatyaar Khamba = Toolbar 
Uh Buh Kuh Duh Thik Thak = Spell Check 
Isko Kya Kehte Hain = Thesaurus 
Khuli Chaadar = Spreadsheet 
Iska Bhi Naam Nahin Aaata = Database 
Futaas Ki Goli Kha = Exit

{Reposted from April 2003}

Idol-worshipping gone haywire

This is a followup to the comments on my post on Gandhian Self-sufficiency.

It is more than a bit unfortunate that we have a tendency to immediately label any criticism of any person as a sign of disrespect. Any person whose image cannot withstand the harsh glare of honest criticism says something about the fragility of that image. The image takes on a aura of such holiness and awe that any hint of possible flaws is taken as sacrilegious. Taken to an extreme, this sort of idol-worshipping ends up with the worshippers lynching anyone daring to profane the sacred image.

For the record, I do believe that Gandhi was a giant of a man. But for all his greatness, he was still cut from the same cloth as you and I. The same human frailties, the same hopes and ambitions and fears. The difference between a Gandhi and one of us is one of size, not of substance. If we keep that in mind — not just about Gandhi but everyone — I do believe that we would have a useful working hypothesis. Those great big people are magnified images of ourselves. And that which magnifies the virtues, magnifies the flaws as well. An old Chinese saying says that the bigger the front-side, the larger the back-side. Continue reading “Idol-worshipping gone haywire”

On Gandhian Self-sufficiency

I am somewhat familiar with the concepts of Satyagraha and non-violence that Gandhi preached and sometimes practiced. They are interesting tools and can be employed effectively in some circumstances. But, like all tools, they too can’t be employed in every case; they are not easy for mere mortals to employ even under favorable circumstances. In fact, they have severe limitations in that they are not general purpose tools but are rather special purpose tools. The interesting thing is irrespective of whether they work or not, the user gets to occupy the moral high ground.

Occupying moral high ground is well and good if that is one’s objective. But one could be very dead at the end of the day — on high ground but still dead.

Those tools elevate the user in the user’s estimation at least. But the sad fact of this world is that it does not work in those cases where you most desperately want it to work. One needs an effective tool against mass murderers more urgently than against robbers. The former could not care less whether you have an elevated opinion of your own moral standing. Hitler, for instance, would have slaughtered without compunction those who responded to his aggression with non-violence; it would have eased the realization of his megalomanical dreams of world domination. Continue reading “On Gandhian Self-sufficiency”

Why loving thy enemies is a flawed strategy

Here’s a story I heard some time ago, about a farmer who consistently won the first prize for his fine crop of corn every year at the county agricultural contest. Peculiarly, after the contest he would give away the seeds of this prize-winning corn to the neighboring farmers. This puzzled some people, until someone finally asked him why he shared his good fortune. He answered, “Well, growing corn in my field requires pollen from the neighboring fields. If they don’t have good corn in their fields, I will never be able to grow good corn myself. So I give them good corn seeds.”
Continue reading “Why loving thy enemies is a flawed strategy”

Nani Palkhivala’s Vision for India

This weblog is about India’s development as seen from my personal viewpoint. Like many others, I too have a vision for India although it is not as well known as the famous Vision 2020. Among all the visions that I have had the privilege to see, Nani Palkhivala’s has resonated the most with what my vision is.

I had found it on the usenet some years ago. Unfortunately, now I cannot trace exactly when it was that Nani delivered this address to the Australian College of Defence and Strategic Studies. Most likely it from around 1999. I include it here, for the record.

Lajja

This one is to be filed under “INDIA IS A SUPERPOWER” category.

The newsletter from US-India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) contained this:

We need support and financial contribution from at least 50,000 Indian Americans by March 2004 to persuade the US government to support India in its fight against HIV/AIDS. The US government has already funded 14 nations in curbing the HIV/AIDS menace. With your support, India can become the 15th country to receive the much-needed US funds for fighting the epidemic.

Begging bowl all shiny and ready, I suppose. What the heck is wrong with these people? Do they have no shame? Begging for their living? Because I don’t doubt that they fly first class from one end of the country to the other shiny begging bowl in hand.
Continue reading “Lajja”

India’s Shining New Clothes

Of course India is shining. Just ask the guy who is raking in the stuff from his BPO company. Or ask the those who are buying all the electronic gizmos from the mega stores in the mega cities. India, defined strictly as those people at the top of the heap who make a shining living because the supply of people at the bottom of the heap is so abundant that they work for next to nothing, is shining and how.
Continue reading “India’s Shining New Clothes”