-: [rti4empowerment] Re: [Janshakti] Fw: [RajivMalhotraDiscussion] Return of the German Indologists?

Respected Sir,

I received my MBA from a US university. I pursued "arts" studies, after work hours and paid for by my employers, in a Canada University. In India, I attended Engineering at Sindri, Bihar ..... and Birla School for pre-college. So, I too have reasonable grounds to compare what we have here and what is available in the west.

I further compare my nephew who is studying History in Delhi U. I am appalled and dismayed, that apart from "history", his syllabus does not have any language, geography, computer science, etc. .... all of which, and more, he would be required to study if he were in, say USA. Todays world is multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional.

Too, I was shoked that the MBA and engineering students (from second and third rung "institutes" I hired in my India job, were not even upto clerical standards. Even our leading tech companies like Infi, Wipro, HCL, etc. say that not more than 10 of 12% of our college graduates are employable, and even out of these, they have to bench and train them for another year or 18 months in their companies to come upto world standards.

We have no patents to speak of. We have no inventions to speak of. We have no high tech manufacturing to speak of. We have no scientific or other journals to speak of.

One wonders, if our education is so good, how come we rank near about the lowest in poverty, hygiene, literacy, unemployment, malnutrition, honesty, good-governance, income, etc., etc.

Yes, China and Japan, and Russia, and Europe, etc. have education in their own languages, but they make sure their engineers and managers know English, as about 80+ % of world research is in English.

Do we have a word for pison, virus, meon, isobar, ... and thousands others?

I understand and appreciate what you are saying, but my understanding and approach are different in that either we can continue to have millions of illeterate, hungry, and unskilled mouths OR we can agree to ignore the hole in the doughnut and concentrate in eating it. In Mr. Modis's recent words, it is high time we stop analysing the psycho dimensions of rape, and concentrate in protecting and saving our daughters, sisters, and mothers.

Regards,

Victor

From: "Rabinder Koul ravindrakkoul@gmail.com [Janshakti]" <Janshakti@yahoogroups.com>
To: Janshakti@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Rabinder Koul <RavindraKKoul@gmail.com>; "Janshakti@yahoogroups.com" <Janshakti@yahoogroups.com>; Barkha Dutt <barkha@ndtv.com>; Paranjoy <paranjoy@gmail.com>; GOACAN <goacan@gmail.com>; Goa RTI <GoaRTI@yahoogroups.com>; "rti4empowerment@yahoogroups.com" <rti4empowerment@yahoogroups.com>; Rti4ngo <rti4ngo@yahoogroups.com>; Voiceofindia <voiceofindiagroup@yahoogroups.co.in>
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2014 7:49 AM
Subject: Re: [Janshakti] Fw: [RajivMalhotraDiscussion] Return of the German Indologists?

Victor Ji;
I am very well familiar with education in USA, with short stint in Henry Poincare Institute of France. So I can say it from personal experience from from studies as well as teaching in some of the most prestigious Universities. On the other other hand I do not know what experience you have.

Based on my personal experience, it will be highly desirable to incorporate Education in Sciences, Engineering, Medicine and mathematics from these Universities. There is no reason why we should borrow liberal arts programs from them, since these are based and steeped in the Christian theology and principles. There History departments and the sound Asian departments are steeped in deep anti-Hindu bias and are very often supported by the Churches and the Christian organizations. This e should be avoided as plauge. There Philosophy departments are Eurocentric, we have much deeper and stronger traditions in philosophy of our own. So there i son reason yo borrow in that. The foundations of Economic theories and the sociological theories have their roots in Christian theology and we don't have to take that. But we certainly must loo at their Economic models, and Indian Economic Models and see what is better for Indian societies. Not what fits them. India has very strong Pschological schools from its tradition, far better than the ones west presents currently. We should incorporate the experimental psychology from them but consider the theoretical foundations based on Indian perspectives on nature elf human being. The economic models of the west, in my thinking are highly unstable and not long lasting. These are individualistic centered and and based on the absolute free will of uman being. It is not clear experimentally or even scientifically , there is such a free will in humans. It has no notion of humans as social animal aspect in it. A better model of human being would take in ti account the limited nature of so called human free will and the a society together. In which the free will must be limit dti the extent society is stable and empowering. The nature of western economy breaks families and communities. That leads to an economy, that creates faceless individuals, nuclear families, who are community less. Individuals loose safety net of a community and a society. That fear brings in enormous greed for wealth and the corresponding hoarding, taking away all other considerations. This economic activity is the source of instability in West. And if you study the cycles of Economic depressions and the Economic recovery, you will see that the periods of depression have lengthened. It used to me a few months, changed to half an year to a year and 2008 depression, wold has still not recovered. If one analyzes it, you find the source is the enormous greed that has crept in because of lack of security and the breaking of communities and societies. India should avoid it, hence we need to bring back laot of our economic theories, given in Artha Shastras. India was economically stable fromm 1 Ad to 1750 Ad. with 28%-30% of world GDP in 100 Ad and 25%-23% in 1800. That is along time to dominate. Indias Economic ruin was orchestrated by the Britush and the Europe during colonial periods.

We don't want Europeans to write our history, and we know how these departments work. We should have our own scholars and our own narrative. That should not come from outsiders. Europeans have been highly manipulative and disastrous for us. We have very long and deep traditions in Philosophy. That should be taught and future developments should come with that starting point, instead of mimicking and aping west. And that is precisely what is happening currently.

China, Japan, malaise does not use English as medium of instruction. They use their native languages. Hence these people are not so inferiority complexed people, who look at west for all the progress in the world. China has huge thrust on development of Chinese narrative based on Confucianism and Taoism In fact it does not encourage Buddhism either. Japan has based it on Buddhism and Shintoism. Language has to be the one of the items that has to be replaced with India's traditional language of intellectual discourse, instead of legion language like english. It will allow people to be in touch with their past so that they understand and know it first hand, instead of missionaries and Europeans telling us what we are. I have both studied with and taught Chinese, Korean students. And I know very well, what language do they think in. It is only Indians who live on borrowed language, borrowed philosophy etc. It makes them second class citizens, and we don't have to be that.

Ravindra Koul
अस्मद्रूपसमाविष्ठ: स्वात्मनात्मानिवारणे
शिव: करोतु निजया नम: शक्त्या ततात्मने

On Jun 12, 2014, at 9:13 PM, Victor Cooper <victor99cooper@yahoo.com> wrote:

Anyone familiar with quality of foreign education Vs. quality of Indian education, be it arts, science, agriculture, or anything else, would agree that we are centuries behind. We need to shape up across-the-board, in every field. I think we should shed our arrogance that we are the best .... Japan is where it is because it did not hesitate to embrace what the world had to offer, the same for China, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.
The world is a place of migrations, of exchange.

Victor

From: "Rabinder Koul ravindrakkoul@gmail.com [Janshakti]" <Janshakti@yahoogroups.com>
To: Janshakti@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Rabinder Koul <RavindraKKoul@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 9:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Janshakti] Fw: [RajivMalhotraDiscussion] Return of the German Indologists?

The only portion of education that we should collaborate with foreign universities, should be on technical education, mathematical education. The liberal arts, philosophies, History etc should be kept under Indian control and India centric. Foreigners [play serious mischief, if it is left to them.

Ravindra Koul
अस्मद्रूपसमाविष्ठ: स्वात्मनात्मानिवारणे
शिव: करोतु निजया नम: शक्त्या ततात्मने

On Jun 12, 2014, at 7:06 AM, Satish Oberoi oberoi50@yahoo.com [Janshakti] <Janshakti@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

No one offers aid for free. We need to carefully examine all lucrative collaborations and offers to see what is there to lose in the long run.

Satish

On Thursday, 12 June 2014, 13:00, "RajivMalhotra2007@gmail.com [RajivMalhotraDiscussion]" <RajivMalhotraDiscussion@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

India and Germany to collaborate on education and vocational training

India and Germany to collaborate on education and vocational training

View on www.samachar.com

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The above mentioned initiative is carefully couched in terms of Germany helping India educate its people in science/vocations. Then comes the message at the end, "Opportunities to partner with Germany on their initiative to set up an International Centre for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences were
also discussed".

Any western intrusion into humanities/social sciences amounts to further colonization into Western Universalism.

We suffer not only the fact that most Indian scholars in positions of influence in humanities/social sciences are seeped in WU and their careers depend on it, even worse is that we lack Hindu minded scholars of good quality and in large numbers. You dont want to replace the anti-Hindus with uninformed pro-Hindus - that always backfires and makes things worse. So its not an easy predicament.

In this situation comes an offer from various western countries to "help" us. This means more western theories and further erasing of dharmic siddhanta.

What we need instead is to push indigenous research and training in our own worldviews - how our traditions study society and humanities. Once we have created a critical mass inside India then we must export this worldview and our trained scholars. Thats what the purpose of places like Nalanda used to be long ago. It created a huge soft power advantage for India.

While we were the world's largest exporter of knowledge in the liberal arts once, we have now become one of the world's largest importers of higher education.

The German ambassador is trying to impress the Indian govt with carrots. How aware and well informed are our folks about the dangers of past German Indology from Max Mueller to Michael Witzel? BI has an overview of this past baggage in the early chapters.

While many of them distorted Indian sanskriti, others busily plagiarized and digested it. For example: Wilhelm von Humboldt learned a lot about Pannini from other Indologists, and then claimed to invent modern grammar. Wikipedia entry has not a single word on the Sanskrit influence and says the following about him:
"He is credited with being the first European linguist to identify human language as a rule-governed system, rather than just a collection of words and phrases paired with meanings. This idea is one of the foundations of Noam Chomsky's theory of language. Chomsky frequently quotes Humboldt's description of language as a system which "makes infinite use of finite means", meaning that an infinite number of sentences can be created using a finite number of grammatical rules."

My job is not to do this activism now. I have enough research/writing in the pipeline to keep busy. The purpose of this group is to spread these ideas wider.

Regards,
Rajiv