[FRIAM] India

[Steve Smith]

feeling a little like the cross product of (Vonnegut) Harrison Bergeron 
and George Santos ?

On 6/1/23 12:07 PM, Sarbajit Roy wrote:
> Hi Glen
>
> In so far as the report of dropping the periodic table and evolution 
> from the Class 10 syllabus, it is essentially a question of Hindu 
> class and caste dynamics operating in India.
>
> Traditionally, education / knowledge in India was the domain of the 
> Higher castes like Brahmins (Pundits), the next caste beneath them 
> (Kshatriyas) were warriors so didn't need much bookish knowledge as 
> they also had Brahmins to advise them, the 3rd highest caste 
> (Kayasthas) were scribes and scriveners so allowed to read books but 
> not to apply them .. and so on. All the  castes beneath them were 
> prohibited from reading books or acquiring Brahmanical knowledge - on 
> pain of death.
>
> Over the centuries by marrying endogamously the genetics of the 
> various castes evolved to amplify the physical 
> characteristics required for each castes' profession. The Muslim and 
> then the British rulers of India were more than happy to allow this 
> state of affairs to continue while they ruled as it kept the Hindus 
> divided and segregated.
>
> However, after India became independent in 1947, with the spread of 
> universal education the Brahmins were subjected to intense reverse 
> discrimination and negative reservations intended to curtail their 
> education domination. With the infiltration of the lower castes 
> throughout the education system the education standards of India have 
> been pulled down to the lowest common denominator. To take a simple 
> example which I cited earlier, a Brahmin student needs to score a 99+% 
> percentile to get into a top engineering or medical college 
> (scoring 250 marks out of 300 in a negatively marked exam) whereas a 
> low caste (barely literate) student gets in even with a score of 
> negative 50 out of 300, with over 40% of the students unable to score 
> +ve marks.
>
> The reasons these chapters are being removed has nothing to do with 
> religion or creationism, and everything to do with the poor state of 
> the Indian education system where the bottom students can't cope. The 
> low caste Prime Minister of India (who has only passed Grade 4) claims 
> to have acquired graduate as well as post-graduate degrees from top 
> universities (which seem completely fake), Universities which he 
> publicly admits he never set foot in, especially seems determined to 
> pull everyone in India down to his semi-literate level.
>
> Sarbajit
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 1, 2023 at 9:29 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     I don't follow Indian politics. But these seem scary:
>
>     Religion and the decline of freethought in South Asia
>     https://freethinker.co.uk/2022/04/religion-and-the-decline-of-freethought-in-south-asia/
>
>     India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks
>     https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01770-y
>
>     Again, going back to Sweet Tooth, the tension between having to
>     sacrifice hybrids to get the 'secret sauce' for the anti-viral (or
>     the cure) against a vegetarian ideology is interesting, flies in
>     the face of naïve utilitarianism.
>
>     -- 
>     ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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