Resumo de Bahujan Samaj & The European Knowledge

the book
THE UNTOUCHABLES

Oliver Mendelsohn & Marika Vicziany
And Atharvaveda says:
Samani prapa sasha vaha annabhagaha
Samane yaktre saha vaha yunajmi
Araha nabhimiva abhitaha
(All have equal rights in articles of food and water. The yoke of the chariot of life is placed equally on the shoulders of all. All should live together with harmony supporting one another like the spokes of a wheel of the chariot connecting its rim and the hub)
India lost these Equality and fraternity also. The learned author points out:
" At a still later point of time, in the long meandering course of our history, the society got divided into innumerable castes and sub-castes. The evil of discrimination as high and low among men, on the basis of birth, hereditory avocations and other considerations raised its head and the pernicious practice of untouchability with all its degrading implications."
After the demise of Equality and fraternity in India it took its birth in Europe. The rights of citizens mentioned in the preamble of the Constitution are taken from the declaration of the rights of Man pronounced by the French Constituent Assembly. The concepts of three varieties of Justice, Liberty, etc were also foreign to the caste-ridden society of India. The principles of socialism were borrowed from the economic and political thoughts of the West and USSR. So much was the debt of the nation to European knowledge, not to speak of European Science and Technology. How did India come in contact with the European Knowledge?
As in other parts of the world enquiry in this part of the world was also speculative. The attempt was to explain the reasons for various occurrences in nature. It was observed that there were evil effects during solar and lunar eclipses. Why? It required an explanation. It was attributed to the emission of poison of the snakes, which was swallowing the Sun or the Moon. Similarly Aristotle wanted to explain why the fire when it was lit went up and the stones thrown up returned to the Earth.
According to Aristotle every object had its natural resting-place and it desired to go to its resting-place, whenever it was displaced. Heaven is the resting-place of fire and therefore whenever fire was lit it went up. The stones had the Earth as its resting-place. So whoever it is lifted returned to the earth. The intensity of the desire of an object to go back to its resting-place depended on its size. The greater is the size the stronger is its desire of an object to come to its resting-place. So bigger objects returned earlier than smaller object. Galelio wanted to know whether it was really so. He climbed Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropped from there two objects of the same material but of different size and observed whether it fell simultaneously on the ground or whether the bigger one due to its stronger desire to come to its returning place fell earlier than the other. He found that two objects fell simultaneously on the ground disproving the Aristotelian concept. This type of activity led to the growth of a new branch of knowledge. The specialty of this type of knowledge was that it could be tested by anyone anywhere in the world and its truth could be established beyond any doubt. This knowledge attained universal acceptance. This type of experimental knowledge came to be known as science and it made rapid progress encompassing all departments of life and natural phenomena. Europe was the center of this activity. It had its impact on India also.
During the first half of nineteenth century, in the field of education, there were two schools of thought in India; one wanted only the traditional education in Arabic. Persian and Sanskrit and the other advocated elementary education in vernacular and higher education in English. It was at that time MACAULAY reached the shore of India. It marked the turning point of India?s intellectual progress.On 10th July 1833 speaking on the India Bill in the House of Commons MACAULAY said "It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our system till it has outgrown that system; that by good Government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better Government; that having become instructed in European knowledge they may, in some future age, demand European Institutions. Whether such a day will come, I know not. But never will I attempt to avert it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history."

Resumos Relacionados