Why remember K Balagopal now?
It is three weeks too late to remember him (on his birth day) and more than three months early, to remember him on his death anniversary. But why do we raise his spirit now? Because wherever there is a human rights violation, there is a reason to remember this wonderful human being. Because only yesterday, there was an inhuman attack on the CRPF men, and the Maoists killed at least 26 ‘men’. Don’t policemen have human rights? And civil liberties? What makes the Maoists think that the cops have sold their souls to the State? Aren’t they just discharging their duties?
In a recent essay on the Bhopal gas tragedy victims, Mr K G Kannabiran argues that the lives of those who lost their all seem to have been ‘sold out’ cheap by the government of India. Now how about the lives of the CRPF men (26) who were massacred yesterday, and a few months ago (more than 120). The APCLC is silent about it till the time of going to press. And they will be silent:
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn…
Civil liberties vs Human Rights
I had the good fortune of listening to Dr K Balagopal only once; he was talking about how the naxals are rounded up by the police in their jurisdiction but actually ‘arrest’ them under a difference jurisdiction. The modus operandi ensures that the next of kin run to the nearest station house, and the police there don’t have the ‘missing person’ on their records. Of course, off the record, they know that the neighboring station which is ‘housing’ them.
And I remember seeing a man with thick-rimmed glasses who looked exactly like Dr K Balagopal, waiting for a bus in Nallakunta. I thought, then, that it cannot be Him. I am an unabashed worshipper of Him. God, please send a replacement soon!
Later in life, not surprisingly, Dr K Balagopal became a human rights activist, from being a civil liberties warrior. Proponents of the concept usually assert that everyone is endowed with certain entitlements merely by reason of being human. “No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land.” – The Magna Carta.
The Indian judiciary in a catena of cases has effectively resorted to the writ of habeas corpus only to secure release of a person from illegal detention. The Indian judiciary has dispensed with the traditional doctrine of locus standi, so that if a detained person is not in a position to file a petition, it can be moved on his behalf by any other person. The scope of habeas relief has expanded in recent times by actions of the Indian judiciary. The habeas writ was used in the Rajan criminal case.
check out for more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._Balagopal
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
God does not play dice
My nephew, who met with an accident and is paralysed for the past ten years on the left side (and cannot speak freely) said in a whisper: 'the unfortunate people say that he plays with human beings'. It was shocking. I have been exercised over the issue of 'accidental casualities' over 20 years now (another nephew was born with cerebral palsy in 1989). God may not have a handle over the deeds of the devil who pushes people to kill and maim others deliberately (they are all under the influence of some drug or the other - hashish, mainly - hence the word assassins.) When you discount the acts of willful evil doing, there are still 'accidents' that need not have occurred. Is god napping?
I don't have an answer. My engineer brother says these things occur one in a thousand or one in a million and we have to take the risk. Isn't risk the most vulgar expression invented by humans? Is it not a shameful that you let loose thousands of lives knowing well that once in a million, the signaling would collapse and people die? Is there no 100% guarantee to the lives and limbs of people?
Do we still have to advance? Can't we say we have enough comforts, gizmos, and stuff and stop all further 'progress' and try and go back to the ones we have and make them failsafe?
I don't have an answer. My engineer brother says these things occur one in a thousand or one in a million and we have to take the risk. Isn't risk the most vulgar expression invented by humans? Is it not a shameful that you let loose thousands of lives knowing well that once in a million, the signaling would collapse and people die? Is there no 100% guarantee to the lives and limbs of people?
Do we still have to advance? Can't we say we have enough comforts, gizmos, and stuff and stop all further 'progress' and try and go back to the ones we have and make them failsafe?
P V Narasimha Rao: Philosoper king
In the essay on Death of Philosophy, there was a minor error: the three greatest philosophers named – Bertrand Russel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and William James – were actually the greatest philosophers of the previous century, of the Western world. The greatest philosophers of the Indian subcontinent were Gandhiji, Rajaji, and P V Narasimha Rao. It is a widely accepted tradition in the west as well as in India that the greatest philosophers are persecuted (Socrates was given the hemlock, with the option of going on exile), Jesus was crucified, and more recently, Bertrant Russell was imprisoned for his pacifist activism during World War I.
Philosopher kings are the hypothetical rulers, or Guardians, of the Utopian Kallipolis (ideal city). If this ideal city-state is to ever come into being, "philosophers [must] become kings…or those now called kings [must]…genuinely and adequately philosophize" (Plato: The Republic).
None of the western philosophers ever made it to anywhere near being kings. But we have Gandhiji, who was almost king. In India, one of us – let us call him Nathuram Godse – shot Gandhiji point blank. But now Gandhiji is no more a philosopher nor a king: he is almost God.
Let us come back to Rajaji, and his theory of time as cyclic (as against the western notion of a linear progression of time) later. He was king too, in a manner of speaking. He was the first Governor-General of India. For some reason, he was neither glorified nor put down. Good for him.
But of the three great philosophers of the last century (in India) P V Narasimha Rao truly meets the requirements of the Socratic philosopher king. He was detached, he was humble, he had fortitude to face the ups and downs with equal composure. And he was king, truly.
Returning to active politics from semi-retirement, he ran a successful non-dynasty Congress government for four years. When his son tried to get into the Congress Working Committee (CWC) in the Tirupati AICC meet, he gave indications to everyone that he was not backing that. (Of P V Ranga Rao who tried to get into the CWC and how he failed, we will talk later.) None of his kith and kin were involved in any scandals and he was himself unblemished (except for the St Kitts allegation, behind which was the hand of Rajiv Gandhi himself). He opened up the economy and brought a career economist in as the finance minister (Dr Man Mohan Singh now finds it an anathema to speak out his name.)
And look what a shabby treatment was meted out to him after his death: the cremation, which should have taken place in New Delhi, with foreign dignitaries (including Sonia-ji) was moved to Hyderabad. There was talk that no one was there to see the cremation through, and that bits and pieces were left unburned: can there be anything more heinous? He is blamed for the Ayodhya fiasco, where as it was Rajiv Gandhi who opened the (flood) gates to the Ram Mandir and therefore the Ayodhya issue. He was pilloried for the St Kitts misadventure, whereas it was Rajiv Gandhi’s brain child.
Now he is being blamed for helping Arthur Anderson to leave the country (Arjun Singh was the CM and P V was the home minister but the big boss – Rajiv was at the helm of affairs. And why do I call him a philosopher in the first place. Here is why…
Walking the Talk with Sekhar Gupta, when asked about the Indo-Pak war averted by the intervention of the U.S. of A., he had the clarity to refuse to answer. He said that the truth will die with him: he is bound by the official secrets act, and he was not going to violate it. Nor did he reveal anything in his book, The Insider. The truth, sometimes, is best kept hidden.
Bottomline: Antony Flew said (in The Story of Philosophy) that Wittgenstein was a great philosopher, however, “some people think that a great deal of stuff is hidden in his philosophy; if so, it is well hidden.”
Philosopher kings are the hypothetical rulers, or Guardians, of the Utopian Kallipolis (ideal city). If this ideal city-state is to ever come into being, "philosophers [must] become kings…or those now called kings [must]…genuinely and adequately philosophize" (Plato: The Republic).
None of the western philosophers ever made it to anywhere near being kings. But we have Gandhiji, who was almost king. In India, one of us – let us call him Nathuram Godse – shot Gandhiji point blank. But now Gandhiji is no more a philosopher nor a king: he is almost God.
Let us come back to Rajaji, and his theory of time as cyclic (as against the western notion of a linear progression of time) later. He was king too, in a manner of speaking. He was the first Governor-General of India. For some reason, he was neither glorified nor put down. Good for him.
But of the three great philosophers of the last century (in India) P V Narasimha Rao truly meets the requirements of the Socratic philosopher king. He was detached, he was humble, he had fortitude to face the ups and downs with equal composure. And he was king, truly.
Returning to active politics from semi-retirement, he ran a successful non-dynasty Congress government for four years. When his son tried to get into the Congress Working Committee (CWC) in the Tirupati AICC meet, he gave indications to everyone that he was not backing that. (Of P V Ranga Rao who tried to get into the CWC and how he failed, we will talk later.) None of his kith and kin were involved in any scandals and he was himself unblemished (except for the St Kitts allegation, behind which was the hand of Rajiv Gandhi himself). He opened up the economy and brought a career economist in as the finance minister (Dr Man Mohan Singh now finds it an anathema to speak out his name.)
And look what a shabby treatment was meted out to him after his death: the cremation, which should have taken place in New Delhi, with foreign dignitaries (including Sonia-ji) was moved to Hyderabad. There was talk that no one was there to see the cremation through, and that bits and pieces were left unburned: can there be anything more heinous? He is blamed for the Ayodhya fiasco, where as it was Rajiv Gandhi who opened the (flood) gates to the Ram Mandir and therefore the Ayodhya issue. He was pilloried for the St Kitts misadventure, whereas it was Rajiv Gandhi’s brain child.
Now he is being blamed for helping Arthur Anderson to leave the country (Arjun Singh was the CM and P V was the home minister but the big boss – Rajiv was at the helm of affairs. And why do I call him a philosopher in the first place. Here is why…
Walking the Talk with Sekhar Gupta, when asked about the Indo-Pak war averted by the intervention of the U.S. of A., he had the clarity to refuse to answer. He said that the truth will die with him: he is bound by the official secrets act, and he was not going to violate it. Nor did he reveal anything in his book, The Insider. The truth, sometimes, is best kept hidden.
Bottomline: Antony Flew said (in The Story of Philosophy) that Wittgenstein was a great philosopher, however, “some people think that a great deal of stuff is hidden in his philosophy; if so, it is well hidden.”
Friday, June 25, 2010
Life in the day of an English teacher
I like Dr Kancha Ilaiah (Why am I not a Hindu?) for one thing: he is a staunch advocate of English education. Although he means English-medium education. I feel my job is very important; I feel wanted. The rest of the time, my students give me as much importance as they give to a door-stop. Maybe a little more: my status in their eyes is perhaps that of the water cooler, around which they can chit chat. And yet, there is life in the day of yours truly, an English teacher at large. I teach adolescents and teenagers – from class VI to XII and each one presents a different challenge. But first let me make it clear that there is life in the day of an English teacher.
I work for a corporate educational organization which has operations from school level to IIT-JEE coaching classes. That means, my daily schedules are very odd. It has been ages since I have seen the dawn. This job makes it mandatory for me to get to work with sunrise; and my avocation –this newspaper column (which I put up on my blog) – keeps me going till sundown. Anyway let us talk about the day at work. I hate the morning hour as much as the students do but they are the pay masters: they can choose not to listen to my lectures, and keep talking in the class. How to handle them is a big challenge: the worst punishment one can deal out, according to school rules, is to send the student out. What does one do when half the class is chattering away?
You identify one of them and ask him or her to leave. The student is stubborn, stands there saying I am sorry sir, and refuses to move out. One student I managed to send out by threatening to go out myself turned so hostile, she does not indulge in the courtesy of wishing me good morning or good afternoon in the corridors. I am sure an adverse feedback would have gone to the management. Mercifully, they have taken me off that class and put a senior lecturer in my place.
Another interesting thing about this job is, some of the students know most of the stuff I teach in the class – they are the ones who came from ‘better’ schools. In fact, I had taken issues with Dr K Ilaiah elsewhere (What price English education, Deccan Herald, July 27, 2008; and What price English education -II, 14 August, 2008) saying that even if English medium education is introduced in government schools, they would not be able to compete with kids who go to Chirec or Oakridge or other such. We will deal with the benefits and otherwise of “English education” in a later piece.
One kid in class VI said, after my lesson on parts of speech: “Sir, we did all this in class II. And in class V we did phrases and clauses”. I had no answer for him. They blog, they write poetry, stories and stuff and bring it for me to ‘check’. They write fairly well. As well as I did in my MA days. Well, a good teacher is a constant learner. I get to learn from my students and honestly admit it: the students appreciate that.
However, not all students are from ‘good’ (or ‘better’) schools: there are still some who need my lectures and for their sake, I need to keep the others quiet and plod through the textbook. There is no one method that works. The best thing to do is to crack a joke. But that is not easy: in a class – let’s call it Darwin – of 55 students, with 35 percent girls and 62 percent boys (and two percent monkeys), one needs to be extremely cautious about the ground one is treading.
The bottomline is: cheating and teaching are anagrams, and they have something in common too.
I like Dr Kancha Ilaiah (Why am I not a Hindu?) for one thing: he is a staunch advocate of English education. Although he means English-medium education. I feel my job is very important; I feel wanted. The rest of the time, my students give me as much importance as they give to a door-stop. Maybe a little more: my status in their eyes is perhaps that of the water cooler, around which they can chit chat. And yet, there is life in the day of yours truly, an English teacher at large. I teach adolescents and teenagers – from class VI to XII and each one presents a different challenge. But first let me make it clear that there is life in the day of an English teacher.
I work for a corporate educational organization which has operations from school level to IIT-JEE coaching classes. That means, my daily schedules are very odd. It has been ages since I have seen the dawn. This job makes it mandatory for me to get to work with sunrise; and my avocation –this newspaper column (which I put up on my blog) – keeps me going till sundown. Anyway let us talk about the day at work. I hate the morning hour as much as the students do but they are the pay masters: they can choose not to listen to my lectures, and keep talking in the class. How to handle them is a big challenge: the worst punishment one can deal out, according to school rules, is to send the student out. What does one do when half the class is chattering away?
You identify one of them and ask him or her to leave. The student is stubborn, stands there saying I am sorry sir, and refuses to move out. One student I managed to send out by threatening to go out myself turned so hostile, she does not indulge in the courtesy of wishing me good morning or good afternoon in the corridors. I am sure an adverse feedback would have gone to the management. Mercifully, they have taken me off that class and put a senior lecturer in my place.
Another interesting thing about this job is, some of the students know most of the stuff I teach in the class – they are the ones who came from ‘better’ schools. In fact, I had taken issues with Dr K Ilaiah elsewhere (What price English education, Deccan Herald, July 27, 2008; and What price English education -II, 14 August, 2008) saying that even if English medium education is introduced in government schools, they would not be able to compete with kids who go to Chirec or Oakridge or other such. We will deal with the benefits and otherwise of “English education” in a later piece.
One kid in class VI said, after my lesson on parts of speech: “Sir, we did all this in class II. And in class V we did phrases and clauses”. I had no answer for him. They blog, they write poetry, stories and stuff and bring it for me to ‘check’. They write fairly well. As well as I did in my MA days. Well, a good teacher is a constant learner. I get to learn from my students and honestly admit it: the students appreciate that.
However, not all students are from ‘good’ (or ‘better’) schools: there are still some who need my lectures and for their sake, I need to keep the others quiet and plod through the textbook. There is no one method that works. The best thing to do is to crack a joke. But that is not easy: in a class – let’s call it Darwin – of 55 students, with 35 percent girls and 62 percent boys (and two percent monkeys), one needs to be extremely cautious about the ground one is treading.
The bottomline is: cheating and teaching are anagrams, and they have something in common too.
Decay of Indian languages
What price English Education?
English medium education is pricey: we all know that. But the price we pay in terms of the damage to, indeed decay of, our national languages is hardly ever realized.
My domestic help proudly tells me that her grandson goes to an English school. It is no wonder that she is happy about it: the elite in our society prefer education in English to mother tongue education. The trickle-down effect ensures that everyone aspires to English education.
English as a medium vs. English as a subject
It is alright to have English as a subject from class 1 and have good teachers imparting knowledge of English, while the medium of instruction is the mother tongue. That would ensure that children learn other subjects better as pointed out in the following section.
Linguistic genocide? Children's right to education in their own languages
[http://www.id21.org/insights/insights-ed05/art01.html]
Children learn better when they are taught through a language they know well.
Children in mother tongue-based bilingual programmes in the USA learn English more rapidly and do better academically than those in all-English programmes.
In the largest-ever study of minority education students who reached the highest levels of bilingualism and school achievement were those whose mother tongue was the main language of instruction for the longest period of time.
While it cannot be denied that knowledge of English is the vehicle to success in today’s India (and most parts of the world), it is also true that the medium of instruction need not be English for pupils to attain fluency in English. It can be taught in the English class room, by well-trained English teachers.
Poor quality of English taught in primary schools
Many ‘convented’ children pick up inaccurate grammar because of poor quality of English used by teachers at the primary level. Consider the salaries of primary school teachers and people in advertising or media: those really proficient in English tend to go to media or other lucrative jobs and only those who cannot make it elsewhere end up teaching. The poor quality of English they speak rubs off on to the pupils and we often hear convented grown-ups using expressions like: “I don’t think so it is true.”
I myself did not go to a convent and know that the right way to say it is “I don’t think it is true.”
While bad English use is one concern, given the level of proficiency of teachers, the other concern is what goes on with our own languages. In a recent television show in Hindi (Are you smarter than a 5th standard kid?), a major Hindi film maker was given three numbers in Hindi – 29, 37, 47 – and was asked to say which was the lowest. He tried counting and ended up at 20 and could not remember – from his school days – what was 21 and beyond. And he seemed quite proud of it; at least, pleased about it.
The worst part was, he seemed very pleased with his ignorance (though he was proud to show off his competence in French, which he picked up while in Switzerland). On a related note, when the song ‘ek do teen’ (from Tehzaab) was translated into Telugu, it became “one two three”. Of course the Telugu numbers do not fit into the tune of ‘ek do teen’ but the point is, they used English without much ado.
Moreover, it is becoming fashionable not to know one’s own mother tongue well enough. An example of this shocked me was when I was working on a project at the CIEFL (now called the EFLU). I was trying to find children who spoke English at home and study their acquisition patterns. In the course of that I met with a child’s parents and the father proudly said: “you speak to her in Telugu, she will answer in English”.
There are many people trying to bring up their children to learn English even at home and not give them a proper mother tongue. We will consider the evils of that in a later essay. For now, suffice it to say that it could lead to the death of our languages. Many languages are on the brink of extinction.
So what if some languages die out?
It leads to loss of information essential for survival.
Non-degraded ecosystems such as rainforests in the Amazon, Borneo or Papua New Guinea are often inhabited only by indigenous and traditional peoples. When their languages disappear, their knowledge about how to maintain diverse ecosystems sustainably also disappears, including important knowledge about human survival (for instance, about medicinal plants) that is encoded in their languages. By killing languages, we are ruining the prerequisites for human life on the planet.
Is it going to happen to Indian languages?
Language death may be a distant eventuality, but language decay is seen in our everyday life. When two educated Indians speak in their mother tongue, 30-40 percent of it tends to be English words. Just like the famous film director, we cannot find the right word in our own languages and fall back on a ‘convenient’ English word.
In this way, over time, a lot of our idioms and expressions can become obsolete like in the following example: The chipmunk (many people think it is a squirrel, but a squirrel does not have the three stripes) got the stripes – according to the Ramayana – when it was helping the building of the Ram Setu by dipping into the sea, rolling in the sand, and carrying the sand back into the Ram Setu. The dedication of the chipmunk is known as ‘udata bhakti’ in Telugu. Kids of 14 or 15 today don’t know that expression or don’t use it – because they are ‘soaked’ in English.
In the sequel to this essay, we will consider in greater detail what happens to our languages because of the fascination for English, and if there is an escape from this colonization of our minds.
English medium education is pricey: we all know that. But the price we pay in terms of the damage to, indeed decay of, our national languages is hardly ever realized.
My domestic help proudly tells me that her grandson goes to an English school. It is no wonder that she is happy about it: the elite in our society prefer education in English to mother tongue education. The trickle-down effect ensures that everyone aspires to English education.
English as a medium vs. English as a subject
It is alright to have English as a subject from class 1 and have good teachers imparting knowledge of English, while the medium of instruction is the mother tongue. That would ensure that children learn other subjects better as pointed out in the following section.
Linguistic genocide? Children's right to education in their own languages
[http://www.id21.org/insights/insights-ed05/art01.html]
Children learn better when they are taught through a language they know well.
Children in mother tongue-based bilingual programmes in the USA learn English more rapidly and do better academically than those in all-English programmes.
In the largest-ever study of minority education students who reached the highest levels of bilingualism and school achievement were those whose mother tongue was the main language of instruction for the longest period of time.
While it cannot be denied that knowledge of English is the vehicle to success in today’s India (and most parts of the world), it is also true that the medium of instruction need not be English for pupils to attain fluency in English. It can be taught in the English class room, by well-trained English teachers.
Poor quality of English taught in primary schools
Many ‘convented’ children pick up inaccurate grammar because of poor quality of English used by teachers at the primary level. Consider the salaries of primary school teachers and people in advertising or media: those really proficient in English tend to go to media or other lucrative jobs and only those who cannot make it elsewhere end up teaching. The poor quality of English they speak rubs off on to the pupils and we often hear convented grown-ups using expressions like: “I don’t think so it is true.”
I myself did not go to a convent and know that the right way to say it is “I don’t think it is true.”
While bad English use is one concern, given the level of proficiency of teachers, the other concern is what goes on with our own languages. In a recent television show in Hindi (Are you smarter than a 5th standard kid?), a major Hindi film maker was given three numbers in Hindi – 29, 37, 47 – and was asked to say which was the lowest. He tried counting and ended up at 20 and could not remember – from his school days – what was 21 and beyond. And he seemed quite proud of it; at least, pleased about it.
The worst part was, he seemed very pleased with his ignorance (though he was proud to show off his competence in French, which he picked up while in Switzerland). On a related note, when the song ‘ek do teen’ (from Tehzaab) was translated into Telugu, it became “one two three”. Of course the Telugu numbers do not fit into the tune of ‘ek do teen’ but the point is, they used English without much ado.
Moreover, it is becoming fashionable not to know one’s own mother tongue well enough. An example of this shocked me was when I was working on a project at the CIEFL (now called the EFLU). I was trying to find children who spoke English at home and study their acquisition patterns. In the course of that I met with a child’s parents and the father proudly said: “you speak to her in Telugu, she will answer in English”.
There are many people trying to bring up their children to learn English even at home and not give them a proper mother tongue. We will consider the evils of that in a later essay. For now, suffice it to say that it could lead to the death of our languages. Many languages are on the brink of extinction.
So what if some languages die out?
It leads to loss of information essential for survival.
Non-degraded ecosystems such as rainforests in the Amazon, Borneo or Papua New Guinea are often inhabited only by indigenous and traditional peoples. When their languages disappear, their knowledge about how to maintain diverse ecosystems sustainably also disappears, including important knowledge about human survival (for instance, about medicinal plants) that is encoded in their languages. By killing languages, we are ruining the prerequisites for human life on the planet.
Is it going to happen to Indian languages?
Language death may be a distant eventuality, but language decay is seen in our everyday life. When two educated Indians speak in their mother tongue, 30-40 percent of it tends to be English words. Just like the famous film director, we cannot find the right word in our own languages and fall back on a ‘convenient’ English word.
In this way, over time, a lot of our idioms and expressions can become obsolete like in the following example: The chipmunk (many people think it is a squirrel, but a squirrel does not have the three stripes) got the stripes – according to the Ramayana – when it was helping the building of the Ram Setu by dipping into the sea, rolling in the sand, and carrying the sand back into the Ram Setu. The dedication of the chipmunk is known as ‘udata bhakti’ in Telugu. Kids of 14 or 15 today don’t know that expression or don’t use it – because they are ‘soaked’ in English.
In the sequel to this essay, we will consider in greater detail what happens to our languages because of the fascination for English, and if there is an escape from this colonization of our minds.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Wittgenstein and the death of philosophy
One of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein (the others being Bertrand Russell, A N Whitehead, and William James – in my reckoning) declared that the business of philosophy was to simply define concepts. It was, according to him, an exercise in semantics. For example, take the assertion: Happy people make people happy. Philosophy doesn’t concern itself with the truth or otherwise of this assertion but merely defines the term ‘happy’. The appropriate dictionary definition of happy (suited to this context) is: “enjoying or characterized by well-being and contentment.” [He is the happiest person I know.] A philosopher may debate what is well-being and contentment, and try to define them. In that sense, a philosopher is a lexicographer.
There are no longer universal truths, no metaphysic s or ontology. We are now in the realm of pragmatics – the belief that “an idea or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that unpractical ideas are to be rejected.” [Wikipedia] In other words, how does the idea play out in the real world? In science, correspondingly, we see a reduction of truth to what works and what does not (performance theory). As an aside here, let us remember Hussain Zeeshan of HCU who went on reading and reading and never gave vent to his thoughts and went crazy; one doesn’t know where he is now but let us hope he is ‘happy’ somewhere. He summed up one time the whole of Noam Chomsky’s one-hour lecture as an explication of performance theory. Scientific theories are true or false only insofar as they the applications built on them perform.
With (speculative) metaphysics thrown out the window, out goes ethics (it is reduced to law) and ontology; logic is appropriated by math, and there is no field of enquiry left called philosophy per se. That being the case, it does not come as a surprise that the Bangalore university shut down the department of philosophy. One can only speculate (if that is allowed ;) that many more universities will follow suit. And hence it is appropriate now to write an obituary for philosophy and sundry philosophers: Anjum Zubairi was another failed philosopher (isn’t that a redundance?). Last seen, he was struggling to find his feet in a software company as a technical writer. Last heard, he committed suicide. Let us keep silent for 2 minute…
From the heydays of Socrates/Plato to “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” philosophy has gained in importance and it is now reduced to this ignominious end. And I have come to bury philosophy, not to praise it. Whatever service it did to humanity and lovers of wisdom in particular, it is no longer relevant now. A degree in philosophy doesn’t get you the job of a philosophy teacher, with more and more universities – in all likelihood – shutting down their philosophy departments. The department of philosophy at the university of Hyderabad had seen great days soon after its inception, but soon it became the last resort of morons: students who could not get admission in any other discipline started getting into that. Any obit of philosophy is not complete without mentioning Shankar; he had a Tee which said: Philosophy – I am in it for the money. I missed the irony and asked naively, “Is there a lot of money in philosophy, in the U.S.?” (That was where he was studying.)
He said: It’s a joke da. I don’t know his full name.
One of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein (the others being Bertrand Russell, A N Whitehead, and William James – in my reckoning) declared that the business of philosophy was to simply define concepts. It was, according to him, an exercise in semantics. For example, take the assertion: Happy people make people happy. Philosophy doesn’t concern itself with the truth or otherwise of this assertion but merely defines the term ‘happy’. The appropriate dictionary definition of happy (suited to this context) is: “enjoying or characterized by well-being and contentment.” [He is the happiest person I know.] A philosopher may debate what is well-being and contentment, and try to define them. In that sense, a philosopher is a lexicographer.
There are no longer universal truths, no metaphysic s or ontology. We are now in the realm of pragmatics – the belief that “an idea or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that unpractical ideas are to be rejected.” [Wikipedia] In other words, how does the idea play out in the real world? In science, correspondingly, we see a reduction of truth to what works and what does not (performance theory). As an aside here, let us remember Hussain Zeeshan of HCU who went on reading and reading and never gave vent to his thoughts and went crazy; one doesn’t know where he is now but let us hope he is ‘happy’ somewhere. He summed up one time the whole of Noam Chomsky’s one-hour lecture as an explication of performance theory. Scientific theories are true or false only insofar as they the applications built on them perform.
With (speculative) metaphysics thrown out the window, out goes ethics (it is reduced to law) and ontology; logic is appropriated by math, and there is no field of enquiry left called philosophy per se. That being the case, it does not come as a surprise that the Bangalore university shut down the department of philosophy. One can only speculate (if that is allowed ;) that many more universities will follow suit. And hence it is appropriate now to write an obituary for philosophy and sundry philosophers: Anjum Zubairi was another failed philosopher (isn’t that a redundance?). Last seen, he was struggling to find his feet in a software company as a technical writer. Last heard, he committed suicide. Let us keep silent for 2 minute…
From the heydays of Socrates/Plato to “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” philosophy has gained in importance and it is now reduced to this ignominious end. And I have come to bury philosophy, not to praise it. Whatever service it did to humanity and lovers of wisdom in particular, it is no longer relevant now. A degree in philosophy doesn’t get you the job of a philosophy teacher, with more and more universities – in all likelihood – shutting down their philosophy departments. The department of philosophy at the university of Hyderabad had seen great days soon after its inception, but soon it became the last resort of morons: students who could not get admission in any other discipline started getting into that. Any obit of philosophy is not complete without mentioning Shankar; he had a Tee which said: Philosophy – I am in it for the money. I missed the irony and asked naively, “Is there a lot of money in philosophy, in the U.S.?” (That was where he was studying.)
He said: It’s a joke da. I don’t know his full name.
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