--- On Tue, 7/6/10, radharao gracias <[email protected]> wrote: > > I must compliment Santosh Helekar, at the outset, for > proving me right. He has taken over the leadership of the chauvanists. > I feel vindicated by the response that has come from fellow > Indians settled abroad. >
Vindicated? How convenient it is to move the goal post when caught in a blatant falsehood! Here is what Adv. Gracias said self-assuredly in his Herald article: "Our contribution to civilization, (and it cannot be disputed) is "zero". No pun intended." .....Adv. Radharao Gracias And now he says this: "Santosh Helekar has in his several comments pointed out the names of Srinivasan Ramanujan, S.N.Bose, P.C.Mahanabolis and C.V.Raman to buttress his point about the greatness of India. In doing so, he has completely backed my argument. It is not my case that India per se is bad but, our “way of life” has made it so. Each of the four individuals mentioned above were born in the nineteenth century and lived most of their productive lives in British India." .....Adv. Radharao Gracias So which side of Adv. Gracias' mouth should we believe? The one which says we Indians have made zero contribution to civilization, no pun intended. Or the one which claims that we made our contributions only when the British were ruling over us. What's worse is he will have to move the goal post again, or this time speak from his nose or something, because the truth is Indians have continued to make original scientific contributions in the post-independence era. The reason Adv. Gracias does not know this is because he has not bothered to find out. Yes, no Indian working in independent India has yet won the Nobel Prize in scientific subjects, but that has more to do with the high cost and advanced state of scientific research today than anything else. As the famous Physics Nobel Laureate Paul Dirac once remarked, referring to the late 19th and early 20th centuries (coincident with Adv. Gracias' British times), contrasting it with modern times, and I paraphrase, it was a glorious time when a second rate physicist could do first rate work. Whereas, now it is very difficult for a first rate physicist to do second rate work. But independent India has continued to produce outstanding indigenous scientists of high international standing. There have been at least 20 Fellows of the Royal Society among those who made their original discoveries after independence. Our own Raghunath Mashelkar, FRS is one of them. The present day genius of the caliber of S. N. Bose is Ashoke Sen, FRS, a world-renowned theoretical physicist at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahbad, who is one of the pioneers of advanced string theory. There have been a few were unlucky not to win the Nobel Prize, such as G. N. Ramachandran who discovered the structure of collagen, and contributed to the theory behind the CAT scan. There are several national institutes such as Indian Statistical Institute, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Indian Institute of Science, The National Centre for Biological Sciences, etc, that are making steady original contributions to expand the frontiers of science. Of course, the unsung heroes behind these discoveries would not easily make it on the evening news. They would also not register on Adv. Gracias' politically tuned radar because RSS and other Hindu extremists do not care much about non-Vedic "science", and for his Maoist "saviors", this is capitalist, western, corporate science. Furthermore, if we follow his revised logic and Nobel yardstick to compare India with Turkey, his exemplar of an ideally developed nation, then despite having all the advantages of proximity with advanced European countries, Turkey has had no Nobel prize winner in science, economics, or peace, and just one in literature. Portugal has had one science prize, and Spain two, one of which was for work done in the U.S. Indeed, the vast majority of science Nobel prizes credited to any country in the world have been awarded for work done in the U.S. In other words, what you are hearing from Adv. Gracias in this regard is pure nonsense. However, I will close by answering his questions. > >If India is so great why do our people have to go abroad to reach > intellectual fulfillment? > Rather than cast India in jingoistic terms, I would prefer to simply oppose Indians who denigrate their own country and countrymen out of ignorance, or for political, ideological or religious reasons. As I have shown above, intellectual fulfillment can be attained in India. But it is often difficult to do so because of lack of facilities, resources and specific expertise, which are heavily dependent on availability of funds for academic research. > >If India is great why would these people achieve greatness only after >>forsaking the country and living in the West? > As I mentioned earlier, many of them have achieved it in India. But it is easier to do so in the U.S. today because of the reasons stated above. To wrap up, I would just like to say that my own criticism of present day India from the standpoint of scientific advancement is its lumbering bureaucracy, poor choice of priorities, lack of philanthropy and absence of serious financial commitment to cutting edge research from the government and private sector. Cheers, Santosh
