--- On Wed, 7/7/10, radharao gracias <[email protected]> wrote: > >I fail to understand whether Santosh Helekar is deliberately >misinterpreting >the contents of my article or he lacks knowledge of the >English language. In my article, I have stated: "Our contribution to >civilization, (and it cannot be disputed) is "zero". “No pun intended." I >>maintain, reiterate and reconfirm it. It is well known and undisputed >fact >that India invented “zero” and it cannot be disputed that it is our > contribution to World Civilisation and that is why I have put the word > >“zero” in inverted commas. >
As I had predicted in my last post, Adv. Gracias has once again moved the goal post, and is now speaking through his nose. To demonstrate this, let me quote his concluding remark in the Herald article in its entirety. Here it is: "Our contribution to civilization, (and it cannot be disputed) is "zero". No pun intended. We have become the coelacanth, of civilization. We are not great. We have to strive to be great." .....Adv. Radharao Gracias I do not know what advanced English is taught in colleges of law or spoken in Goan courts by advocates, but the English I learned in primary and secondary school has equipped me to understand quite well that what he meant in the above quotes is not the same as what he meant in his subsequent quotes below: "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. It is under British rule that they blossomed and flowered. That is precisely my point that the British system encouraged intellectual development." ....Adv. Radharao Gracias Ramanujan, Bose, Mahalanobis and Raman did not contribute "zero" to civilization. Pun or no pun. Aryabhatta who contributed "zero" to Indian civilization did not live any part of his productive life in British India. Their contributions, and those of present day Indian scientists like Ashoke Sen clearly demonstrate that we are not the coelacanth of civilization, assuming that Adv. Gracias is unaware that coelacanth is not exactly an extinct fish. The fact that he does not regard that there is any greatness in the invention of zero, which was made in the 5th century A.D., or in the contributions of the 20th century geniuses I mentioned, is clear from the following introductory remark from his Herald article: "There has been no greatness about our country, not in the last two thousand years or so." .....Adv. Radharao Gracias What takes the cake this time, however, is that even after his thoughtless assertions having been thoroughly repudiated by facts, this gentleman keeps insisting that what I have written in response to his misplaced self-hate, vindicates his disproved claims. The truth is that there is absolutely no agreement between my conclusions and his. Let me quote his already discredited claims verbatim, and show how they completely contradict what I have said. "But it is my case that nothing substantial has been achieved by Indian research post independence." ....Adv. Radharao Gracias I have shown that the post-independence work of G. N. Ramachandran and Ashoke Sen among several other Fellows of Royal Society and unsung heroes of Indian scientific institutions constitute substantial achievements in science. "If it was not for our “way of life”, we would have dozens of Nobel Prize winners." ....Adv. Radharao Gracias I have shown that his own exemplar of a better "way of life" than India, namely Turkey has not won a single Nobel prize. I have also stated that Portugal and Spain, whose "ways of life", I would bet, are quite agreeable to him, have won very few Nobel prizes compared to India. Furthermore, the repeated use of the term in quotes, "way of life", is curious. Reading between the lines, it strikes me as a subtle and sophisticated version of the crude and churlish references of Nascy Caldeira to "eating beef and pork" and "wearing western clothes", as being culturally superior to being a "vegetarian" or "eating lamb and chicken", and wearing a poodvem and saadee. Adv. Gracias' diagnosis of the reasons for a country achieving greatness on the scientific front are also totally wrong-headed from my standpoint. Please see this quote of his, for example: "Precisely so, I would like my country to be what the US is today. And the only way we can do it, is by discarding superstitions, jingoism, bigotry and the ill founded belief in our greatness." ....Adv. Radharao Gracias He is clearly unaware that the U.S. is one of the most jingoistic of countries, much more so than India. Nearly half of the voting population believes in American exceptionalism. Indeed, it can be argued that this unparalleled exaggerated sense of pride drives Americans to achieve greatness. Its sizable, highly vocal and powerful right-wing is opposed to secularism and the separation of Church and State. While I have not compared casteist bigotry in India with racist and religious bigotry in some parts of the U.S., it is quite alive and well, albeit not to the same extent as it once was, when Americans were still winning Nobel prizes at a high rate. Regarding superstitions, like "way of life", it depends on what Adv. Gracias means by it, and what his preferences and biases are. From an objective standpoint, U.S.A. is one of the most religious countries in the world. The majority of its population believes in creationism and the literal truth of the scriptures. The majority also believes in afterlife, ghosts, supernatural entities other than god(s), astrology and the New Age. Finally, nothing I have said could possibly vindicate the following crazy notions and the implied hare-brained solutions to India's problems: "The tragedy of our country is that we are yet to find our emperor Meji or Kemal Attaturk." ....Adv. Radharao Gracias And in another Herald article: "The Maoists are a threat. To those who share Nehru's vision. And to you. And to me. To the underclass they may be saviours. Yet." ....Adv. Radharao Gracias I guess to people who believe in ideological fantasies, nightmares aren't so bad. Cheers, Santosh P.S. - BTW, I came to the U.S. because it is the best place in the world to study and work in my chosen field of expertise. My action is entirely consistent with my strong disagreement with those who proclaim that India has not made any great contributions to civilization in the last 2000 years, or made "zero" contribution (no pun intended), or made contributions only during British rule, or made no substantial contribution post-independence.
