On Wednesday 18 Jul 2007 8:04 pm, ashok _ wrote: > This is most probably because becoming a sociologist or a historian > does not pay. > its a fact that most arts faculties are neglected and underfunded. > Pray, tell me which mother in her right mind would arrange-marriage > her daughter > to a poor historian or a sociologist?
Exactly. While the software engineer comment was an exaggeration, which mother in her right mind would not arrange-marriage her daughter to a software engineer? More seriously (my opinions here), educated Indians themselves are a "backward society". Awareness of the value of a whole lot of things starting from habits like walking and not pissing on the footpath, to the value of having better conditions for "menial" laborers and the value of the "arts" subjects that you have named are all alien to the Indian who appears otherwise sophisticated and worldly wise. If the value of such subjects was recognized it would be easy to get sponsors to pay people to do the work. But a society that cheerfully tolerates temporary slums for construction workers (while their own houses and offices are being built) and tolerates their crapping on the roadside and their kids running about without any education is hardly likely to see any value in history or sociology. So where does one even start making a difference? And I am not even talking about the 50 or whatever percent of illiterates in India. India is a society stuck in a time warp and needs to be kicked forward in a variety of ways. One way in my view is to recognize that "Hindu" does not mean what the RSS says but all of us and our relatives who live double standards all our lives perpetuating societal stratification and elitist behavior exactly the way it was meant to be even as we pretend that the real Hindu of the RSS does not occur widely. Of course not. The real Hindu lies within every one of us and we refuse to acknowledge it while we pretend to be what we are not. shiv
