On Wednesday 12 Dec 2007 1:16 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > With the unbridled faith in science, technology and economic growth that > seems to have gripped the middle classes, some critical reflection on > India's current development trajectory is in order -- which is precisely > what sociologists (and others) are supposed to be good at. Yet they do not > often enough air their views, or their knowledge, in public.
Carol your study was itself an eye opener. You showed how the IT boom was restricted largely to the forward castes. You were bold enough to mention the unmentionable "R" word that can earn you a fatwa -"reservation!! As you pointed out (and as was mentioned in an article that I Googled) Engilsh rules the airwaves. People who use English in India get heard the most and their views are echoed and amplified by the dominance of the anglosphere courtesy the US of A. I have often felt (with no proof whatsoever) that the old (pre-independence) cliches about India, many of them negative, were based on interaction of foreign visitors and invaders with the upper castes of India. If you exclude ancient Indian literature, the narratives of India that exist are the narratives of the upper castes of India and their attitudes and habits. You will not find, for example, a narrative of a "chamar" or a "bhangi", or even a "mochi" - a word that caused recent uproar for being used in a Bollywood song. I have no way of verifying this theory- there is no independent corroboration that I know of. But if that is true, it only adds on to another possible anomaly that can be verified if someone bothers to do that. I spoke of the way the views of the Indian anglophones are propagated and amplified. But a question that has always puzzled me is whether anyone has ever done a caste distribution study of Indian immigrants in the US. I suspect, without proof, that they are likely to be predominantly Indians of forward caste descent. If there is a correlation between Indian English-speakers and forward caste, we may be hearing a narrative of India that excludes the 95% of Indians by virtue of their lack of English that also correlates with a complete absence of serious information about the state of lower castes, non English speakers and the poor. In other words, there may be a complete dysjunction between what is said and discussed in the English media and issues on the ground in India. I would consider this a serious social anomaly. shiv
