From: rsd@ccrl.nj.nec.com (Rajiv Dighe)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bangladesh,soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Re: Who's Smarter? :-)
Date: 5 Nov 92 16:18:35 GMT
Article-I.D.: research.1992Nov5.161835.2116
Organization: C&C Research Labs, NEC USA, Princeton, N.J.

In article <68906@cup.portal.com> hassan@cup.portal.com (hassan monu alam) writes:
>Far Eastern Economic Review
>------------------------------
>
>Who's smarter?
>North-South debate flares anew
>
>By Jug Suraiya in New Delhi
>
>Are South Indians smarter than
>North Indians? That indigenous
>North-South debate gained political
>currency when P. V. Narasimha Rao be-
>came the first Indian prime minister from
>south of the Vindhya range, ending the
>Hindi heartland's monopoly at the helm of
>national affairs. Many members of his cabi-
>net, including Finance Minister Manmohan
>Singh, are northerners.
>
>But the Madrasi (the Northener's blan-
>ket term for all those from peninsular In-
>dia) had eased his reputation for canni-
>ness long before this--thanks largely to
>the preponderance of Tamils in the lower
>echelons of Delhi's bureaucracy and the
>ubiquity of the udipi, southern India's an-
>swer to the western pizza parlour.
>
>It was said of the Tamil-speaking
>Palghat migrant from Kerala that when
>you hired a Palghat Iyer you were sure of
>employing a good typist or a good cook--
>or even the two in one. But the Madrasi's
>celebrated capacity for cerebration can ap-
>parently accommodate much more than a
>happy combination of secretarial and culi-
>nary skills: it seems that South Indians pro-
>duce more, and better, scientists than
>North Indians--however unscientific the
>proposition may sound.
>
>It is well known that two out of the
>three Indians who have won Nobel
>Prizes for science have been from the
>South: Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata
>Raman, founder of the Indian journal of
>Physics and the Indian Academy of
>Sciences, who won the physics prize in
>1930 for the discovery of the "Raman ef-
>fect"--the change that occurs in the wave-
>length of a light beam when it is deflected
>by molecules, and Dr S. Chandrashekhar,
>who was awarded the prize in 1983 for his
>work on stellar evolution and structure,
>which led to the formulation of the
>"Chandrashekhar Limit," which deter-
>mines the collapse of stars and the forma-
>tion of black holes.
>
>Almost equally well known is the popu-
>lar lore surrounding the tragically brief life
>and brilliant work of the mathematical
>prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujam, who in
>1918 became the first Indian to be made a
>Fellow of the Royal Society in Britain.
>
>An article in a recent issue of the Taj
>quarterly, "The S.I. Factor?" by Anvar
>Alikhan, now not only quantifies the con-
>tribution made by South India to a spec-
>trum of sciences ranging from astrophysics
>to agrobiology, from rock-
>etry to robotics, but also
>weaves together a social
>and cultural hypothesis
>suggesting why the South
>should be scientifically
>"smarter" than the North.
>
>The article says that 47%
>of the Fellows of the Indian
>Academy of Science as well
>as 10 of the 15 Indians who
>are Fellows of the Royal So-
>ciety are from South India,
>which accounts for only
>24% of the national popula-
>tion.
>
>Alikhan enlisted the aid
>of an International compu-
>ter network to compile a
>list of preeminent "Swa-
>mis of science," living and
>dead, which reads like a who's who of re-
>search and technology. After interviewing
>a wide range of scientists and technocrats,
>Alikhan traced the geographical and cul-
>tural contours that might have helped in
>shaping the South's scientific bent of mind.
>
>Predominant among these is peninsular
>India's historical dual advantage of having
>been open to external influences (thanks to
>a tradition of maritime trade) while being
>sequestered from the waves of invasion
>and upheaval that have swept North India
>through the ages. According to Alikhan,
>the relative political, religious and social
>stability this gave the South afforded it "the
>luxury to sit and ponder" on the abstract
>and the timeless, detached from the mate-
>rial exigencies of the moment. Over time
>this led to the germination of a metaphys-
>ics based on rigorous logi-
>cal analysis.
>
>Alikhan observes that
>while Westem logic admits
>of only two categories of
>value, true and false, classi-
>cal advaita--the greatest
>exponent of which was
>Sankaracharya, the great
>religious philosopher from
>the South--admits of no
>fewer than seven.
>
>While North India has
>traditionally equated social
>status with feudatory rights
>and martial prowess, the
>Tamil Brahmins have
>largely been a non-proper-
>tied class whose main in-
>vestment has been in the
>
>education of their children. (Incidentally,
>Ernakulam in the neighboring state of
>Kerala recently earned the distinction of
>being the first of the country's 412 districts
>to achieve a 100% literacy rate).
>
>The intellectual, rather than the soldier-
>king, has long been the Tamil Brahmin's
>role model, and Alikhan traces the en-
>during popularity of okra
>
>among South Indian stu-
>dents to an incident in S.
>Chandrashekhar's child-
>hood when the scientist-
>to-be was asked by an
>"awed teacher" what his
>favorite vegetable was.
>Alikhan recounts: "When
>Chandra replied that it was
>vendakai, the teacher seri-
>ously urged all the other
>students, too, to eat okra
>every day, saying 'Look at
>Chandra!"'
>
>Alikhan draws a paral-
>lel between the harmonious
>structure of logic and the
>rhythms of Camatic music,
>the purest form of Indian
>classical music.
>
>Pointing out the math-
>ematical precision of Camatic music, which
>is based on a 22-note framework as com-
>pared with the 12-note octaves of Westem
>classical music, Alikhan notes that Than-
>javur district produced not only four of the
>greatest scientific geniuses of the country
>--C. V. Raman, Chandrashekhar, Rama-
>nujam and K. S. Krishan, Raman's co-
>researcher--but also gave birth to the
>"great trinity" of Carnatic music:
>Thyagaraja, Shyama Shastri and Muthu-
>swami Dikshitar.
>
>Carnatic music continues to enjoy a vast
>following in the South, and Alikhan sug-
>gests that its rhythms "may have been re-
>sponsible for instilling a set of highly pre-
>cise, highly mathematical cadences into the
>South Indian mind."
>
>Indeed, Dr Raja Ramana, the "father of
>
>the Pokharan explosion,"
>has confessed to a passion-
>ate love for music, but
>mainly the music of Liszt,
>the title of whose last major
>work the Indian scientist
>borrowed for his recently
>published memoirs, "Years
>of Pilgrimage." Such minor
>inconveniences of fact
>however, are liable to be
>brushed aside by those
>who take their vendakai
>with a pinch of salt--in-
>cluding Alikhan himself
>who, coming from Hydera-
>bad, could lay claim to
>being a member of the
>"smarter" set, Liszt or no
>Liszt.


Greetings members of the smarter set.

In our greener days, we would often
look at some of our brethrens who were "slow"
or couldnt get anything done right and chide
them gently for their shortcomings.
Getting some work done from them used to often
be a marathon exercise and required management skills
far far beyond anything our managers ever had or ever will have.
When we were very young, we would often
have to resort to threats to get these cretins
to get anything useful done, "Munna, jaldi kaam
karo nahin to Gabbar Singh tumhe pakad ke leke jayega"
would often work.
A little older, we would try something more subtle
by reminding them of their grandmothers (to quote
an erstwhile prime minister of ours "unki Nani yaad
dilayenge.")
In our college days, carrots could be dangled in front
of the lumpen by telling them that if they did the job
right, a certain Ms Right would be favourably impressed
and we would personally volunteer our time to convey
to Ms Right about the stupendousness of their deeds
(these idjuts had obviously never heard of Miles Standish ).
Most times that would work, though there were times
when we had to give up in despair at some of the
more Neanderthals of our kin.
In desperation we would often regress to our younger
days and come up with a vile oath aimed at challenging
the cretin's manhood and humanity.
The deepest and darkest of this oath which almost always
worked was the omnipotent:

		"Aadmi hai ya Madarasi ?"

There wasnt a fouler oath in the fair hinterlands of Mumbai
and it would have the hoi-polloi shivering in sheer terror.
A far gentler oath would be "Aadmi hai ya Pyjama ?"
This morning I am told that we were very very wrong..
I see this piece on SCI from Jug Suraiya (on ze udder hand, why would
I put faith on anything written by somebody called Jug ?).
Perusing carefully this startling piece of yellow journalism,
all I can say is that
the man should have stuck to "Man bites Dog"-type of stories.

Rajiv-who-eats-no-okra-before-its-time
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bangladesh,soc.culture.pakistan,soc.culture.indian