From: nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson)
Subject: Re: Were there universities in India before the British went?
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 15:26:09 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA

In article <190f13INNbgi@bigboote.WPI.EDU> wizard@maxine.wpi.edu (Ajay Khanna) writes:
>The honorable A.Raman@massey.ac.nz (Anand) chanced to say:
>= Sometimes during a party, a date  or a dinner, an Indian is  liable to
>= get asked that  apparently innocent  question,  the irksome nature  of
>= which cannot be underestimated:
>= 
>= Did you have universities in your country before the British came?
>
>My response to that (if an American asked me) would be:
>	We did.  Did you have universities in your country before the
>	British came?
>
>You can use the above line in Australia and New Zealand, too :)
>
>On the more serious (and educational) note, we did.  That they were
>different from current Western-style universities is irrelevant. 

  I'm not sure it's irrelevant.  "University" is a Latin word and 
  it may well be that if a North American or European asks "did you
  have universities" they may be referring specifically to western-
  style universities.   Or not.  The whole thing hinges on what is
  mean by "university".    For instance, did the early Chinese civil
  service schools constitute "universities"?  

  A similar question would be more usefully phrased, "what kind(s) of
  specialized higher education for the elite existed on the Indian
  subcontinent before the Europeans arrived?"   Culturally and techno-
  logically advanced societies have existed in that region for thousands
  of years, and such societies have the need to teach certain members
  skills that go beyond the basic cultural/religious knowledge that
  presumably all members of any society must be taught.  Subjects like
  science, writing, medicine, administration, military, and philosophy
  in most societies are taught to those who will be members of the
  administrative/religious/military/cultural/economic elite.   But
  how this is done has varied widely between cultures and historical
  periods and whereas today we have the concept that an "educated
  man" should have a taste of all this, this certainly was not always
  true in the west, and I can only surmise this varied elewhere
  as well.  

  It does not follow that because something is not a "university" that
  it is, somehow less legitimate, less valuable, less honorable, etc.
  To suggest that things called "university" are better than things
  called something else, or structured along different lines is to 
  give in to European cultural imperialism.
   
                            
>had clothes before the British came, too.  That they were a different
>kind of clothing is irrelevant. 

  I'm not sure this is a good analogy.   To cite clothing, how would you
  answer an inquiry along the lines of, "Did Indian businessmen wear suits
  before the Europeans arrived?"   It becomes necessary then to find the 
  a close mapping to "businessmen", which would probably be to various
  merchant or trader classes.  And then if they had some clothing that
  was unique to them (i.e., if a merchant could be distinguished by
  his dress from, say, a farmer, a religious man, etc) you could call
  whatever that was a "suit".   And scale all this by the way the concept
  of "suit" has changed over the centuries.    It would be much better
  to phrase the questiom, "did Indian merchants wear clothing that 
  distinguished them from other social/economic/trade classes, as Euro-
  pean merchants did?".
  
  The problem is that trying to find 1:1 mappings between things in different
  cultures often result in awkward nonsense such as when Christian children
  in America are told that Hanukkah is the "Jewish Christmas".   
  

---peter