From: hassan@cup.portal.com (hassan monu alam)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bangladesh,soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Who's Smarter? :-)
Date: Wed,  4 Nov 92 22:02:21 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

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.