Science in Europe was able to question and over-throw incorrect believes and practices. However, in India, it has been used to justify and perpetuate existing order and crude practices. So, it is clear that philosophies and erudition by themselves do not lead to any progress in the society. In fact, most of the philosophies discovered in Europe had been independently discovered in India many centuries earlier but these philosophies were either ridiculed or replaced by other meta theories that reinforced existing order and ideas.
The establishment of trade routes from Europe made it easy for Europeans to dominate and rule over India, as Europe had made great progress both as a society and also in engineering technology. But material greed was the main motivating force for this adventure into India, so it made minor contribution to the social progress in India. In fact, whatever progress it caused was mainly negated by the fact that the technology offered the ruling government an unprecedented control over its people, with such draconian rules that was able to prohibit even the peaceful assembly of the people, which is practiced till today in India. These and other more subtle forms of controls ensured that both the Indian government and its people remained backward in a perpetual state.
On the other hand, this dominating relationship by Europe and later on by the United States and other countries populated by Europeans like Australia, Canada, etc… ensured that these dominating countries also began to show tendencies of backward social progress due to their colonization and neo-colonization behaviors which reflected back into their own societies. However, the ruling classes in India did benefit a little with the progressive European and American ideas that induced them to reach a more advanced state of social development; Science in India grew by this contact.
The science in India has tended to be more theoretical and mathematical in nature, drawing inspiration from mystical schools exemplified by Srinivasan Ramanujan. Science in India mostly follows the creationists school, who believe that the new world is created by geniuses such as Ramanujan and can definitely be not understood by ordinary people. The Europeans are more inclined to the fact that these geniuses are just discovering things which already exist and would be eventually understood by ordinary people, just as Galileo's and Newton's discoveries are easily understood by ordinary people now. In fact, new discoveries in quantum physics has shown clearly that no new information can be created [1].
The discoveries even within mathematics mostly come from other sources; Newton's interest in planetary motions made him discover differential calculus and so was the creation of a new topic in mathematics, topology, by Poincare, who was banished to the department of Astronomy as he was doing stuff which was not considered mathematics at that time [2]. Despite of this most of the scientists in India believe that just by studying mathematics, computer science or business administration it is possible to understand most of the world. For that to be true the world has to be flat and not round. It is believed that the information technology has made the world flat [3] but the gap between the wired and the unwired is growing bigger and bigger.
Manual labor is looked down upon in India and even students who have studied in engineering institutes do not want to work in engineering concerns as it involves dealing with both people from lower class segments thus reducing their class status. Information technology, which is mostly used at the service of making more profits, has made it possible to reduce this contact with labor by providing a meta framework that minimizes contact with manual labor and at the same time reducing the employment of labor to a minimum. So most of the engineering students get a degree in MBA or Computer Science.
Mathematicians know how difficult it is to fit this flat world on the surface of the sphere; we would have many ozone holes and may be the word that these information technologists create would only be livable by Robots. Humans with flesh and blood are going to have one hell of a fight to bring this flat world to fit into this mundane round earth.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate