01. Wikipedia and the issue of original knowledge

02. The sly cunning in education

03. A one-way dissemination of information

04. Rights to public domain

05. A digression to Newton

Wikipedia and the issue of original knowledge

Now coming back to the Wikipedia, it is about a strange policy of theirs that I need to speak of. It is that nothing original should be posted. In that only knowledge that is currently known should be mentioned. Now, this is a very complicated issue. It is an area wherein persons with deep insight and profundity should work. It is not an area for mediocre persons to wield a baton and eraser.

To make this point clear, I need to speak about a particular post of mine, wherein it was noted as Original Research. That means it is forbidden on Wikipedia. Now what is this original discovery of mine? Well, there have been various studies done by English and other non-‘Indian’ research scholars on ‘Indian’ themes. They have written much based on observations, analysis and statistical calculations. However, what they are discovering is just ‘ordinary information’ for any individual who lives in ‘India’. What is original research finding in what is an innate feature of the ‘Indian’ people? Something which every Indian knows. But something that has not entered social science textbooks. Would a knowledge become a human knowledge only if it comes in college textbooks?

SEE THIS: Wikipedia Talk page on: Bhikkhuni. See the section titled: Concept of equality

Now, this fact has another extension. Most of the Indian academicians lack a definite level of social experience. It is not that they are cut-off from society. It is just that they are contained in a particular indicant level slot. It is a reclusive situation when viewed from an ordinary English perspective. They become quite nervous about anything that seems to encroach upon their superior slot. They simply become parrots of academic textbooks. This becomes so much a part of their personality that they are not willing to admit realities which are not in tune with what they are studying and teaching.

I mention this much in connection to a contention that was aimed against me in my case against the compulsory imposition of Malayalam on all students. I contented in the High Court of Kerala that Malayalam was a feudal language. The contention from the third party [Malayalam professors and researchers] who joined on the opposite side was that there is no such mention in language theory. The question was why I should rely on language theory, when what I was mentioning was an everyday reality that only the local natives can understand.

See this comment made by a commenter attacking me on Scientific America:

Neeraj in reply to VED from VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS 03:19 PM 12/23/12

You also seem to draw some major conclusions from the different words used to describe a person of a higher standing as opposed to a person of a lower class, but that is a ridiculous analysis. For almost ALL languages across the subcontinent have this common trait (again pointing to linguistic unity, a point against your favour). If we are to then say that all of British India(landmass, as large as Europe) had languages inherently feudal, and almost racist in nature therefore all of India shares these social characteristics, it would be naive, near impossible.

MY COMMENT: This comment though attacking me, actually supports my point, inadvertently.

It is seen that what I am proposing is actually a common knowledge in India. However, it has not yet entered the ‘Language Theory’. Mentioning something that is known but not in the textbook is ‘original’ and cannot be posted on Wikipedia. That simply means that Wikipedia is a textbook version of everything. Well, in nations like Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka etc. textbook versions of many things are most colloquial perspectives of the section of population that is holding the nation to ransom. For example, in the history of Sir Lanka, how would they mention the butchery they committed on the independent nation of the Tamils in North Ceylon?

If I write this on Wikipedia, to an English native speaker, it is either an original research finding or some crack idea. As to an Indian administrator on Wikipedia, he would very well view it with a very competitive mood. He would want to delete it fast. Well, that is a fact of life, in India.

I need to mention an occasion when I was visiting the UAE in the year around 1999. I happened to meet a journalist. He was an MA in English, who had studied in Trivandrum. However, he had not much idea about English classics. About the various English Classical authors, he had only a vague idea, not much more than their names. However he could write correctly in a perfunctory manner, more or less adept in that due to so many years of writing experience.

I saw him writing reviews about books. He simply told me that he did not go through the books, but simply made the cursory glance through the front and back cover and little reading here and there. I hinted that he might miss the real gist of the book with this type of reviewing. He simply answered that all books are only that much deep and a cursory glance was enough to give a deep idea about what was inside. Then I told me that there might be some books which are quite original and different. He then dryly told me that there was nothing original to be written anymore. Everything had more or less had been written. This was a very disconcerting statement. For, I had been toying with the idea of giving him a copy of my book (the typescript): MARCH of the EVIL EMPIRES; ENGLSH versus the FEUDAL LANGUAGES which I had written first in 1989. However his rather total sarcastic comment made me defer from doing that.

Part of the hesitation that sprung up was also due to a very truculent mood of competition that he had displayed when he had read my profile details, in which my profound reading experience in English Classics was mentioned. Well, this was the competitive mood that I had sensed in the Indian Administrators on Wikipedia. However, there was also a mood among the non-Indian Administrators about the mediocrity of ‘Indian’ writings. However, this was a mood that was easily curable once they read my writings. This is very much sensed in the mood of the first admonishing that the lady Administrator on Ezhava Talk Page had displayed. This did change subsequently. However, to see that one has to go through the complete conversation.

Read the complete text in the UsserPage of VED from VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS in Wikipedia

The very idea that original researchers are cracks is an old one, borne mainly by mediocre people. However, how this idea came to infect Wikipedia should confound me. There would be a need to control people who use the Wikipedia to promote themselves. However, when it is knowledge that is being given, it has to be seen in a different manner.

Off course, in feudal language nations, people who give information and teachings to the others are viewed as social threats. For, they are aspiring for social leadership. Or the nearest fear is that they would snatch the social leadership from traditional leaders. It is this fear that made the Indian social and traditional leaders disallow the teaching of English by the East India Company as advised by Lord Macaulay. It is easily seen that Macaulay is aspiring for the leadership of the native masses. Or at least, that is the fear of the local leaders.

The same thing happened when BBC started an Indian Broadcast for the people of British India. No leader, including the ubiquitous chatterbox MK Gandhi or his fellow charlatan Nehru mentioned about this to the people. What was their fear? Their fear was that the people would listen to the BBC and their intellectual leadership would move on to people like George Orwell etc. who were trying their best to improve the lot of the natives of ‘India’. I think such persons as Mulk Raj Anand, the Indian English writer, was also involved in this endeavour.

Now when speaking about lending knowledge, it has to be seen as a very altruistic stance and not as a stance of self-aggrandisement. For, as I have mentioned elsewhere, in India, no one really likes to impart information and knowledge to others. So, when a person comes out with information that others do not know, he or she should not be treated as a nut. And that too this defining and categorisation, should not be done by mediocre nuts. However, they would naturally feel compromised.

I remember speaking to a homeopathy doctor. He once confided in me that he had found out a very effective method of effecting homeopathic cure. He told me the technique. He informed that he had stumbled upon this technique by some chance. I then told him that it would be good to inform this to the other homeopaths or at least post it on the Internet so that so many other human beings would benefit from it. He simply told me that it would be quite idiotic to do so. For, like the Adobe PageMaker teacher, he also mentioned that it would only be giving munitions to the enemies. Meaning that other homeopaths would use the technique and they would garner the accolades.

In feudal language nations, this is not an unwise logic. For, it is there in the language codes. Moreover, it is a logic practised traditionally over the centuries. It is seen that every man who did know a skill or information would not impart it to anyone other than someone who has become closely identified as a verified disciple. So that all medical knowledge that this social system had literally moved through closed corridors.

The sly cunning in education [Read my book: Compulsory Education: A travesty!]

The mass way of imparting information like that of Medicine, Engineering etc. came through the English mindset and never emerged on its own in nations like ‘India’. However, the question would then arise as to how there are so many colleges and schools in India, where the teachers are imparting their knowledge to the students. The answer is that they teach information that are too general and of no practical use to the students. All information that has practical use and which the student can use to compete with the teacher/s, are never imparted that easily. That imparting comes with a price, and not necessarily through the academic route.

A one-way dissemination of information

Now when speaking about what the homeopathy doctor said, I get reminded of what is there on the Internet. Almost all information that the English world has is on display for free browsing and use. Moreover, the immense amounts of books that have become Public Domain have all been allowed for free use internationally. Compare this with the fact that if any outsider comes to India and collects a plant or a leaf from a forest, all the news media would make a clamour saying the India’s genetic resources are being robbed! Natural resources, trees and plants are not the product of any ‘Indian’ genius, but what providence has provided. Posting claims on assets of providence could be dangerous. For, nemesis has some association with providence!

Rights to public domain

Well, in this context I think it would be quite intelligent for the English nations to charge a small fee for the use of their national Public Domain items by outsiders. And each person who uses English in any form has to necessarily pay a token amount as royalty fee to England. If England doesn’t feel that it has no right to do so, I fear that the feel of England as the Homeland of English has diminished to the extent that it has been redefined by fools as a homeland of ‘Multiculture’.

As to India, claiming any royalty for anything that is in the Public Domain, well the nation has to become a little more decades older to do so. It is still too young to claim any right over anything. Such things as Sanskrit literature and such things are not connectable with the modern nation of India. Just because a few people of India have can read and write Sanskrit, it doesn’t mean that they or the whole nation has a claim on things that were there in the public domain since five thousand years. Such a claim would simply be like saying that people who studied Physics in India have a royalty rights over the works of Sir Isaac Newton. Moreover even the geographical area connected to Vedic texts does not exactly come inside modern day India.

A digression to Newton

Now, when mentioning about Sir Isaac Newton, there is this thing to be mentioned. He was more of an occultist than a scientist. Most of his research was on the theme of occultism. However, when he proposed the theory of gravitation, he was ridiculed by many. Some simply sneered that he was bringing in the oculist theme of an unseen rope pulling material objects. Newton was so much distress that he was frightened of publishing his mathematical discoveries concerning Differential Calculus. For, they would be seen as more far-fetched and implausible. {Later French Mathematical genius Leibniz published similar findings}.

Now imagine Sir Newton trying to publish his ideas by bringing this theme in a concerned Wikipedia Talk Page. He would have been sneered and jeered, especially if the kind of administrators and other collaborators that accosted me on Wikipedia were to see his writings. They would have viewed with quite obvious unbearable envy the possibility that his writings were driving viewers to his own writings page.

DIGRESSION: England is great not because of people like Newton, but because of a great common man there. British Empire was not founded by great academicians and scientists of Britain, but literally by persons with very little formal education. For example, Robert Clive was a school dropout. Yet, I know for sure that his level of intellectual calibre and social understanding, not many academicians would have.

{See this: The fact is that the link given in on my TalkPage leading nowhere and I had not thought much about correcting it. However, the quite obvious concern that I might be giving some information to the interested viewers is consternating the Administrator or some other Indian constable on the prowl on Wikipedia. It may be noted that the posts on the Ezhava page about which one complainant had made this comment: ‘He seems to have got into quite a conflict regarding his postings at Talk:Ezhava as well’ is one of the most visited writings on my Writings page. Yet, the funny thing is that all of these things have been removed from the Wikipedia Talk Page}.