[Y-Indology] INDIA'S TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS: IN SEARCH OF NEEDHAM.

[Guest guest]

Dear Dr. Malhotra,

I admire your passion for unraveling India's past and

the eloquence in your expression. You have a noble

task ahead.

 

In the total knowledge systems, the empirical sciences

take a prominent role. Science by its foundation needs

documentation and cataloging. Most of the Indian

contributions has been painted as intuitive and

speculative. This has played well into the hands of

the religious fanatics to claim "God spoke thru such

and such". So is the fallacy in present thinking.

That has hurt the cause.

 

First, we have to acknowledge that the civilization

did need and carried out large writing and created

catalogs of natural phenomena over long periods.

We have to then hypothesize that people developed

tools to handle the observations and mark the exceptions.

While we have some tools that are still used, we

have no understanding of their development.

We think sloppily about the possible schools.

 

What it means is that huge areas of India would need

excavation and archaeological studies have to be

conducted. We have to acknowledge that only small

fraction of the manuscripts have been unearthed and

whole collections are yet to be discovered being

in private collections or buried under earth.

The theory that the weather ate the manuscripts and

so to stop searching is erroneous. People who

dscovered technology could also discover ways to

preserve!

 

I congratulate you for thinking about the wholeness

of knowledge and not getting into the superiority

complex. India discovered things simply with need

and developed civilization as a function of time.

The guild workers must have been very creative.

I come from Orissa and have always been amazed at

ordinary people's creativity in daily lives.

You have to participate in a village festival to

observe the effect of total knowledge systems

being practiced on an ongoing basis. The question

still remains why they have hard time finding

decent living. That is another discussion.

 

Best regards,

 

Bijoy Misra

 

 

On Thu, 17 May 2001, Rajiv Malhotra wrote:

 

> What Needham did for China is badly lacking for India. Besides linguistics,

> archeology, and genetics, Indology must also include Traditional Knowledge

> Systems as a field of study. This would develop a deeper picture of a

> civilization, its relationship to other civilizations at that time, its

> critical economic strengths and weakness. There are many Indic technologies

> and sciences that predated colonialism, and that comprised large scale

> economic activity for the workers of India. Many TKS' were the foundation of

> India's very massive export economy that thrived for centuries:

>

>

> 1. METAL TECHNOLOGIES: This consisted of not only metallurgy but also

> tools, many of which were pioneered in India. D.P. Agarwal (who was at the

> Harvard Roundtable on Indology) is a leading researcher in this field, and

> has documented many examples of tools that were first developed in India. He

> has been writing books on this topic. India was a major exporter of steel

> since Roman times and perhaps earlier. The British sent teams to India to

> analyze the metallurgical processes that were later appropriated by Britain.

> (British archives on this were found and republished by Dharampala.) Making

> India's metal works illegal was motivated partly by the goal to

> industrialize Britain, but also because of the risk of gun manufacturing by

> potential nationalists. India's steel industry was relocated to Britain.

> Some Indians continued to operate production facilities, but are still

> unlawful.

> 2. CIVIL ENGINEERING: From Harappan towns to Qutub Minar and other

> large projects, indigenous technologies were very sophisticated in design,

> planning, water supply, traffic flow, natural air conditioning, etc. Complex

> stone work was another industry related to this. Bricks were invented as far

> back as 5,000 BC. (Next time you see Indians in poor mud huts, think twice

> before saying that their upgrading into brick homes would be a sign of

> 'westernizing'.)

> 3. TEXTILES: India's textile exports were legendary. Roman archives

> contain official complaints about massive cash drainage because of imports

> of fine Indian textiles. One of the earliest industries relocated from India

> to Britain was textile, and it became the first major success of the

> Industrial Revolution, with Britain replacing India as the world's leading

> textile exporter. Many of the machines used by Britain were Indian designs

> and had been constantly improved over long periods. Meanwhile, India's

> textile manufacturer's were de-licensed, even tortured in some cases,

> over-taxed, regulated, etc. to 'civilize' them into virtual extinction.

> 4. SHIPPING AND SHIP BUILDING: Vasco da Gama's ships were captained by

> a Gujarati sailor (ref: Gyan Prakash of Princeton University History

> Department), and much of the 'discovery' of navigation was in fact an

> appropriation of pre-existing navigation in the Indian Ocean, that had

> already been a thriving trade system for centuries before Europeans

> 'discovered' it. Some of the world's largest and most sophisticated ships

> were also built in India. The compass and other navigation tools were

> already in use at the time.

> 5. WATER HARVESTING SYSTEMS: There were 1.3 million man-made water

> lakes and ponds across India, some as large as 250 square miles. These are

> now being rediscovered. Most of the rain water was harvested and used for

> irrigation, drinking, etc. till the following year's rainfall. Village

> organizations managed these resources, but got dismantled during the

> colonial period, as tax collection, cash expropriation, and legal controls

> became the primary function of local governance appointed by the British.

> Recently, thousands of these 'talabs' have been restored, and this has

> resulted in a re-emergence of abundant water in many places. (A very

> different approach compared to the massive modern dams built in the name of

> progress that have devastated the lives of millions.)

> 6. FOREST MANAGEMENT: Described under the term 'sacred groves', many

> interesting findings have recently come out about the way forests and trees

> were managed by each village and a careful method applied to harvest

> medicines, firewood, and building material in accordance with natural

> renewal rates. There is now a database being built of sacred groves across

> India. Again, it's a story of an economic asset falling into disuse and

> abuse. Massive logging by the British to export India's timber to fund the

> two world wars and other civilizing programs of the empire are never

> mentioned when scholars try to explain India's current ecological disasters.

> The local populations were quite sophisticated in ecology until they were

> dis-empowered.

> 7. FARMING TECHNIQUES: India's agricultural production was large, and

> surpluses were stored and/or exported . But the British exported massive

> amounts of harvests even during severe droughts, to expedite the cash flow

> required to feed their own industrialization. This caused tens of millions

> to die of starvation while at the same time India's food production was

> exported at unprecedented rates to generate cash. Also, traditional

> non-chemical based pesticides have been recently revived in India with

> excellent results, replacing Union Carbide's products in certain markets.

> 8. TRADITIONAL MEDICINE: This is now a well-known field and much

> re-legitimizing has already been done thanks to many US labs and scientists.

> Many multinationals no longer denigrate this field and have in fact entered

> it.

> 9. There were numerous other industries as well. Many of India's

> manufactured goods were highly prized around the world. We must evaluate

> these TKS' based on their economic power for their time, during which they

> were as important as today's high tech would be in the modern context.

>

> Recently, it was Madhu Kishwar who crystallized these issues in my mind. I

> learnt how India's government today continues to make many TKS' illegal or

> impossible to practice. After independence, British laws have continued, and

> top-down Soviet style economic planning got added, turning it from a British

> Raj to a British-Soviet modeled economy run by Indian Macaulayites. On the

> other hand, Israelis have been very successful in rediscovering many lost

> technologies relevant to their environment and culture by looking in their

> ancient texts. They now pioneer in many processes of economic value that

> conventional European technology lacks.

>

> Traditionally, British Indologists did not study TKS except to quietly

> document them as competing systems and to facilitate their transfer to

> Britain. The civilizing mission of colonialists required publicly denying

> any value in TKS. What was found valuable was appropriated and its Indian

> manufacturers put out of business. Meanwhile, a new history of India was

> fabricated to make future generations of the colonialized people believe in

> their own inherent inferiority, and in the colonizers' bringing to them

> solutions to their backwardness. (Sounds familiar?) Post-independence,

> Marxist theory required a society to 'fit in' as either being capitalist or

> as being feudalist. Hence, India's intellectual elite worked hard to

> convince the west that India did qualify as feudalistic, so as to avoid

> missing out on the anticipated revolution. Later, Subalternists tried to

> return back to the indigenous, but they knew only Marxist hermeneutics and

> its inherent disdain for the 'primitive'; hence, they lumped all the TKS as

> 'religion' and threw the baby out with the bathwater. These developments in

> historiography were cumulative, adding more layers but without removing

> prior ones. Today, despite these prejudices being discredited, the

> Macaulayite mentality persists: they cannot face the possibility that after

> aping the west, the indigenous systems they discarded had/have value.

>

> Today, there are Indian economists and social developers who are hard at

> work to revitalize many TKS'. Less than 10% of India's labor works in the

> 'organized sector', meaning corporate and governmental employees. The rest

> are individual free-lancers, contract labor, private entrepreneurs, etc. It

> is these 90% whose jatis were at one time the guilds of specialized workers

> that supplied the world with many industrial items, and created a thriving

> domestic economy that attracted many an invader. (The invaders did not come

> to save souls or to civilize.) Most Indians were neither backward nor poor.

> So next time you see a poor iron works villager, a poor weaver, or a humble

> construction worker, think twice before calling his tradition backward or

> primitive. It was massive economic drainage, oppression, social

> re-engineering, that made millions of 'new poor' over the past few

> centuries.

>

> Now some evangelists and sociologists who built their own 'miracles of

> modernity', standing on the foundations of this oppression and plunder, have

> returned to 'save' the poor of India from what they claim to be the essences

> of India's backwardness. What irony! It reminds me of the way white thinkers

> once tried to explain slavery as being the result of the slaves being black.

> To add insult to injury, many western 'liberals' proclaim that they are

> compassionate and progressive, and wish to rescue Indians from themselves.

> They badly need to learn an honest account of history, such as is beginning

> to come out from western academic presses over the past few years.

>

> Rajiv Malhotra

> The Infinity Foundation

> 53 White Oak Drive

> Princeton, NJ 08540

> www.infinityfoundation.com

>

>

>

> indology

>

>

>

> Your use of is subject to

>

>

[Guest guest]

Dear Rajiv,

I really liked your argument, I had not seen it

earlier. Actually my D.Phil is addressing the question

of competing epistemologies, and how the non-west has

had a rich and diverse system of traditional

environmental knowledge and medical systems which was

spatially expressed in the form of sacred groves and

other sacred landscapes. I am primarily dealing with a

tribal community which is practising a combination of

animism and buddhism: Sikkim, India. I would be

interested in knowing some of the sources which you

have used. As one of my central arguments is that, in

its initial inception anthropology and colonialsim

went together, and that although today there is

increasing sensitivity to TEK, a lot of the western

biases which have their roots in Modernity and

veneration of science continue to exist in

anthropological discourse and writings, hence a need

to reevaluate our anthropological approaches.

looking forward to a response regarding references to

literature.

with warm wishes

vibha

 

__________

 

Get your free @.co.uk address at http://mail..co.uk

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[Guest guest]

Dear Bijoy,

I will like to ask you a simple question is everyone

happy or earning a decent living today, whether in the

 

non-west or in the USA. The question of knowledge

systems is vital and above all about the power to

define the truth discourses and what can be considered

as knowledge in the first place. Historians of western

science have long argued and questioned the so-called

empirical objectivity of scientific constructions. The

role of intuition and emotions are validated in the

construction and constitution of of science. Just read

some of the biographies of some of the famous

scientists. I suggest you read some literature such as

Kuhn's - the structure of the scientific

revolution,and Against method by Lyotard to begin

with....The recognition of TEK in world environment

policies, in UN charters clearly testifies to their

validity and importance.

Kindly read some of the relevant literature, before

denigrating your own culture. Ayurveda is a recognised

medical science! Hence, so much money is being

invested into translation of knowledge enshrined in

ancient texts and their present experimentation in

pharmaceutical companies.

I find some of your arguments pretty ludicrous, or I

will rather put it this way...today we have so much

genetics happening, we have gone into cloning etc,

then how come we have not solved the problem of AIDS,

or of world poverty! Inspite of so much science can we

predict and anticipate earthquakes. Everyday I listen

to a scientifically based weather report, but does the

weather actually behave in that predicted way. Due to

numerous reasons so much of the manuscripts could not

have been preserved, for instances lot of sanskrit

literature was preserved in Tibet due to favourable

weather conditions, and not just because of a will to

do so.

Lot of the indigenous knowledge was handed down as

part of oral traditions, and restricted to few

categories, women were normally excluded from it.

However, i would like to remind the gentlemen that so

much of indigenous knowledge exists in our homes, with

our mothers in home-based remedies, remember the TV

clip on `dadi ma ke nuskhe' which used to come on

Indian TV. would you say that just because it was not

inscribed ot quantified it ceases to be knowledge!

What about time-tested practical wisdom of the tribal

forager of the forest, it is as rich as a

scientifically trained forester, perhaps even more

detailed, there are anthropological work on this, and

ecologists such as P.S. Ramakrishnan (JNU) have argued

that lot of sacred trees in India are ecologically

valuable species. Such knowledge systems are lived

realities and stand on their own, they donot need

scienctific standards of construction or validation to

exist, they exist because they work on the ground.

However, By arguing all this I donot wish to say that

all is good in TEK, or that we should romanticise

there, but that there is valid knowledge is now being

increasingly recognised in many directions and levels.

We donot necessarily need archaelogical excavation to

establish that there exists indigenous knowledge.

all the best

vibha

 

 

 

__________

 

Get your free @.co.uk address at http://mail..co.uk

or your free @.ie address at http://mail..ie

[Guest guest]

Dear Bijoy,

I will like to ask you a simple question is everyone

happy or earning a decent living today, whether in the

 

non-west or in the USA. The question of knowledge

systems is vital and above all about the power to

define the truth discourses and what can be considered

as knowledge in the first place. Historians of western

science have long argued and questioned the so-called

empirical objectivity of scientific constructions. The

role of intuition and emotions are validated in the

construction and constitution of of science. Just read

some of the biographies of some of the famous

scientists. I suggest you read some literature such as

Kuhn's - the structure of the scientific

revolution,and Against method by Lyotard to begin

with....The recognition of TEK in world environment

policies, in UN charters clearly testifies to their

validity and importance.

Kindly read some of the relevant literature, before

denigrating your own culture. Ayurveda is a recognised

medical science! Hence, so much money is being

invested into translation of knowledge enshrined in

ancient texts and their present experimentation in

pharmaceutical companies.

I find some of your arguments pretty ludicrous, or I

will rather put it this way...today we have so much

genetics happening, we have gone into cloning etc,

then how come we have not solved the problem of AIDS,

or of world poverty! Inspite of so much science can we

predict and anticipate earthquakes. Everyday I listen

to a scientifically based weather report, but does the

weather actually behave in that predicted way. Due to

numerous reasons so much of the manuscripts could not

have been preserved, for instances lot of sanskrit

literature was preserved in Tibet due to favourable

weather conditions, and not just because of a will to

do so.

Lot of the indigenous knowledge was handed down as

part of oral traditions, and restricted to few

categories, women were normally excluded from it.

However, i would like to remind the gentlemen that so

much of indigenous knowledge exists in our homes, with

our mothers in home-based remedies, remember the TV

clip on `dadi ma ke nuskhe' which used to come on

Indian TV. would you say that just because it was not

inscribed ot quantified it ceases to be knowledge!

What about time-tested practical wisdom of the tribal

forager of the forest, it is as rich as a

scientifically trained forester, perhaps even more

detailed, there are anthropological work on this, and

ecologists such as P.S. Ramakrishnan (JNU) have argued

that lot of sacred trees in India are ecologically

valuable species. Such knowledge systems are lived

realities and stand on their own, they donot need

scienctific standards of construction or validation to

exist, they exist because they work on the ground.

However, By arguing all this I donot wish to say that

all is good in TEK, or that we should romanticise

there, but that there is valid knowledge is now being

increasingly recognised in many directions and levels.

We donot necessarily need archaelogical excavation to

establish that there exists indigenous knowledge.

all the best

vibha

 

 

 

__________

 

Get your free @.co.uk address at http://mail..co.uk

or your free @.ie address at http://mail..ie

[Guest guest]

Dear Vibha Arora,

 

Are you responding to my mail?

Pl read it again. I didn't say

what you seem to understand.

 

I am a hard core scientist and teacher.

What I said is based on long years

of reflection and observations.

 

Somewhere you went tangent.

Why is all asking others to read than

read what's in front well?

 

Bijoy Misra

 

 

On Thu, 17 May 2001, [iso-8859-1] vibha arora wrote:

 

> Dear Bijoy,

> I will like to ask you a simple question is everyone

> happy or earning a decent living today, whether in the

>

> non-west or in the USA. The question of knowledge

> systems is vital and above all about the power to

> define the truth discourses and what can be considered

> as knowledge in the first place. Historians of western

> science have long argued and questioned the so-called

> empirical objectivity of scientific constructions. The

> role of intuition and emotions are validated in the

> construction and constitution of of science. Just read

> some of the biographies of some of the famous

> scientists. I suggest you read some literature such as

> Kuhn's - the structure of the scientific

> revolution,and Against method by Lyotard to begin

> with....The recognition of TEK in world environment

> policies, in UN charters clearly testifies to their

> validity and importance.

> Kindly read some of the relevant literature, before

> denigrating your own culture. Ayurveda is a recognised

> medical science! Hence, so much money is being

> invested into translation of knowledge enshrined in

> ancient texts and their present experimentation in

> pharmaceutical companies.

> I find some of your arguments pretty ludicrous, or I

> will rather put it this way...today we have so much

> genetics happening, we have gone into cloning etc,

> then how come we have not solved the problem of AIDS,

> or of world poverty! Inspite of so much science can we

> predict and anticipate earthquakes. Everyday I listen

> to a scientifically based weather report, but does the

> weather actually behave in that predicted way. Due to

> numerous reasons so much of the manuscripts could not

> have been preserved, for instances lot of sanskrit

> literature was preserved in Tibet due to favourable

> weather conditions, and not just because of a will to

> do so.

> Lot of the indigenous knowledge was handed down as

> part of oral traditions, and restricted to few

> categories, women were normally excluded from it.

> However, i would like to remind the gentlemen that so

> much of indigenous knowledge exists in our homes, with

> our mothers in home-based remedies, remember the TV

> clip on `dadi ma ke nuskhe' which used to come on

> Indian TV. would you say that just because it was not

> inscribed ot quantified it ceases to be knowledge!

> What about time-tested practical wisdom of the tribal

> forager of the forest, it is as rich as a

> scientifically trained forester, perhaps even more

> detailed, there are anthropological work on this, and

> ecologists such as P.S. Ramakrishnan (JNU) have argued

> that lot of sacred trees in India are ecologically

> valuable species. Such knowledge systems are lived

> realities and stand on their own, they donot need

> scienctific standards of construction or validation to

> exist, they exist because they work on the ground.

> However, By arguing all this I donot wish to say that

> all is good in TEK, or that we should romanticise

> there, but that there is valid knowledge is now being

> increasingly recognised in many directions and levels.

> We donot necessarily need archaelogical excavation to

> establish that there exists indigenous knowledge.

> all the best

> vibha

>

>

>

> __________

>

> Get your free @.co.uk address at http://mail..co.uk

> or your free @.ie address at http://mail..ie

>

>

> indology

>

>

>

> Your use of is subject to

>

>

[Guest guest]

>vibha arora <sacredlandscapes> wrote:

>However, By arguing all this I donot wish to say that all is good in

>TEK, or that we should romanticise there, but that there is valid

>knowledge is now being increasingly recognised in many directions

>and levels. We donot necessarily need archaelogical excavation to

>establish that there exists indigenous knowledge.

 

TKS is a misnomer. If India had resisted invasion and colonization,

its TKS would have grown into present science. In 1300 years of abuse

it got stifled and is now fit to be called a TKS.

 

There area also unique approaches in ancient Indian inquiry. These

are knowledge acquisition systems that can never be copied or

appropriated by anyone except faithful followers, such as zrauta. I

know I am going to hear big ROFLs and LOLs, but those who laugh

should be prepared to bite their tongues :-)

 

Regards

Bhadraiah

[Guest guest]

Lars Martin Fosse [lmfosse]

Friday, May 18, 2001 4:05 AM

 

 

 

Could you enlighten a poor Norwegian here? What are ROFLs and LOLs?

 

 

By the way, I met another poor Norwegian named Knut Axel Jacobsen (U of

Bergen) at the Montreal Conference. He seems to be doing a good job putting

together a CD-ROM on India for schools.

 

RM