[world-vedic] Caste and Science: Hot Air and Cold Fusion

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Aum Namasivaya

 

Fantastic! Thanks for the article.

 

Aum

Tara

 

 

--- N.S., UNEXPECTED_DATA_AFTER_ADDRESS@.SYNTAX-ERROR. wrote:

> Caste and Science: Hot Air and Cold Fusion

> N.S. Rajaram

>

> In an article titled "Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste

> Populations", eighteen authors, mainly from Utah in the US and

> Vishakapatnam in India, led by Michael Bamshad of the Department of

> Pediatrics from the University of Utah make the claim that there were

> several waves of immigration into India, the last of which (from

> Europe) was responsible for the caste system. In their words:

>

> "In the most recent of these waves (of immigration), Indo-European-

> speaking people from West Eurasia entered India from the Northwest

> and diffused throughout the subcontinent. They purportedly admixed

> with or displaced Dravidic-speaking populations. Subsequently, they

> may have established the Hindu caste system and placed themselves in

> castes of higher rank."

> In his press statements, Bamshad has gone much further claiming: "We

> are able to demonstrate unequivocally that the upper castes are more

> similar to Europeans than lower castes..." This finding, they claim,

> is based on genetics.

>

> To a scientifically informed person knowledgeable about the field, it

> is apparent even at first glance that it is the Aryan invasion theory

> all over again along with its associated Aryan-Dravidian conflicts.

> This is now presented as the product of 'genetics research',

> protected from scrutiny by opaque jargon-filled language. Genetics of

> course cannot tell if some people living thousands of years ago were

> Aryan speaking or 'Dravidic-speakers'. What Bamshad & Co are

> presenting is simply their presumption that they are trying to pass

> off as 'scientific findings' using some samples-all from near

> Vishakapatnam-and some numerical measures that they claim indicates

> the nearness of Indian population groups to the people of Europe.

> Their specific claim is that the upper caste Hindus are genetically

> closer to Europeans whereas the lower and middle castes are Asiatics.

>

> All this of course is part of the Marxist claim- that 'class'

> became 'caste' in India, imposed by the Aryan invaders. And now all

> this is 'proved' by the magic of science! So at one stroke, this Utah

> pediatrician and his Dravidian colleagues, aided by samples from

> Vishakapatnam, have shown that both the Colonial-imposed Aryan

> invasion-part of the "White Man's Burden" but now adopted by Indian

> Marxists-and the Class-to-Caste transition propounded by Indian

> Marxists (and Dravidian politicians) are supported by genetics!

>

> But the sheen was off the claim almost immediately after it was made.

> The same week, Bryan Sykes, a professor of genetics at Oxford

> University, made exactly the opposite claim: The British White

> population carries African and Asian genes. (The same must hold for

> other European populations.) But unlike the Utah researchers, he made

> no claims about their relationship to upper and lower class

> Britishers and their ancestry. So what does all this mean? It means

> that over tens of thousands of years, human populations have moved

> over large areas, and it is impossible to reduce it to simplistic

> models favoured by invasionists (successors to the "White Man's

> Burden") and Marxists. Further, it is misleading to use terms

> like "European" and "West Eurasian" to people so long ago, when they

> may not yet have moved into Europe or Eurasia from their original

> home in Africa-or even possibly India as Indian records indicate. (So

> Europeans could be carrying Indian traces rather than vice versa.)

>

> There is also a fundamental scientific fallacy in the Utah study.

> Caste and language-like religion-is a man-made classification, not a

> law of nature. It is absurd to assign laws of nature to them,

> although Marxists believe that their classification is also a

> scientific law of history. Actually, Sir Julian Huxley warned against

> it long ago: "In 1848 the young German scholar Friedrich Max Muller

> (1823-1900) settled in Oxford. ...About 1853, he introduced into

> English usage the unlucky term Aryan as applied to a large group of

> languages. ...Moreover, Max Muller threw another apple of discord. He

> introduced a proposition that is demonstrably false. He spoke not

> only of a definite Aryan language and its descendants, but also of a

> corresponding 'Aryan race'. The idea was rapidly taken up both in

> Germany and in England."

>

> Now, thanks to Bamshad & Co, this discredited notion as well as the

> Marxist Class-to-Caste Law has become scientific! If their theory

> (based on a sample from Vishakapatnam) has any validity at all, then

> Brahmins and Kshatriyas all over India must have some common physical

> features indicating their European ancestry. But they do not. For

> example, Brahmins and Kshatriyas in Kerala look like Keralites, those

> from Assam look like Assamese and those from Kashmir look like

> Kashmiris. This diversity goes to show that the Indian population is

> ancient, having lived in the same region long enough to have adopted

> to the environment by natural selection. What they have in common are

> certain cultural traits modified by regional factors like language,

> dress and food. These are acquired characteristics that have nothing

> to do with genetics.

> These Utah researchers should perhaps next apply their methodology to

> Christians. They can then discover Catholic genes and Protestant

> genes. And among Protestants they may further find Anglican genes,

> Lutheran genes, Methodist genes, Baptist genes-all the way down to

> Mormon genes in the Mormon capital of Salt Lake City, Utah. Their

> methodology is the kind of numerology that can be used to prove

> anything anywhere. In plain English, their science is just so much

> hot air.

>

> Academic prestige: image and reality

>

> At the heart of this approach is a belief that academic prestige can

> overcome unsound scholarship. The goal of some of these academics,

> especially in the West, is not so much to make or present true

> scientific discoveries, but use the prestige that goes with their

> position to bluff and bulldoze Indians, in the hope no one will dare

> question them. This was also the thinking behind a recent propaganda

> campaign launched by a couple of 'Indologists' that tried to bluff

> their way with assertions like "no horse at Harappa, and any evidence

> to the contrary must be faked". To some extent, their faith in the

> servility of the Indian intelligentsia is justified: Indian

> journalists in particular rarely question any statement by a Western

> scholar. They believe that anything coming from the West must be

> true, and it is not for any Indian to question it.

>

> As a former US academic I have the unhappy duty to shatter this

> illusion: the University of Utah and many others in the US are by no

> means distinguished for research excellence. Some may recall that

> more than ten years ago a couple of electro-chemists from the

> University of Utah (Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman) claimed that

> they had created 'Cold Fusion' in a bottle. This amounted to the

> claim that they could create and control an unlimited energy source

> like a hydrogen bomb in a bottle, which would eventually solve the

> world's energy problems. It has not turned out that way. California

> is having daily blackouts. The work reported by Michael Bamshad and

> his colleagues-also from the University of Utah of Cold Fusion fame-

> falls in the same category.

>

> The message of all this is that any claim should be subjected to

> critical scrutiny and not accepted simply because it happens to come

> from a person and/or institution that enjoys prestige. To take an

> example from the other extreme, the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujam

> was working as a clerk in the Madras Port Trust when he made some of

> the greatest discoveries in modern mathematics. And Albert Einstein

> was himself a "clerk, third class" at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern

> when he discovered the Special Theory of Relativity. Yielding to

> prestige is the response of an illiterate.

> Institutional problems

> What is happening in academia for such extravagant claims that fail

> to stand scientific scrutiny to be becoming increasingly more

> frequent? One might almost say, the less substantial the research,

> the more extravagant the claim made for it. It is a complex issue,

> but may be summarized as deriving from polarization of academic life

> in the US. There is a severe shortage of technically qualified

> people. As a result, US is forced to import scientists and engineers

> in large numbers. Soon, teachers will be in short supply. This shows

> that American universities, especially research universities, are

> just not graduating enough scientists and engineers-or even science

> teachers. The feeling is widespread in America-among the public as

> well as in official circles-that universities are neglecting the

> educational needs of the country in the name of research. This has

> reduced the flow of money into universities, forcing them

> increasingly to seek funding from outside for their research: all

> they have to sell is their 'research', not their usefulness to

> society or meeting its educational needs. The demand for such funds

> is always greater than the supply. As a result, these researchers

> have also to be salesmen. This has resulted in an explosion of

> journals and other publications, recently supplemented by electronic

> journals (websites). To be heard in this cacophony of claims and

> demands, one is forced to make more and more extravagant claims.

> Quality becomes secondary and quantity becomes all-important. This is

> called "publish or perish", it is not entirely new, but now it has

> assumed unmanageable proportions. In such an environment, survival

> takes precedence over concern for quality or even truth. So almost

> anything is published as long as it adds to the researcher's bio-

> data. This is what is behind publications like the one authored by

> Bamshad & Co.

>

>

> In the final analysis, what we are witnessing is a struggle for

> survival by a disenfranchised academic priesthood that will resort to

> any means to ensure its survival. And this includes hot air and Cold

> Fusion.

>

>

>

>

 

 

 

 

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