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I have no idea exactly how much this particular curriculum change is influenced by religion. But your assertion that science is depoliticized in India is very w

• alephnerd 3y ago
  Slightly pedantic, but Satya Pal Singh wasn't Minister of Education. That said, the rest is true.
  • dmix 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Pal_Singh_(Uttar_Pradesh_politician) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Pal_Singh_(Uttar_Pradesh... Strange how a former police officer gets a gov job with influence over higher education. He called himself a “man of science” but his entire career was police work with a bit of politics at the tail end. He was “minister of state” [1] for the Ministry of Human Resource Development which apparently was renamed the Ministry of Education after he left. [1] Google tells me that’s an assistant/junior role to the actual Minister.
    • alephnerd 3y ago
      Minister of State is a generic executive position that is created to reward medium level politicians. Satyapal Singh specifically helped the BJP win over the Jat community in Western Uttar Pradesh which before 2014 voted for the RLD (a Jat primary party in western UP, Rajasthan, and Haryana). By rewarding him, with a low level backbench minister position, he can provide patronage to the rest of his patronage network. He also tried to save Amit Shah+Modi's political skin during the Ishrat Jahan encounter killing case while he was part of the IPS. Indian politics is heavily based on micro-level community based calculations because of how close elections are in India (most elections are decided within 5,000 votes ie. one town). Due to this, caste, family, and regional patronage networks form, and this is common across all parties (INC, BJP, etc). For example, Modi rose to power in Gujarat by helping organize a Dalits+Tribal+Urban coalition in the 1980s and 90s at the expense of a combined Muslim+Patel voting bloc. This same template Modi used is what the BJP has been using since 2014 (intersectionality of identity based on Hinduism ie. Hinduvta). And the same thing happened in Satyapal Singh's area during the Muzaffarnagar/Shamli riots when the Dalit Hindu + Dalit Muslim voter bloc split due to communal violence, leading to Hindu Dalits leaving the BSP for the BJP, Hindu Jatts leaving the RLD for BJP, and Dalit Muslims leaving the BSP to support the Samajwadi Party because there was no other viable party left in Western Uttar Pradesh. I am not a fan of the BJP, but you got to hand it to them - they are probably the only national party in India with a strong understanding of subaltern power struggles and micro-level demographic data. Anyone in the INC who knew this stuff defected to the BJP by 2019 anyhow, but might defect back to the INC assuming the right PM candidate is selected (Gehlot would be a strong competitor against Modi, RG would have a hard time)
      • 1024core 3y ago
        I, on the other hand, can't stand when people cherry-pick facts to try and make a point. The INC is doing the same caste/tribe based division of power that you accuse the BJP of. Have you seen the list of ministers in the latest Karnataka cabinet: https://thefederal.com/states/south/karnataka/karnataka-cabinet-congs-caste-region-wise-balancing-act-24-take-oath-as-ministers/ https://thefederal.com/states/south/karnataka/karnataka-cabi... ?
        • alephnerd 3y ago
          From my post > Due to this, caste, family, and regional patronage networks form, and this is common across all parties (INC, BJP, etc)
    • wrycoder 3y ago
      He seems to be an upstanding and popular fellow, but sadly lacking in scientific education. Seems strange for India.
• deleted 3y ago
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• rhaway84773 3y ago
  > The story goes that Hindus had nuclear energy 10,000 years ago, but filthy foreigners corrupted Mother India. I’ve never understood this kind of messaging. You see it in all sorts of supremacists. But how is it a credit to you and your ancestors that they had the ability to create nuclear power or fly, etc and then they just lost it! That’s a sign of deep shame. The particular group of people you’re claiming are superior are so incompetent they weren’t even able to keep knowledge they already had. Seems like the group of people you think are so superior have been getting dumber with every generation and you therefore are the dumbest of your lineage. What’s there to be proud of about that?
  • jackmott42 3y ago
    It doesn't matter if a story makes sense, just that it is easy to understand. See much of rhetoric in America right now, and Russia regarding Ukraine.
  • xeonmc 3y ago
    To lose one civilization may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness.
  • duskwuff 3y ago
    The corollary story that usually shows up is that Westerners "stole" scientific discoveries from India and suppressed them while the country was under occupation. There's a fairly standard example of this at: https://pparihar.com/2017/05/22/modern-inventions-stolen-from-the-vedas/ https://pparihar.com/2017/05/22/modern-inventions-stolen-fro... And the BBC reported on some instances of this sort of thought at the Indian Science Congress in 2019: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46778879 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46778879
    • andybak 3y ago
      That first link is a gateway to a whole level of insanity I had no idea about.
    • godelski 3y ago
• anticodon 3y ago
  > but filthy foreigners corrupted Mother India. Isn't this part actually true, because Britain pillaged India for centuries?
  • pfannkuchen 3y ago
    I don’t recall any accounts of the British finding nuclear power when they arrived though…
    • godelski 3y ago
      Or the British suspiciously inventing nuclear weapons/power relatively quickly after the occupation of India. Or even when they began trading. Nor the Greeks. But maybe the British were just playing the long con. Well played British... well played. Waiting a hundred years, giving the technology to the Americans, and letting Germany bomb your cities and almost occupy your country. Very crafty.
  • buildbot 3y ago
    Couldn't the same be said for the dominant group before and after? Honestly asking, but looking through the history, that area has been in turmoil a long time, which is true of most places. And also does not excuse imperialism either of course.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • neilk 3y ago
    It’s absolutely true, and even in the sense of losing technology. The effect of British rule on India is sometimes called “de-industrialization”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-industrialisation_of_India?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-industrialisation_of_India?... The British had a deliberate policy of extracting raw materials and flooding the market with machine-manufactured goods. The British markets were not open to Indian manufacturers. So not only was India de-industrialized, but many rare skills and techniques were lost during this period. I can’t find a reference, but I remember reading an early British East India Conpany account of encountering silk of such fine quality that yards of it could be folded into a tiny box. Those workers would have been put out of business by the British, and their skills lost for generations. Might be a legend but I’m sure many things like that happened. It’s just not things like rockets or nuclear weapons.
• brobdingnagians 3y ago
  In the West, any attempt to debate science is declared to be anti-science, which eventually suffocates science. Conformity to the party line is the ticket to funding (from the political establishment) and acclaim. Are there anti-science people? Sure, but far fewer than the knee jerk reactionists say there are. And someone who goes around calling everyone anti-science without logical basis is antithetical to scientific debate and advancement. Let us remember where a lot of "scientific" funding comes from, the politicians and Uncle Sam; which inherently tends to corrupt the "science" to become political.
  • andybak 3y ago
    Holup. You're referring to something specific, methinks? I don't recall much of this in cosmology, organic chemistry or behavioural ornithology.
  • godelski 3y ago
    There needs to be some added context to this. Many anti-science advocates mask as "just asking questions." This was the whole Koch strategy over climate change (they didn't invent it though) where they exaggerated uncertainties in data/conclusions. These always exist, they are called error bounds, but can be quite nuanced. It is easy to bastardize scientific language, which is different than laymen (and why it is possible, though noisy, to identify scientists on semi-anonymous forums like this one). > Let us remember where a lot of "scientific" funding comes from, the politicians and Uncle Sam; which inherently tends to corrupt the "science" to become political. Which this is a flag about your political beliefs and lack of experience. It just doesn't follow the practicality of the situation. Neither democrats nor republicans control government science. If you look at DOE secretaries you'll see their party affiliation matches the sitting president. In the labs, there are a lot of political diversity (including a need to ban news being played in the cafeterias because it led to fighting). It is far from monolithic and it's absurd to paint it with a wide brush. You also need to decouple the science (what's being published) from what becomes political narratives (news/directions from secretaries). Gov scientists frequently publish works contrary to the normal political narratives (even of the agency) and if they are prevented from publishing leaks happen pretty quickly. Some science itself is innately connected to politics (others "aren't"[0]: e.g. cosmology or particle physics). The question is how science should be participating (leading, participating, or auxiliary). You invent new technologies that affect societies and governments... govern societies. You find information that affect citizens and of course this is going to affect policy (e.g. climate change). Of course there are going to be biases, but there is less than what you'd find in an industry. Government science is different, especially since the focus is far less profit motivated (the scientists also aren't making much and can make far more in industry if they are profit motivated). While not ideal, gov science should be a third party verification of information. As an example, looking at climate again, you look at the results of 3 (not independent) different groups: gov, industry, academia (influenced by both gov and industry). If gov + academia comes to a consensus, industry agrees with data but not conclusions, then there's reason to distrust the industry conclusions as there's profit incentives. Your comment is destructive because it has been the narrative that has led to industry capture and manipulation. We've seen it in leaded gasoline, cigarettes, climate change, and many others. No, gov and academia aren't perfect, but this shouldn't result in defaulting to industry opinion or allowing them to dominate narratives. This has to stop. [0] quotes because money and funding is political, but this is different than conclusions like climate change. Most gov science is in the low politics camp btw.
• captn3m0 3y ago
  > By the 2021-2022 academic year, Darwin’s theory was quietly removed from the examination syllabus for the students of Class 9 and Class 10. By 2022-2023, the topic of evolution was completely purged from school textbooks, teachers and education experts told Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/14/mughals-rss-evolution-outrage-as-india-edits-school-textbooks https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/14/mughals-rss-evoluti...
• witchesindublin 3y ago
  [flagged]
• BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  India is not alone. We have a well-known rapper in France who recently explained how the Egyptian pyramides were something something electricity generators and that Egyptians had electricity thousand of years ago. This was relayed on TikTok and other platforms to the point where some gov't official had to say that this is bullshit.
  • cafard 3y ago
    What arm of the French government did this rapper represent?
    • carlmr 3y ago
      He said represent in public a few times and people thought he's a public representative!
  • buildbot 3y ago
    As they are landing pads for Goa'uld, they probably do have some power generation capability. More seriously, a French wrapper is just that and not the government in any capacity.