"Women are in general inferior to men in bodily strength and energy; consequently the male part of the community, taking advantage of their corporeal weakness, have denied to them those excellent merits that they are entitled to by nature, and afterwards they are apt to say that women are naturally incapable of acquiring those merits. But if we give the subjects consideration, we may easily ascertain whether or not your accusation against them is consistent with justice. As to their inferiority in point of understanding, when did you ever afford them a fair opportunity of exhibiting their natural capacity? How then can you accuse them of want of understanding? If, after instruction in knowledge and wisdom, a person cannot comprehend or retain what has been taught him, we may consider him as deficient; but as you keep women generally void of education and acquirements, you cannot, therefore, in justice pronounce on their inferiority."
- Raja Rammohun Roy
Reading the above, I feel monumentally inept.
What prose! This was written 200 years ago, by a person born 240 years ago in rural Bengal. No schools, no printed books, no travel outside of Bengal. How did he acquire such a command on the English language? This is perfectly accessible language that makes sense even today; not the kind of flowery crap people used to write in those days.
What insight! He has captured all of society's hypocrisy in one hard-hitting sentence. His thoughts are relevant even today, across the world. Do we unburden women of their domestic chores when they take up careers outside? Do we afford them a level playing field in the workplace? And yet they must outperform their male colleagues in order to be demonstrate their competent.
Thanks to my association with rights groups over the last fifteen years, I've hobnobbed with a number of women's rights activists. I'm yet to see someone express themselves as eloquently as this guy 200 years their senior.
I am a "product" of "elite" English medium schools and a "premier" engineering college (ugh, but that is how the Indian press likes to describe folks like me). Of course, RRR started the first English medium school for Indians, so if anything, I'm a "product" of his legacy. But can I ever express myself as coherently, eloquently, beautifully as this man whose only possible formal education was in the Hindu scriptures.
Before thought must come observation. Can I ever perceive the injustice around me, and recognise my own hypocrisy and of those around me, as this man could?
Why have I not read the works of great Indian thinkers like him before? I've read Jefferson and Lincoln and Marx but not RRR or Ambedkar or JP. I suppose you end up reading more of Gandhi, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, JK and Annie Besant because they have entire publishing societies promoting their works. I suppose this is expected if all you ever read is what the media promotes.
People before us have thought so much. Written so much. We pay such little attention to history, and to writers and thinkers who do not belong to our generation. In my most recent visit to Anand Bhawan in Allahabad, Anuj Mama pointed out the wealth of books in the library there. He observed how our leaders were so well read. If they didn't read so much, how would they develop their own ideas?
I think we give too much importance to "original" thought. Maybe its the startup culture - argumentum ad novitatem (or perhaps even novitate gratia novitatem). When the truth is that most useful human output is incremental. Everywhere you see, the good stuff improved incrementally - hardware, software, scientific research, architecture.
Is it possible, that if you read a lot, you would run out of original ideas, because everything interesting had already been thought before? The infinite monkeys theorem!
At the very least, the more you read, the harder it becomes for you to come up with truly novel improvements to existing ideas. In fact, you're left with very little room for thought. Your puny brain is too busy connecting up all the observations and thoughts of people before you.
But hey, I'm only 33. Maybe I should keep reading books and bide my time till I'm 45, then move to a big city and be a rockstar (which is what RRR did). So the plan is:
Step 1: Get off the grid; go rural.
Step 2: Read lots of books; think new thoughts (or die trying).
Step 3: Write books and propose new laws.
Step 4: Be awesome!
Wait a minute, I know some people who're following exactly this plan. Jean Drèze, Aruna Roy, Michael Mazgaonkar.
Damn. Even my diabolical plan for intellectual domination isn't original.
Maybe I'll just go upgrade Ubuntu on Aruna and Michael's laptops.
- Raja Rammohun Roy
Reading the above, I feel monumentally inept.
What prose! This was written 200 years ago, by a person born 240 years ago in rural Bengal. No schools, no printed books, no travel outside of Bengal. How did he acquire such a command on the English language? This is perfectly accessible language that makes sense even today; not the kind of flowery crap people used to write in those days.
What insight! He has captured all of society's hypocrisy in one hard-hitting sentence. His thoughts are relevant even today, across the world. Do we unburden women of their domestic chores when they take up careers outside? Do we afford them a level playing field in the workplace? And yet they must outperform their male colleagues in order to be demonstrate their competent.
Thanks to my association with rights groups over the last fifteen years, I've hobnobbed with a number of women's rights activists. I'm yet to see someone express themselves as eloquently as this guy 200 years their senior.
I am a "product" of "elite" English medium schools and a "premier" engineering college (ugh, but that is how the Indian press likes to describe folks like me). Of course, RRR started the first English medium school for Indians, so if anything, I'm a "product" of his legacy. But can I ever express myself as coherently, eloquently, beautifully as this man whose only possible formal education was in the Hindu scriptures.
Before thought must come observation. Can I ever perceive the injustice around me, and recognise my own hypocrisy and of those around me, as this man could?
Why have I not read the works of great Indian thinkers like him before? I've read Jefferson and Lincoln and Marx but not RRR or Ambedkar or JP. I suppose you end up reading more of Gandhi, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, JK and Annie Besant because they have entire publishing societies promoting their works. I suppose this is expected if all you ever read is what the media promotes.
People before us have thought so much. Written so much. We pay such little attention to history, and to writers and thinkers who do not belong to our generation. In my most recent visit to Anand Bhawan in Allahabad, Anuj Mama pointed out the wealth of books in the library there. He observed how our leaders were so well read. If they didn't read so much, how would they develop their own ideas?
I think we give too much importance to "original" thought. Maybe its the startup culture - argumentum ad novitatem (or perhaps even novitate gratia novitatem). When the truth is that most useful human output is incremental. Everywhere you see, the good stuff improved incrementally - hardware, software, scientific research, architecture.
Is it possible, that if you read a lot, you would run out of original ideas, because everything interesting had already been thought before? The infinite monkeys theorem!
At the very least, the more you read, the harder it becomes for you to come up with truly novel improvements to existing ideas. In fact, you're left with very little room for thought. Your puny brain is too busy connecting up all the observations and thoughts of people before you.
But hey, I'm only 33. Maybe I should keep reading books and bide my time till I'm 45, then move to a big city and be a rockstar (which is what RRR did). So the plan is:
Step 1: Get off the grid; go rural.
Step 2: Read lots of books; think new thoughts (or die trying).
Step 3: Write books and propose new laws.
Step 4: Be awesome!
Wait a minute, I know some people who're following exactly this plan. Jean Drèze, Aruna Roy, Michael Mazgaonkar.
Damn. Even my diabolical plan for intellectual domination isn't original.
Maybe I'll just go upgrade Ubuntu on Aruna and Michael's laptops.