Dr.Subhash Kak,Renaissance man - Fundamentalist or Reactionary?
Ratan:
Interesting fellow this Subhash. I just read a book called In Search of the Cradle of Civilization , he is one of the authors.
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The Rediff Interview/ Dr Subhash Kak
'Our school books talk about Socrates, Plato and Aristotle but don't mention Yajnavalkya, Panini and Patanjali'
Dr Subhash Kak is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. He is also a renowned authority on ancient Indian science and technology. Originally from Kashmir, Dr Kak has worked at IIT Delhi, Imperial College, Bell Laboratories and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He has authored ten books and over three hundred journal articles in areas as varied as neural networks, quantum physics, artificial intelligence, and the philosophy and history of science. Dr Kak's websites www.lsu.edu/ee/kak and ftp://www.lsu.edu/pub/kak provide links to some of his articles.
Rajeev Srinivasan interviewed him by email in connection with his research into Indian science.
Q: 'You are a practising electrical engineer who holds patents in leading-edge areas such as neural networks. Yet, you are also a published poet and writer, as well as a Sanskrit scholar and expert on ancient Indian science. You are a Renaissance man, in other words. How did all this come about? '
A: ............
Q: You have also argued against the Aryan Invasion Theory. What specific evidence has come to light recently?
A: There is absolutely no evidence of a break in Indic tradition, going back 10,000 years. No break in ceramic styles, artistic expression, skeletal remains, and so on. Now if you compare that with regions that have suffered invasion, such as the Americas, you will see a clear break in all these things. This apart, all the recent iconographic finds confirm that key elements of what is generally called Classical Hinduism were present in the Indus-Sarasvati civilization before 2500 BCE. Examples are: ritual bathing, vermilion, bangles, conch-shells in religious ritual, a buffalo-killing goddess, abstract symbolism, the centrality of cattle in the economy...................
Q: You have argued that the Aryan-Dravidian divide simply doesn't exist, and that the superficial differences between North and South India are overlaid on a unified cultural foundation.
A: The concept of an Aryan-Dravidian divide is a by-product of the racist discourse of the 19th century. It was this racism that postulated a single language from which all modern languages were derived. Linguists now acknowledge that there must have existed very many language families in the past and what has survived represents complex interactions between different peoples and languages, many of which have left no trace. It is also being recognized that while by one reckoning Sanskrit, Greek and Latin belong to a family; by another, Sanskrit and Tamil and Telugu belong to another. Linguists are now talking of the concept of a linguistic area and the whole of India is one such area...........................
........I shouldn't forget to tell you that a most advanced calculus, math and astronomy arose in Kerala several centuries before Newton.
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