False history as a colonial weapon of soft power

C. K. Raju


Indian Institute of Education
G. D. Parikh Centre, J. P. Naik Bhavan
Mumbai University Kalina Campus

Introduction

Primary question

  • Q. How did a handful of Britishers rule over a vast country like India for so long?
  • The British (or other Europeans) did NOT come with a huge army.
  • Until the 18th c. due to bad navigation and disease each trip to India left 30% dead.
  • Indians had better numbers, better steel technology, better ships, better cannons etc.

Military weakness of the would-be colonizer

  • For example, the Governor of the British East India Company prostrated himself before Aurangzeb to beg for pardon (for Child's war)
  • When the pirate Avery attacked Aurangzeb's ship Ganj-i-Sawai he threatened to retaliate against Bombay,
  • the frightened British parliament declared Avery hostis humanis generis (enemy of humanity)
  • and paid a fine to persuade Aurangzeb that the British East India Company was not involved.

259 years

  • It took over 250 years for Europeans to win their first serious military victory
  • [From Vasco da Gama's arrival (1498) to the "Battle of Plassey" (1757)]
  • Even that 1757 battle was won by bribing part of the opposing army, NOT superior technology
  • The weakness persisted: British rule was easily overthrown in the uprising of 1857.

But colonizer had a new weapon

  • used soft power to make up for weakness in hard power.
  • The soft power was provided by the church.
  • Colonial rule involved the state-church partnership: hard power + soft power.

Indians never understood that soft power

  • Hence, that soft power persists long after political independence.

Clarification: The church is a POLITICAL entity

  • distinct from the religion Christianity which it claims to represent.
  • The church ruled for a over a thousand years without weapons,
  • with the help of myths and superstitions.
  • The colonised never imagined that myths and superstitions could be spread through math and science.

Many misconceptions about soft power

  • Most people swallowed the STORY that science is at war with the church (e.g. Galileo).
  • Also, eating Indian food or practising "yogaaa" does NOT generate soft power for India
  • Power is about control.
  • Colonial soft power comes from control of the mind of the colonized.

Colonial soft power

Education system

  • Control of the mind comes through the education system.
  • prolonged indoctrination (10-21 years, starting from a young age)
  • We fell victims to colonial/church propaganda (used e.g. by Macaulay) about "Western origin of science"
  • and for science allowed the colonizer/church free access to shape the minds of our future generations.

Today, as mental slaves Indians have lost the freedom

  • to modify the education system, especially in math, as we saw in my earlier talk.
  • We are gripped by the superstition that the church's axiomatic method of reasoning (as in rational theology) is "superior"
  • using the crusading myth of "Euclid" as a facade.

Who can change the education system?

  • Not the students (they are threatened with failure/punishment).
  • Not the teachers (they are forced to follow the syllabus).
  • Not the the bureaucracy (NCERT),
  • Not politicians (too ignorant and afraid to change it e.g. Smrti Irani, Satpal Singh and my open speech),
  • Not professional mathematicians (in the current system) whose livelihood depends on it.

Ordinary people don't understand

  • how the mind was captured with invisible bonds,
  • unlike the shackles of physical slavery or victory in war.
  • In India, people typically blame Macaulay
  • for the colonial education system.

Very foolish to blame only Macaulay,

  • for the SAME education system is found in ALL colonies:
  • Malaysia, Lebanon (French), South Africa, Suriname (Dutch), Brazil (Portuguese), Argentina (Spanish).
  • Without a correct understanding of causes, there is no cure.

Colonial education came a CHURCH education

False history a stock part of church propaganda

  • From the time of its first religious war with "pagans" (4th-6th c. CE)
  • the church got politicised and used secular propaganda (against those who rejected Christian beliefs).

Systematically false history since 5th c.

  • Orosius (5th c.) wrote a false History Against the Pagans
  • during the first religious war waged by the church against "pagans".
  • to argue that the Christian god rewarded Christians also in this very world.

Systematically false history of SCIENCE

Made translation of these texts theologically correct

  • Hence, the Arabic books were not burnt but translated
  • and used as texts in the first European universities.
  • This false history of science was later carried forward by racist and colonial historians
  • to assert White/Western superiority.

People fell for (secular) false history

  • especially of science which seemed plausible.
  • The colonised learnt to worship false gods of science.

Gullible colonized NEVER cross-checked that false history

  • Not when education system was changed 2 centuries ago
  • REFUSE to do so today, 75 years after independence.
  • NCERT's official stand: WRONG to cross-check Western history! (Questioning the master?)
  • Says it MUST be accepted WITHOUT primary evidence by Indians (e.g. Euclid in class IX text).

We believe in these false gods of science

False history affects teaching

  • Or the real origin of calculus, needed for technology,
  • (theft of calculus made it so difficult to understand today).
  • Children just believe all the false stories told in our school texts
  • and they are in awe of the West.

HPS taboo

  • Because false history was a source of power the history and philosophy of science(HPS) is taboo
  • was never taught to the colonised by the coloniser.
  • And this did not change after independence: not a single university department for HPS in the country,
  • because no one understood the trick of using false history for soft power.

Difficult to cross-check today

  • because various further tricks were used
  • to preserve this false history.

Trick No. 1: vast secondary literature

  • A huge amount of secondary literature has been built up over the centuries.
  • Google and you are taken to Wikipedia which reinforces that false history citing secondary sources.

Trick no. 2: mixing history and philosophy

Trick No. 3: Teaching ignorance

  • Since church power flows from (propagandist) narratives
  • to preserve the false narratives, colonial education teaches ignorance.

Thus, colonial education supposedly came for science

  • but actually made the colonized ignorant of even WHY 1+1=2 (axiomatically)
  • (my "Cape Town Challenge")
  • That is called Bantuization
  • teach only what the colonized "need to know", and they are happy with that!

Ignorance forces people to rely on authority

  • and colonial education teaches them to trust only Western authority
  • and distrust all others.
  • You believe a PhD in math from Cambridge knows math (and will be honest)
  • Check it. Try my Cape Town challenge (1+1=2) on Pervin Sinclair, former Director of NCERT.

What can be done

Avoid silly counter-propaganda

  • Obviously false stories like "Vedic math" or ancient Indian spacecraft etc. are pathetic responses
  • They only make people laugh.
  • Deep research and study is needed.
  • Why doesn't the AWC initiate and set up an HPS unit?

New HPS curriculum

How false history of science is preserved

  • After spreading the false belief that science is Western in origin
  • this is preserved by (1) the taboo against non-Western HPS (2) mixing history and philosophy, (3) teaching ignorance etc.
  • The only way to break this is public debate (not easy).

Indian tradition of public debate

  • very useful to expose false "experts".
  • To change the education system,
  • we need real experts,
  • not merely those deemed "experts" on the existing system of education.

Conclusions

  • A systematically false history of science was used to put the colonized in awe of the colonizer.
  • The colonized never checked that false history, and refuse to do so today.
  • Anyway, though colonial education supposedly came for science, the colonized remain ignorant of even why 1+1=2.
  • Therefore, they judge truth by trusting Western authority (and distrust others).
  • The sole escape from this trap is public debate (if possible).