India has been a closed culture educationally, and has been characteristically so for the large part of its history.
Knowledge, that intangible key to progress, has been captured, much like inscrutable Vedic phrases; mystified, rarefied and allowed to exist only in close confines of its priestly class.
In India, knowledge is still supposed to be abstruse and not democratic.
A holder of this holy grail is supposed to confine , protect and cherish it as an embellishment, and look down upon others who are not fortunate enough to get a grasp of it.Puzzling formula, enigmatic and the recondite is preferred over simple and straight knowledge.
This is terribly unlike the west's quest to popularize knowledge , technology and "dummify" even the most difficult of ideas.
Simplicity, of course, is at the heart of knowledge, and Newton with his laws was to depict it years later.
The other facet of Indian knowledge was that it emphasized Mathematics, philosophy , the abstract and gave prominence to memorization rather than creative thinking, perhaps an unfortunate side-effect of centuries of cramming vedic texts.
The result was thousands of years of class divides, and a large underbelly of peoples who would confine themselves into straight jacketed jobs and form, initially con-sensually, into various "castes", or social stuctures.
The pinnacle of all knowledge, the vedas themselves, were not written down until 6th century AD and were initially transmitted by word of mouth, memorized in fine phrases, rhythmic movements, nasal sounds and the like.
No one is sure who or how the words themselves came to fore, thereby leading credence to Asprushya theory of origin of vedas, attributing them to a divine origin.
Eventually when it was written down, it was remarkably accurate but not terribly legible or intuitive to a commoner, largely because of its usage of an extreme form of Sanskrit.
There is no such instance, perhaps, of such an amazing reproduction of spoken word from yore such as india's vedas. It is a remarkable feat to be proud of.
But unfortunately, it also led to India's quest with capture of knowledge, education and literature by its erudite class.
For next thousands of years, education would be imparted in encrypted Sanskrit, over informal "Gurukuls", and ashrams, where admission would be strictly regulated, and much like romanticized nature of the schools, would be basically a gathering under trees like peepal, neem etc.
What was nasty about these "schools" was that millions of "other classes" were kept out of this system totally, either by choice or compulsion.
This was for a combination of non inclusive measures by priestly class as well as renunciation by other classes towards sterile knowledge.
So entire generations of literature, math, science , philosophy and the like endured and developed in only a fraction of human minds belonging to the subcontinent.
Imagine what the possibilities would have been for Indian Knowledge if ideas would have allowed to germinate and develop in all its peoples!
Of course, this was not totally unlike the Clergy capturing the Biblical scriptures in Europe, where until one Gutenberg with his printing machine, willingly or unwillingly, egalitarianized it.
The result there was that there was a profligation of holy bible, leading to want of basic literacy in people wanting to decipher it.
But it had unintended consequences as well.
People, once being able to read, accidentally or otherwise, lay their hands on huge huge repository of ancient knowledge, philosophy, political philosophy, science etc which had been left behind by ancient Greeks and Romans.
Apparently, Europe had fallen into dark ages after years of invasions, which had led to barbarism and feudalism, as its knowledge was consigned to cold storage.
Now, with Gutenberg's press and wide dissemination of biblical literature, a revolution had begun, and Europe was pulled out of dark ages thanks to the democratic dissemination of knowledge we now know as renaissance.
Eventually this knowledge spiral would lead to Industrial revolution, with Europe becoming Master of Science, Math and war, marching years ahead of other oriental civilizations.
This knowledge it later put to barbaric use, by building ships , guns, canons and enslaving the rest of the world in a whirlwind tour of imperialism.
Nothing dramatic of that sort ever happened in India.
Most Indians considered Education as terribly abstract , confined and best left to fussy pony tailed priestly class , while the later consider it as exclusive preserve not worthy of dissemination and democratization anyway.
Practical usages of any knowledge was never thought, perhaps because of this abstraction of knowledge by priestly class, who were isolated from the "activity" of the other classes.
The activity / labor was thoroughly confined to other classes of weavers, artisans, peasants, manual laborers, tillers, painters, and the priests had been bought up to disdain from physical activity.
So essentially, a priest holding an awesome theorem for better accuracy to predict movement of a parabola , would neither have an incentive nor a appreciation to build better weapons, or better machines.
The result was an economy dependent on human labor, skill and the grind.
Innovation, creativity and thought was put on backseat and our GDP, though a whopping 25% at the end of 18th Century, was entirely based on huge numbers and hands, churning out garments and stuff based on pure labour.
Quality of the literature and education suffered incredibly due to this isolation, and one sir Thomas Macauly, in its minutes of 1835, rather unfairly, thundered as to how a shelf of western knowledge was superior to all literature of the orient.
To govern India with its few ICS officers was terribly cumbersome, and the constant litigation and the paperwork , not the kind the warrior class of England would be interested in, required the services of an army of educated clerks and lawyers.
This was the real reason for British serving their fruits of English education to natives.
The English then quickly relegated all the oriental books, including vedas, by translating them onto a bookshelf of fairly readable, juvenile literature thereby condemning them to commonplace and eroding the myth of their invincibility.
Indophiles like James Princep, Alexander hamilton, Elphinstone etc. all played a part in helping translate, preserve and bring the esoteric ancient Indian knowledge to the masses.
But only a few cults and sub-sects really dig into what it had to offer.
The rest, so it was, readily embraced anglicized knowledge, and within decades we had hundreds of lawyers and clerks, all enjoying its ensuing benefits of Government employment.
However, it was not until 1930's until one suave lawyer, Dr Ambedkar, dealt a second blow by agitating for affirmative action in all spheres , including education.
Thereafter, we had streams of small numbers of educated "Other Classes" pilfering up , much like bubbles, onto positions and jobs hitherto the domain of the priestly classes.
We are now into third phase, possibly the final one, in the cycle of Indian Renaissance.
Idea Cellular's new Advertisement about IIN or Idea Internet Network has been at the heart of many trolls, satires and faking posts.
It showed all manners of oppressed men and women, reaching out and learning knowledge over a humble mobile phone rather than give up after failing to get admission into India's notoriously choosy and expensive universities. The ad probably conveyed, inadvertently, the sign of our times.
Anything can be accessed now through a humble mobile device, over its internet network.
Cliched and banal as it was,it probably was putting across the most pertinent point of our times.
Today, we have information and knowledge freely available , and anyone , even the uneducated, can access it with ease with a variety of options like animation, videos, TV programmes, Mobile Apps etc.
We are in an information revolution.
Where thousands of information asymmetries will be broken down, and things and people seamlessly integrated.
Caste and Gender will be eroded substantially, if not totally, with this third blow. Why?
Anything that makes sense to the economy will endure.
Back in the old days, knowledgeable males, priestly class and ones who had access to credit and information controlled the strings of the economy.
And wealth.
The weavers, the skilled artisans, the priests, the soldiers were all cocooned in their respective occupations attaining a degree of specialization. Knowledge was in silos.
With the advent of information revolution, anyone with an aptitude in anything will train themselves into it, and there will be a cross fertilization of ideas, skills and jobs. Hon. Prime minister's National Skill development programme is a step in the right direction.
The idea is to capture all those lesser educated dropouts at the second grade, and skill them. That way they'd end up with a skilled job rather than menial labor.
And probably pushing up the GDP the way china has.
Of course, this is a stop gap arrangement to net all those dropouts while we address the problem itself.
So , essentially its a social churning.
Castes and gender are facing a major challenge.
An MNC would care less about caste and gender of its employees and much more about his contribution to the company.
In Bangalore, a 60 billion dollar industry grew overnight while the government was looking the other way. Young people of all hues got thousands of jobs in its BPC(Business process centers), Call Centers and IT sweat shops.
There are things holding back these changes no doubt.
With castes, its the surnames and the selective matrimony that endures in the name of tradition.(KhatriMatrimony, Baniamatrimony)
With gender, its the biased right wing movements which hinders females to move to next level.
But as with anything, its basically the Economy, Stupid!
As millions are reared out of poverty , and as india embraces capitalism and globalization with an evangelist attitude, Adam smith , and not marx , may be its savior.
Caste-ism and Gender equality will not make any sense at all in the new economy.
Keeping an 60% percent of educated "lesser castes" will be foolish just as keeping out 50% of your workforce of females.
No country, except perhaps the insanely endowed sheiek-doms of middle east, can develop without allowing all its peoples, without exceptions, a part in their growth story. With middle east, of course, as the oil reserves dry out, they may be staring at sheep rearing as prominent occupation again.
As we are ushered into the new age economy, skill sets, and the IQ of the person wielding it, would be far more relevant than his caste, context, gender and geography.
Perhaps this is a reason to be anxious, for some.
