Knowledge is power ?

Has been a busy week, with more work, a conference in San Francisco and the usual happenings at home. I have been attending this conference almost every year for the last 13 years! This conference is usually a week long event. I get to attend it for two or three days every year. Ever since I started working, even those two days are marred by frequent phone calls and beeps on my pager. In spite of the interruptions, I feel so alive at this conference. I get to listen to the latest and greatest breakthroughs in my field of research, meet people who have similar interests, and get to overload my brain with all the information.

The hour long drive to and from San Francisco also helps clear my head and give me time to process the information. Yesterday I met an old friend and the conversation steered towards education. On the way back from the conference, my thought process was wandering around

education
why I did not become a professor
India
Brahmins
Importance to Knowledge
Aaavani Avittam
BHU
Mandal commission
reservations
affirmative action
research
white LED's
Nakamura
% success in Research projects
funding
policy
role of policy in education

and after going through a full circle I just realized I was just tired and the little hamster insdie my head needed some sleep!

But a couple of thoughts were stuck there for some time.

What Aavani Avittam ceremony is supposed to do for me and fails, this conference does! All Brahmin boys, renew their commitment to the learning process once every year at this ceremony. I do that ceremony mechanically because I am not well versed in Sanskrit or study Vedas and Upanishads for a living. I do love learning though! This week has been an extended Aavani Avittam for me! I get to meet the high priests of materials engineering, chat and debate with fellow researchers and realize the value of what I do for a living!

A second train of thought was that somehow in the back of my mind, I do always feel that the caste systems successful survival and stubborness to be eradicated in India has to do with how it makes people believe that they are special. More specifically Brahmins are proud of their commitment to learning or their belief of "knowledge is power". I am not discriminatory by nature and I am definitely not elitist or snobish because I am a brahmin. However, I have made statements in the past of how proud I am to believe that "knowledge is power" and that is somehow a very Brahmin thing to believe! I also realized that every caste tries to one up the others by making their speciality a secret. If brahmins believed that Knowledge is power, the right thing to do would have been to spread knowledge and empower everyone. Yet we know only a handful of people like Sankara, Ramanuja went along those lines. The vast majority decided to keep education to themselves and their clan and made the rest of the population dependent on them to even read and write! I could say similar things about all other castes except the poorest and lowest castes who by default got the shaft from everyone else.

I also keep thinking about how researchers are confronting politicians in faith vs science debates today, similar to the power struggle dynamics between Brahmins and the Kshatriyas.

It would have been great if everyone knew how to read and write, everyone was well versed in martial arts or had self defense skills, everyone knew how to trade and do business and of course everyone knew how to wash their own clothes, clean their own toilets or cut their own hair!! or at the least have a mutual respect for every other profession and professional!!

The hamster is on overdrive and needs to rest! Enough rambling....

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