Atanu Dey On India's Development

The Secrets of Dee-Quack Chopra

March 19, 2010 by Atanu Dey | 46 Comments

If you have not read the modestly titled Huffington Post piece — The Future of God: A New Theory of the Divine — by Dee-Quack Deepak Chopra, you have missed out on world-class intellectual nonsense.

Profound stupidity mixed with infinite hubris served up with astonishing confidence. The piece starts off with three quotations — from Albert Einstein, Steven (sic) Hawking, and — hold your breath — Deepak Chopra. The man certainly gives himself airs. But perhaps I am wrong. Maybe he was just setting up the scene and showing the gradation from the great to the good to the utterly stupid.

The first sentence itself is a shining example of the inanity that pervades most of Chopra’s writing.

Today, 3/14 , is Einstein’s birthday and the day of the debate at Cal-Tech on the Future of God. (3.14 is also Pi, another amazing coincidence.)

I am sure that he does not know that Pi is an irrational number and within its infinite decimal representation you can find whatever number you are looking for. But that’s just the start of it. He pulls bombastic claims out of his butt without a moment’s hesitation.

“God is Infinite Consciousness,” he asserts as if he stood outside creation and having surveyed the entity that created the universe, is reporting what he saw on the 6 o’clock evening news. “The stock market is heading up.”

Then he is on a roll. “God is the agent of downward causation. God is the consciousness that differentiates into space, time, energy information and matter.”

We all know what downward causation is, don’t we? He pulled that one out without even taking a breath, followed with consciousness differentiating all over the place.

I only marvel at how deluded the guy is for him to keep going on spewing utter nonsense without the least shame. His next gem goes,

Cosmogenesis, Biopoesis Evolution : The principle of parsimony (Occam’s razor) dictates that God is the author of the Big Bang (neither big nor noisy) a moment where a point of infinite density and zero volume starts creation in an instant.

I am impressed by all those big words. Big and noisy words. How he drags in Occam’s razor is a mystery though. His next howler comes close behind. Quote:

10 billion years later our sun appears and starts to fragment pieces of itself to create its own solar system, including planet earth 30 million years after the formation of the sun.

Dear god in heaven! Where the heck did that come from? The sun fragments pieces of itself? Does the man have any general knowledge at all? Does he not know that the sun is essentially hydrogen, whereas the earth and other rocky planets are far up the periodic table? He is ignorant and does not hesitate to demonstrate his ignorance.

He has read big words and thinks he understands what they mean. The nonsense he constructs out of words is a wonder to behold.

Each moment of time a new universe is created. Fundamentally the universe is a discontinuity. In each moment of time the universe is not only recreated but also evolves. This recreation happens in the Gap where consciousness resides. The Gap is:
(a) a super position of possibilities
(b) a field of infinite non local correlation, dynamic and kinematic
(c) a field of quantum creativity
(d) an intention field, (the observer effect) — where consciousness collapses its possibility waves into space — time events, which are measured out as motion, energy, information and matter.

Someone quoted Bertrand Russell in one of the comments to that article, “A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”

Deepak Chopra is a stupid man.

But he is a famous man. He is even featured in comic strip. (Click on the strip to go to the site “Ape Not Monkey” and check out the rest of the story.)

[Hat tip: Rajan Parrikar for the Huff Post link.]

  • Sundried Atheist

    Atanu check out this video where Richard Dawkins interviews Deepak Chopra.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-FaXD_igv4

    Actually Deepak Chopra is quite a genuis in coining words which have no basis in the English language or any other language for that matter. Worst of all this thug actually goes on to accuse scietists of stealing the word “Quantum”.

  • hUmDiNgEr

    Atanu,

    I think DC studied only up to 7th std. I remember reading this “earth is a piece out of Sun” crap in one of those defunct text books.
    Hail the man, he doesn’t even think twice before emptying his bottoms :D

  • Kannan

    Really hard to con Americans…and he did it to Americans in America..
    We Indians are geniuses..Dont know how he went to celebrity status with it..Just teach yoga poses and breathing exercises and stop embarrassing Hindus..for fuck sake.

  • http://akshar100.wordpress.com Akshar

    :) In our class one student mentioned Deepak Chopra and Robin Sharma as modern day philosophers of the might of Plato, Descartes and Dawey.

    This article smells (because the matter is same) just like the one you wrote when S[1..0]*RS put the argument of in love losing is winning.

    Most of the people struggle to prove that they are smarter/superior than others. People like chopra know this and they bombard them with these meaningless words of “Infinite Consciousness” and so on. People pamper their own ego thinking that they have been consuming some great knowledge only few on earth are able to understand.

  • http://milkmiracle.net Anirban

    Jokes aside, the difficulty in trying to pin down these New Age speakers is that they use defined technical terms to sound scientificky while at the same time propounding grandiose concepts.

  • kautilya

    So this Chopra guy, he’s a regular on that moron on CNN’s Larry King. And both these idiots come up with some random stuff.. all the time.. the Hollywood Limo Liberal stuff..

    And seeing them talk, i feel like holding those elastic suspenders, King wears,..and go K-A-B-O-O-M…
    fking nuts.

  • Mahabaleshwar Hegde

    It is a really well written, hard hitting post. But I wonder why you waste your time on writing on such stupid people :)

  • Chandra

    Deepak Chopra is one of the world’s best dead-pan comedians. The problem is, some people just don’t get the jokes.

  • Kaffir

    =>
    It is a really well written, hard hitting post. But I wonder why you waste your time on writing on such stupid people
    =>

    Mahabaleshwar, because it shows that Atanu is not afraid to criticize fellow-Hindus and their nonsense.

  • larissa

    Chopra is really harmful! He gives Hindus a bad name. But then again you have to realize that the people who read this kind of nonsense are of an inferior intellect– you know not all people are meant to be profound and intelligent, and comprehend difficult concepts, this takes a lifelong training and dedication. The new age garbage fills in the gap for those who need to understand the world in their own stupid terms…hence the proliferation of such books…its fine as long as it is harmless but many of these folks do a lot of harm. I remember the guy who popularized yoga in the US…it was all fine until he began to proclaim that he could cure AIDS…Such people give HIndus a bad name and turn the religion into some kind of new age cult. The fact that anyone can write a book these days and gain an audience makes one think: with the increase of stupid books out there, one wonders how the garbage can be weeded out, for books written by cows only confuses people by distracting them from intelligent books that are worth reading…

  • Ravi

    A post after my heart Atanu. My only regret is I didnot think of the name”D Quack’ first although I am certain that is what I’ve felt since he first burst into the healing scene. It is impossible to estimate the extent of damage Mr. Quack has done. His “intellectual” f**ts have destroyed medicine, diminuted science have done immeasurable disservice to one of the most profound Philosophy humankind has known.
    My anxiety as a medical practioner though comes from a much deeper question. I know Mr. quack is a symptom or a collection of symptoms, yet the pathology remains elusive to me.
    Reading the post “Dee-Quack” suddenly fired up the grey cells and here is my simplistic tentative hypothesis.
    Mr Quack and the likes of him (Mr. HHH SSSRS) are successful just because of that – They are quacks masquerading pop as philosophy, entertainment as cure. I any climate where the chosen populace prefers esoteric over educational, instantaneous as opposed to inquisitorial, Mr. quack will be successful.
    My other hypothesis is less scientific. I believe the “infinte consciousness” became the “agent of downward creation” after it/he /she ralised the imperfections in the evolution program that could create bombs like mr. Quack
    Ravi

  • Dhariwal

    Minor point:

    From “Birth of the Earth” – http://geology.about.com/od/nutshells/a/aa_earthbirth.htm (emphasis mine)

    “Long, long ago (some 5 billion years ago) in a perfectly ordinary place in the galaxy, a supernova exploded, pushing a lot of its heavy-element wreckage into a nearby cloud of hydrogen gas and interstellar dust. The mixture grew hot and compressed under its own gravity, and at its center a new star began to form. Around it swirled a disk **of the same material**, which grew white-hot from the great compressive forces. That new star became our Sun, and the glowing disk gave rise to Earth and its sister planets.”

    Chopra says: “later our sun appears and starts to fragment pieces of itself to create its own solar system”

    I don’t think that statement is outrageous at all. I disagree with a lot of things that Chopra concludes but the man has read up on science, even if he ends up twisting it like a pretzel to suit his scheme of things.

    • http://www.deeshaa.org Atanu Dey

      Mr Dhariwal:

      Chopra is wrong. He thinks the Sun got formed and then it fragmented and the planets formed from that fragmentation. What he believes is far from what you quote. All heavy elements are “forged” in supernova explosion — the last stages of some stellar bodies. The Sun will never go supernova — it is too small for that.

      In any case, I think you misread what my primary objection to Chopra’s illogic is.

  • Sundried Atheist

    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Mahabaleshwar, because it shows that Atanu is not afraid to criticize fellow-Hindus and their nonsense.

    Chopra is one of the most bitter critic of Hindus, in fact on one his interviews he went on to blame Hindus for inciting Muslims to carry out acts of terrorism. He went on further to say that “No True Muslim” would ever do what the Islamofacists are doing right now.
    Chopra is just a conman who is over there to earn his millions. He does not care about anything else. His being Hindu is immaterial here, what matters is a is a liar and a conman.

  • Venkat

    I used to ignore this guy all along (typical Hindu mindset) but, after reading this post and watching the video about him, I think we need to expose such quacks and stop them from going ahead with their diatribe!!

    I liked that video where Richard Dawkins poses a very serious question to him “Now how is that related to quantum physics” LOL… I bet Richard would have cried in his bed that night after interviewing Deequack.. “Why did I have to go through this today”???!!! :-)

  • larissa

    Chopra is one of the most bitter critic of Hindus, in fact on one his interviews he went on to blame Hindus for inciting Muslims to carry out acts of terrorism. He went on further to say that “No True Muslim” would ever do what the Islamofacists are doing right now.

    Well he is just a quack who makes a quick buck out of ignorant Americans with his self-help books. By the way, did you know what sells the most in India? Self-help books of the kind Deepak writes!

  • larissa

    “Chopra is one of the most bitter critic of Hindus, in fact on one his interviews he went on to blame Hindus for inciting Muslims to carry out acts of terrorism. He went on further to say that “No True Muslim” would ever do what the Islamofacists are doing right now.”

    I remember after seeing him on TV as he was interviewed after the Bombay blasts, one of my friends wrote to him saying that he was distorting the Eastern religions. He replied that his “religious” outlook is made up of “many” religions. What a quack! There is no arguing with him. Regarding the interview, he just says whatever makes him popular, as most people of his ilk do, whatever the profession. In ancient times, such people were called sophists–they make falsehoods appear as true and make a buck in the process!
    HIndus have to guard against such sophists, and many HIndus themselves are their own enemy in this regard as they fall prey easily to fake gurus, not knowing much themselves about their own religion and culture. Also one has to realize that religion has to reach the masses in a positive way without the distortion of such quacks if it is to be preserved–it does not help if a few understand, its the wide masses who practice and they need to be guided by correct teachers, not fakes. There is a need for the “right” teachers to guide people whose approach to religion is simple not cerebral. It is unfortunte that at this point such a need is filled by all kinds of pop gurus and fakes…It just ultimately harms the religion itself if people are not on guard against such people….

  • http://boyunderpressure.blogspot.com/ Ajax

    Ha ha ha ha ha!!!

    I can’t believe b-sht like this actually exists on the Internet! Huff Post just went down on my ratings…

  • Vim

    I can’t bear to read anything Deequack writes. I don’t know how you managed to do it enough to write this critique. It’s unfortunate that a lot of people continue to eat it up, when it’s clearly just garbage in – garbage out.

    Also to be nitpicky, we don’t know if any set of numbers can be found in pi. That would require that pi be “normal,” or that any n-sequence of digits be equally likely in the decimal expansion, which has not been proven and will be very very difficult to prove.

    Irrational only means not rational, or cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers. For example, the number 1.101001000100001…. is irrational, but is of course not normal, as you can’t even find a 2 in the decimal expansion. One of the few numbers that is known to be both normal and irrational is the constant 0.12345678910111213141516…, but this is trivially true as the number is explicitly constructed as such.

  • Sandeep

    The last para in Atanu’s post:

    Is it just me or did anyone understand what Dee-quack wrote?? My first reaction was WTF??!!? Its the same reaction even now.

  • Sandeep

    The last para in Atanu’s post:

    Each moment of time a new universe is created. Fundamentally the universe is a discontinuity. In each moment of time the universe is not only recreated but also evolves. This recreation happens in the Gap where consciousness resides. The Gap is:
    (a) a super position of possibilities
    (b) a field of infinite non local correlation, dynamic and kinematic
    (c) a field of quantum creativity
    (d) an intention field, (the observer effect) — where consciousness collapses its possibility waves into space — time events, which are measured out as motion, energy, information and matter.

    Is it just me or did anyone understand what Dee-quack wrote?? My first reaction was WTF??!!? Its the same reaction even now.

  • Kaffir

    =>
    Regarding the interview, he just says whatever makes him popular, as most people of his ilk do, whatever the profession. In ancient times, such people were called sophists–they make falsehoods appear as true and make a buck in the process!
    HIndus have to guard against such sophists, and many HIndus themselves are their own enemy in this regard as they fall prey easily to fake gurus, not knowing much themselves about their own religion and culture.
    =>

    To be fair, most Hindus do see through, or don’t care about the crap that Deepak Chopra spews. His popularity and fame is a lot more among the goras/Americans rather than Indians/Hindus.

  • larissa

    To be fair, most Hindus do see through, or don’t care about the crap that Deepak Chopra spews. His popularity and fame is a lot more among the goras/Americans rather than Indians/Hindus.

    I do know however, that the kinds of books that sell the most in India are generally self-help ones written by so-called (in most cases, dubious) gurus!

  • Pankaj

    The most distressing aspect of Dquack is that on every question of terrorism in the middle east terrorism or South Asia, he has supported the islamofascists.

  • http://the-redpill.blogspot.com vakibs

    It’s a shame that a quack like Deepak Chopra exploits connections in quantum physics, anthropic principle, biocentrism and stuff like that. These are serious issues and we need real scientists arguing them, not quacks.. That will only bring serious questions into disrepute !

  • Oldtimer

    Atanu, offtopic. The oped below

    http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/mahesh-vyas-common-man%5Cs-uncommon-reaction/389308/

    shows the author’s political bias, but setting that aside,
    is he making sense or talking through his hat? I can believe
    that people with disposable incomes can cope with high
    inflation, but it seems to stretch credulity to claim they
    wouldn’t mind it though.

    Second, to me the issue seems to be with the data itself.
    The “income pyramid” table categorizes households with 10L
    or more annual income as ‘rich’. In which other economy would
    a household making the equivalent of a 20th or 30th of the
    price of a modest-sized home deemed ‘middle income’!?

  • Sundried Atheist

    >>>>>>>>>Well he is just a quack who makes a quick buck out of ignorant Americans with his self-help books. By the way, did you know what sells the most in India? Self-help books of the kind Deepak writes!

    Indians are not know to be amogst the world’s most literary people.

  • Sundried Atheist

    Chopra is not the only, smuggled through customs, Indian origin quack in USA. There is another guy by the name of Dinesh D’Souza, a true Christian (read bigot) who lives and works in the USA.
    He potrays himself as a very learned man and works as a polemicist, defending the Christian position. He also happens to be one of the top people in the American Catholic Association or something to that effect.
    This fellow happens to have answers to all the problems and he went on the criticise secualr people for Islamic intolerance, just like Chopra blames hindus are inciting Muslims to kill them.
    Both of them suffer from the same disease, they wish to be popular amogst their respective circles and the best way to do this is to be seen with the enemies of humanity. This method, as most of you must know, works very well in these times.

  • Kaffir

    =>
    I do know however, that the kinds of books that sell the most in India are generally self-help ones written by so-called (in most cases, dubious) gurus!
    =>

    Hmmm…not so sure about that. I’d think the percentage of Indian population that reads such books (by whom?) is very, very small.

  • SR

    Atanu,

    Post after my heart – the moron Dee-crap was called out pretty effectively in an op-ed by Dorothy Rabinowitz a few years ago (when he blamed the US for the Mumbai attacks).
    It’s a shame to see him suck off the blood of rich ignorant foolish people…

  • larissa

    Indians are not know to be amogst the world’s most literary people.

    I disagree with you, you don’t seem to know much about Indian literature or culture–the Sanskrit library is larger than that of Greek and Latin combined. Hindus are artistic and poetic by nature, its just that India has adopted the weird mythologies of the Congress party after independence, and so the new generation of Indians are basically cut off from their culture as a result of the secular education they recieve through the State, they retain their culture because Hindus are generally conservative by default, not because they take special care to protect what is their own–but HIndus are perhaps the most literary and poetic of peoples by nature–if they were not they would not have created so much philosophy, poetry and literature and a civilization…They are not as creative in modern times because their classical culture was interrupted (and destroyed to a great extent) by Islam and then by the British rule…but they still retain something of their direct, distant past, which is more than most other cultures which are farily recent by comparison and do not have an unbroken continuity as far as religion and culture is concerned…Hopefully they keep that spark burning, because however dim that spark might be (the India today is but a shadow of its former glory, its a “wounded” civilization, as Naipaul put it), when properly nourished in the right circumstances it can easily become a flame…

  • Sundried Atheist

    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>I disagree with you, you don’t seem to know much about Indian literature or culture–the Sanskrit library is larger than that of Greek and Latin combined.

    You are assuming a lot of things. For example how do you know that I am not aware of Indian literarure, etc. What I meant was that Indians are not know to be very fond of reading books.

  • http://ketanpanchal.blogspot.com/ Ketan

    Atanu,

    Chopra in The Sunday Times of India had tried to answer questions like – “by what factor, time for gods is slower than for humans” and “what is the mass of the soul?”. These were very good indicators of IQ of those asking such questions (if not in jest). I do not think people like Chopra are foolish. They know that they are speaking gibberish, but probably they get a high from duping gullible rich people, and of course loads of money. This is irrelevant, but his smile looks so lecherous!

    Considering the impunity with which many godmen break the moral codes they themselves prescribe, I feel most of them know what they teach is garbage, and are sure no god exists to be able to punish them, and hence, they must be atheists. This creates a weird paradox – the godmen, right from three or more millennia back, who started teaching ‘morality’ and ‘ethics’, and whose ideas (including that “God exists”) the firm theists follow and fall in kind with, were all themselves atheists! Theists were and are lead by atheists – how is that for a joke? ;)

  • http://ketanpanchal.blogspot.com/ Ketan

    *fall in line with

  • larissa

    “”You are assuming a lot of things. For example how do you know that I am not aware of Indian literarure, etc. What I meant was that Indians are not know to be very fond of reading books.”"

    You are assuming a lot as well. This is an absurd statement. Its one thing to say that the current government has influenced culture in a negative way through the false mythologies of secularism it has imposed on the state, but quite another to state that Indians don’t like to read. Indians are just misinformed due to the current educational system which ties to falsify aand rewrite their history. But there are smart Indians out there who understand what is happening–they are in the minority and don’t have political power.

  • Sundried Atheist

    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>This is an absurd statement. Its one thing to say that the current government has influenced culture in a negative way through the false mythologies of secularism it has imposed on the state, but quite another to state that Indians don’t like to read. Indians are just misinformed due to the current educational system which ties to falsify aand rewrite their history. But there are smart Indians out there who understand what is happening–they are in the minority and don’t have political power.

    No I am not assuming, I am saying this on facevalue and with regards to my personal experiences as well as those who I have met. By the there is nothing absurd about my saying that Indians are by far not amogst the most well read people in this world.

    By the way can you point out to any studies that might prove your point that Indians are avid readers? I am sorry to say ,but but not a lot of Indians read. By reading I don;t mean those third rate novels you get along the pavements, but reading books of real value.

    There was always only a small section of people in India who used to read. Being artitistic or creative has nothing to do with being well read. You are mixing up issues here, as I as talking about Indians being a literay people not an artistic people.

    Look I find tribal art very artistic and creative, but that does not necessarily entail that tribals are amogst the most literate of people or are very scietific in those approach. The science of literary critique and the ability to discern philosphies comes from reading not from creativity.

  • larissa

    Well you have not met the right kind of Indians. However, you are right in that there is not much of an intellectual life in India–this is due to the secularism imposed upon the culture and the way education has been mapped out by the state in India which has tried to forcibly rewrite and gloss over many facets of Indian history so that most Indians do not get a proper education in the liberal sense in universities. Also the current educational system is a legacy of Nehru who only focused on elite institutions and not on mass education. Now there is a scramble to get a technical education so that the liberal arts education is neglected, and people mostly want an education to survive in the professional world. However, there are many private individuals who do read; I know in our community every family has at least a grandfather or uncle or father or someone who is a scholar or highly educated (in more than just a technical sense)–It is largely a matter of who you come across in India–what kind of community. In America, I also come across many uninformed people. Moreover the liberal education is also a ‘mess” these days in America as well with all the political correctness and the freudian, marxist, feminist interpretations and what not–and one has to educate oneself properly if one wants a real liberal education. But the resources are all available in America for those who wish to self educate themselves, realizing that they did not get a proper education with the so called “liberal arts” degree. In India the resources are not as available. But there are old conservative Hindu families who have a tradition of learning and who retain respect for education and culture, and who try to get their hands on whatever books they can to educate themselves, although the state likes to keep them uninformed. It is this natural conservatism of Hindus which has preserved any culture that is found in India, this enabled Hindus to still be Hindus in the face of Islamic invasions, this enabled them to reject missionaries and their religion, but this natural conservatism is being eroded fast by the state, and this poses the greatest threat to whatever culture Indians retain, although the threat is not noticeable by most Indians who have jumped on the secular bandwagon and do not know to question critically what is taught to them by the state and the current “liberal” outlook they blindly adopt from the West.

  • Sundried Atheist

    Larissa, I think you are again mixing up issues now. What you are debating about is the Nehruvian legacy and its after effects, which has nothing to do with Indians being avid readers.
    I am not saying whether Indians are reading lies or the right sort of stuff, but that majority of Indians don’t read at all and this has nothing to do with Nehru, but with the way we are brought up.
    I don’t know many families who encourage their children to read books besides their own syllabus books in India and that is the issue here.

  • larissa

    “I am not saying whether Indians are reading lies or the right sort of stuff, but that majority of Indians don’t read at all and this has nothing to do with Nehru, but with the way we are brought up.”

    Well I am sorry the same cannot be said for our community, I don’t know what background you are from. We take pride in being knowledgeable, and most people in our community are extremely well read, and that is tradition. So don’t generalize. My husband’s community (although they are a tiny minority) is even more so with 100 % literacy–education is a family tradition from generations (and I mean education in a broad cultural sense of knowing who you are and your history, and keeping the tradtions of your forefathers). Its just that the new generation growing up under the current secular regime does not not learn anything at university (other than what is taught for a professional, or technical education)–they retain some culture because their families retain some culture.

    It is indeed the fault of Nehru. He focused on technical education for a few elite universities and ignored mass education. The Congress has not changed his policies with regard to ecuation, and has only made it worse through affirmative action, and not addressing the question of quality education for the masses. This has resulted in India being able to have a handful of high calibre scientists working on a space program while at the same time housing the largest number of illiterate people. Most Indians kids study hard to get into technical universities. There are no world class liberal arts institutions in India. Couple this with the absurd secular mythologies that the state has adopted as the national ideals as a result of the Congress government, and what that does for a people’s perception of their history and identity, and you realize why so many Indian kids are ignorant when it come to their culture and history. They don’t learn anything at school or university! What is dangerous is that as a result of the forced secularism whatever was retained through family tradition is also endangered, and this is the most dangerous because the damage is done gradually, without being overtly noticeable…

  • larissa

    Getting back to the subject matter check out this edition of Forbes–certainly Forbes does not think he is a quack! Furthermore, they value his opinion so highly that he has been chosen to come up with a list of the most powerful teachers!!! http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/09/deepak-chopra-grameen-leadership-power-09-teachers_slide.html

    One realizes that mediocrity rules these days–As the essayist Ortega y Gasset writes of our times:

    “The characteristic fact of the moment is that the mediocre soul, recognizing itself as mediocre, has the audacity to assert the right of mediocrity and impose it everywhere.”

  • Sundierd Atheist

    >>>>>>>>>>>Well I am sorry the same cannot be said for our community, I don’t know what background you are from. We take pride in being knowledgeable, and most people in our community are extremely well read, and that is tradition.

    Great going for your community and my best wishes to you and your community for “taking pride” in being “knowlegeable” and being “extremely well-read”. Since you were casting a shadow of doubt about my heritage let me introduce you to my “unknowlegeable’, pathetically illiterate and unread community of Hindus who are not interetsed in reading books. You see I belong to the community of Hindus, majority of whom are more interested to wasting their time over worshipping imaginary beings and the reamining time they like to spend on idle gossip and watching B-grade soap operas. The vast majority of my huge community is like. Sigh! I guess we can’t choose into which community we are born and I have to live with being the part of an ill read and totally unknowlegeable community.

    >>>>>>>>>>So don’t generalize.

    A few people don’t really make a lot of difference. As I mentioned before the vast majority of my community is not interested in reading books of any value. So when you take a mean average of my community, it sadly turns out that they are not very literary people, quite unlike yours ofcourse.

    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>My husband’s community (although they are a tiny minority) is even more so with 100 % literacy–education is a family tradition from generations (and I mean education in a broad cultural sense of knowing who you are and your history, and keeping the tradtions of your forefathers). Its just that the new generation growing up under the current secular regime does not not learn anything at university (other than what is taught for a professional, or technical education)–they retain some culture because their families retain some culture.

    Ah! well my heartfelt congratulations to your husband’s 100% literate community too, gee! its on getting better and better. Poor me and community.

  • larissa

    Well no offense to you, but a minority in India are well read and understand what is going on. So don’t say Indians do not read, there are some communities for whom being educated consists in the highest achievement as per tradition–and as for communities, there is nothing wrong in taking pride in one’s heritage. As I said, I don’t know a single person in our community whose uncle, or grandfather, or father is not involved in some kind of scholarly pursuits. So its offensive when someone says our parents don’t teach us to read. However, the kids these days up in a secular culture that is artificial and imposed by the state and so whatever culture the families retained and instilled in them, is in danger of being lost. This is the greatest danger and people don’t realize it jumping on the secular, liberal bandwagon. Once the traditions are lost, they are lost for good.

    I believe that it is largely the state that is responsible for Indians remaining ignorant of their history (as the real history is not taught and is falsified and whitewashed), moreover, a peoples collectively elect their leaders and get what they elect.

    Also in a democracy, you have a government that stays in power by distributing money to people to win their support in the case of Congress instead of building something with the money, i.e. you have a nanny state.

    A “few” informed people do matter, its the only people that have mattered in history. They just need to have political say, i.e. power.

  • Kedar

    Sundried Atheist:

    You obviously havent come across the One you are arguing against before, have you :) ?

    Such a monumental waste of time…

  • larissa

    Ah! well my heartfelt congratulations to your husband’s 100% literate community too, gee! its on getting better and better. Poor me and community.
    No need to get jealous sun dried atheist! I understand as you say your “parents did not teach you to read” but mine did and many other Hindus are brought up properly as well…You sound like a bitter person. I can’t help it if not all communites are the same!

  • Ravi

    Global New Age Indian Gurus have their own take:

    The Cult of Paramahamsa Nithyananda – Spiritual Fraud!

    {Edited out for non-relevance.}

    For more information:visit http://www.nithyananda-cult.blogspot.com

  • Tarun Jain

    Deepak Chopra Apologizes on Twitter for Starting an Earthquake:

    http://mashable.com/2010/04/04/deepak-chopra-earthquake/