Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Can the ancient Tamil word ‘paRiah’ be rescued from the misuse in the western world?


The employment of the Tamil word ‘paRiah’ in the following text attracted my attention, in the light of my discoveries related to the origin of the ‘untouchablity’ in music in Tamilnadu, India.

“A decade later, Dawkins played the role of interpreter for an even broader audience. Average effects became selfish genes and individuals became lumbering robots controlled by their genes. Group selection became a pariah concept, taught only as an example of how not to think.”
‘RICHARD DAWKINS IS WRONG ABOUT RELIGION’- by David Sloan Wilson

Why did David Sloan Wilson chose the word ‘pariah’ to communicate the negative dimension of ‘Group selection’? Could he have used the term ‘Negro’, that was “associated it with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second class citizens, or worse” (Smith, Tom W. (1992) "Changing racial labels: from 'Colored' to 'Negro' to 'Black' to 'African American'." Public Opinion Quarterly 56(4):496–514) without objection?

Unlike the word ‘Negro’, introduced by  the Spanish and Portuguese (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro) ;

the Tamil word ‘paRiah’ was found in the ancient Tamil texts to mean those who could play a ‘group’ of a kind of percussion instruments; and was designated as the ‘group’ eligible to be identified as the ‘citizens’ of the society. (புறநானூறு 335:  7 -  8: puRanhAnURu 335: 7-8).

How did the word ‘paRiah’ originally meaning a respectable ‘group’ of the citizens, acquire the negative dimension? 

Under what social mechanism, it entered into the ‘group’ of the western world, ‘influencing’ even the reputed writers, who had stopped using the word ‘Negro’, to use the word ‘pariah’ in their writings? 

Worse, how did that social mechanism, influence even the ‘western’ science, to ‘absorb’ the word ‘pariah’ into Mathematics ( ‘In the area of modern algebra known as group theory, the term pariah was introduced by Griess (1982) to refer to the six sporadic simple groups that are not subquotients of the monster group.’- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pariah_group)?

My research w.r.t the ‘untouchability’ dimension of the ancient Tamil percussion instrument ‘paRai’, had identified the ’colonial mischief’ , as the probable origin of the ‘untouchability’ in music. (http://tamilsdirection.blogspot.sg/2013/11/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none_13.html )

The present caste identity system, with ‘paRai’ and ‘paRaiah’ as the ‘untouchables’, was introduced during the colony rule, as explained below.

"colonialism in India produced new forms of civil society which have been represented as traditional forms; chief among these is caste itself.................
colonialism seems to have created much of what is now accepted as Indian "tradition," including an autonomous caste structure with the Brahman clearly and unambiguously at the head, village based systems of exchange, .  isolated ceremonial residues of the old regime state, and fetishistic competition for ritual goods that no longer played a vital role in the political system."
'THE INVENTION OF CASTE: CIVIL SOCIETY IN COLONIAL INDIA'
Nicholas B. Dirks (1988)

The role played by the British administration in the evolution of the caste system, was also explained in the following evidence.

"the permeability of caste groups and the ability of castes and caste associations to react and adapt their caste identity in the relatively short term to their environment. Moreover, it clearly points to the role played by the British administration in the evolution of the caste system."
'British law and caste identity manipulation in colonial
India: the Punjab Alienation of Land Act.' by Guilhem Cassan (2009)

Highly respected ancient percussion instruments grouped as ‘parai’, & ‘citizen group’ called ‘paRiah’, had undergone ‘degradation as the untouchables’, during the colony rule. Worse, even after the Indian independence, and in spite of evidences of their 'respectable' status during the period of the ancient Tamil texts, the Western world not only continued to misuse the word ‘pariah’ in their writings, but also dared to ‘absorb’ the word into Mathematics.

In the concluding part of his article, David Sloan Wilson had noted down the following.

“Toward the end of The God Delusion, Dawkins waxes poetic about the open-mindedness of science compared to the closed-mindedness of religion. He describes the heart-warming example of a scientist who changed his long-held beliefs on the basis of a single lecture, rushing up to his former opponent in front of everyone and declaring “Sir! I have been wrong all these years!”

The western world  “have been wrong all these years!” w.r.t the employment of the Tamil word ‘pariah’ in their writings.

Will David Sloan Wilson take the lead to end the misuse of the Tamil word ‘pariah’ in the western world?

Did the ‘dalit groups’, in India, object to the above unpardonable misuse of the word ‘pariah’ in the western world? If so, what social mechanism prevented the ‘due’ success of their efforts?

Hope David Sloan Wilson, in his research, will consider the ‘group-level adaptation’ of the ‘mischievous negative’ meaning of the Tamil word ‘pariah’ in the western world, in spite of the opposition from the ‘pariah’ group in Tamilnadu to the negative employment of the word.

Will the Indian govt take the necessary steps to rescue the Tamil word ‘pariah’ from the ‘Group Theory’ in Modern Algebra of Mathematics?


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