Caste

(A) Consider the following sequence of sentences: All Indians are perfectly and fully moral. All westerners are perfectly fully moral. All Indians are immoral. All westerners are immoral. For sentences (1) and (2), all it takes is one instance of immorality to be proven wrong. Our proverbial municipal clerk would be immoral, and it would disprove the sentence (1). The same example could also …

One of the striking things about the British colonial rule is its success in developing certain ways of talking about the Indian culture and society. The British criticised the Indian ‘religions’, the Indian ‘caste system’, the Indian education system, practices like ‘sati’ and ‘untouchability’, and so on and so forth. They redrew the outlines of Indian intellectual history as indigenous responses …

A question: Is it desirable to have a model that can simulate social and cultural changes? I cannot see what good reason there is not to find it desirable. It would be eminently desirable. It will take some time though before we get there, but we will surely get there. Thanks to computers, we have a possibility of talking realistically about simulation. However, we have to still go a very long way …