The brahmin soul of Economic Times
Something peculiar in today's ET caught my attention.
Pg 4. 'It is patently absurd victory' - TK Arun.
The reporter has this to say about Samsung - 'The company is likely to gloat a bit - as a result of the lawsuit, this one-time maker of cheap synthetic garments is now squarely in the same bracket as the bluest of haloed Silicon Valley blue-chips.'
Hmm.. I smell a Brahminical bias here.. The author suggests that the cheap synthetic garment maker should feel good about the loss because its more than it could have ever hoped for. After all, it came from the low cast profession of making 'cheap synthetic garments'. The fact that it stretched itself out of its impoverished roots is laudable, feels the Brahmin inside Mr. Arun. His spirit still lives in the 20th century India where there were 'low cast professions' and 'high cast professions'; where they myth of who deserved what was continuously spun by the few in the 'upper circles', who looked down on the ones lower down and nodded approvingly, like a good brahmin should, when someone attempted to better himself/herself.
How readily Mr. Arun subscribes to the myth of the 'haloed' blueness of the Silicon valley companies. Are there some racial assumptions at work here? Why was Apple not a 'company started by a college drop-out/ pop-culture messiah of rounded rectangles', but a blue-chip. Or is it a preserve of white Europeans and nobody else, even though discernibly South Koreans are quite fair too. Well, perhaps it must be the blueness of the eye color for Mr. Arun.
His view of technology '...most potent sources of mass emancipation from ignorance...'
Well, I am not disagreeing with his view, but the way he formulates his argument gives away a strong bias at work. 'emancipation from ignorance..' reeks of an attitude that divides the world into 2 levels, where the observer is sitting in the higher level. Big words such as emancipation and ignorance are often used by religious zealots standing on pedestals. Often these words are no more than tools of portraying oneself or his community as hero, who does the noble deed of contemplating to rid the 'ignorance' of the lower classes.
Have I read too much into the whole thing? What do you think?
Pg 4. 'It is patently absurd victory' - TK Arun.
The reporter has this to say about Samsung - 'The company is likely to gloat a bit - as a result of the lawsuit, this one-time maker of cheap synthetic garments is now squarely in the same bracket as the bluest of haloed Silicon Valley blue-chips.'
Hmm.. I smell a Brahminical bias here.. The author suggests that the cheap synthetic garment maker should feel good about the loss because its more than it could have ever hoped for. After all, it came from the low cast profession of making 'cheap synthetic garments'. The fact that it stretched itself out of its impoverished roots is laudable, feels the Brahmin inside Mr. Arun. His spirit still lives in the 20th century India where there were 'low cast professions' and 'high cast professions'; where they myth of who deserved what was continuously spun by the few in the 'upper circles', who looked down on the ones lower down and nodded approvingly, like a good brahmin should, when someone attempted to better himself/herself.
How readily Mr. Arun subscribes to the myth of the 'haloed' blueness of the Silicon valley companies. Are there some racial assumptions at work here? Why was Apple not a 'company started by a college drop-out/ pop-culture messiah of rounded rectangles', but a blue-chip. Or is it a preserve of white Europeans and nobody else, even though discernibly South Koreans are quite fair too. Well, perhaps it must be the blueness of the eye color for Mr. Arun.
His view of technology '...most potent sources of mass emancipation from ignorance...'
Well, I am not disagreeing with his view, but the way he formulates his argument gives away a strong bias at work. 'emancipation from ignorance..' reeks of an attitude that divides the world into 2 levels, where the observer is sitting in the higher level. Big words such as emancipation and ignorance are often used by religious zealots standing on pedestals. Often these words are no more than tools of portraying oneself or his community as hero, who does the noble deed of contemplating to rid the 'ignorance' of the lower classes.
Have I read too much into the whole thing? What do you think?
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