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?
