Author: Prof. Bal Ram Singh (UMass Dartmouth)
Publication:
Date: December 19, 2005
Sometimes in November 1988, I suffered from
a minor upset stomach problem (I had slight abdominal discomfort), and visited
my physician, Dr. Vastola, in Madison, WI.
As Dr. Vastola started questioning, he paused
on my answer to his question, "what did you eat yesterday?" I had
replied vegetable curry, rice, and bread. He appeared to have hit some treasure,
further questioned me on the contents of the curry, and upon hearing it contained
all sorts of spices, he immediately pronounced I had ulcer.
"But, Dr. Vastola, my discomfort is towards
the lower part of my stomach. Isn't the ulcer to cause discomfort in the upper
part of the stomach?", I pleaded. Hun… hun.., "why don't you
get this prescription, and see me after three days", he uttered while
leaving the prescription in my hand. I was not sure if he accepted my plea
or ignored it.
I thought whatever he decided must be the
right prescription. After all, he was a trained physician, an expert working
for a famous HMO, and was highly recommended by my friend, Chinmoy Ray, who
had lived in Madison for 10 years before I got there!
When I reported back to Dr. Vastola three
days later that there was no relief from the prescription, he said, "well,
you do not have ulcer then. We need to do more tests."
Since that time, I have become watchful of
experts, experts in politics, economics, sociology, religion, computers, education,
science, etc., etc. who shove their ideas through public throat. And if we
had to calculate a correlation of experts and world's health, economic, social,
religious, and political problems, I bet the correlation coefficient would
be over 0.95. The world seems to be suffering from hyper expertise problem
(HEP).
Earlier this year, Professor Amartya Sen,
a Nobel Prize economics expert at Harvard, faced `Annie Hall' moment when
he displayed HEP at a meeting in Hong Kong praising the communist China's
state medical system under the cultural revolution.
Sen in his usual self-righteous style was
treading along very well with facts and figures on infant mortality and life
expectancy, especially in comparison to India, when suddenly was confronted
by Weijian Shan, who had actually lived through the Cultural Revolution in
China as one of Mao's "barefoot doctors".
According to an article in February 22, 2005
Wall Street Journal entitled, "A Nobel Prize-winning economist spouts
off, and a Chinese survivor sets him straight", Shan is quoted as saying
"I observed with my eyes the total absence of medicine in some parts
of China. The system was totally unsustainable, we used to admire India."
On September 2005, HEP was again at display
in Saudi Arabia, when the US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy,
Ms. Karen Hughes, addressed a 500 strong women audience at a Saudi Dar Al-Hekma
College in an effort to impart some American values and expert advice, with
"driving car was an important part of my freedom." She had earful
from those burqua-clad women, thought to be backwards by centuries.
"I don't want to drive a car," said
Dr. Siddiqa Kamal, an obstetrician and gynecologist who runs her own hospital.
"I worked hard for my medical degree. Why do I need a driver's license?"
"The general image of the Arab woman is that she isn't happy," one
audience member said. "Well, we're all pretty happy." The room,
full of students, faculty members and some professionals, resounded with applause.
Very recently HEP raised its ugly head again
in California when a German linguist, Michael Witzel, a professor at Harvard's
Sanskrit and Indian Studies department claiming expertise in Indian history,
culture, and religion, interjected himself into the issue of sixth grade textbook
portrayal of India in general, and Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists, in
particular.
While concerned parents, community educational
organizations, and education experts, had worked out a reasonably acceptable
text for social studies books, Witzel along with several of his like minded
colleagues (including Stanely Wolpert whose sensational books were banned
by Indian government during Indira Gandhi's days, and D. N. Jha, whose book
on beef eating in India was banned by Indian courts in 2001) wrote a letter
to the California Board of Education (CBE), berating Hindus, Hindu scholars,
and Indian Americans, urging "to reject the demands of nationalist Hindu
("Hindutva") groups that the California textbooks be altered to
conform to their religious political views."
Witzel represents a group of remaining colonialist
scholars who are trying to hold on to their view of superior Aryan race, a
view that has been decimated within the past decade by a group of very dedicated
individuals like N. S. Rajaram, S. Kalyanraman, and David Frawley. They have
collected more effective scientific and archeological evidences, as opposed
to linguistics and speculative history, to refute the existences of Aryan
race, ever. BBC recently reported that the Aryan Invasion Theory among other
things "provided basis for racism in the Imperial context by suggesting
that the peoples of Northern India were descended from invaders from Europe
and so racially closer to the British Raj".
