Vatsan’s Ramblings

I was reading Richard Feynman’s Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track. The excerpt below speaks for itself. He clearly explains why superiority ascribed to anyone owing to his heritage is a dangerous way of thinking.

Growing up, I always used to hear things like “South Indians are smarter” or that “Brahmins are more successful”. I belonged in  both categories, and often, these statements were made by others who also belonged in the same flock – parents, relatives etc. At one point, I remember very much believing in this attitude, and also espousing it to others. That was probably up until middle school – when I was living either in places that were not Southern India, or were not very much dense in people who would call themselves Hindu Brahmins.  

This rhetoric was often followed by examples of promimently successful people who belonged to one category or another – and cleverly failing to show examples of the numerous people who didn’t fit into this category who were also successful, and the ones that did fit these categories and yet were miserable failures.

I suspect that I started changing my opinions around upper-middle school and high school – when my family was living in Tuticorin – a small port-town in Tamil Nadu. I was surrounded by couple of brilliant kids who didn’t fit this stereotype at all, and I just didn’t buy the “it’s admirable that they are so smart, intelligent and well mannered despite their birth” opinion coming from the proponents of this prejudicial form or thinking. 

I hated moving to Tuticorin – and was very much unhappy about the several experiences I had to endure, esp. studying in a very (Hindu) religious oriented middle/high school. But in hindsight, it might have been one of the best things to happen to me – I started to shed the venomous skin of the oh-so-subtle indoctrinations of prejudicial thought.