cogito ergo sum, in Latin, to mean I think therefore I am.
The expose by the scholars and participants from 20 countries help to convince those who were still hesitant about the need for efforts to decolonise universities – still very much Eurocentric – in Asia and Africa that the knowledge they had been “brainwashed” into believing as being universal was not universal at all and based on false assumptions.
It was also meant to provoke re-thinking about the assumptions they had made based on discoveries and ideas of western scholars published in western academic journals, that nothing should be accepted as universal truth without careful scrutiny.
The West seems reluctant to acknowledge scholars from India, China, Africa and those from the Muslim world and promotes the idea that the Bologna monastic school was the first university.
Thus, few know about the great universities of Taxila, Nalanda, Zaytuna and Nanjing which preceded Bologna.
... the conference agreed that while the physical colonisation is long gone – hopefully so, said some – the mental colonisation is very much alive.
Thus the call for the need to purge the “West in us” before efforts to decolonise can truly begin.
http://www.thesundaily.my/news/65758
An inquiring mind will set you free
While the physical colonisation ended with the lowering of the Union Jack on Aug 31, 1957, the colonisation of the mind has not ended.
The West is clever at explaining and rationalising discoveries made by non-Europeans which it copied. They use the word modern for something they took from us. Thus the redevelopment of the movable type printing press by Johannes Guttenberg in 1436 was called modern to differentiate it from the one invented by the Chinese almost 400 years earlier.
There were many cases of Westerners taking the discoveries of Easterners without acknowledging them. Yes, they stole. But they would scream blue murder if any Easterner today were to use their discoveries without acknowledging it.
Some of our minds are so completely colonised that we find it difficult to believe that Europeans plagiarised our discoveries but would not hesitate to condemn any of us who has been suspected of “stealing” the work of a Westerner.
By being critical and unwilling to accept something without question, we may discover that much of what we know – our knowledge – has been based on wrong assumptions and basis.
Mohan: So what can we do?
Zain: Question. Why is a university divided into faculties? Africa and Asia had universities long before the first European university was established in Bologna in 1088. How were the pre-European universities of Africa and Asia divided? Why do we structure our campuses the way the Europeans do? Is there any other way? Already there are some experiments going on in certain campuses in Africa? And then there is the Swaraj University experiment in India.
Mohan: Are we going about this independent of the West?
Zain: No. The idea is to work together. The Westerners too have to critically examine what they have in place. It is going to take a long time, but the conference in Penang is a start.
http://www.thesundaily.my/news/75912
Follow Up:
Human Failings Not The Issue (The Sun Daily, 20th July 2011)
The declared church policy since Orosius (4th c.) was that it was moral to tell lies to benefit the church. That is, after the church combined with the state, it used false history as an instrument of mind control.
the false history built by the Church continues to be institutionally maintained today. One of my proposals at the conference was the creation of forums for an open debate on history and philosophy of science, not mediated by the heavy arm of Western authority.
Decades after political independence, countries like India and Malaysia have few institutions to re-examine this history which was the source of their mental bondage. So we need a lot more of such attempts, not less for a level debate to be possible.
C.K. Raju, Visiting Professor
School of Mathematical Science, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang
http://www.usm.my/images/stories/20_Julai_2011_-_Human_failings_The_Sun.jpg
Show us the evidence
Raju must in his own words defend his assertions, "History must be based on evidence".
Patrick C. Augustin, 15 August 2011
Kuala Lumpur
http://www.thesundaily.my/news/111372
East, west, what’s best
From what has appeared in the press, most if not all, our problems are with the western-initiated and we in the east are unfortunate victims; but, given another chance, we can do much better.
K. J. John, 18 August 2011
http://www.thesundaily.my/news/115917
