Hacker News Reader

Comment by causality0 | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

From their bio: “My dissertation was a linguistic and cultural examination of disability as portrayed in Medieval Icelandic genre of the Sagas and Þættir of Icelanders.”

If they weren’t a professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, you’d think this was straight out of Portlandia.

What's so weird about that?

Studying how a specific ancient culture potrayed and felt about disability seems like a reasonable thing to study.

Sure, maybe its not as immediately useful as say science, but if you are going to study ancient cultures, analyzing the writings they left behind is one of the main ways to do it.

If it's not immediately useful, at what point in the future will it become useful?

Probably never.

What kind of an anemic society do you want to live in, that everyone should only be an expert on capital-P Profitable subjects?

It's not that it's unprofitable. It's that it's un-interesting.

It's not interesting now, and will never be interesting. It was selected as a topic because it hit the right buzzwords, and nobody will ever read it out of genuine interest. Nobody will re-think their worldview from the conclusions.

We live in a massive universe, in the most exciting time in human history. There are a thousand times more topics to research than there will ever be people or time to do so. To pick a pointless dissertation topic in this open, vast universe of potential is a profound waste of human potential. It's sad.

> It's not interesting now, and will never be interesting

You’re writing off Icelandic culture as having nothing useful to suggest to modern civilisation. Given their parliament is the oldest continuously-operating one in the world, I’d say you’re dead wrong. What’s sad is that you’re dismissing books you haven’t read. Which is ironically pertinent to this article—it’s what India has been doing.

> Nobody will re-think their worldview from the conclusions.

Did you read their dissertation? How do you know?

> It was selected as a topic because it hit the right buzzwords, and nobody will ever read it out of genuine interest

I don't think that is true. How societies balance group needs versus individual needs, especially for individuals with unique needs or who may not be able to contribute in the same way as most is a pretty perenial question.

Certainly in the greek context people have talked and argued about sparta's alleged harsh attitude towards disabled people since forever. Like its a pretty pernial source of debate, and has echoes in more modern movements such as eugenics in the 1900s thousands of years later.

All that is to say. This isn't a particularly buzzwordy topic. Most computer science disertations are more buzwordy than this.

I consider history to be useful right now. The past influences the present and guides the future. I meant immediate as in like instructions on how to build a car.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a shitbird (with all respect to Mr Lahey) but it seems to be a moot point given that these collections can be digitized and indexed, opening them up to far more people than a few hundred thousand physical copies would have, especially for researchers who need to search vast collections.

Indian universities (and the American ones with the collections) should fund a full digitization program. It’s not like the collections are closed to researchers and all of the money for the purchases went right back to the Indian economy.

I believe the term is appropriate. Not only would the books have mostly disappeared due to local conditions, they can indeed be, and often are, digitized.

Instead, we have a professor who seems to feel obligated to gaslight the US and portray it as “colonialist” even in the face of incredible outcomes of public policy.

Millions of Indians escaped starvation thanks to this policy and an astounding body of knowledge survived and was consequently studied, helping elevate Indian culture in academic circles. But no matter, this created “knowledge gaps”.

The conclusion that this "created knowledge gaps" seems particularly inapt. If American universities had not purchased these particular books, they would have most likely been lost just like the rest of their respective print runs. The "knowledge gap" would have been even worse, as no one at all would have had access to those books.

Also mind you, this is coming from an academic. Yet there’s no proof being brought to the argument that this gap does exist and they’re not saying “may or might”, they’re making what appears to be a purely ideological statement.

There's certainly a hypothetical universe where American universities didn't buy these books, and they were instead acquired by Indian libraries which managed to preserve them. But that isn't our universe, and there's no clear means by which the US could brought it about.

>Instead, we have a professor who seems to feel obligated to gaslight the US and portray it as “colonialist” even in the face of incredible outcomes of public policy.

I'm not talking about this particular case right now, although I may comment separately about it a little later, but the US did have a colonial past. See:

European_colonization_of_the_Americas:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_colonization_of_the...

From that article, the 7th or so paragraph, highlighting is mine:

>Violent conflicts arose during the beginning of this period as indigenous peoples fought to preserve their territorial integrity from increasing European colonizers and from hostile indigenous neighbors who were equipped with Eurasian technology. Conflict between the various European empires and the indigenous peoples was a leading dynamic in the Americas into the 1800s, although some parts of the continent gained their independence from Europe by then, countries such as the United States continued to fight against Native Americans and practiced settler colonialism. The United States for example practiced a settler colonial policy of Manifest Destiny and the Trail of Tears.

And links from that paragraph:

Settler_colonialism:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settler_colonialism

The graphic after the first paragraph there (labelled "Graphic depicting the loss of Native American land to U.S. settlers in the 19th century"), is, well, graphic. See all that blue area disappearing?

Manifest destiny:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

Trail of Tears:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears

Also see:

Banana republic:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic

Also see:

Philippines:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines

Under the History section there, see this sub-section:

Spanish and American colonial rule (1565–1934).

A link from there:

Philippine–American War:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine%E2%80%93American_...

We're perfectly aware of this, just as we're aware a large part of the starvation the US was saving Indians from was due to decades of the British forcing them to grow cash crops instead of food. An American collection of Indian works is no more a "colonial library" than an American collection of Irish works or of Canadian works.

I may reply more comprehensively later, but a few points for now:

>decades of the British forcing

JFC. A few centuries, is more like it. That's how long the Brits enslaved India(ns) for, which could happen at all, and then continue, due to multiple reasons on both sides, including, as one interesting reason, some Indian groups (think small "kingdoms") backstabbing others, and colluding with the British, which is why Alexander won over Porus, it is said in some history books.

Maybe check British colonial history and history of India, in obvious places such as Wikipedia and Britannica (ironically, for the latter).

Also read about Winston Churchill and the Bengal famine, in which millions died, but don't just limit yourself to Wikipedia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhusree_Mukerjee#cite_note...

http://www.madhusree.com/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill%27s_Secret_War

There, did some of your homework for you.

And let's not forget:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

which you too seem to display in your comment, at least going by:

>the starvation the US was saving Indians from

Sure, they may have saved them from it (I was a kid at the time, too young to look it up in depth, but I vaguely remember reading / hearing something about it, including some newspaper scandals about the quality of some of the food supplied by the US - milo is one term I somewhat recollect, but I don't know the details), but they did not necessarily do it (only) for noble or altruistic intentions.

I would not be surprised if there was some quid pro quo demanded or made a condition for the help, as often is the case when the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund gave financial aid to developing countries in times of crisis.

In fact I just did a quick google or two, and this is one link I found:

Ghost of PL-480 Returns as India Avoids the Wheat Trap All Over Again:

https://www.news18.com/news/opinion/ghost-of-pl-480-returns-...

And one more for you, for the new year:

US Raising 'Human Rights in India' is Like the Pot Calling the Kettle Black

https://www.news18.com/news/opinion/us-raising-human-rights-...

And let's not forget that the wrecked state of many such countries was at least in "good" part one of the results of European colonialism. The United States itself was earlier one such colony, as you know. Heard of the Boston tea party?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party

I have been to Boston, BTW, and have eaten at Legal Seafoods and other places in downtown Boston. Nice town. I liked the architecture of some of the historical public buildings. I think one of them was the Public Library.

And one final one for you:

History of the Central Intelligence Agency:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Central_Intel...

That is a long and very interesting article. It also has links to more detailed articles on many of the sub topics.

Apart from general background information, it has many paragraphs about the way the CIA interfered in the affairs of many countries, including some famous examples that many people outside the US are well aware of.

"and saved Indians from starving to death with 340 million metric tons of food aid"

No, theres more complexity to the story. Do some research on what caused famine in India and how there's more questions around Churchill and WW2 influences.

Start with https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/29/asia/churchill-bengal-fam... (Churchill’s policies to blame for millions of Indian famine deaths, study says) , which IIRC references https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018... (Drought and Famine in India, 1870–2016)

Also watch the documentary "Bengal Tigers": https://youtube.com/watch?v=T31MFNLJKJw

Churchill's famine is a different story altogether from the famines stated in the article though. Churchill's famines were directly a result of food exports to the rest of the Commonwealth while India starved. On the contrary, these famines mentioned in the article were often the usual in India at the time. While the Northern plains are very fertile, there is also a strong "luck" element that depends on the timing of rains and the monsoon season. Getting them wrong was often the reason for a large number of famines across the country. The southern part of India is largely mountain plateau and jungle and agriculturally poor, hence they often relied on imports from the north.

What really changed the equation for India was the Green Revolution, which happened because the first PM, Jawaharlal Nehru (a figure the current govt loves to denigrate and pin all their faults on), invited Norman Borlaug to replicate his Mexican success story for India.

Consider reading critiques of the Green Revolution, such as 'The Globalization of Wheat' https://upittpress.org/books/9780822947349/

I would say M.S. Swaminathan as the father of Green revolution in India.

MS Swaminathan worked and learnt under Borlaug. I'd like to think of them as hammer and anvil - Swaminathan is the hammer who worked out the implementation on the village level, but without Borlaug the anvil present to provide the technology, would have had his hands tied.

The CNN article references the Bengal famine of 1943, specifically prioritizing food delivery to military personnel during WW2. The Food for Peace Act of came into effect in 1954.

Fair point, but I wonder how much that event led to international support that mightve been well intentioned but also with potential issues, thinking more in the context of the Green Revolution (Norman borlaug documentary https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/man-who-tr... ) and critiques of it ( see 'The Globalization of Wheat' https://upittpress.org/books/9780822947349/ )

Yes, the British starved millions to death. What does that have to do with an American program?

> but Michelson-Ambelang calls it a "colonial archive"

Didn't FDR pressure Churchill to give India independence ? It would make sense if the archive is in Briton.

Shitbird is some strong word, but yeah that is a very weird take. If anything, a food shortage is a much more urgent problem than a book shortage.

Yeah, as that program was the only reason a lot of these books survived. Manuscripts were specifically excluded, so the reason copies don’t survive in India was that they literally let them all rot.

Eliminating this program would just have meant global knowledge gaps.

Not really. But I understand your outrage as you only have partial information - the western media often has a tendency to whitewash their foreign policy to show themselves as "benevolent" to poor and developing nations, when in fact most of it seeks to take advantage of weaker nations.

In all this "tit for tat" convoluted policies, like the PL-480 for India, it is easy to miss the fact that the US, one of the wealthiest nation in the world even in the 50's and 60's, was asking India, then an impoverished nation, to pay for the wheat they supplied to it.

> A key event took place in 1943 that extended India’s food shortage until the early 1950s. In 1943, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered foodgrains meant for eastern parts of the country to be diverted to the British troops engaged in World War II. It resulted in a man-made famine in Bengal and the deaths of millions of people ... India signed a long-term Public Law (PL) 480 agreement to get food aid under Government agricultural trade development assistance, with the US in 1954. The agreement was signed a few more times before the US ended it in the late 1960s as Lal Bahadur Shastri and then Indira Gandhi were not willing to make policy changes, especially to allow privatisation of the industrial sector, in return for food aid. > > ... Food aid under PL480 not only drew flak but some critics pointed out that the wheat sent to India was “fit enough only for pigs!”. It was termed as a great insult that was to linger for long in people’s memory. Despite repeated pleas, the US gave only “a small quantity of rice” to India.

(How India overcame food emergency, attained self-sufficiency (August 2022) - https://web.archive.org/web/20240616192936/https://www.thehi... ).

> Now, the US wants India to export its wheat to other parts of the world amidst rising prices due to the Ukraine war whereas India is avoiding falling into the wheat trap all over again ... In 1954, then US President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched the Public Law 480 (PL-480) ... It was an initiative to offload all the excess wheat that the US had cultivated with price support. The US also started using it as a tool of diplomacy, because when another nation is dependent on you for its food, you can easily compel it into submission ... It was however realised by India in the mid-1960s that American food supplies came with strings attached and were being used as a means of diplomatic interference. At one point, the US even came close to rejecting wheat shipments to India, which threatened to push the country to the brink of famine. > > ... Six decades after the PL-480 controversy broke out between the two countries, India and the US find themselves at a crossroads over the staple commodity all over again. This time around, India imposed restrictions on its wheat exports ... India has restricted exports in the background of a persistent heatwave and lack of rain compelling officials to lower wheat output estimates ... However, the US, Germany and other G-7 countries have been critical of India’s stance. They are arguing that the restrictions on wheat exports could worsen the current food crisis in the world. Asking India to export wheat on the terms and conditions set by the Western world for its own advantage is more of a condescending attempt to tell the country that it somehow owes the sole responsibility to relax the soaring global prices. The richer nations, therefore, want India to do most of the heavy lifting ... This is in sharp contrast to Washington’s own track record. Remember, the US could have left India in a severe food crisis in the 1960s had New Delhi not managed to augment agricultural production within time. At that time, the US was motivated by its self-interest and India’s refusal to take sides between the USSR and the US. Today, India isn’t abandoning its moral responsibility, yet the US is sermonising it over wheat exports.

(Ghost of PL-480 Returns as India Avoids the Wheat Trap All Over Again (May 2022) - https://web.archive.org/web/20220525074511/https://www.news1... )

The only kind thing I have to say about the PL-480 or the "food for peace" program is that the American politicians taught us Indians a very valuable lesson - the need to become self-reliant to stave off exploitation. (Ironically, when it comes to people to people relationship, ordinary Indians and Americans really hit it off and work well together - for e.g. India's space, nuclear and even agricultural programs owes a lot to American scientists and thinkers. But this still hasn't translated to a close political relationships because Indian and American politicians just don't see eye to eye).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com