Something that I stumbled into

Tata, Prasad (PrasadT@MOCR.OAPI.COM)
Mon, 28 Jul 1997 08:36:52 -0400 

Please read this article, If you find it's worth reading, do circulate
>   this article to others.  Adam Osborne is the guy who invented the first
>   microcomputer bus called S-100.  He's one of the two that started Apple
>   computers (the other is Steve Jobs).
>
>   This article was printed in Dataquest magazine in the April 91 issue.
>
>   It was written by Adam Osborne, who is the director of Silicon Valley
>   Technologies and publisher of a monthly newsletter "From the Fountainhead"
>
>   ---- BEGIN -----
>
>   I was raised in Tamil Nadu in South India, in the ashram of Sri Ramana
>   Maharishi, of an English father and a Polish mother.  Both were dedicated
>   followers of Sri Ramana Maharishi.  Therefore as a child growing up in the
>    small town of Tiruvannamalai, Tamilnadu.  I was fluent in Tamil and was
>   surrounded by Indians who were proud of their nationality and heritage,
>   and believed they had a lot to teach us Europeans.
>
>   I still speak enough Tamil to get by, and feel that my roots are indeed in
>   India. I must be only professed "vellackaaren" (=3Dwhite) Tamilian in
>   America.  After all, how could anyone, even an English boy, grown up in
>   Tiruvannamalai, in the ashram of Sri Ramana Maharishi, and not acquire a
>   pride in his roots?  It is therefore with some misgivings that today I
>   find myself dealing with Indians, many of who do not feel proud of their
>   Indianness.  Indian Americans represent the most affluent minority in
>   America, ahead of Jewish Americans and Japanese americans.  This is a
>   statistic and not an opinion.
>
>   Indians swarm all over the Silicon valley, where they are an integral part
>   of most product development teams: be they teams developing new
>   semiconductor chips, software packages or computers.  Indians are
>   recognized throughout America as technically superior.  No Indian in
>   America has to explain his educational background, or apologize for his
>   technical training. And yet, as a group, though Indian Americans are quick
>   to acknowledge their caste, religion or family, they lack national pride.
>
>   Indians are not proud of their nationality as Indians, something I
>   realized many years ago, Something that puzzled me.  Recently, talking
>   before Indian audiences on the lecture circuit, I have frequently talked
>   to Indians of their lack of national pride, with telling results.
>   Invariably, after making this assertion from the lecture podium, I find
>   myself surrounded by Indians: Engineers, Scientists, doctors, even
>   lawyers, all asserting the correctness of my observations, "You are
>   correct," they will assert. "I am not proud that I am an Indian." Is the
>   reasons India's colonial heritage?  Who knows?  But whatever the reason,
>   it is a pity. Since the day Indians learn pride, India will rapidly move
>   out of its third world status to become one of the world's industrial
>   powers.
>
>   Today I work with an Indian American, trying to help him make his dream
>   come true.  And in the process, make my own dream come true, since I have
>   hitched my dream to his.  Then, with my dream realized, I will return to
>   India, to preach Indian pride: not pride in being a Hindu, or practicing
>   Islam or being a Parsee, or a Sikh: not pride in being a Tamilian, or a
>   Telugu, or a Punjabi, or a Marwari; not pride in being a Brahmin rather
>   than a lesser caste.
>
>   These are all divisive differences that India would be better off without.
>   But I will preach that Indians must learn to be proud of being Indians
>   just as Singapore nationals are proud of their nationality, irrespective
>   of their race or their religion.  Then there will be no more shoddy Indian
>    products, since every worker will generate output with the stamp of a
>   proud man on it.  With self-evident quality that screams out: "That is the
>   work of an Indian!"  And corruption will decline.
>
>   For, although bribes are solicited by greedy, dishonest men, as well as by
>   men who do not earn enough to feed themselves and their families, and even
>   though these root causes of corruption transcend the bases of lack of
>   Indian pride of which I speak, nevertheless a proud man will pause, more
>   than a man without pride, before extending his hand to receive a bribe.
>
>   And a proud Indian will try harder to be responsible for products and
>   services that others will praise.
>
>   AND IT IS IN THAT PRAISE THAT INDIA'S FUTURE INDUSTRIAL GREATNESS LIES.
>
>   - Adam Osborne
>
>
>


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