On Dec 13, 2007 5:54 PM, shiv sastry wrote: > You mean I could be as right or as wrong as Daniken? > > Of course you are right. If you choose to believe Daniken, that is your > prerogative. If you don't, it's not Daniken's problem. > > Credibility does not matter a whit in the absence of valid information. > Anything goes. It is the lack of exploration and the comfortable unvalidated > "I'll stay within my box" conclusions that everyone (and that includes you > and me) can reach that seem to be hallmark of Indian intellectualism. >
You mentioned that narratives for "mochis", "darjis" and "chamars" dont exist. Isnt that a flimsy presumption ? Then you have gone on to to make various conclusions, why these narratives dont exist. I am sure if you included the vernacular many such narratives would turn up, not necessarily written by themselves but by other people. I don't know much about vernacular Indian writing, apart from whats been translated, but a lot of vernacular literature has been set to film. A good example is the apu trilogy of films by satyajit ray (even his other work...) based on a series of bengali novels. These films provide narratives and strong characterizations (who can forget the character of the aging, homeless grand aunt....) of different kinds of people (the cuckolded taxi driver in "abhijaan"...)
