Brothers in arms, but the family is splitting

Lawrence Summers and “Cho” Ramaswamy. And, it appears that Mr. “Cho” is the elder.

On January 14, 2005 what Mr Summers, the then president of Harvard University, said at a conference sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research – “Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce: Women, Underrepresented Minorities, and their S[cience] & E[ngineering] Careers” stirred the hornets nest. He suggested / said / understood to have said / implied that women have vacancies in their heads: One of the three possible explanations for the “higher proportion of men in high-end science and engineering positions” could be "the different availability of aptitude at the high end". He further mentioned that these are issues of “intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude." He discounted cultural factors that could have led to adverse selection in this matter. He argued that discrimination was economically unlikely because it would put institutions at a disadvantage compared to institutions that did not discriminate – economic Darwinism but conveniently forgetting that there are shades of slavery. And he dismissed socialization, claiming that research shows that it is rarely a factor in anything anyone thinks it is – no golfing buddies in academic and research circles.

Mr. Summers should have known, and I am sure he did, that even a hint at howsoever “high end” of genetic determinacy, X-X or X-Y pairing of sex chromosomes driving mathematical, science and engineering intelligence, would be vehemently resisted within the university and in the wider world. And, it was. He was eventually forced out, the next year. But, as luck would have it, Mr. Summers landed a plum posting with the Obama administration - Director of the White House's National Economic Council. As far as I know, he has been silent on this sensitive matter ever since.

Now, fast forward nearly four and a half years, to June 5, 2009. In the “Enge Brahmanan?” episode on Jaya TV of that day, I heard Mr. “Cho” say in the farcical “dialogue” mode something like women are weaker, they need to be protected, they do not have a steady mind, they tend to succumb to temptations, etc. Though the episode is vintage this year, the novel the serial is based on is a few years old, and must predate Mr. Summers’ utterances in a similar vein. Sure, Mr. “Cho” was taking the words out of a story ostensibly told by Bhishma Pitahma on the sidelines of the Mahabharat story, so to say. But, the story line of the serial makes it crystal clear that as per the writer the parameters as regards women are still the same. Women are still of an unstable mind and of a weak body. Double whammy.

If you Googled “Enge Brahmanan?”, you get about 7,500 listings. I can vouch that one of them, a blog of mine, is very critical of the serial. But many others, numbering in hundreds, are appreciative of Mr. “Cho’s” efforts to pull up the Tamil Brahmin community and to instill in it a sense of self-pride. Mr. “Cho” is a Tamil Brahmin. I do not know the show's TRPs but whatever it is getting must be impressive, at least from the point of view of disposable income, given how small the Tamil Brahmin community is.

So, what we have come to is this: Mr. Summers is keeping his wise counsel to himself, though after the fact, and is silent on the mental capabilities of women. But, Mr. “Cho” does not feel bound by such caution. He is shouting his regressive positions from the roof tops and it is most unfortunate that people are listening to him.

Why is Mr. “Cho” the elder? On a number of counts: he is older. Two, the supposedly scriptural precedents of his arguments predate the ideas Mr. Summers takes recourse to, including recent research. Three, Mr. “Cho” has served in the Rajya Sabha of the Indian parliament, the house of the “elders”. On this point, I would like to ask whether it is a reasonable premise that had he been required to vote to introduce a constitutional amendment regarding reservation of seats for women, he would have voted “No.”

This is a dysfunctional family. The younger sibling is not paying heed to what the elder is saying. Mr. Summers, by being silent on the statements he had made is refusing to traverse the path of enlightenment. This is indeed bad, but not as bad as actively guiding people onto a beaten and rotten path, as Mr. “Cho” is doing. This is where I see the family splitting. One branch is, de facto and marginally, progressive while the other is regressive to the core.

But there is a silver lining to the cloud: Harvard chose a woman as its next president, listening to neither of the brothers.

Raghuram Ekambaram