What is your proof of the existence and more importantly of the relevance of any difference in “population IQ” between India and China?
I’d like an answer to BG’s question as well.
It might inform the discussion here to consider this response by MacKenzie to Tharoors assertions.
It addresses some of the points covered here.
"Viewpoint: Why Britain does not owe reparations to India
At the end of May, the Oxford Union held a debate on the motion “This house believes Britain owes reparations to her former colonies”. Speakers included Indian politician and writer Shashi Tharoor and British historian John MacKenzie. Mr Tharoor’s argument in support of the motion has found favour among many Indians, where the subject of colonial exploitation remains a sore topic. Here, Professor MacKenzie, who spoke against the motion, offers his views.
Snipped for copyright purposes.
The Koh-i-Noor diamond is a strange example for Mr Tharoor to use. It is surely absolutely symbolic of some unproductive aspects of Hinduism, as well as the power of earlier elites who had oppressed India just as much as the British.
John MacKenzie is emeritus professor of imperial history at Lancaster University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh"
Moderator’s Note: Filmstar, please don’t quote entire articles. Provide a link and a quote instead.
Re: this - to your knowledge, has the UK government formally apologized for its imperialist past?
That would be an invitation for a procession of tin pot nationalists to send invoices in the hope that their personal Swiss bank accounts would be topped up.
Never apologise, never explain is the political maxim that comes to mind.
I believe Blair apologised for not helping enough to relieve the Irish Potato Famine, but that was probably a diplomatic gesture intended to support the wider project for constitutional settlement with the Irish state regarding Northern Ireland.
I cannot see that any British politician worth his salt would expend political capital on gestures like official apologies unless there was some clear reward for doing so. I daresay there are unofficial apologies and gestures by minor politicians. Ken Livingston was quite keen on that sort of thing.
The world of academic historians is quite different, their conclusions often have little political consequence, though their research does help to explain historical events and explain some puzzling decisions.
There is no escaping the fact the history of civilisation correlates closely with the formation of empires in one form or another. So it is appropriate to understand how they worked.
I wonder if some academic would indeed set about the interesting project to compile a matrix of nations and empires. Then apportion a measure of moral culpability to each negative event such as famines, wars, genocides, etc. Then the same for some credit for each positive benefit: mobility of ideas and people, political stability, the building of infrastructure, civil and government institutions and so on.
That would keep them busy for quite some time.
Actually Cameron did ‘express regret’ for the Amritsar massacre when visiting India.
Not quite an official apology, I am guessing that is because that would open the floodgates to a cascade of speculative legal claims.
The article explains his probable political reasons for making the gesture.
Brain Glutton India took the PISA test a few years ago, which correlates pretty well with previously published IQ scores. Their PISA score was second to last, ahead only of Kyrgyzstan, and well below all of Latin America, North America or Europe. Only two relatively high-HDI states took it, TN and Himachal Pradesh, so the average Indian score would have been even lower still. Indian iq / education levels are really abysmal.
Well it is interesting to hear that the reason China has a more successful economy than India is because it has been winning international peeing contests based on surveys of progress of 15 year old school students.
I suggest you look at some of the critiques of PISA tests. As for IQ, that is a dubious concept that does not bear much examination.
I think it might have more to do with politics and economic policy rather which country can contrive the most austere examination Hell for their young students.
India has an underperforming economy and the reason for that lies not in its education system, but in large part because of the systems of patronage and corruption that have been allowed to persist. China deals with corruption very severely, when it is exposed. India, in contrast, seems not to mind so much and regularly attracts politicians with criminal backgrounds who can win votes. Their looting of public purse is widely tolerated and increases the gap between rich and poor. It is a serious weakness.
Did the British really ‘drain’ Wealth from India?
My answer is certainly in the initial East India Company phase as they gradually took over from the Murghal rulers. Less so under the British Raj from 1858 to 1948 (for the parts of the country they controlled directly.) But that pales into oblivion compared to the political class who drain the wealth of India to this day.
Will there be any reparations for this historical wrongdoing? Well, to be fair, you would have to put a value on the assets that the British left behind in their long association with India and do some kind of reconciliation. But that seems an impractical task, politically difficult and the public would see little benefit from it. Besides, the original Murghal kingdoms, like the British Raj, are now long gone.
I don’t think you can really regard China as free of corruption. It’s more a case of the corruption having been legalized and built into the system.
A lot of businesses in China are owned by branches of the Chinese government. My understanding is that when western corporations are starting up business ventures in China, they’re encouraged to have some Chinese government agency join in as a local partner. So you’ll have something like the Chinese Post Office owning a 25% interest in a electronics company. The idea is that the westerners provide the capital and the business expertise while the Chinese government agency acts as a local patron and looks out for the business’ interests in the political arena.
So, I had to track that down myself, because you didn’t actually provide a link. And I think it’s even more clear that you aren’t actually reading the thread, because any normal person would have gone back and provided the link after the mod edit. So, you don’t actually read any of the responses to you and just keep posting the same ignorant, racist crap over and over.
MacKenzie’s statement is full of paternalistic, racist crap interspersed with factual statements. But, here’s what’s funny about you posting this. Despite all the racist crap in the statement, it actually supports me and not you in many ways. It’s just that Mackenzie is so blinkered in his racism, he doesn’t actually realize that he’s supporting my position.
Just as a reminder to everyone, filmstar-en is completely ignorant of basic facts about the colonial period. He’s like someone who thinks “2+2=5” giving us a lecture on mathematics.
Well, despite the student heckling in the background, this has been an interesting discussion for me.
The nationalist v imperialist debate over the economy of India has been going on since 1900, it is indeed an old chestnut.
The arguments are discussed on from page 21 of this document.
However, I am still puzzled at what point the British should have withdrawn from India for economic reasons. It seems to have been of marginal economic benefit and by the 1930s it was becoming a liability, requiring much more investment than could be supplied.
I guess the Great Depression and the Gold Standard economic instability played a part.
Uh, no, IQ is not a ‘dubious concept’. Most intelligence tests correlate reasonably well with each other, which suggests that they’re indicative of some common principal component, g. If you were going to hire an engineer with an IQ or 110 or one of 120, other things being equal, which would you pick?
The one that fit better in with the others in the office. I have hired engineers, and just bringing up your IQ score in an interview is going to be a rather dubius move for someone who wants to be hired.
IQ was originally contrived to separate the old medical categories of mental retardation where the IQ numbers are very low indeed. It separated Imbeciles, Morons and Idiots in the days when medical treatment for the mentally challenged was quite undeveloped.
While it may or may not have been useful at that end of scale, it was adopted as an arbitrary measure of cognitive ability for the purposes of restricting access to educational institutions and professional jobs. Intelligence has lots of definitions and IQ tests refer only to a very narrow set of skills. It is little more than a peeing contest for puzzle jockeys.
If I was going to hire an engineer, I would hire one who has good engineering problem solving ability and who does not appear to be an asshole.
I’m aware of that. Nevertheless IQ does correlate with whatever reasonable measure of intelligence you look for, and the reality is that Indians are a very, very low intelligence group.
Well, here’s where we part ways, because this is just racist claptrap. IQ is an imperfect measure of intelligence, and is a small piece of the puzzle when determining intelligence characteristics. We simply don’t know enough about how human intelligence develops for IQ to be a meaningful metric.
Yawn. Learn something about the topic at hand, and maybe you won’t be called out on your nonsense.
I don’t see that this is such a convincing argument. Them’s elites might have been bastards, but they were *their *bastards. And, drain-wise, when they died the plundered wealth stayed in the country rather than staying in a wind-swept island thousands of miles away.
What does the Kohinoor have to do with ‘hinduism’?
I’m no fan of the Hindu religion to say the least, but the diamond was owned by Muslims or Sikhs for most of its history (though I think technically it was last legally bequeathed to a Hindu temple).
No blessed clue.