Re: [LIG] [ilugd] [off-topic not] vision of an enlightened indian mystic on copyleft

On 9/8/07, Linux Lingam <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Indian Philosohical view??
> > If Indian spirituality and mysticism is your definition ->
> >
> > copyright -> ownership
> >
> > Did we ever talked of owning anything amidst this 'maya' and 'mithya'??
> >
> > ;-)
> >
> > anand
>
> excellent point, anand.
> we tend to gloss over the indian and indic-vision on ownership,
> copyrights, and sharing knowledge.
> venky from redhat has spoken, blogged, and otherwise written several
> times about this disconnect. vandana shiva of naudanya has also done
> considerable work in this area.


the matter is not as simple as it *appears*.  these quotations are the ones
that kept several Indians mask their identities, and never spoke explicitly
the truth.  They create a kind of impression that most people abroad have
about India, say as snake charmers or cow worshipers.  Haven't we heard
about that jyothi on most educational instiutions which is expected to light
every candle?  (This way I found several quotations, and Prof. Sivakumar the
other day quoted a few while launching the SELF Platoform in our centre.  I
will upload his slides and share with you very soon. )

However, I do not agree entirely with Venky, and several others including
Phatak, that in India knowledge is always treated as a public domain, and
never thought of making it proprietary.  My reading of Indian history or for
that matter world history is different.  I think the great Indian masters
also encrypted (re-encoded) the common wisdom of the past (say the Vedas) in
a 'programming language' called Sanskrit.  Having done that that body of
knowledge remained with the powerful minority who ruled and enslaved the
rest.  They realized knowledge is capital, and kept it under lock and key,
created special clubs, which are not open to the commons.  Haven't we heard
that non-bramhins are not allowed to learn certain portions of that wisdom.
If you are not part of that club you have no right to understand that
wisdom.  To me this social mechanism is nothing short of proprietary
software that modern society is witnessing today.  Proprietary companies are
re-encoding science and mathematics, embedding in their software as well as
hardware and selling them as capsules  to only those who pay the price, but
never ever disclose the decoding keys.  Therefore I called proprietary
software as a modern and global version of 'Brahmanism'.  Unless you are
born or  a member of  my club you cannot chant Vedas to me no different from
the proprietary software company that says: unless you sign an NDA you
cannot access the code.

I am not saying that India has not heritage of free knowledge.  Several of
us have used Tagore's poem in several podiums across the world, in our free
software advocacy speaches. Didn't we?  The point I am trying to say is: the
thought of free knowledge does exist, all over the world, not just in
India.  But that thought was used as a mask while we all participate in
actual matters of life which are mostly proprietary.   Therefore I do not
like  this idea of east vs west, or trying to contrast saying copyright was
never part of our history.  This is a lie. And it is this lie that blocks
our vision to see our self.

Nagarjuna
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