Thread by @amitangshu

This cartoon from @thetoonguy today in @TheHinduMag today, which captures the reality of knowledge supremacy, triggered an old memory that had been buried deep inside for 13 years.

The Children's #Science Congress was taking place in Baramati, Maharashtra in 2008. I had travelled with an incredible bunch of geohydrologists from ACWADAM, Pune, to see how #science was being encouraged for school goers.

I landed up in a room where children from across the country were making presentations on #biological #sciences. One presenter was from #Nagaland & she made a fantastic presentation on local #rice varieties in her village.

She put up images of each local variety, listed their local names, how their flavour and quality differed. She talked about her grandmother who maintained the seed bank and taught her about these rice varieties and how they were disappearing from Nagaland.

This presentation was perhaps the only one on alternative ways of knowing and doing #science. I loved it. She should have been lauded and praised. Instead, the panel of judges, all science teachers from schools in mainland #India, seemed unimpressed.

One male teacher, condescendingly asked, " you are presenting about #rice, do you know the Latin name for rice"? This was the stupidest question that can follow a beautiful presentation like that. The girl didn't know & her #knowledge had been rubbished with a single question.

The man persisted - "how can you even present about rice if you don't even know the Latin name? It is Oryza sativa. You should have started your presentation with that." I witnessed first hand how #science was being murdered in the Children's Science Congress.

This cartoon reminded me of how we have unhesitatingly adopted the #knowledge hierarchies of the west, and learned to discount & rubbish all alternative ways of knowing. We are not only imitators of white man's #science, but we have also ingrained that #colonial attitude.

A breathtakingly beautiful presentation on local rice varieties is not scientific, because the student didn't know the taxonomy. This is how we erase #knowledge pluralism in this country for indigenous groups and communities in classrooms across the country.