Viswanathan K's Thoughts

In his autobiography, Born a Crime , the comedian Trevor Noah talks about the names of black South Africans. Since the whites could not pronounce African names, the natives would have to (also) take on a name for whites to use, the so-called English name. This English name was chosen at random – “plucked from the Bible or taken from a Hollywood celebrity or a famous politician in the news”. Thus, names like Napoleon, Mussolini and even Hitler.   Such names offend whites, but Noah is unapologetic. The whites came, invaded, occupied, treated the natives like crap, did not educate them, and then act offended by the fact that the blacks don’t know history (of whites) and pick names like Mussolini and even Hitler. Whereas, as Noah says: “Many black people in South Africa don’t really know who Hitler was.” Noah’s own grandfather thought Hitler was a tank since all the news said it was crashing through Europe! Many South Africans considered Hitler good because he had white Europe...

Is it right or fair to dishonour somebody from earlier eras based on today’s criteria of right and wrong? We’re used to that happening to political figures, but I didn’t realize it’s been happening in other non-political areas (science, philosophy, and ideologies) as well until I read Sean Welsh’s article .   Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, did a lot of data crunching of family trees and thereby strengthened the belief in the role of genetics. Inevitably, the data led him to being a supporter of eugenics, both selective breeding (positive eugenics) as well as discouraging the breeding of those with undesirable characteristics (negative eugenics). Given what followed next (Nazism, forced sterilizations in the US etc), perhaps you think it isn’t wrong that Galton’s name is being removed from several institutions in recent times? Wrong, says Welsh: “(Because you’re tarring) Galton with the Nazi brush even though he died 32 years before Hitler came to power.” Besides, isn’t p...