Superior Asians
Sir: Depends how far back Auberon Waugh wants to go (`Towards apartheid', 27 June). Because at the point where the nice new science of sociology meets up with that antiquarian hobby called anthropology, You might well find that the founders of 'apartheid' were none other than the ancestors of those very Asians who are today said to be six times as clever as 'West Indians'.
For in Aryan India, things were rather cushy for Brahmin Hindus (and I speak as one myself), whereby they were held to be the cleverest in the clan, and were thus expected to do no work other than devote themselves to scholarly pursuits, while the rest of society toiled away (in appropriately hierarchical tiers) for the benefit of the master class. In time, one generation of Brahmins produced another, and lo and behold, they too were found to be more Clever than the second generation of warriors, traders and menials, and a mere Speculative theory was ascribed the status of empirically verifiable fact. Then the Muslims introduced the wretch edly subversive notion that all men were equal in the sight of God. And the British polished off what little hegemony the Brahmins still retained by releasing a horde of Scottish missionaries and civil servants who injected the higher echelons of the Indian populace with the heady cocktail of Calvinism, egalitarianism and the work ethic. Life has never been quite the same since then for any member of that supremely homogenous race called the 'Asians'.
Thus, non-Brahmin progenies of immigrants from that continent have actually learned to 'swot', in the hilariously mistaken belief, encouraged by two successive armies of alien conquerors, that 'industry' (or application or motivation or what you will) will achieve that same degree of effortless cerebral superiority which the Brahmin inherits as a birthright. And their labours have been rewarded by the ex cathedra pronouncements of the Rampton Report. And at this rate any solace one could still find in the notion of intellectual or any other kind of pedigree will soon become a social anathema.
Sasthi Brata 33 Savernake Road, Hampstead, London NW3
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