Syntax and Semantics

I studied 2 courses from a professor at IIT Delhi, who was also my advisor. People familiar with the CS department know him as SAK, a short form for his name. Apart from being one of the best teachers I have come across, he always put forth the importance of correct syntax and semantics. For the un-initiated, syntax is simply the words and structure of language that you use for any communication, including programming. For example the sentence structure used in english is its syntax. Semantics, on the other hand, means what is meant by the syntax. So even though you will have detailed rules about syntax, it is very hard to do the same for semantics. Semantics is dependent on more than the syntax used to express it, it depends on the history of the communication, the context, the emotion and tonality of the means of expression, and foremost, our prior knowledge and prejudices. I've gone on about interpretation and the subjectiveness of the whole process so I won't go there.

The reason for this discussion is a conversation I had with my friends a few weeks back. They were mentioning a conversation with a person who lives in the same community as us, and asked one of them about his caste. She's not an Indian, but probably interested in the whole shebang, I really don't know, quite frankly. But my friend certainly didn't like it, which is understandable, and somewhat expected. Remnants of the past should be left where they belong. The more interesting thing is how the specific castes, even though as words don't mean much, have come to imply so many things. Which is why I made the distinction about syntax and semantics. When we hear a word, we immediately think of the semantics, so much so that the word itself becomes a placeholder for the meaning. Not that there's anything wrong with it, that's what learning is meant to do. But the issue is that we should not confuse the syntax and semantics. The problem is that the actual evil of the concept lies in the semantics and what they imply, not quite with the syntax. To explain, the problem is with the caste system, not the actual names of the castes, is it? If the names of our castes were not to cause any prejudice, and were something simply innocuous, like our names, it wouldn't be a problem. But the issue still exists that you cannot separate the semantics from the word. It is somewhat similar to a chicken and egg problem. Ergo, it would seem sensible to try to 'ban' the offending word from popular usage. Herein lies the problem. Banning the word doesn't really achieve anything, as I've said earlier about racism and many other things. It simply pushes the person to use a more sophisticated workaround to express the same feeling. The problem lies herein with the semantics, they haven't gone away, people will still find new ways of expressing them. If we are to solve the problem, we need to remove the semantics of what the caste system stands for in the current world, rather than just remove the labels. On the other hand, shouting out those labels and trying to coerce people to shout out the equality of castes is unlikely to help either. This isn't a bitter cough medicine. You need to condition entire generations to not be concerned about the concept, and that can only come about by pure and simple nonchalance to the whole concept. If you can discuss the caste of two people without really caring, and I mean truly without caring, then you've probably erased the semantics from your memory, and you can assign a new meaning to that word, or maybe, none at all. Though I'm using the example of the caste system, the same concept can extend to just about any current evils of society, be it any kind of discrimination, racial, sexual or otherwise. The major problems of such discriminations arise because of the lack of context in which they were established. The caste system was simply a worker classification system to begin with, it didn't become a problem till it became hereditary and assumed the role of a social class system.

I don't claim to know the solution to these problems, but in my experience, nothing kills anything like indifference. It may be worth a try, when everyone is harping about reservations for everyone. For that let me propose a parallel. Of all the songs I love, the ones I love the most, I love for reasons completely independent of the song itself. To me, they serve as reminders of some other memory. If and when I forget that, the song doesn't sound the same anymore. So if we can't remember the reasons for something, it's hard to justify doing it. It may not be the panacea for all that ails us, but it's worth a try. Like the famous saying goes, time is the best healer. I think it is because it makes us OK with whatever is troubling us, we understand that it is best that we make our peace and move on.