Last year there was a newspaper article published in The Times, London regarding Nobel Prize winner genetics scientist James Watson's controversial claim that black people are inferior in intelligence to white people. Dr. Watson is said to have made the controversial remarks in an interview in The Sunday Times. The 79-year old geneticist remarked on the record that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really." He also claimed that the intellectual proficiency of the black people is everywhere to be seen.

By commenting on intellectual hegemony and superiority, he has stirred up a hornet's nest long after the Sir Cyril Burt scandal. In the late 60's, Sir Burt falsified and tampered data to establish the racist claim of the stupidity of the black people. After that fraud was discovered, the debate was laid to rest. But the remarks of Dr. James Watson proves that the age-old debate has yet not died its natural death. So, let us have quick look at what merit or intellectual capacity really is.

Is human intelligence a genetic phenomenon? Is an intelligent person is just genetically coded or programmed to be just intelligent? Can an intelligent person be called superior to another intelligent person? Or, for that matter, can human intelligence be qualified or quantified in no uncertain terms? No, human intelligence can neither be qualified nor be quantified - it is not as simple 'a thing' as such that it can be empirically judged to settle all scores. Yes, like all other human attributes, intelligence too have some implicitly genetic link but that is not the be-all and end-all of human intelligence. Environmental impacts in the form of nurturing comes into fray in developing it but we never can say how it will develop or how far it will develop.

Moreover, human intelligence and intelligent activities are socially nurtured, socially manifested and socially motivated and as such they are social phenomena not to be set aside for scientific community for their forensic dissection. A person is intelligent only when his/her intellects and activities manage to get a strong social recognition without which the all-too-powerful genetic code is never allowed to come to the fore. So, environmental impact or social nurturing is the main thing for a person to develop as a complete human being in terms of intellectual and moral standards.

In socio-political paradigm, all persons are intelligent in some way or the other. It never depends on the caste, creed or colour. Do the black people get proper nurturing because of their socio-political backwardness? Are all the white people are Einsteins or Shakespeares? So why those people are wont to boast of the white men's superiority? In that regard, I can remember a radio interview of Dr. Har Gobind Khorana after he won the Nobel Prize in 1968 for his contribution to interpretation of genetic code. He was asked whether Hitlers are genetically born. He answered that Hitlers are socio-politically born depending on the socio-political environment they live in.

It is rather sad that a scientist of Dr, James Watson's stature could talk in such extremely irresponsible and offensive way. Is that a way that an intelligent person could talk? An intelligent person should be a morally responsible person to the society and the world. If he/she is not morally responsible, he/she should never be called an intelligent person.

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No more shall there be any life
No more shall there be any wind
All the birds have shed their wings
Flowers have shed their petals
The trees are all alone
The withered leaves will now dance in stillness
Darkness has created darkness night after night
Days are lying long in shadows
All the dying images have stopped miming
What will uncover the mask of wayward delight?
What will save save the hunger from hunger?

The river is not far away
Will it meet the ocean in its last voyage?
Shadows of memory of yonder land creeping in
Words vibrating in missing language
Untold tales of the past have told tales of sorrows and death
Life will be spared in long silence
What will fight against the regimen of violence?

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O, the birds of the sky
O, forest-dwelling sage of the north
Give us wisdom, give us the knowledge of the breadth of the sky
We will chase the depth of the ocean with our shadows falling back
We have never sucked the honey-comb
We have never kissed the feet of withering rays of the twilight
Give us a chance to feel the chill of death before life
Together we we will dance to the tune of satanic verses
Before praying on our last pyre.

O, the charisma of the old world
O, the saviours of the retracting sun
The light is still burning the surrounding darkness
When the apocalypse will be revealed to all
When the Magus of the East will burn the fire of wisdom
We are the smaller beings of God's forsaken children
We will again be reborn at His behest.

We pray to Thee with folded arms, O the Omniscient
We will see the face of our destiny
When there will be no more sighs of silence
And no more whispers of violence
Together we will spread our wings beyond the yonder sky.

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Leave me alone, let me live alone
I am further farther from death, farther from life
I am too alone to live alone Mother,I am too alone to live alone
I am too alone to kiss life farther from the valley of death, I am too alone.

I am too near to life, too near to death
Again and again I come back to life from the valley of death
As life is to life more, so much more than death, yet I am all too alone.

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You never dance any more with your fluttering wings
You never talk like a fleeting butterfly
Why the morning dew never tuoches your feet
I do not know if you laugh in twilight's splendour.

When you dance, you smile in golden verse
You sing in thousand colours of the rainbow
But why don't you come to love me in twilght delight?

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Stop beating, oh, the bell, stop beating
The trees are sleeping, streams running into the river
Frogs no more leaping like village urchins
The village urchins thumping their breasts in shame.

Oh, the bugle, beat your siren
The war planes flapping their wings on my mother’s lap
Just to eat into her blind eyes in the dark old alley.

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