The Indian Groucho Marx

Dagalti's comment on Goundamani

"Goundamani's life message seems to be irreverence to all and sundry, people, institutions, history, what not."


Perfectly put. Can't catch the essence of the man better than that. Doing the Kamal Hassan thing of bringing in Hollywood even when talking about Chockalinga Bagavathar, I will go ahead and anoint the one and only Gounder, "The Indian Groucho Marx".

Objective history ?

"I've said two things about it. One, that it's not possible. Two, it's not desirable. It's not possible because all history is a selection out of an infinite number of facts. As soon as you begin to select, you select according to what you think is important. Therefore it is already not objective. It's already biased in the direction of whatever you, as the selector of this information, think people should know. So it's really not possible. Of course, some people claim to be objective. The worst thing is to claim to be objective. Of course you can't be. Historians should say what their values are, what they care about, what their background is, and let you know what is important to them so that young people and everybody who reads history are warned in advance that they should never count on any one source, but should go to many sources. So it's not possible to be objective, and it's not desirable if it were possible."

--Howard Zinn