Western Universalism - what's the big deal?

[Prem]

Let me add a few more variables that hinder this"processing" of Oriopean civilization by the Indian/Indic mind:
1) Lot of politically active and well networked set of house - N****s that were never wiped out after the "peaceful exit" of briturds from India.
2) The continuing effects of the above House-N****s in keeping alive the myth of the superior white man that continues to this day.
3) White-washing and obscuring of Indic history and information warfare by the west and assorted House-Ns

Proof is seen in the success of Indian immigrants in WEST. Brit knew after 2 worldwars that Indians have come to know the empty reality of Britmyth. Indians saw Europe from close in those wars. But Cogressi secular culture internalize the Mccauleyman as well added Gungadeeniat to it. Luckily Indians have gotton break in 2014,It wont be so long to recover from these 2 diseases. Cleaning of Ganga will clean Gungadeens, Guungarams and Gunngruwali Tehjeeb.

[shiv]

I think the Islamic invasions were not complete. They simply laid the stage for recognizing and declaring the Hindu as the "other" - the archetypal kafir. Note that there are similar Christian equivalents in the forms "pagan" and "heathen". The British simply knocked over what was left and completed the branding of Hindus as bad. The British "knew" islam - as it was well known across Europe and "Christendom". But Hindus were an unknown entity and their views, as Balagangadhara points out gelled in perfectly well with Christian beliefs of what the devil's followers would do.

From a modernist perspective it would be useful for Hindus to self-identify themselves as being followers of the devil known in both Christianity and Islam. Anyone who asks about Hinduism should be told that "We are the devil worshippers your local parish priest warned you about" There is no way Hindu dharma can find a place to enter even edgewise as legitimate in Christian and Islamic theology. Technically it has huge areas that cannot even be called "religion". It is pure devil worship. This was very plain in the way the Portuguese treated Hindus - they had a little inquisition of their own reserved for the Hindu.

The only way "Hindu reformers" could find acceptability among the British was to cook up a version of Hinduism where they could condemn idol worship and proclaim one god. This is what has led to modern day "secularism". Western (pseudo)secularism involves pretending that Hindus do not represent the very devil worshippers that Christianity warns them about. We are not telling them the truth in a way they can understand it.

Hindu life revolves around the family, not a God. It is about duties of individuals within a family. Any religion that exists there is simply obeisance or worship of any one of hundreds of local deities who double up as God. But the Hindu God never demands attention as the only God. Hindu life is about family and society. Not God. There can be only one family for you and your duty is to protect and support that family within society. God is peripheral. God will do bugger-all to support your family and help society. You have to do it. God has his whims and fancies and you can ask him for help, if that makes you feel better. But a Hindu God cannot screw you if you tell him to bugger off and stay out of your life especially if you feel he has wronged you. Rejection and cursing of god for errors made is common in Hindu folklore and stories. Such views of God simply cannot exist in Christianity and Islam although they are now visible in modern western societies. But modern western society is all about the individual and individual greed. It is not about family. Indian American kids squirm and complain that the fresh off the boat Indian asks them about family, brothers and sisters, For Indians, family is important. The individual plays second fiddle to family and both the individual and family need to support society. This may be what the devil wants - i.e. forget the individual and care for family and society, but that's how it is.

Vive le difference is the only truthful and dharmic way forward.

[shiv]

If Hindus did not worship idols, we should not have any problem when an image of Ganesha is printed on a pair of shoes. For the more "secular and enlightened" among us, we know damn well that Ganesha cannot be insulted by having his image printed on a shoe. In any case we do not worship idols, so we should not care.

But this is utter nonsense. we do care. Frankly if I want to worship a lump of shit it should be my right to do that. If dung beetles had sentience and religion that we could recognize, they would probably worship dung anyway and there is no way we should object to that worship. Dung may not be important for you, but it could be important for someone else. if you are speaking honestly and not pushing some pretence/snake oil, freedom of choice, freedom of expression and freedom of worship really do mean that people can worship shit if they wish. Would universalism be "Not worshipping dung because most people don't" or would universalism be "Freedom of choice and freedom of religion?"

So there is absolutely no reason for an Indian to be apologetic about idol worship. If you want an explanation why it is not the idol per se that is sacred, such explanations are possible. But the idol per se is certainly sacred to some and it is their right to hold it sacred. There is no need for anyone else to develop khujli in his ass over that. No explanations needed. But don;t pretend that idols are not worshipped. You are allowed to worship whatever you want.

Part of the "dilemmas" of western universalism is embarrassment and shame at explaining why we are "different" and pressure to conform because you are told that something is "universal". Well I say freedom of choice and freedom to worship what you want are all universal - so why sit back and take crap?

[Vikas]

Hakim Ji, Wonderful post about Hindu way of being Dharmic!!
I think part of the reason that some of us end up being Dhimmi or MuTu or RAPE is because we are ashamed of our own practices, cultural beliefs and Dharma.
The understanding of a Nirguna Ishwar is so alien now that it is hard to even understand it.
Imagine me having to explain praying to a elephant headed God or a Monkey God or even a half naked Mother divine to the follower of a religion where God is like a stern fatherly figure ready to punish at the smallest mistake. With no support of understanding my own belief system nor knowing the details about other religions, All I can do is deny, curse my own and become dhimmi.
On top, the constant commie inspired Macaulay bombardment of half baked truths and calling Indic religion as Hindu Mythology adds petrol to the fire.

I think part of the problem is lack of understanding of religion or core belief system of Indic as well as non-Indic otherwise we wont be singing Kumbhayas to RoL and RoP and hosting Iftaar, New Year and Christmas eve parties and feeling ashamed of Holi, Ayudh Puja and Fire-crackers.

[prahaar]

Rejection and cursing of god for errors made is common in Hindu folklore and stories. Such views of God simply cannot exist in Christianity and Islam although they are now visible in modern western societies.

This is a very important observation. Hindu System, for want of a better word, brings "down" the divine to the level of a human, so much so, that the human relates to divine as another individual in terms of interactions, it is just a means of more close relationship. Even the venerable "Shri Gurucharitra" has instances of lady bhakt cursing Bhagwan for the ill-fortune that has been brought on her, Bhagwan is not angry, but rather gentle and loving in return. The point being, such behavior is not looked down upon (since there are instances where "bad actions/karma" has been explicitly pointed at. The same behavior has been observed in real world by individuals upon feeling acute sense of loss.

OTOH, there are instances in other granths, where Bhagwan has reacted with displeasure when the promised word has not been kept.

Idol worship in my own experience, may be worship of divine through the "idol" for some. But for many, including me, the idol represents the deity. The deity after pran-pratishtha is not a gateway only. Why would people perform panch-amrut pooja? I do not feel, every aspect of ritual has to be connected to nirguna form, which is the modern tendency of many educated people.

Shraddha in nirguna bhagwan is not what I am contesting, the tendency to look down upon people with saguna bhakti is what I feel is the effect of Western universalism.

I know of certain people, who light agarbatti for 30 seconds and then extinguish it, since God does not need full agarbatti. The point to be noted is that for the person, the ritual of lighting agarbatti is important but since God does not need anything from anyone, he puts it out. This example is to show, the myriad different ways people see and relate with the divine.

[A_Gupta]

Shraddha in nirguna bhagwan is not what I am contesting, the tendency to look down upon people with saguna bhakti is what I feel is the effect of Western universalism.

+1

PS: One more from Balu, worth reading:
http://www.hipkapi.com/2011/04/02/to-fo ... angadhara/

In other words, both the colonial and the contemporary western descriptions of India and her traditions transform us into something worse than children. They make us into the mental retards of modernity. No amount of ‘symbolic’ interpretation can take away the sting of the facts that one ‘interprets’: ‘the Indians worship the phallus, the cow, the monkey, the idol and the naked fakir.’ We cannot instill pride in our children about their culture and traditions by telling them that these are all ‘manifestations of the Brahman’. If you try talking that way with them, you will not be able to answer their question, ‘why then not worship this Brahman directly without having to worship these disgusting things?’ without making your ancestors and the rest of the Indians into cretins and morons. Often, truth liberates; and that is also the case now. Make them first understand that these questions have their roots in the Semitic religions and the contempt these religions have for the Indian traditions. Tell them subsequently that it is their task to figure out what ‘puja‘ is, because it is not ‘worship’. Of course, this requires honesty on our part: can we tell our children that we have failed in making sense of our traditions in the last few centuries and decades? Or, to save our faces, will we take recourse to feeding them with pseudo-answers about ‘Hinduism’ as a ‘religion’, which allegedly hides profound and sublime truths under the loincloth of Shiva? Only time will tell whether we can face the problems we confront or stick our heads in the sand hoping that they will go away.

[shiv]

This is a very important observation. Hindu System, for want of a better word, brings "down" the divine to the level of a human, so much so, that the human relates to divine as another individual in terms of interactions, it is just a means of more close relationship.

No not down to man's level. God in the Hindu concept was never man or animal. God is always special and cannot be "brought down". The indicators that god is neither man nor animal but exists all over and in varied forms comes from identifying god everywhere - in the earth, in the wind, the sun, moon stars and trees, and gods are given non human identifying features to set them apart as gods and this could be many arms with each arm representing a particular feature of the god's power, an animal head or even a river emerging from the head. The need for "one God" only helps to narrow down the source of human political power to a small oligarchy who know the laws of that one God and can force everyone to go down one route. This problem of concentrating political power does not exist if gods various powers are depicted as different gods - and in keeping with common human experience one god often works against another as a rain god may abate the fury of a fire or a wind god may increase that fury. This whole business of identifying Brahmins as culprits was the need to identify a group like the clergy who were claimed to have inordinate power over the devil worshippers. Brahmins on their own never had such inordinate power. The power was in the hands of other groups.

If you had god looking like man then you have the problem issue of what he looks like. So he must not be pictured - and when that rule was flouted he usually was a white male. How simplistic and naive.

It is Christianity that pre-conditions people's minds to think that man is modelled after god and that man therefore gets special rights over the world and animals because God himself is biased in that way.

But the lack of concentration of a central "Hindu political power" was probably a fault that helped the meltdown that occurred.

[shiv]

The "west" got their religion from the middle east, but they claim their history and philosophy is from Greece. Looking at these facts puts things into an interesting perspective - considering that India got religion and its philosophy of inquiry from the same place, same people.

It is important not to forget this. Let me explain..

If you look at Greek philosophy the earliest philosophers (whose words are known only through other later philosophers) included people like Plutarch and Anaximander. Aristotle has written about the above two.

All these philosophers searched for the origins of everything - the world, the air, rivers, earth etc and they came up with some ideas. It is a matter of some interest to Indians that Anaximander (and Plutarch too, to an extent) said that everything originated from a homogenous unseen, unfelt, unknowable entity. These are the closest that the Greeks seem to have come to a "Hindu" explanation of the origin of all things - the infinite, undifferentiated not dark not light "Brahman" or "Ishvara" These Greeks lived their lives a thousand years or so after the Harappan civilization and the Vedic civilization.

However Aristotle was sceptical about such theories and he and later Greeks looked for explanations for origins in physical things like air, water, earth, fire etc. These methods can be claimed to have set the trend for secular western science that came later. But these Greeks looked for explanations "externally" from outside physical objects - exactly like later western scientists. Note that these Greek philosophers were completely secular. God does not enter their explanations. Of course "western religion", Christianity, was still a few centuries in the future.

Interestingly Indian philosophers too who searched for the origins of everything were totally secular. But they looked and found answers internally, and they looked in and found a lot more than the Greeks did and what they found again was not "God". At least it was not god in the Christian and Islamic sense of the word.

Simultaneously, in the same era and same geographic region in India, there was also religion. Those Indian philosophers who found an explanation for "the origins of everything" within themselves were not giving credit to god for that . It was as secular as the later Greek enquiry. They said, what exists exists, impersonal, eternal, all encompassing. It has no arms. legs eyes etc. It is not modelled on man but the whole universe is part of that. But those who had religion had their gods. Somehow, somewhere, the Indian ideas of God were reconciled with the secular findings of the origins of all things. Some gods - principal ones were given the attributes of creator or destroyer and were all powerful. But they were also given form and were intertwined in mythology with other gods and natural forces. This must have happened very very long ago because the blending of secular origins along with common "gods" appears to be in the Vedas (as per Aurobindo). The point really is that for Hindus, all ideas, whether they involved god or whether they were secular were all packaged into the learning of one common Hindu culture. You could believe if you wished. If you searched further you might end up having a deeper, secular or even atheist explanation for life and the universe. This "knowledge" and these different approaches sit perfectly comfortably in the mind of a Hindu from his childhood. All the choices are there. All the roads are there. Take what you want.

The west evolved very differently. The enquiries of the Greeks did not get very far until Christianity came. Then all the answers - all rubbish, were provided. This went on for about a thousand years, and Islam was born and formed a solid physical "wall" between the "west" and India. Islam borrowed from India and what Islam got from India came to the west much later via Islam. And it came at a time when "secular science" was seeing resurgence and the church was on the back foot - with secularism being imposed on western states.

By the time this happened, India had been pushed into the dark ages by islam, and that is when the British came to India with their restricted jealous god, and the social demands he extracted from his followers, but competent secular science. By now Indians had forgotten everything. The height of Indian civilizational glory had been wiped out. Ever since then we have been saying, "Sorry. You must be right. I must be wrong"

[UlanBatori]

One should zoom out and look at the timeline with a Hindu timescale. Basically, for the past 1000 yrs India has been battered by many waves of savages.

Since 1947 efforts have been underway to develop some sort of protective unity, but that if of course threatened. For the past month and a half there is some hope of fast upward progress.

But other than that, for the past 1,700,000,000 years, India has been at the forefront of thought, technology, philosophy, and art/culture.

Maybe one should just teach kids that. I am sure kids of every age felt that TODAY's Modern Thought had rendered all the part irrelevant.

All is Maya. We are like this onlee. Bhavitavyam Bhaved Eva.

[ramana]

Looks like you went to wrong IIT!!

Should have been kanpur and would have argued for bakpakis!

[member_22733]

By the time this happened, India had been pushed into the dark ages by islam, and that is when the British came to India with their restricted jealous god, and the social demands he extracted from his followers, but competent secular science. By now Indians had forgotten everything. The height of Indian civilizational glory had been wiped out. Ever since then we have been saying, "Sorry. You must be right. I must be wrong"

+1008
The bolded part cannot be stressed enough. Islam destroyed the learning centers of India and integrated itself into the economy. Our culture/science/arts froze at that point onwards.

In an imaging class I attended back in grad school, it was shown how if you take a photocopy of a photocopy, defects creep into each iteration and soon what is left is a hollow noisy shell of the original. While our Vedas had error correcting codes to guard against this, our culture/science had nothing similar that resulted in the rot that is visible today.

Studies involving abstract and complex thought, like Science and Arts, needs a certain 'velocity'. It is much like a human pyramid. Anyone who wants to do something in those fields have to stand on the shoulders of those below them and only then can one make any progress. The higher the pyramid the faster it grows, it has its own inertia. Islam destroyed this very intertia in India. What was left was a shell.

Islam did one more thing, it de-linked science from economy and commerce, it also denied any possibility of Indic science contributing to Indic economy. Whether this delinking was a by-product of Islamic onslaught or an active effort by the Islamist is a debate that a revisionist historian can take up. My guess would be that it was a by-product. Indic science was closely related to Indic knowledge structures, which was destroyed by Islamic barbarians.

The west was relatively safe from all this. After their 'renaissance' the economy, industry and science merged into a commercial branch while religion split into its own branch. This split is the root of "secularism". Since commerce ultimately trumps religion in a scarce environment (which was the case with most of Europe), it set of the need for more science and more natural resources. Resulting in colonialism on one hand, and an explosion of science on the other.

We would be writing a very different history is the Marathas had managed to wipe out the cancer of Islam in India.

[Prem]

Jubb Siir Phaarne Ke Diin Thai Tho Sirr Taulne Laggey
Abb Siir Pharne Ke Dinn Aayye Tho Sirr Ginnney Laggey
Siir Pharrne Ke Dinn Owrr Bhi Aayenge ,
Par
Siir Thapaae Mey Guzzar Jayyenge
Karne Ka Kaam Sochne Sey Kaise Hogga ?
Agge Barrne Ka Kaam, Peeche Jaane Se Kaise Hogga?
Dharm Karam Mey Sharam Kahe Ki?
Suunn Lay Meri Ikk Salah
Aagge Jaa Yaan Peeche Jaa,
Jitthe Jaana oothe Jaa ,
Jaan Tho Pehla Karrda Jaa
Jinne LaathDey Ooneh Laah
Gaddi Chaar Tey Pahuncha Jannah.

[A_Gupta]

An answer to a question Shiv posed early on, is as follows:

To suggest that “Buddhism” and “Hinduism” are two different religions and that their doctrinal differences are crucial to this divide is not a claim about the structure of the world. Instead it is a claim about one’s classificatory scheme.

This is Balu, of course. He casts the various paths to enlightenment/awakening/moksha in modern terms along the way. You can access his paper here, "How to Speak for the Indian Traditions":

https://www.academia.edu/4214100/How_to ... Traditions

If that doesn't work for you, I'll find a way to make the paper available. I'm not sure that he is entirely right; but he is thought-provoking.

Summarizing: the insights of these {Indic} traditions are not “doctrines” or even straightforward (partial) descriptions of the world. They are “route descriptions” relativized both to the route and to the individual on that route. Their role as (partial) descriptions of the world is strictly subordinated to the role they play as instructions for actions (in the sense I have just explained). Because of this, it is not possible to speak either about the truth or about the falsity of such traditions but only about whether or not some route description taught the individual to go about the world experimentally.

[RamaY]

If we go back in history, Romans thought that they are a unique race and are different from others. They treated non-roman citizens as a different race and are ok to be enslaved and exploited for the betterment of Roman-race. Today's European races were enslaved by Romans as if they were a different race. The theology of those days was limited to that. During roman days even though a slave believed in the roman gods, the slave wasn't included in the roman race.

After Fall of Roman Empire, this definition of 'us' extended to whites and the west , till 1800s, truly believed that white race is different from blacks same as human race is different from pigs, cows, dogs, cats, fish, birds etc., that's why they thought it was natural to be self-protective of their white race and treat others as non-whites and thus are same as other races and are kosher to be destroyed to sustain one's own race. Naturally the theology was changed to include only white races in the 'us' definition. This was the phase when it was acceptable to convert all the 'us' into the same god.

Then in 1800s (I think after getting exposed to asia) they realized that the definition of 'us' extends to the whole human race and the concept of western universalism took root. Now the theology is changed to include all humans into the 'us' group and acceptable to be converted. All other non-human races are ok to be exploited.

This is exactly what Islam is trying to mimic. JEM has posted this video in Islamism thread and they are doing exactly that - http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 9#p1691219

Hindus include everything (animate/inanimate) as part of the definition of 'us'.

The Seculars want to give west and Islam all the time they need so they can expand their definition of us to reach the definition of us. Even if it costs centuries/millennia of Adharma and mayhem.

The Dharmics want to assert Dharmic definition of us and enforce it on west and Islam even as they learn to expand their horizons.

That's the debate India is having.

[Vayutuvan]

Should have been kanpur and would have argued for bakpakis!

ramana garu: pliss not too forget Ravi Kuchimanchi and Aravinda Pillalamarri (from a southern IIT). I had lots of heated discussions recently with parents/aunts/uncles of kids following the said jeevan saathis blindly and roaming around with a jhola asking all and sundry "what have you done for the common man?". Some of these "future of India"s have swallowed the "Western Universalism" uncritically and confuse that with Universalism. Two weeks of high BP and soar throat plus a run-in with Green Peace. My vacation was not a vacation .

PS: A side note - does Aravinda Pillalamarri trace her ancestry to Pillamarri pina veerabhadrudu (one of the ashTha diggaja in the court of srI krsihna dEvarAyaWikipedia says sALuva narasimha rayalu's court in 15 th century).

[shiv]

Islam did one more thing, it de-linked science from economy and commerce, it also denied any possibility of Indic science contributing to Indic economy.

Actually Christianity did to Europe what Islam did to India, except that the Islamic onslaught came after India had developed a great deal in terms of science/philosophy. I will state (later) why I link these two words. In the case of Europe - Europe was in the "dark ages". At the top of the heap were the Greek philosophers who were conscientious observers of the world and did not accept answers like "There is a god and god made this". But their inquries were muddling along when Christianity came in - 600 years before Islam was born.

Christianity did not care about science. It cared about economy though, so the Church with its soldiers of God simply conquered Europe and kept them dumb. Europe had no chance of reaching the intellectual heights of India because the Persian empire and later the Islamic empire stood in between - barring all contact.

In fact it is easy to see why Europe required the creation of political secularism and India did not. Greek philosophers established a secular method of inquiring into the why and where of this world by not invoking god at every step as an explanation for the mysterious. This was killed by a religion (Chritianity) that came from the middle east. Europe had to escape the clutches of this religion and the church's monopoly of all explanations for world phenomena. This was achieved after the 30 years war and the secularization of European politics, sidelining the role of the church in governance.

By the time Europe escaped the clutches of religion they were ready to absorb the knowledge that Islamic invaders had imbibed from India and China and these included astronomy and trigonometry, gunpowder and magnetic compasses. These were the things that led to exploration by sea and the European conquest of the world. But European society had been Christianized to the extent that they were bigoted and believed that only Christians were the chosen people. Hence "secularism" helped them progress in terms of knowledge, but the religion kept them racist and exclusive - behind the usual pretence of "love" and "salvation" as long as you followed church dictates and morality.

Contrast this with India. In India philosophical inquiry into where the world comes from led to an internal search. Religion coexisted side by side - that religion had arisen in India and was not interested in competing with the philosophical inquirers or defeating them to "rule" That did not happen in India until Islam came. The question of "secularism" was unnecessary in India because religion never interfered with philosophical inquiry to try and impose itself as the only explanation. In fact religion evolved in India to accommodate the answers provided by philosophical inquiry. There is no science/religion conflict in India because of this - and it is in the west that science and religion are in conflict. It is their religion versus science. Talking of a need to promote or sideline a religion as being some kind of universal ideal is bullshit until you see it in a western context.

It is only when you make the fake equivalence between some mythical "Hindu religion" that is "competing" with modernity that you need to invoke secularism for the sole purpose of killing a religion that was not even trying to compete for the throne.

A word about how philosophy and science are equivalent. The initial inquirers into the nature of being and existence were the philosophers where "sophos" means "wise". It was these inquiries that led to science, so long as god was not invoked at every step that could not be explained logically

[member_28638]

Comment by kashsoldier3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBX95Qb-Xoo)

Really, no surprise here. Indians are the smartest people on earth, if you look at their 12,000 yrs of history, even though they were constantly invaded by Barbarians (British looters, French looters, so called German scholars) from Europe, Arabia and Persia for the past 1000 yrs.

If it weren't for Indian civilization's discovery/invention of science and technology until 18th century, so called the west and rest of the world would be roaming in the woods, painted

Indian civilization gave birth to Mathematics (Arithmetic, Trigonometry, Geometry, Decimal system, Calculus, Numbers 0 to 9, place value system etc) Astronomy, Metallurgy, Medicine, Plastic surgery, Linguistics, and High Philosophies) and also developed them to an advanced level for misappropriation by European looters and the west since the 18th century. The sad truth is - the looting part still continues. For instance, India's traditional knowledge system like yoga techniques are still being digested by the westerners with out even an acknowledgment of the Indian source eg Yoga nidra, sold in the west as Lucid dreaming and Transcendental meditation is another technique looted by the so called western scientists. Multiple Intelligences is another knowledge area ripped off from Indian Vedic texts by the west. Did they ever acknowledge the Indian source? a Big NO.

Western scientists not only de-link the Indian source but also start abusing the Indian source by funding Indian socialists/communists who hate anything related to Indian civilization's past, Indian Journalists who work for foreign media, and Pseudo-secularists. Indian space research organization's (ISRO) efforts to build a cryogenic engine was successfully sabotaged by the west in the early 90s. Nambi Narayanan's (ex ISRO) case is a proof of that. Strange nexus is there between Indian communists and the west as far as distortion and discouragement of Indian civilization's glorious past is concerned.

The Fractal mindset of Brilliant Hindu Mathematicians and Astronomers can never be replicated by Western scientists , regardless of how hard they try to rip off and come up with all kinds of Brain models and Brain theories. Western Philosophies, religion and though process, just don't have it in them. So, they come back running to India, every time they run out of ideas.
Ever wondered why average European minds during so called dark ages for 1500 yrs suddenly started discovering science like calculus and gravity since 18th century (which Indians did thousands of yrs before). Thanks to colonization of INDIA in the 18th century. We have to look at the discontinuation of thought process of Europeans for 1500 yrs here.I mean come on, Germans couldn't have created a Vortex engine design out of thin air without Indian Vedic texts. The ion engine was first demonstrated by German-born NASA scientist Ernst Stuhlinger. The Vedic texts from colonized India were taken or stolen to Germany by Hermann Gundert

According to Stephen Knapp, the Vaimanika Shastra (ancient Hindu manuscript on the construction and use of flying machines). describes in detail, the construction of what is called, the mercury vortex engine the forerunner of the ion engines being made today by NASA. Knapp adds that additional information on the mercury engines can be found in the ancient Vedic text called Samaranga Sutradhara. This text also devotes 230 verses, to the use of these machines in peace and war. The Indologist William Clarendon, who has written down a detailed description of the mercury vortex engine in his translation of Samaranga Sutradhara quotes thus ‘Inside the circular air frame, place the mercury-engine with its solar mercury boiler at the aircraft center.

Fibonacci (Italian mathematician) was the one who introduced Indian numbers 0 to 9 to the west in 1200 AD and until then, Europe was struggling with Roman numerals. LOL Indian mathematicians had already solved advanced mathematical problems by 500 AD which baffled rest of the world, with the discovery of Calculus in 486 AD by a Brilliant Hindu mathematician and astronomer called Bhaskara II

Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher, was the teacher of Plato. Socrates of course claims to have been enlightened by the teachings of Pythagoras who preceded him by 200 years. It is also historically known and should be remembered that Pythagoras studied in India; he was a vegetarian, virtually unheard of anywhere else, and learned the philosophy and Mathematics of India and taught them in Greece.

So if we are to accept the well-known saying in academia that western philosophy is simply footnotes to Plato, it is then logical to say that the knowledge of India has been leaking into western culture for thousands of years. That this is not understood is a shame because it's both extremely exciting and a huge aspect of our human heritage. The Abrahamic religions, however, especially Islam and Christianity, have been very resistant to this idea because of their own institutional agendas. So knowledge from India that leaked in to other cultures has often remained either hidden or was simply incorporated into western thought without credit to India.

Many people don't know that Egyptian Pyramids were built with the help of Hindu/Indian Maharishis who used Sri Yantra (Hindu cosmic diagram) a complex 3D Geometry which used Golden Ratio. It came from the Fractal mindset ancient Indian/Hindus. Egyptians had no clue about it. Swami Vivekananda realized that when he looked at the Pyramids in Egypt. The golden ratio was stolen by an Italian Fibonacci , from the mystic Vaastu geometry of Sri Yantra of Indian Vedic times, along with so called Fibonacci numbers and of course put his name under them. Shame on European looters.

Maya, Inca and Aztec civilizations were founded by ancient Indians. The Mayan calendar , which everybody knows about , is nothing but a Vedic calendar made by Maya Danava. The Mayan calendar began with the Fifth Great Cycle in 3114 BC and ended on 21 December 2012 AD. In Surya Siddhantam, Maya described how eclipses were caused..

Indian civilization was the largest economy and richest civilization between 1AD to 1700 AD with a GDP of 25 to 30% until the time of British invasion in the 18th century, according to Angus MADDISON's 20yrs research on world economy for 2000 yrs. He was funded by OECD countries. His book World economy: a millennial perspective and historical statistics, says it all.

India was also the largest manufacturer and exporter of Iron and steel and textiles until the British looters DE-INDUSTRIALIZED Indian civilization and shifted both these technologies to Britain and made them as twin engines of so called Industrial revolution.

Now history is repeating itself. India is already the third largest economy in the world and set to become the largest economy before 2050 with a GDP of 85 trillion dollars in terms of PPP according to a report by CITI private bank and knight frank report.

[shiv]

I have argued that "universalism", defined as traits that are considered universally "applicable" are not always universally acceptable, and often morally questionable. They can only be "applicable" under coercion, economic or psychological. Other traits that are not tom-tommed as "universal" really should fall under the category of "universalism" but do not, because they are not acceptable to people who push their personal brand of snake oil as universalism.

Is the prevention of cruelty to humans universally acceptable? Yes
Is the prevention of unlawful killing of humans universally acceptable? Yes
Is the prevention of cruelty to animals universally acceptable? It's been a long time coming - but we in India have always been taught that animals have sentience and feelings and wanton cruelty to animals is wrong. Acceptance of this is gradually coming in as "universalism"

But what about killing of animals?

Richard Dawkins makes an interesting argument in his book "The Blind Watchmaker". He points out that biologists agree that it is cruel to kill Chimpanzees, but they "reserve the right" to kill Chimapnzees if necessary. However these same biologists might protest at the idea of abortion - failing to not that a very large number of pregnancies are aborted anyway. Naturally.

The west has drawm a line between man and animal. Man is a higher being. Man is modelled on God (Guess whose god?) Man is special. Man is sacrosanct. For these reasons what "man" needs for himself, no matter how greedy or environmentally destructive it may be, is considered to require greater priority than what animals need.

No one needs to tell a Hindu that this is a Christian argument. Animals are part of nature. Animals are worshipped not because they lay golden eggs, nor because we Hindus like to drink cow piss, but because they form an inseparable part of life itself. Hindu tradition has interwoven animal life and animal consciousness into a story where animals impart wisdom to humans and humans may be reborn as animals. That is the way we see life.

What, then, is "universally applicable" about putting man at the top of the heap and relegating animal life to an expendable feature to protect "man's rights"

On the other hand, we are such an apologetic bunch of wimps, that if I post a video of a chap simply shooting and killing birds to "test air rifles and scopes" - people say "Oh this is OK it is legal in that country". On the other hand we splutter and choke, when we are mocked and told that we worship rats and drink cow piss. Why are we apologetic and diffident and allow ourselves to be slammed by false accusations, while we make excuses on behalf of others who are actually being extremely cruel

We who like to make excuses about how something is "Right for others even if it is wrong for us" should have no reason to complain about "Universalism" should we? If its right for "them" we accept it even if it is morally wrong for us. We hide our disgust and join up with others and fail to show that we too have some values that we ought to project. Wimps and dhimmis we are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTqvR1J8KDo

[member_23692]

though India would be far more successful on this front once it is able to show some actual success in significantly improving the lives of its own citizens. NaMo I think has made a start and his success over the next few years will be central to this project.

The performance of China has thrown up a more powerful argument against western universalism than anything India has done.

India actually seems to share a lot more with western democracies in some areas than China, but other than growing economically and militarily I can't see any reason why anyone would want to accept any Indian model of universalism. I think it is more a matter of staying the course for us Indians. I think it was you that mentioned "soft power"

I don't think it is China, that is a powerful argument against Western Universalism. Everyone knows that China is a house of cards, based on lies and deception and cooked statistics, waiting to be toppled. India, on the other hand, is the real thing, and a real argument against Western Universalism.

[Rony]

Chinese are not challenging WU. They are a bad example.They are against west just like Russia is against West. Most of the chinese are either atheists aping west who have no clue about their own ancient thought (in our words Macaulay putras) or Christian Converts (EJs). The % of Chinese taking pride in their Confucian/Buddhist heritage and looking at the world through it is even lower than the % of Indians taking pride in Hindu heritage and seeing the world from Indian lens. In terms of isms, the Chinese historically are followers not leaders or initiators. They took buddhism from India when India was the dominant intellectual power in ancient times. They took Communism from Europe when Europe was at its peak intellectually. Now they want to ape America because it is the dominant intellectual power now. The only genuine alternative of WU are Hindu/Indian universalism and Islamic universalism.

[Rudradev]

Chinese are not challenging WU. They are a bad example.They are against west just like Russia is against West. Most of the chinese are either atheists aping west who have no clue about their own ancient thought (in our words Macaulay putras) or Christian Converts (EJs). The % of Chinese taking pride in their Confucian/Buddhist heritage and looking at the world through it is even lower than the % of Indians taking pride in Hindu heritage and seeing the world from Indian lens. In terms of isms, the Chinese historically are followers not leaders or initiators. They took buddhism from India when India was the dominant intellectual power in ancient times. They took Communism from Europe when Europe was at its peak intellectually. Now they want to ape America because it is the dominant intellectual power now. The only genuine alternative of WU are Hindu/Indian universalism and Islamic universalism.

Sorry saar, you are 400% wrong. Chinese have been challenging WU far more systematically and successfully than India. In fact, Rajiv Malhotra holds up their techniques and apparatus as an example for India to emulate in this regard. Many references attest to this in Breaking India, Being Different and his video lectures.

You are looking at it from the point of view of individual citizens. But individual citizens, especially in a society like PRC, can do very little either way. To systemically resist WU there has to be an organized, authoritative apparatus with state backing, and the Chinese have a very good one (Indians don't have one at all).

In 1990 when China opened up its economy, American corporations lined up to go in. At the same time, American WU armies lined up to go in behind the corporations (just as they had in Russia under the drunk Yeltsin). The American/Western WU armies, who have complete free rein in India, include:

1) Journalists to write "you farted" type defamatory and psyops articles in the local and foreign press.

2) Academics who pretend to respect the native country, take knowledge from the native country's systems and then digest it into Western universalism while u-turning against the native country.

3) Activists who start up NGOs to defame the native country on the basis of religious freedom rights, "sub-regional ethnic identity" rights, "oppressed minority" rights, women's rights, gay rights, animal rights, plant rights, environmental rights, water rights and everything else... supporting an ongoing psyops commentary where the native country NEEDS to import Western Values in order to gain "truly inclusive and egalitarian prosperity".

4) Recruiters to bring in native-country citizens (especially elites) to the WU Journalist, Academic and Activist causes, just like our own "Civil Society" herrows in India. These gunga-din sepoys then provide additional credibility to WU psyops by playing the role of "native informants" or "social/political reformers" in all these spheres.

Unlike India and to some extent Russia, China had been recently bitten by the Tian'anmen square episode in 1989 and knew the danger well. They let the American Corporations in the door, then slammed it firmly in the faces of the WU brigades. They then went on to CONTROL the narrative about China in the West, or at least do their best to take control of that narrative. Chinese studies professors in Western universities are the EXACT opposite of Indian academics in Western universities... they push a stringently nationalistic line. American academics, journalists and others who are inclined to write against the Chinese narrative come up against a stone wall if they try to visit China; they will be barred from access to exactly the resources they need to write authoritative journalistic or academic pieces. Only those Western academics and journalists who respect the Chinese authorized narrative as paramount are allowed in. As for NGO/activist types, forget it!

So while it is true that there is a lack of nativist narrative-driven sentiment amongst Chinese... largely thanks to historical events (Mao's cultural revolution, the absorption of HK and Macau that brought in a lot of Xtian citizens)... they are at least protected now and for future generations by a strong system that guards the Chinese civilizational narrative from WU control. The narrative itself is still being shaped, and slowly (without Western interference) the Chinese people will buy into it as it develops. In the meantime, at least they don't have to deal with Mani Shankar Aiyers, Pankaj Mishras, Prafool Bidwais or Teesta Setalvads (let alone the far more insidious armies of EJ that have fanned the Maoist and Northeastern separatist movements up and down the breadth of India).

[Manish_Sharma]

Western Universalism is as shallow and ugly as 'sophistry' ~ Osho

Pythagoras is a link between East and West, between a civilization that disappeared in the Atlantic and a civilization that we are living in; hence he has a significance of his own.

He traveled almost all his life in search of fragments of truth. Most of his time he was in Egypt, in Alexandria. In those days Alexandria had the biggest library in the whole world, particularly scriptures containing all the discoveries of consciousness made in the lost civilization of Atlantis -- a whole civilization drowned with the whole continent in the Atlantic ocean. The name Atlantic comes from the continent Atlantis, that went down into it. The only fragmentary knowledge available about it was in Alexandria -- and perhaps Pythagoras was the first and the last man of such integrity, intelligence, ingenuity, to look into those scriptures.

That library exists no more, so whatever we know about Atlantis we know through Pythagoras. That library was destroyed by Mohammedans. The man who destroyed it, Mahmud Gaznavi, destroyed many beautiful things in India, in Afghanistan, in Egypt.

But the most precious was the vast library that contained everything about that whole civilization, which had reached to the peaks of consciousness. The day this man destroyed the library, he took Koran Sharif in one of his hands and a burning torch in another, entered the library and asked the learned librarian, "Listen carefully -- the existence of your library depends on your answers. My first question is: Is there anything in your whole library which goes against the holy KORAN? And my second question is:

If there is nothing which goes against the holy KORAN, then the holy KORAN is enough; why bother about this big library?"

The librarian must have been in a dilemma -- whatever he says will be dangerous. If he says there are many things in the library which are not in the KORAN, Mahmud is going to burn the library, because that which is not in the KORAN is untrue -- the KORAN contains all and ultimate truth. And if he says that everything that is in the library is substantially and essentially contained in the KORAN, then too he is going to burn the library, saying, "Then it is useless; the KORAN has it all." And the library was so huge and so immense that you can only conceive... He burned it, and the fire continued for six months. For six months continuously books were burning; perhaps the greatest treasure of humanity was destroyed.

Pythagoras studied in that library for many years. He was a Greek, but he found in Greece itself only sophistry. Sophistry is something ugly. It comes from a very beautiful word `sophia', which means wisdom, but sophistry is only a pretension of wisdom. And the whole of Greece was so interested in sophistry. There were sophist teachers moving all over the country teaching people, and the basic teaching of sophistry was: There is no truth. It is all a question of better argument. Truth as such does not exist, it is a fallacy.

When two persons argue, whoever is better in argument seems to have the truth, but it is really the better argument and nothing else.

Their teaching was to give you all possible ways of arguing and to make you a great arguer, and then you can argue from any side -- it doesn't matter. When truth does not exist, what side you take and argue for does not matter. It is a question of convenience:

which side is going to declare you victorious? Which side do you have more arguments for?

I have been interested in sophistry, although the name sophistry has disappeared. Socrates was the cause of destroying it. He emphasized that truth is, and arguments do not prove it, they only discover it. They do not disprove it either; they can only prevent its discovery. One single man, Socrates, destroyed the whole tradition, hundreds of years old, of sophistry. But it has remained running underground. I see it in theologians, in religious philosophies, in political ideologies... no concern for truth, the only concern is to present a very solid argument.

There is a story: one very famous sophist teacher, Zeno... and he was not just a sophist, he was a genius. It is unfortunate that his genius became associated with sophistry because that was prevalent. You pay him money and he can prove anything -- anything in the world. You just say it, he has a price for it. He proved strange things which logicians have not been able to disprove even now, after two thousand years, and whatever he has proved goes against all common sense. But logic listens to the argument, and his arguments are so fine, so refined.

For example, he says that when you kill a bird with an arrow, the arrow does not move at all. This is absurd, because if the arrow does not move at all, then how does it reach the bird? From your bow to the bird there is a distance. The arrow reaches there, the bird is killed -- there is proof. This question was asked by one king, thinking that Zeno would not be able to prove this -- and he was ready to give any amount of money if Zeno should prove that the arrow does not move.

Zeno proved that the arrow does not move, and even up to now there is no way to disprove him. His argument is that for movement, the arrow has to go from point 1 to point 2 to point 3 to point 4; obviously it has to move from one place to another place, then only will it reach the bird.

Moving from A to B or from 1 to 2, it has to pass a passage between A and B; it cannot simply reach from A to B, so you have to make another point between the two. So where there were two points, now there are three points -- and you have got into difficulty. Now he has to reach not only three points but five, because these two gaps are there, and this goes on growing. If you fill these two gaps, then there are five points and there are gaps.

And you go on filling ad infinitum... the arrow will never reach the bird.

The argument is very solid. What he is saying makes sense -- but it is absolute nonsense:

the arrow goes and kills the bird.

Zeno is not interested in the arrow or the bird. He says, "My argument proves that nothing moves, nothing can move; there is no movement in the world."

These kinds of people were all over Greece. They dominated the mind; they were constantly debating. Pythagoras was not interested at all in this kind of stupid game. It sharpens your intellect, but it does not lead you to any truth, to any discovery, to any realization. And even the greatest sophists were getting into trouble, because Zeno himself -- who had many arguments which go against reality but could not be disproved - - was defeated by his own student.

This was the routine: he was so confident, and he had the genius to be confident, that he used to take half the fees in the beginning, and half when the student won his first argument. This student was strange: he gave half the fee but he told him that he would never give him the other half. Zeno said, "How?" He said, "I am never going to argue! I will accept defeat without arguing. I may lose everything that I have but I am not going to give you the other half of your fee."

Zeno waited, but the man would not even talk about the weather, because some argument may start and there may be trouble. And he was determined not to pay the fees so as to teach Zeno: "You may be a great logician, but there is a possibility of going higher than you."

But Zeno was not going to sit silently. He put a case in the court against the student: "He has not paid me half the fee." His idea was that if he wins the case, then he will tell the court, "Force that student to pay the fee." If he loses the case, no harm -- outside the court he will catch the student and will say, "You have won your first argument -- my fee!" So whether he wins or whether he loses, he is going to get half the fee.

But he forgot that it was his own student who knew all his techniques and arguments.

From the opposite side the student was thinking, "That's good: if I win in the court, I will appeal to the court that this man should not bother me outside the court, because that will be a contempt of court. And if I lose the case, then there is no problem. Outside I will catch hold of Zeno and say, "Master, I have lost my first argument -- you cannot get the fee."

The whole genius of Greece was involved in that, in that atmosphere. Pythagoras is very unique. He got out of Greece -- it was not the right place. People were simply arguing and arguing, but nobody was concerned in evolving consciousness. He was coming to India. On the way he remained a few years in the library of Alexandria, where he picked up knowledge about the lost continent of Atlantis.

We have only that proof; no other proof exists -- although recently scientists have started looking into the matter. What they have been finding in the Atlantic ocean suggests that there must have been a great civilization; whole cities are drowned there. The whole continent simply went down into the ocean. Such changes happen on the earth: new islands come up, new mountains come up.

The Himalayas are a new mountain range -- the newest. It was not there when RIG VEDA was written, because it is impossible that RIG VEDA should not mention such beautiful mountains -- the highest and the most glorious. But there is no mention about them. And the people who wrote RIG VEDA had come from Mongolia. Certainly there was no mountain on the way; otherwise to cross the Himalayas and to come to India would have been impossible. Even today, there are only two places from where you can cross the Himalayas; otherwise it is uncrossable. Changes go on happening on the earth.

Pythagoras reached India, but he got caught again -- in the Buddhist atmosphere. It was so real; although Buddha was dead, the whole country was throbbing. His impression, his impact, had been very deep. When Pythagoras reached India, whatever he learned was learned in Buddhist universities. You will be surprised to know that Buddhist universities are the oldest universities in the world. Oxford is only one thousand years old. Nalanda, a Buddhist university, and Takshila, a Buddhist university, existed twenty-three hundred years ago. They were destroyed by Mohammedans.

But they were rare universities -- they fulfilled the real meaning of the word. Not everybody was allowed to be in the university. Outside the university campus there were places where people could live for preparation. At the gate the gatekeepers were no ordinary people but very qualified Buddhist bhikkhus, and they had to give people an examination at the gate. When you had passed those examinations, you could enter into the university campus; otherwise it was not even possible to enter it. Even just to see it was not possible; it was so sacred. Wisdom was thought so sacred -- it was not everybody's thing, only those who could put their whole life into the search.

These three P's -- Purification, Preparation, Perfection -- come from the Buddhist sources of wisdom. Of course, Pythagoras made them more logical -- he had a Greek mind -- made them more systematic. But those words are really significant.

Preparation does not mean preparing for a verbal examination or a written examination.

Preparation means preparing for an existential examination; it means going deeper into meditation. Unless you were meditative you could not enter those universities. And they had big campuses: Takshila had ten thousand scholars in it, Nalanda had twelve thousand scholars in it. Even today the greatest universities don't have more than that number, but their quality is very ordinary; students have simply passed the school examinations and they are ready to enter. No existential preparation is needed.

Preparation means that you drop all your conditionings, you drop your prejudices, you drop what you think you know and you do not know: you get as innocent as possible.

Your innocence will be the preparation -- that will allow you to enter into the university campus.

Then purification... In preparation you drop the conditionings which were given by the society, prejudices which were given to you or caught by you from the surroundings; it was borrowed knowledge in some way or other. You go like a child -- but even the child is not pure. That is something very significant to understand, because people take it for granted that the child is pure.

He is certainly innocent, but his innocence is equivalent to ignorance, and behind his innocence are all his feelings: anger, hatred, greed, jealousy. You can see, children are very jealous. If one child has a doll, the other becomes so jealous that they will start fighting. If some child has something, then the other child also wants to have it. They are very competitive. Even in the family children have a hierarchy, and they are constantly fighting to be higher than others. Whatever is needed to be done... if obedience makes them the most loved in the family, they will follow obedience. But they are not following obedience; they are really trying a power strategy.

So preparation simply takes away the layers that society has put on your mind. But you have brought with nature, with your birth, so many ugly instincts, that a purification is needed.

You have to understand that competition is meaningless. You have to meditate deeply and recognize that you are not like anybody else. And competition can be only among similar people -- and everybody is dissimilar, unique.

Once the competitive mind disappears, many things change in you; then you are not jealous. If somebody has a beautiful face and somebody has more money, and somebody has a more powerful body, you simply accept the fact that a few trees are tall and a few trees are small. But existence accepts them all.

The disappearance of competitiveness will also help you to get rid of greed. People go on accumulating -- they want to be in a better position than you, with more money than you, with everything better than you. And their whole life is wasted in that.

Purification is almost going through a fire of understanding in which all that is instinctive and ugly burns down. And it is a great experience that only the ugly burns. That which is beautiful blossoms. In purification you lose all trace of hate, and instead, suddenly a spring of love bursts forth -- as if the rock of hate was preventing the spring.

Once the cruelty... and children are very cruel. The idea that they are angels is just stupid.

They are very cruel; they will beat dogs, they will beat cats. A small insect passing by -- and a child will simply kill it for no reason, he just enjoys destruction. There is a destructiveness in him. Once that is gone, creativity arises.

So purification is a deeper meditation than preparation. Preparation was very simple, but purification is going deeper into meditation -- the deepest possible -- so everything that is not worthy of human beings is transformed. Everything has energy in it -- hate, jealousy, greed -- and when these things change, their energy becomes available to you in its purified form. And they can turn: greed can turn into compassion, sharing; hate can turn into love. Everything will turn into something which makes your heart a garden.

And when the purification is complete, utterly complete, not a corner of your being remains in the dark, everything is light and fragrant, fresh... What we have called the awakened man, the enlightened man, Pythagoras calls perfection. It is simply a different name: the perfect man.

The first two you have to do; the third is the ultimate outcome of it. In these three simple words he has condensed the whole alchemy of human transformation.

Pythagoras is one of the most important people that Greece has given to the world. But strangely enough, nothing much is talked about all the best geniuses that Greece has given to the world. Pythagoras, Socrates, Heraclitus, Epicurus -- these are the ones who should be talked about. But instead of them, in the universities Plato is studied, Aristotle is studied.

Plato is simply a record-keeper -- he has not a single idea of his own! He is a devoted lover of Socrates, and whatever Socrates says, he goes on recording it, writing it. Socrates has not written anything -- just as no great master has ever written anything. And Plato is certainly a great writer; perhaps Socrates may not have been able to write so beautifully.

Plato has made Socrates' teachings as beautiful as possible, but he himself is no one. Now the same work can be done by a tape recorder. And Aristotle is merely an intellectual, with no understanding of being, or even a desire to search for it. These people are taught in the universities.

I was constantly in a fight with my professors. When they started teaching Plato, I said, "This is absolute nonsense, because Plato has nothing to say of his own. It is better to teach about Socrates. Plato can be referred to -- he has compiled it all. But Socrates' name has become almost a fiction, and Plato has become the reality -- just the way I was saying to you last night that Ouspensky has become the master, because he has written the books, beautiful books. One day Gurdjieff will be forgotten -- he is already forgotten -- and Ouspensky will be remembered for centuries. And sooner or later what he has written will be thought to be his own ideas. None of it is his own ideas.

Pythagoras is not at all bothered about any university in the world, for the simple reason that he is not a routine scholar; he is an original seeker, and he is ready to go anywhere.

He traveled all his life to find people who may have had a little glimpse and may be able to impart something to him. He was collecting pieces, and he managed beautifully.

But Greeks don't talk about him because he is not talking about Greek philosophy; he is bringing foreign ideas, strange ideas from Alexandria, from Nalanda, from Takshila -- he is almost not a Greek. They are not interested in what he is bringing, although what he is bringing has nothing to do with Greeks or Indians or Egyptians. But he is ignored -- one of the most significant men, utterly ignored.

The same has happened to Diogenes. He is ignored because he looks embarrassing to the Greeks. And he is very original -- not only in thoughts but in life. In everything that he does he is original and very sincere -- a man of tremendous courage, who could say to Alexander the Great, "You are behaving like a fool. The very idea of conquering the world is nonsense. For what do you want to conquer the world? What will you do after it?"

He said, "After it? I am going to relax and enjoy." And Diogenes looked at his dog -- they were friends, they used to live together -- and he told the dog, "Did you hear? He is planning to relax and enjoy after conquering the world, and we are enjoying right now, without conquering anything! Why take so much trouble?" A naked man who can say to Alexander, "You are behaving like a fool," must have guts -- and Alexander had to recognize it. And he was a man of tremendous power himself, of great intelligence. He had to recognize it -- that he has never met a man of the quality of Diogenes.

But Greeks go on avoiding, the same way they have done with Epicurus. It is very strange, but perhaps this is the way of humanity to behave with its own greatest sons -- to ignore them, not to take any note of them.

But amongst all these, Pythagoras has created a complete system to create a Buddha. He himself became an enlightened man -- it was not only theoretical. When he came back to Greece, he was not the same Pythagoras who had left; he was a new man. And that was one of the greatest difficulties -- his own country could not recognize him. In fact they had no category of enlightenment, awakening, buddhahood, so where to put Pythagoras?

The category just does not exist in their mind, so he remains uncategorized, and for two thousand years nobody has commented upon him.

I am the first man to have commented on the great genius and realization of this unique individual. He has a more perfect way of presentation than you will find in Indian scriptures, because Indian scriptures are more poetic, and he is, after all, a Greek! He is very logical and very scientific.

http://oshosearch.net/Convert/Articles_ ... 00030.html

[Vayutuvan]

I would not qualify Universalism unless it is Western universalism or islamic universalism. They are like when a qualification like "major" is added to a General, then theat is alower rank than the General, i.e. Major General < General. Same way, Islamist Universalism <= Western Universalism < Univesalism, which is a concept that has been there from time immemorial AKA sanatana dharma. Time is not just linear or circular - it is a spiral ever going upwards but looks circular when projected onto a lower dimensional worldly plane (subspace).

[Rony]

So while it is true that there is a lack of nativist narrative-driven sentiment amongst Chinese... largely thanks to historical events (Mao's cultural revolution, the absorption of HK and Macau that brought in a lot of Xtian citizens)... they are at least protected now and for future generations by a strong system that guards the Chinese civilizational narrative from WU control. The narrative itself is still being shaped, and slowly (without Western interference) the Chinese people will buy into it as it develops. In the meantime, at least they don't have to deal with Mani Shankar Aiyers, Pankaj Mishras, Prafool Bidwais or Teesta Setalvads (let alone the far more insidious armies of EJ that have fanned the Maoist and Northeastern separatist movements up and down the breadth of India).

I agree that they are protected now from WU largely because of their govt (whose ideological base itself is WU derived one -communism and capitalism). But the chinese are not *fighting* WU. That is not their intention when they deny visas to western journalists or censor western media. They intentions are far more mundane related to purely contemporary political events. It is another matter and only coincidence that their actions are resulting in preventing WU agents access to China. If tomorrow the communist govt gets replaced by western friendly Chiang Kai-shek (a christian) type govt, then China would be a easy prey to WU. WU at its core is about ideology, how one sees the world from which lens and seduce/force others to do the same. In this ideological battle, the chinese are far behind the Indians. For example, the Chinese don't have their Ram Swarups, Sitaram Goels or Rajiv Malhotras. The closest they have is Zhang Weiwei whose english translated book is called " The China Wave: the Rise of a Civilizational State" which pales in comparison to what RS, SG or RM wrote or writing. I am not saying this out of hatred for Chinese or from Indian chauvinism. But this is *my* impartial assessment.

[Rudradev]

I agree that they are protected now from WU largely because of their govt (whose ideological base itself is WU derived one -communism and capitalism). But the chinese are not *fighting* WU. That is not their intention when they deny visas to western journalists or censor western media.

I would not say so... I distinguish between political/economic systems on the one hand, and ideological base in terms of deep-state narrative on the other.

The communist/capitalist political/economic systems may be Western derived, just as the present democracy in India is Western derived... but that does not mean the underlying ideological basis of the deep state has to also be Western derived. China itself is a perfect example of this. It kept some elements from Communism (one-party state, totalitarianism), threw out others, adopted some other elements from Capitalism (free enterprise etc.) and built a machine that runs the political and economic system. But this is only a machine... an apparatus. The ideology is what is in the mind of the person operating the machine. The Chinese recognize this and we should too. Chinese *ideology* as it is right now would be quite unrecognizable to Marx, Lenin or Che Guevara. Or to Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson for that matter.

I agree with you that their ideology in terms of self-defined narrative is still weakly articulated, compared to that held by *some* Hindus in India. Because of China's unique circumstances their narrative is still evolving, while ours (as you say) has been forcefully articulated by at least a few Indian scholars. But we would be foolish to consider them incapable of ever evolving a national ideology, they are every bit as intellectually capable as we are.

They intentions are far more mundane related to purely contemporary political events. It is another matter and only coincidence that their actions are resulting in preventing WU agents access to China.

For one thing, many close observers including Rajiv Malhotra would not agree with you that it is only coincidence. They've examined how the Chinese academics work up close and concluded that it's very much a conscious agenda.

But even beyond that, the distinction remains between apparatus and ideology... if the Chinese adopted a certain apparatus (repressive totalitarianism) for reasons of ideology X, and now that apparatus serves their interest in protecting a different ideology Y, what difference does it make if the original intention was to protect ideology X? The point is that their apparatus now protects their ideology Y while our ideology Z remains wide open to WU depredations.

If tomorrow the communist govt gets replaced by western friendly Chiang Kai-shek (a christian) type govt, then China would be a easy prey to WU. WU at its core is about ideology, how one sees the world from which lens and seduce/force others to do the same. In this ideological battle, the chinese are far behind the Indians.

Hypothetical arguments about sudden collapses are all very well, and I daresay if Arvind Kejriwal suddenly became India's dictator tomorrow, we too would be easy prey to WU (even easier than we are now).

But as you rightly say, WU is about ideology and the preferential adoption of lenses to view both the world and oneself.

In that way I believe the Chinese are far ahead of the Indians. They have compelled the WU-vadis, much more robustly than we, to disavow the public adoption of lenses that insidiously and intractably degrade the Chinese civilizational narrative.

For example, consider the sheer number of Western publications that challenge the very notion of India as a unitary state... and the number of different angles of attack adopted to foster this assault. Dalitism, Dravidianism, Religious angles, Caste angles, Ethnic angles and Linguistic angles. These kinds of ideas actually *dominate* the Indian self-narrative among Indian elites with a "Western" model education. This is HUGELY dangerous for India because as more people rise into the middle class and aspire to the elite class, the more they are tempted to adopt the same WU-based worldviews as the elite.

Is that a problem at ALL in China? How many Western publications have challenged the very idea that China is one country (even though, politically speaking it has been as fractious as India throughout its history?) How many have tracked the overwhelming evidence of multiple ethnic migrations into China (Tibeto-Burman, Mongolic, Manchu, Korean)... many of which actually deposed and replaced the ruling classes of the day, and used this to come up with nonsense like the Aryan Invasion Theory to undermine China's cultural unity? Are there volumes and volumes of articles suggesting institutionalized social repression as a part of Chinese tradition, the way "caste system" is described as ingrained within "oppressive" Hinduism?

If such publications exist you can be sure they are not read in China. In fact, they have limited traction in the USA or elsewhere in the West, because the authors have been prohibited from visiting libraries, historical sites, universities, museums and other institutions in the country of China that they write about. Without such access, they lack credibility and authority in academia... they are "armchair" experts at best.

Certainly the Red Princes and Five-Star Billionaires of Shanghai and Beijing do not quote from such anti-China publications to show off their open-minded erudition, and do not defend their authors against "censorship" as Indian elites will always defend a Dalrymple or Doniger.

Meanwhile, only those Western authors who do not challenge the idea of Chinese cultural, political and civilizational unity get the stamp of "authority" that can only be acquired by visiting and accessing the source material of their scholarship.

The authors who write anti-China material continue to spout off in The New Yorker or NPR or BBC about this or that dissident being sent to jail... but their arguments never come close to affecting foreign policy of Western nations towards China (compare the Modi visa issue!) Their discourse doesn't even affect mainstream media perceptions of China in the West (how often do you see the hundreds of Tibetan self-immolations being reported in the West, if at all?) And it isn't taken seriously by anybody in China anyway.

So I would not agree with your assessment of who is ahead in the ideological battle.

For example, the Chinese don't have their Ram Swarups, Sitaram Goels or Rajiv Malhotras. The closest they have is Zhang Weiwei whose english translated book is called " The China Wave: the Rise of a Civilizational State" which pales in comparison to what RS, SG or RM wrote or writing. I am not saying this out of hatred for Chinese or from Indian chauvinism. But this is *my* impartial assessment.

Fair enough. But what percentage of Indians have read RS, SRG or RM's work? How many Chinese have read the narrative espoused by Zhang and others like him, noting in fact that is written in Chinese rather than English? Our assessment of Zhang's erudition scarcely matters when you consider that Chinese children grow up reading about the Rise of a Chinese Civilizational State, while our children grow up reading JNU-penned NCERT textbooks about Akbar the Great, Syncretism, Aryan Invasion Theory and the Evil Hindu Caste System.

You are right in that some individual scholars from India have benefited from the greater intellectual freedom afforded in India. Things like the Cultural Revolution rendered China completely devoid of intellectuals of the RS/SRG generation. They've had to start inventing a new narrative to take the place of the Communist deep-state ideology that *was* WU based. And as Rajiv Malhotra attests they are working on developing and protecting it in a driven, systematic manner.

So let's remember this: India was ahead of China economically in the 1950s, on par with it in 1980, and dwarfed by it in 2010. We can continue to absorb Western beliefs that China will fall apart like a house of cards, China is a paper tiger and whatever else... and continue to believe that we are "far ahead" in the intellectual battle against Western Universalism. In fact, reality is changing, and just as with the economic race it is not changing in a direction that favours us. We were probably somewhat ahead of them in the 1960s (even though we had our own Macaulayputras ruling the roost then). But we've either stood still or fallen behind since then. Meanwhile, they have been equipping themselves to protect the rapid advances that they will make as they surge ahead.

And no, I'm not speaking out of love or fear for China either! This is just my assessment, too... though in all honesty I became aware of it because of Rajiv Malhotra's writings.

[Rony]

I agree with you that their ideology in terms of self-defined narrative is still weakly articulated, compared to that held by *some* Hindus in India. Because of China's unique circumstances their narrative is still evolving, while ours (as you say) has been forcefully articulated by at least a few Indian scholars. But we would be foolish to consider them incapable of ever evolving a national ideology, they are every bit as intellectually capable as we are.

I never said they are incapable of ever evolving a national ideology. I said they are far behind Indians now and probably in medium term.

For one thing, many close observers including Rajiv Malhotra would not agree with you that it is only coincidence. They've examined how the Chinese academics work up close and concluded that it's very much a conscious agenda.

I don’t think RM has examined how the Chinese academics work up close or did a purva paksha of Chinese like he did of the west. His only interactions of Chinese as far as i remember and at least as far as i know are the ones he had in America which is not a serious assessment of the ideological capacity of chinese scholars. Also, RM like many Hindus have a Hanuman syndrome where they underestimate their work compared to other nationalities even while they have Ravana syndrome arrogance while trying to compare with other Hindu scholars and try to dismiss them .RM usually invoke Chinese at the drop of a hat because he thinks by invoking the chinese, the Indians will get into competitive spirit mode and understand the gravity of the situation (similar to how Pakistanis do equal-equal with Indians at the drop of the hat to get attention from their domestic audience). Other example i can cite may be a controversial example closer home but we can see this phenomenon when Hindus overexaggerate the Islamic “victories” over Hindus or when they say “Without Sikhs, Hindus were doomed and Sikhs are the sword arm of Hinduism” (as if Marathas, Rajputs, Assamese, Andhras , Kannadas did not fight for Hinduism at various points in the past and were not the sword arm of Hinduism at those times)

Hypothetical arguments about sudden collapses are all very well, and I daresay if Arvind Kejriwal suddenly became India's dictator tomorrow, we too would be easy prey to WU (even easier than we are now).

Even if AJ becomes PM, there will still be *some* Hindus both in India and in dispora who will continue to challenge WU. India’s strength in this case (and in other cases weakness) is its decentralized approach. But by the very nature of Chinese society which is top down, a change in leadership and priorities means there is *lesser* chance of it getting challenged from the citizenry.

To sum it up, I am not disagreeing with you about the far more serious challenges Indian civilization and nationhood faces from WU compared to WU threat to chinese civilization or nationhood. Nor i am disagreeing with you that by the very anglicized and deracinated nature of large part of India elite and as a result of not able to to control our narrative , we face more serious challenges than the Chinese in countering it. My point is specific that 1) *some* Hindu scholars did more intense purvapaksha of WU than any Chinese did so far and because of it *some* of us are in better position to understand the nature and threat of WU than any Chinese can (at the moment and possibly in medium term) and 2) by the very decentralized nature of our society, even if people like AJ, Mamata, Mulayam, KCR are in the helm, *some* Hindus will continue to fight WU in their own way which is unlikely in China’s case in similar situation.

[shiv]

I saw a sad news item today. It seems to have become a fashion in India to starts schools with the name "techno-school". So we have names like "Chaitanya techno-school" with the name prominently adverstising some "technological connection" with that school which promises to give your child a special technology leg-up in exchange for your wallet.

The news was of some "techno-school" in AP (or was it Telengana) where a bus picked up 26 kids and then proceeded to cross an unmanned railway crossing where the bus was hit by a train, killing 15 kids on the spot. Exactly what was advanced technology about this school? Sad, but the point is that people get fooled by labels. The label, the name, is important. If someone signs his name as "Gay_Dick" it won't be long before people start seeing a connection between the name/label and the sexual preferences of that person. Also, we have all heard "Islam means peace" Therefore Islam means peace. We hear, "God loves everyone. Give yourself to Jesus and God will forgive you for all your sins". What a lovely sales pitch to get a guilty sinner on your side. These are classic "You farted" tricks to wrong-foot someone else and make third party observers to make a judgement call that the label creator is right and others are wrong

Exactly the same trick has been achieved by calling something "Universalism" The minute you call something "universalism" - those who are exposed to the concept automatically and subconsciously accept that the concept really is "universals" exactly like Gay_Dick is homosexual, Islam is peace, and God will love you unconditionally as long as you meet certain conditions.

The west never pushes universalism as western universalism. It is pushed as universalism. Period. It is to Rajiv Malhotra's credit that he sussed out the real meaning. But the meaning is not difficult to see - especially for older codgers like me who have seen definitions of "universalism" changing as western society changes with the latest western societal experiment.

[brihaspati]

shiv ji,
I havent been following BR for some time, and see a refreshing air of change a la the bad/pretentious/million-billion-trillion-digit fond "Hinduism"'s time cycles, that both knowledge and asinine stupidity recur in cycles. why do you need to start such topics? to see people mocking any deconstruction of a certain viewpoint associated with the "west" because they themselves have been absorbed into that viewpoint?

The primary position behind supporting what is dubbed "western universalism" here, seems to be that it is (a) "rational" (b) "universalism is desirable" (c) any deviation from "universal" does not negate the utility or justifiability of the "universal". (d) the three points before imply that this "universalism" is also the universal scale on which all civilizational experience must be measured.

Once folks accept these axiomatically, they then deconstruct the Indian components in accordance with apparent universalist principles to try and show that Indian ones don't fit, and hence either they graciously offer Indians to reconstruct their ideas to fit (a)-(d) or be prepared to be trashed.

Interestingly, none of the points (a) to (d) are really explained or analyzed or deconstructed. I will try to explore these points in a series of posts. lets start with "rational" - people touting this as basis of WU" are either deliberately pervertly or blissfully ignorant-ly unaware of the fierce critique of "ratio" and the "rational" going on within western philosophy since the bashing of Weber by Habermas. The reason for dissing "rationality" as basis of "WU" are many, and primarily because it is self-contradictory and severely restrictive as a practical philosophy or even value system. Some folks told me that they know "rationality" is derived from the root "reason" [which is not true]- apparently these "rational" guys think being "rational" is about being able to "reason on facts". Facts are problematic, as facts depend on perception. But a more serious problem is that reason itself is dependent on a set of propositional logic.

When people loosely shoot about with "rationality/reason based on facts" they forget that the two components "fact" and "logic" both are subject to underlying human values. The westerners never used "rationality" as basis for a practical social philosophy as is amply clear in their history.

Even though "Moshe" will perhaps not be considered "western" by current standards, since he has been cited here - lets take him up. Was there any "rationality" given by Moshe himself, or the commentators who report it - for his "commandments"? well the only thing that comes close as "fact" is that he was supposedly dictated to "write those down" by his "God", and that they should be "obeyed" because "God" ordered them to. Impeccable fact and "reason". Has any "rationalist" asked the question as to which logical system Moshe was using, and why is that logical system universally applicable? Based on the claim that everything in WU is based on reason, we must be able to deconstruct and cycle back in layers of reasoning to even more basic "facts" and "reasons" as to why "God" must be obeyed? Forget challenging "moshes'" version of "facts" as none else was there as witness.

This is the fatal flaw that universalists hide: their reason also ends up in something unjustified, a claim, an unprovable, unjustifiable end node beyond which no fact or reason can be found.

A practical flaw of "universalist" rationality also appears in Moshe's story: the attempt to universalize can only even partially succeed if and only if you can trim various aspects of reality or fact to make disparate situations/phenomena/experiences identical. To apply the same law on two men, you need to ignore their individualities, their uniquenesses and construct a non-real abstract entity which is formed after trimming off those bits of these two individuals that dont agree and hence describes no one. There starts the first step in dehumanization of the human civilization where as much of the different aspects of humanity as possible must be trimmed away, to create a human-entity that represents none. The end product of the "rationally universal" project is therefore a convenient shell which can then be defined according to the context and convenience of those who have the power to do so.

One can see that Moshe himself had to order the culling of the Medianite women and children - a people who had given him and his refugees refuge after escaping Egypt, and break his commandment "thou shalt not kill". Contrary to claims pushed here - this was no "judgment" by "God" - as Moshe knew what he was doing was a "guilty act", as he ordered the executioners to do penance for shedding blood, in the traditional way.

So he needed to justify breaking his own "rational" universalism, and thereby invalidate the previous reason, by showing that it had to be replaced by a more complicated and contextual "reason" - and that the older "universalism" was without any basis, and needed to be problematized and complexified. This is what has happened in ever more increasing crises within western philosophical thought: their universalism is always a temporary fit, that needs to be constantly broken, problematized, extended to accommodate changing needs, greeds, objectives and evolving reality. A universalism that is never stationary, contradicts its own claim to universalism. And one of the reasons this happens is "rationality".

phew! hope folks won't mind ore of this to come - as they have worshiped "wu" here too on pretty long harangues.
(post -1 on WU)

[Rudradev]

Excellent point Shiv. In fact this platform is not even generally referred to as "universalism" but something even more generic, like "human values" that we as "world citizens" should be equipped with. That brings up a core aspect of Western Universalism: the platform is most powerful when it does not have a name at all, when its tenets simply pervade societies with an almost subconscious sense of defining "the way things should be." Then nobody even thinks to ask why they should be that way.

[Pulikeshi]

The west never pushes universalism as western universalism. It is pushed as universalism. Period.

Southern Universalism means what?
Adding anything in front of Universalism as a qualification makes it less Universal onlee no?
In calling it "Western" Universalism it has already been made into an "ism" if you get my drift...

[shiv]

Western Universalism is as shallow and ugly as 'sophistry' ~ Osho

Pythagoras studied in that library for many years. He was a Greek, but he found in Greece itself only sophistry. Sophistry is something ugly. It comes from a very beautiful word `sophia', which means wisdom, but sophistry is only a pretension of wisdom. And the whole of Greece was so interested in sophistry. There were sophist teachers moving all over the country teaching people, and the basic teaching of sophistry was: There is no truth. It is all a question of better argument. Truth as such does not exist, it is a fallacy.

When two persons argue, whoever is better in argument seems to have the truth, but it is really the better argument and nothing else.

Their teaching was to give you all possible ways of arguing and to make you a great arguer, and then you can argue from any side -- it doesn't matter. When truth does not exist, what side you take and argue for does not matter. It is a question of convenience:

which side is going to declare you victorious? Which side do you have more arguments for?
http://oshosearch.net/Convert/Articles_ ... 00030.html

Fascinating. Actually "sophistry" being a pejorative expression was replaced by the subject "rhetoric" - which was actively taught as a subject in universities. It was and still is taught as part of higher Islamic education for mullahs. That is why we have heard some of the most stunning rhetoric from Islamic sources - most convincing and difficult to rebut. Not on facts, but on technicalities. "The recently coined term "Islamophobia" is a master stroke example of "one-word rhetoric" that accuses people of being bigoted and "phobic" os Islam, as if they suffer from a disease. It is a "you farted" label that impales and holds anyone down with a pre-created accusation to indict him should he so much as chirp any word against Islam. But I digress.

We have some fine rhetoricians on BRF, but few can match Wendy Doniger or Arundhati Roy.

From Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the capability of writers or speakers to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations.[1] As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western tradition.

[shiv]

To apply the same law on two men, you need to ignore their individualities, their uniquenesses and construct a non-real abstract entity which is formed after trimming off those bits of these two individuals that dont agree and hence describes no one. There starts the first step in dehumanization of the human civilization where as much of the different aspects of humanity as possible must be trimmed away, to create a human-entity that represents none. The end product of the "rationally universal" project is therefore a convenient shell which can then be defined according to the context and convenience of those who have the power to do so.

Super stuff. Spot on, but it took me hundreds of words and scores of posts to try and say this.

[Pulikeshi]

And no, I'm not speaking out of love or fear for China either! This is just my assessment, too... though in all honesty I became aware of it because of Rajiv Malhotra's writings.

Rudradev, goes without saying... enjoy reading ur opinions... keep them coming.

Question(s) - are you saying that India is more targeted by the West because of the need to deny space for any Universal claim by India more so than China?
In that case, is it also true that India's intrinsic claims may be superior, if weakly presented today... whereas China's claims are weaker, even if strongly presented today?
Can you please elaborate on the reason if this is the case?

[A_Gupta]

As an example of "universalism" that completely undermines our interests:
The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

The implicit model here is that one has one religion or another. It does not accommodate, e.g., Japan, where {via Prof. Arvind Sharma}

According to the 1991 census, 95% of the population of Japan declared itself as followers of Shinto and 76% of the same population also declared itself as Buddhists.

Can you be both Muslim and Christian? Shia and Sunni? Baptist and Episcopalian? No. Will the UN defend your human rights if you try to be both? No. They will say you are crazy, and uphold the right for you to be excommunicated from one or both.

Likewise, the construction of "Hinduism" and "Sikhism" as religions has pretty much destroyed, I think, the continuum between "Hindu" and "Sikh" that existed in practice.

PS: Prof. Arvind Sharma's article:
http://comparativestudyofreligion.wordp ... s-freedom/

[KrishnaK]

I thought I wasn't going to continue this conversation, but I changed my mind.

If you take a system like democracy and introduce it to a target population, it's survival cannot be guaranteed just because the system is considered good and dubbed "universal". The target society needs to have a prior culture of accepting the right of everyone in society to survive and have a voice. That "prior culture" represents the "initial conditions" suitable for the growth of democracy.

WRONG. Democracy is the natural state. It will survive and prosper everywhere, irrespective of culture, because all humans everywhere, whatever the culture are the same. They have the same urges and drives. The only thing required to cultivate democracy is understanding all other forms are cannot sustain themselves beyond a point. When people get that in their stupid heads, democracy will prosper just fine. It is precisely for that reason that the shiite clergy in Iraq talk about a secular democratic state. They understand given Iraq's deep divide between sunnis and shia, nothing else will work in the long run.

That apart, when it comes to economic development - political models other than democracy have done well, so the argument that "prosperity is a function of democratic freedoms" is garbage.

Good economics can come without democracy yes. But they can't sustain prosperity without establishing institutions. Institutions that are transparent, accountable, blah blah. China can continue to grow just fine to a point. How long will the CPC be able to peddle the nonsense that they alone can keep China secure ?

If I am prosperous and successful today and you are less so, the idea that you should behave like me to be like me presupposes that you desperately want to be like me and are seeking my advice. It may be that you don't give a damn and you are content as you are. You don't need my sanctimonious advice. Western universalism is that sanctimonious advice to everyone else. "We are the best. You need to be like us. You need to behave in this way to be like us"

Most of this "west is forcing their ideas on us" comes solely from the already well off middle class. You might be content. But a lot of people do want more.

[member_22733]

To apply the same law on two men, you need to ignore their individualities, their uniquenesses and construct a non-real abstract entity which is formed after trimming off those bits of these two individuals that dont agree and hence describes no one. There starts the first step in dehumanization of the human civilization where as much of the different aspects of humanity as possible must be trimmed away, to create a human-entity that represents none. The end product of the "rationally universal" project is therefore a convenient shell which can then be defined according to the context and convenience of those who have the power to do so.

Super stuff. Spot on, but it took me hundreds of words and scores of posts to try and say this.

Super stuff indeed. I knew that the left-wing libertarians of the west have an equal (if not more) part in plundering and "genociding" what they consider to be "the other", but I did not know how they could bring themselves to do it. The answer is in the bolded point in Brihaspati-ji's post. Dehumanizing and labeling "the other", is the first step in genocide.

Here is an example of "dehumanizing" at work:

One of my good friends is a prof of pyschology a pol-sci dept in a UKstani univ (a good example of cross collab b/w diff areas of science). He was telling me about how there is a section of people in the pol-sci community who are proponents of "rational choice theory" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory), who irrationally defend their philosophy against any criticism. They claim that rational-choice is universally human and that the politics of every country that has some form of democracy can be modeled successfully by Rational-Choice theory.

One of the piskology/behavioral econmics oriented guys in the community proved in a study, that most people DO NOT make rational choices in politics and the prof also provided statistical evidence that conclusively proved it so. They proved an early version of what is now mainstream knowledge: People who deeply believe in something when provided with evidence contrary to that belief, stick even more closely to that very belief (a version of cognitive dissonance). This caused a huge consternation within the rational choice community and made them kick out a few profs/post grads because they supported the new evidence, thereby proving that the study was correct Since the rational thing to do would be to have accepted that contrary evidence and modify their theories.

This is exactly what happens to any one who tries to apply abstract philosophy like a mathematical equation on ALL humans expects everyone to follow it like a robot, and obviously dehumanizing them in the process.

[KrishnaK]

The efficacy and "success" of government ideally should revolve around an overall sense of success achieved by a large majority of people who are being governed. In some senses the governments of Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia are extremely successful. Success in income is no issue at all for them. Success in education does not appear to be a problem. They can only be criticized for their effect on other countries - perhaps Saudi Arabia can be criticized for funding Wahhabism, but those criticisms, in my view are "weak" criticisms.

If I compare Bahrain or Saudi Arabia with the USA - I find that the US is about as successful as the other two nations. If an American and a Saudi national were to stand together and boast about why "Mine is bigger" who would win? Whose nation is "more successful?" If I cut the detail, it appears that the US's model of success requires a lot more human intervention - a lot more work. If the US were to magically stop doing that work - it is the US that would become poorer and face internal dissatisfaction. KSA on the other hand has oil to export. If the US stops importing oil someone else will buy oil, and in fact the oil supplies will last longer because it is not being burnt up at US rates. So KSA could claim "greater success" than the USA. These arguments are pretty inane, but these are the types of arguments that are often used to measure success. They are more easily applied to compare between nations where it is evident from the outset that one is "more successful" and the other is "less successful". When it comes to comparing Saudi with USA the goalpost is moved from "income" and "education" to freedom of information and freedom of religion. Here again the parameters are weighted so that "the west" wins. If the parameters were set by asking "Where the one and only religion is paramount. Where women are treated as God intended them to be treated. Where gun violence is not high" etc - Saudi Arabia would "win"

Very specious argument. The US model of success will make saudi arabia irrelevant. When their oil becomes completely useless, hopefully those idiots will change.

Added later: There is no US model of success. India was successful for a 1000 years too. And will be again. The only thing that's changed is our form of governance. One that's a lot more sustainable that Ashoka's India or even Ram Rajya.

Ultimately the only parameters that count are
1. Do I have enough to eat
2. Does my family have enough to eat
3. Do we have clothes to wear
4. Do we have a roof over our heads
5. Can we be safe from natural disasters, wars and crime
6. Will my children get what they need to become useful adults who can lead lives on their own (What exactly are the "best" needs for children?)
7. Can everyone get some relief from ill health
8. What happens to old and infirm people?

Finally, there is a number 9:
9. Can all the above factors remain positive for everyone for at least 100 years?

Point 9 is what requires democracy. It is the only thing that can sustain.

Can all 9 factors be assured for ALL people in the WHOLE WORLD for now and for the foreseeable future?

Yes.

It is easier to get a small number of people in one nation state to be "successful" especially if that success is predatory and at someone else's expense. If some magical force compelled that "successful" nation state to try and arrange for everyone else in the world to be equally successful, it might turn out that they might fail if success of one nation rests on the failure and exploitation of another nation.

If millions of "exploited" Chinese workers lead to a massive expansion of the Chinese economy and an improvement in infrastructure and healthcare in China, what would the enforcement of western style human rights have done? Human rights is simply something used to bash China. Western style democracy and human rights were of no use to China and they are demonstrating that clearly.

"Success" is like a photograph. Humans live only for 60 to 70 years. Success has to be recalibrated and redefined every 25 to 50 years or so to see what helps the largest number of people lead the most self sufficient lives. It is a government's responsibility to make the lives of its people better. If the government does this by exploiting some other nation, it is morally wrong even if it is successful. If a nation state finds itself being exploited and yet criticized as "not being successful" - it would be in that nation state's interest to act destructive and wage war to tear down the exploitation from predatory, but "successful" states.

For the individual, his life would depend on whether the happens to be living in a currently successful state that seeks to maintain its current status, or whether he lives in a "less successful" state which is plotting to bring down the more successful state so that resources can be grabbed for itself. Certainty is absent.

The argument that success is a zero sum game is entirely wrong. It is not. China has grown entirely because of the access to the US market and capital from the west. For all your angst again western universalism, India too has grown because of that. That GDP growth hasn't come out of the US GDP. All have grown together. If India is today at 1k USD per capita and the US is at 50k USD, then there's a 50 times upside in India and everybody is welcome to invest and reap the rewards. Resources are only as finite as the capacity of the human brain to innovate. Any society that provides as many people the access to innovate will sustain for as long as the people procreate. That's very certain.

[KrishnaK]

To apply the same law on two men, you need to ignore their individualities, their uniquenesses and construct a non-real abstract entity which is formed after trimming off those bits of these two individuals that dont agree and hence describes no one. There starts the first step in dehumanization of the human civilization where as much of the different aspects of humanity as possible must be trimmed away, to create a human-entity that represents none. The end product of the "rationally universal" project is therefore a convenient shell which can then be defined according to the context and convenience of those who have the power to do so.

Super stuff. Spot on, but it took me hundreds of words and scores of posts to try and say this.

heavy duty bullshit by guruji. No wonder you like it. Makes no sense at all. Applying the same law to two men, is the same as applying the same medicine to two men. Human drive and behaviour everywhere is the same. Any part of your unique culture that isn't hurting anyone else, is just fine. Nobody's asking anyone to change that.

[ShauryaT]

Likewise, the construction of "Hinduism" and "Sikhism" as religions has pretty much destroyed, I think, the continuum between "Hindu" and "Sikh" that existed in practice.

PS: Prof. Arvind Sharma's article:
http://comparativestudyofreligion.wordp ... s-freedom/

It was only in 1925 that an SGPC resolution required Sikhs to follow no "other" faith. Until, about 1900, Idols of deities were present inside the Golden temple. So, this nonsense of "exclusivism" is clearly political and influenced by the British presence in India. Thankfully, Most Sikhs and Hindus reject such exclusivist doctrines and the RSS considers ALL Indians to be Hindus . The SGPC itself is a political organization formed under political influence to "unify" the spiritual and temporal aspects of the Sikh faith and as such the reason why the Akali Dal would fail the doctrinal tests of secularism. Like the works of Arvind Sharma.

[A_Gupta]

I thought I wasn't going to continue this conversation, but I changed my mind.

WRONG. Democracy is the natural state. It will survive and prosper everywhere, irrespective of culture, because all humans everywhere, whatever the culture are the same. They have the same urges and drives.

In humanity's approx 5000 years of post-invention-of-writing history, democracy has been the exception rather than the rule. How did it become "the natural state", inquiring minds want to know.

This idea that "democracy is the natural state" is universalism popping up again.

The only thing required to cultivate democracy is understanding all other forms are cannot sustain themselves beyond a point. When people get that in their stupid heads, democracy will prosper just fine.

Exactly, humans everywhere, whatever the culture, have a propensity not to exercise their intelligence. As a result, even in the single global superpower, supposedly the bastion of world science, 44+% of its citizens think that the Theory of Evolution is probably or definitely false.

Moreover, even if a majority of one generation get it into their stupid heads that democracy is the only sustainable form of government, a few generations down, people will have to learn it all over again.

It is precisely for that reason that the shiite clergy in Iraq talk about a secular democratic state. They understand given Iraq's deep divide between sunnis and shia, nothing else will work in the long run.

A **few** of the Shiite clergy in Iraq talk about a secular democratic state.

Anyway, M.A. Jinnah and his adherents in the Muslim League were insistent that given India's deep divide between Muslims and Hindus, democracy could not work.

Jinnah, 1942:
The British statesmen know that the so-called democracy and the parliamentary system of government is nothing but a farce in the country. It is not, as some people mix it up, a question of Muslims objecting to a government based on the brotherhood of man, as it is often alleged by people who really do not understand what they are talking about when they talk of either democracy or Islam. Democracy means, to begin with, majority rule. Majority rule in a single nation, in a single society, is understandable, although even there it has failed. Representative government in a single nation, harmonious, homogenous and one is understandable. But you have only got to apply your mind for a few minutes to see the truth.

Can such a system ever work or succeed when you have two different nations-indeed more than two different societies, the Muslim society and the Hindu society?

Likewise it was British wisdom that given India's multiplicity of languages, religions and ethnicities, India could not work and democracy could not work. Somehow a century or two of scholarship and policy did not chance upon this sublime idea of yours that "democracy is the natural state".

http://www.democracy-asia.org/qa/india/ ... shikar.pdf

The introduction of English education in India created a class of upper class/caste graduates who aspired for positions of honour and influence under the colonial regime. They found to their dismay that the employment opportunities were limited and that the British were unwilling to accept them as their equals. The more articulate among them demanded, during the 1870s and 80s, a greater share of power – more jobs in the bureaucracy, especially at the higher level, and more seats in the legislative councils. The reaction from the British side asserted the superiority of the rulers. The earlier liberal idea that it was the colonial mission to prepare Indians for self-rule and that limited amount of representation introduced at the local and provincial levels “would be a school of self-government for the whole India” lost ground. More and more officials started taking the James Mill and John Stuart Mill line that representative government was ‘totally unsuited’ to India. Indians were allegedly unfit to rule themselves and introducing British political institutions to India was ‘a fantastic dream’. The irremediable problem, according to this perspective, was that the Indians did not have the character required for governing, however well educated they might become. Hence the British rule had to continue indefinitely.

The Spectator, 1963:
http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/ ... -democracy

THE persistence of parliamentary democracy in India, when in so many of the new States of Asia and Africa it has either never had the opportunity of birth or has, after a short life, yielded to military or civilian oligarchy, is one Of the most remarkable phenomena of this century. None the less, it does not have an easy time in India, where many serious men believe that it is unsuited to Indian conditions and Indian traditions. Among Western students of the subject, there is a belief that the inherited traditions and social structure of India will, in the end, be too much for an imported system of government.

Do note, the "new States of Asia and Africa" quickly lapsed from "democracy,the natural state".

Good economics can come without democracy yes. But they can't sustain prosperity without establishing institutions. Institutions that are transparent, accountable, blah blah. China can continue to grow just fine to a point. How long will the CPC be able to peddle the nonsense that they alone can keep China secure ?

That there really is accountability in democracy is yet to be established. As someone pointed out, in India, we just shuffle in and out the same set of corrupt politicians. They get to enjoy their ill-gotten gains without fear of prison or beheading in a revolution. In that sense, they are much smarter than the dictators of the Middle East.

Most of this "west is forcing their ideas on us" comes solely from the already well off middle class. You might be content. But a lot of people do want more.

Right -- about wanting more -- most countries, for instance, are very, very happy, and keen to embrace whatever it is the International Monetary Fund (IMF) tells them to do -- in some alternate universe. Are not IMF prescriptions "the west forcing their ideas" on these countries?