Non-Western Worldview

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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Murugan »

One of the reasons why educated Indians are so scathing and derisive about India is precisely because no one can define a place for India in their minds - but everyone is clear about the west, Russia and China.
Smriti bhransh (स्मृति भ्रंष). Indians are victims of disconnect due to apathy of their own doing.
"When memory is bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost, one falls down again"

Creating new 'memories' which once brought good marks in exams, helped in clearing competitive interviews and earning daily bread.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Murugan »

Romans, Arabs and Chinese had significant presence in ancient India. India influenced the ancient world till 16th century CE and there are solid evidences.

Interactions on intellectual level with Arabs and Chinese lasted for many centuries.
Chinese records of interaction with India is from 4-5th Century to 14th Century CE. Chinese translated whatever they learnt/gathered from India in Chinese, vis-a-vis translated Chinese works in Sanskrit.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

X-Post...
habal wrote:Is US the new empire or does the empire control US

The real Empire has been in operation since 1649. The nominal Anglo Empire, actually controlled by a “power elite” of financial interests like the Rothschilds, operated through Britain until the 20th Century. They lost partial control of the US in 1783, but fought hard (financially) to re-establish control of the US. After 130 years, they finally regained a foothold with the Federal Reserve and consolidated that control during the next 50 years, finally gaining absolute control by 1963.

Meanwhile, the power of Britain as the bully boy under their control had been dissipated through their endless series of wars. The US, under tighter and tighter control through the first half of the 20th Century, became the co-bully boy with Britain during WW II, and replaced it entirely in 1956. However, the power elite still financially controls both the British Commonwealth and the US, and they sometimes indirectly influence US policy through British puppets like Theresa May (White Helmets, Skripals, the Steele dossier etc.)

In the 1830-40s, the power elite decided that a pro-British puppet state in historic Palestine would be useful to their goals in SW Asia, and they started a project to “restore” Jewish power in Palestine. This was a very long term project, as we know, taking more than a century.

It’s important for us to understand that this Empire, this power elite, is not a monolithic, absolute dictatorship with consistent policies. There are factions and power struggles within the power elite, but for the most part they are guided by shared interests, the most important being the preservation and expansion of their own collective power. As in any hierarchy, there are constantly shifts in relative power. Subordinates will always attempt to increase their own power, sometimes becoming a dominant force. Israel is such a case. However, if and when a vassal’s reckless actions begin to threaten the aggregate power of the rest of the elite, other factions will attempt to check its power. If they are able to, the vassal will be weakened or destroyed and the Empire and its power elite will endure. If unable, the parasitic vassal may cause the collapse of the Empire as a whole, perhaps even destroying the power elite itself.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by A_Gupta »

https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.c ... narguable/
More troubling is the short shrift given to the letter and spirit of the Constitution in the concurring opinion of Justice Chandrachud. While as a matter of law, like the other majority opinions, he denies the status of a religious denomination to the Ayyappans, unlike the others, he goes further and presents an eloquent, albeit gratuitous reading of the Constitution to justify his position.

The fulcrum of Justice Chandrachud’s view is that “the founding faith on which the Constitution is based is the belief that it is in the dignity of each individual that the pursuit of happiness is founded.” This is a laudable proposition but one that is certainly not evident from reading the Indian Constitution, let alone capable of being its founding faith.

At a philosophical level, the pursuit of individual happiness is, at best, an incidental goal for our Constitution to aspire to. It has no basis in text, doctrine or debates of our framers. Our philosophical traditions highlight the dissolution of the self rather than its assertion, as Justice Chandrachud has done. Importing an evocative Jeffersonian phrase and making it the founding faith of our Constitution makes for terrific reading but poor reasoning.

A reading of our Constitution demonstrates that different provisions of the Constitution serve different but equally significant objectives – liberty, equality, fraternity, diversity and so on. Equally, the Constitution speaks of duties of individuals and responsibility of the state to distribute resources to serve the common good. Limiting the breadth of the Constitution to a single virtue – dignity – is an instance of uni-dimensional holism, an entirely discredited method of constitutional interpretation.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by A_Gupta »

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018 ... -sculpture
Brinkmann soon realized that his discovery hardly required a special lamp: if you were looking at an ancient Greek or Roman sculpture up close, some of the pigment “was easy to see, even with the naked eye.” Westerners had been engaged in an act of collective blindness. “It turns out that vision is heavily subjective,” he told me. “You need to transform your eye into an objective tool in order to overcome this powerful imprint”—a tendency to equate whiteness with beauty, taste, and classical ideals, and to see color as alien, sensual, and garish.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

A_Gupta wrote:https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018 ... -sculpture
Brinkmann soon realized that his discovery hardly required a special lamp: if you were looking at an ancient Greek or Roman sculpture up close, some of the pigment “was easy to see, even with the naked eye.” Westerners had been engaged in an act of collective blindness. “It turns out that vision is heavily subjective,” he told me. “You need to transform your eye into an objective tool in order to overcome this powerful imprint”—a tendency to equate whiteness with beauty, taste, and classical ideals, and to see color as alien, sensual, and garish.

well written and argued.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by A_Gupta »

Didn't know where to put this item. But notice the alarm that prospective Indian politicians are being taught a non-western worldview.
https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... ts/588127/
MUMBAI—Vinay Sahasrabuddhe is on a mission that is at once impossibly simple and yet somehow insurmountable: He is training Indian politicians to be competent.

Not just any politicians, mind you—Hindu nationalist politicians.

Sahasrabuddhe, a senior official in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, has for years been admitting election hopefuls to his Indian Institute of Democratic Leadership, teaching them to deliver speeches, debate while staying on message, and promote good governance, all to show them how to work the system and, ultimately, master it. In essence, Sahasrabuddhe and his colleagues are trying to professionalize nationalism.

Such an effort to induct a new generation of leaders into political life is unusual in India, where many elected officials still rely on patrons or lineage to rise to the top. The institute, which markets itself as offering an Ivy League education in politics, offers a window into the BJP’s efforts to educate its cadres and widen its appeal. It suggests a level of strategic calm in a political party that faces tough national parliamentary elections this month and next, but which is nevertheless playing a longer game of investing in youth and expanding party ranks.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by csaurabh »

I have been noticing for quite some time. 'Global' fantasy ( read Hollywood ) is now fast becoming Indian fantasy as well.
Young gen is very disconnected with our itihasas and puranas. Or even if they know, they don't care.

They don't seem to want to dress up as Hanuman for Ram Lila. They would rather dress up as characters from DOTA, World of Warcraft, Marvel Comics and Star Wars.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

Dated article but worth reading.
Will post full text and my comments.


https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2 ... ins-russia
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by siqir »

russian orthodox basically do not bow or bend the knee to anyone in the west

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/worl ... hurch.html

there is some parallels to iran shia

both these nations should be target for civilizational ghar vapsi at some point
should start with setting up panini institutes of sanskrit in their major cities
a milestone would be getting them to drop cyrillic and arabic scripts in favour of devanagari or other brahmi derived

one of the reasons oit ait debate is important
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ricky_v »

civilizational ghar wapsi of persia and khazar -rus? for the pars and parths,i get though dasrajanya was a long gone memory when civilization took root and both are precisely where they are because they exported their culture everywhere, regards :hindi is persianized sanskrit.
Hey, why not tell proud cultures to take up our system of writing when even we dont do that? Even realms of fantasy fabricate less than this, lest the world feels unreal.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Ardeshir »

There is a small movement in Persia to revisit ancient Persian culture, but the mullahs viciously attack it.
This is an older report, but not much has changed. https://www.cnn.com/2011/11/14/opinion/ ... index.html
The Zoroastrian cemetery outside Tehran now faces another challenge: The municipality seeks to lay a highway through it. Some schools and devotional centers in other Zoroastrian strongholds like Yazd and Kerman have also been notified of pending annexation. Communal gatherings are routinely monitored by fundamentalist Muslim authorities who allege that Zoroastrianism "threatens national security and subverts the Islamic revolution."
Protections offered by the Islamic Republic's constitution have been rendered meaningless in practice. Not surprisingly, the daily regimen of discrimination makes Zoroastrians feel wholly unwelcome in their Iranian homeland. Only between 35,000 and 90,000 now remain in a country of approximately 74 million citizens -- and, fearing persecution, many do not readily identify themselves as Zoroastrians.
As of today, there are more Zoroastrians in India than in Iran.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by siqir »

hindu number system replaced roman numerals

in holy roman empire

for good reasons and without killing anyone

https://अङ्कलोक.भारत/8.1.jpg

pic is devanagari keyboard for chinese
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by A_Gupta »

A challenge to all:
http://www.hipkapi.com/2011/02/28/why-w ... angadhara/
excerpt:
2. During the colonial period, we were described as immoral people. This is one end of the spectrum. At the other end, we have ‘liberals’ like Shweder, who make us into a bunch of moral cretins. So, it appears, we have two choices: either we are immoral or we are moral idiots. Not much of a choice, is it?

3. Why does this situation come about? This is not a translation problem (‘how should we translate paap into English?’), but an empirical and theoretical problem: what is it about the western ethical tradition that makes the Indian culture either immoral or morally senile?

4. To answer this question, we need to develop a theory of ethics, which does two things simultaneously: (a) show how and why there is an ethical domain in the Indian culture and in what ways it differs from the Western ethical domain; and (b) what are the constraints on the western ethical tradition that it is forced to describe us the way it has.

5. This means such a theory of ethics will be a direct competitor to the Western thinking on ethics. That is to say, our ‘westology’ will not remain a mere ‘westology’ but will be forced to provide an alternative and competing way of looking at the ethical phenomenon itself.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by A_Gupta »

The fallacy of thinking Asia will recapitulate European/Western history.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ket-newtab
Decades of Being Wrong About China Should Teach Us Something
American analysts keep trying to fit the country into familiar patterns—ignoring the many ways in which it’s an exception.
The fact is that generations of American policy makers, political scientists, and economists have gotten China wrong more often than they’ve gotten China right. In domestic politics, economic development, and foreign policy, China has charted a surprising path that flies in the face of professional prognostications, general theories about anything, and the experience of other nations.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

This thread was started in 2008 and was the second iteration after the earlier one had to be closed down.

This week Alexander Dugin, Putin's adviser gave an interview to The Hindu which basically reflects this thread!!!
Austin wrote:Putin sees India and China as Moscow’s partner in multipolar world: Alexander Dugin

https://www.thehindu.com/news/internati ... 316215.ece

PM Modi is Putin’s special invitee to the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special invite to Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok that begins on Wednesday is a step to fulfill his vision of establishing a multipolar world with India and China as Moscow’s core partner, says a leading Russian thinker.

In an interview with The Hindu in Beijing — Alexander Dugin, also known a President Putin’s “brain” as well as the architect of the Fourth Political Theory — stressed that President Putin’s invitation to Mr. Modi as the chief guest at this year’s EEF is “first of all “a recognition of modern India to the Eurasian continent and the world in general”.

He added: “It also reflects as well the strategic vision of (Mr.) Putin towards shaping the future world order. This order, according to the Russian President, should be multipolar, based on the absolute sovereignty of powerful civilisations instead of liberal western hegemony.”


Among global leaders, President Putin is at the forefront as he recognises that the “multipolar moment” has already arrived, and the unipolar world order, led by the U.S., which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, is being eclipsed by new rising powers, such as India, which have a deep civilisational past.

“Putin understands well the lesson of the former Soviet Union in the Cold War. Russia alone cannot bear the burden to oppose the liberal capitalist hegemony. So Moscow has to share the task of multipolarity with other major emergent players — first of all China and India. Hence, the role of India as one of the main pillars of multipolar world order,” Mr. Dugin observed.

The Russian scholar noted that Mr. Modi comes from a non-western ideological background, and his mind has been shaped by a deep Indian civilizational tradition — ideal for his emergence as a leader of the multipolar world. “Mr. Modi is exactly the kind of leader the multipolar world needs. He represents Indian identity as civilization.

He is symbol of modernisation without westernisation, representing a kind of conservative revolution of Indian politics based on deep cultural and spiritual identity.”


Mr. Dugin nailed the pioneering legacy Indian freedom fighter, Bal Gangadhar Tilak “who tried to combine anti-colonialism by return to the roots of tradition” as the philosophic template that India could pursue. “I think this third line of Indian traditionalism, which was not inspired by western modern nationalism, nor liberalism but was rooted in classic Indian traditionalism can be the way forward.”

“We need deep decolonisation and we need to restore our identity with our terms based on or tradition, our spiritual values and our historical experiences. This is deep decolonisation of the mind,”
Mr. Dugin observed.

After joining the eight nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) pillared by Russia and China, India should take “the next decisive step” of becoming an active player of the multipolar world, Mr. Dugin observed.

“With the growing importance of China and its growing opposition to the U.S. led world politics and deepening relations with Russia—other key opponent to Western hegemony— we are already inside the era of multipolarity. So India logically is invited to join the club – the sooner the better, because the norms of emerging multipolar world order are establishing now.”

Asked to identify modern western scholars who anticipated the rise of the multipolar world, Mr. Dugin singled out American scholar Samuel Huntington, the author of, “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”.

“Huntington could foresee that instead of ideology, modernisation, westernisation, technological assertion, there is some core of self-consciousness or identity that is more stable and stronger. I think he could see that we are coming to this moment, this deep truth of fundamental spiritual identity of civilizations, as they appear on the historical scene after the collapse of liberalism—the last utopic modern political theory.”

“Liberalism is obsolete as Putin has said recently, and instead of it, civilizations reappear, and now the problem is what will be the multipolar order? What are the borders, and that is very important and significant. What are the numbers of civilizations that are ready or not yet? What will be the juridical aspect of civilizational? All that has to be decided now. We live in the moment that nothing is as yet decided, but everything is put under question,” Mr. Dugin observed
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Sanju »

unLungiying of Devdutt Patnaik
True Indology
@TIinExile
"Hail to Shiva the most auspicious one, hail to Soma Rudra, hail to the red, copper hued one, hail to the terrible and fearful one, hail to Pashupati, hail to Shambhu, hail to Shankara, hail to Kapardin, the one with matter hair"- Yajurveda 4.5.8.1
:rotfl: :rotfl:
Devdutt Pattanaik
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Replying to @satyajit_nayak4
Shiva is not mentioned in Vedas. Does that make him fictional, as per your research?
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by A_Gupta »

https://www.prekshaa.in/article/ideal-i ... -democracy
The Ideal of the Indian Tradition of Kshatra is Needed in Today’s Democracy
Shatavadhani Dr. R. Ganesh
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by A_Gupta »

http://indiafacts.org/book-summary-euro ... -roover-i/
Book Summary: Europe, India, and the Limits of Secularism by Jakob de Roover- I
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Vayutuvan »

I think this goes here. I am not sure.

I came across this link on Wikipedia talk page on "Green Revolution in India"

UC_Berkeley/India_(Global_Studies_121)_(Fall_2019)

which gives a list of assignments handed out to students of a 100 level course (I presume that this is a freshman course) at UCB.

This is a good idea for Journalism/Intl. studies/Law/Business Admin/History/... depts. of universities in India to emulate.

Two birds with one shot - Wikipedia's India related content improves (hopefully) and the students doing the homework/assignments/projects get hands on real-life experience in politics of Social Media.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

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http://indiafacts.org/indology-and-the- ... umanities/
{Adluri & Bagchee's}Philology and Criticism exposes the recklessness with which Indologists have sought to cast doubt upon the critical edition {of the Mahabharata} by any means necessary, and the breakdown in the social structures of scholarship that have permitted illogical and even nonsensical attacks to achieve the status of conventional wisdom without challenge, allowing professional camaraderie or mere laziness to take precedence over the ideals that guide the life of the mind, and upon which a wider community depends. By this wider community, I do not mean merely other scholars in recondite fields, but the entire system by which world-historical communities understand and assimilate their own histories and evaluate—yes, even criticize—their own traditions.

But why should it be so important to Indologists to cast doubt upon this text? The crime committed by Sukthankar’s critical edition of the Mahābhārata in the eyes of Indologists is that the text the critical edition produced was much closer to the traditional reception of the Indian epic as a body of inspired literature than to the German critics’ assertions. The Mahābhārata critics had hoped for a critical edition as the best means of undermining the authority of the textual tradition, and the Bhandarkar editors had countered with an edition bearing out the traditional reception of the epic.

Critics had hoped that the process of producing a critical edition of the epic would reveal seams in the text that could be used to justify the image of Hinduism itself as a makeshift construct, not unified by any common purpose or ideal, but a marriage of convenience or worse. Unmasking the text in the form in which it actually exists and has always been known to the Hindu tradition as a mere self-serving “Brahmanic redaction” would have been a valuable aid to Christian evangelism, which has always followed in the Indologists’ footsteps. But when philology, textual science, failed to produce the results they had wanted, the critics began to attack the foundations of philology in pursuit of their ideological aims.

As Adluri and Bagchee pointed out in a presentation at the recent World Sanskrit Conference,
The resultant fragmentation of the text was not the unintended consequence of applying a valid scientific procedure to the text. As we have seen, no such procedure existed … Rather, it was explicitly desired … Their sole aim in pursuing Mahābhārata “criticism” was to ensure that the text, which articulates a comprehensive vision of the Hindu cosmos, did not survive as a unity … [T]here was an urgent need to deconstruct the text, in full awareness of the challenge it posed to Christianity. The invocation of a “critical” procedure merely served as a pretext.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by vishvak »

Two birds with one shot - Wikipedia's India related content improves (hopefully) and the students doing the homework/assignments/projects get hands on real-life experience in politics of Social Media
Or pseudo-lefty and such (not religious definitely) interested groups give them true lessons on tip toe ing arround anything for politically correct discourse which is what happens usually.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Vayutuvan »

vishvak wrote:Or pseudo-lefty and such (not religious definitely) interested groups give them true lessons on tip toe ing arround anything for politically correct discourse which is what happens usually.
What is interesting is that "Political Correctness" was invented at Harvard by conservatives to stop uncomfortable free speech. Now the left has appropriated that and made it into an art form. Stalinism redux.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by vishvak »

I think it is one way to remember such arts (correctness) as replacement to religion where all credit past to future is handed out to pseudo-lefty plus jihadi plus mediaeval barbarism while hiding everything wrong. Then, comes blame game and outright restrictions (like against festivals and so on).

On the lines of how UK ruled others. Like a English saying about sponge that emptied in Thames etc.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

Now that 2020 is drawing close time to revive this thread.

S. Jaishankar's " The India Way" is good summary of Indian world view.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Vadivel »

Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World

Adam Curtis

Part 1 -
Part 2 -
Part 3 -
Part 4 -
Part 5 -
Part 6 -
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by sudarshan »

X-post from canuck thread:
sudarshan wrote:
m_saini wrote: +1008 to everything.

Just last week I had the (dis)pleasure of speaking with another INO who was saying stuff like "British united india" and how india would've remain divided if it weren't for the british.

I said would you agree that hitler helped Jews to establish Israel?
That's a good response. Other canned responses can also be used to refute this and other similar canards - no relation to canuck thread, so will post in Non-western world-view thread.
Since these silly notions keep getting thrown at Indians, here are some crisp fact-based counters.

a. The British were the ones who united India into one country.

a.1. When the British left India, India was a collection of about 650 princely states (in addition to "British India," which only consisted of about 60% of India's landmass, and which, moreover, wasn't one contiguous piece)
So if India had stayed the way she was when the British left, India would today be a collection of >600 independent countries, it was Sardar Patel who united the princely states into modern India

a.2. The Mauryan empire (circa 200 BC) during its peak had united about 90% of India's landmass

a.3. The Mauryan empire wasn't an accident, it was a well-thought-out plan of Chanakya, who believed that India would not be safe from outside influence, until the whole of India came under one empire

a.4. The British were instrumental in dividing India into - take your pick - 2 countries at least; more like 6 countries now


As a corollary - if it weren't for the British, there would be no such nation as India today

On the contrary - if it weren't for India, there would be no such nation as the UK today. It was only by bribing Scotland with gold from India, that Britain got Scotland to accept merger into the "UK," back in the early 1700's. Now that the wealth from India is exhausted, the UK is already falling apart, and Scotland, Ireland, and Wales will soon go their separate ways.

b. The British educated India

b.1. When the British left India, the literacy rate in India as a whole was 11%

b.2. See this article by Jabez Sutherland, published in 1908:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ia/304893/

As the quote below shows, princely states such as Baroda and Mysore were doing very well on the education front, while British India, according to the author, showed a 10% literacy rate among men, and <1% literacy among women. So the above literacy rate of 11%, India-wide, in 1947, includes these princely states, many of which had near universal literacy.

A further answer to the assertion that India cannot govern herself—and surely one that should be conclusive—is the fact that, in parts, she is governing herself now, and governing herself well. It is notorious that the very best government in India to-day is not that carried on by the British, but that of several of the native states, notably Baroda and Mysore. In these states, particularly Baroda, the people are more free, more prosperous, more contented, and are making more progress, than in any other part of India. Note the superiority of both these states in the important matter of popular education. Mysore is spending on education more than three times as much per capita as is British India, while Baroda has made her education free and compulsory. Both of these states, but especially Baroda, which has thus placed herself in line with the leading nations of Europe and America by making provision for the education of all her children, may well be contrasted with British India, which provides education, even of the poorest kind, for only one boy in ten and one girl in one hundred and forty-four.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by sudarshan »

c. The British built your railways for you

c.1. Sure, and the Chinese built your toys and gadgets for you. So be grateful to the Chinese, rather than cribbing that they stole your manufacturing industry.

(This is not an idle point, as Suraj san explained in another thread - I'll try to find a link to that - this is how colonialism works).

EDIT:

Here:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7788&hilit=colonialism&start=5286

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7788&hilit=colonialism&start=5296

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7788&hilit=colonialism&start=5300

END EDIT:

Classic textbook colonialism consists of: robbing the colony of raw materials; using those raw materials to build up manufacturing industry in the imperialist country; using the colony as a captive market to dump those finished goods - but only after extracting "payment" from the colony in return.

So yes, every inch of railway lines laid by the British in India, was "paid for" with wealth taken from India (different matter that the Indians had no choice but to pay). This was on top of robbing India of iron ore, coal, etc.; and then destroying the local manufacturing industry in India. On top of that, those railways which India paid for, were not even used by Indians, since those railways were meant for moving troops to suppress revolts by Indians, and also for further draining India of wealth and raw materials.

China didn't do even half of the above to the USA - all China did was to reduce local manufacturing in the USA. China did not rob the USA of raw materials, nor force Americans to pay for the finished goods (Americans bought those goods willingly), nor did China prevent Americans from enjoying those goods, after they had already been paid for. So how about being grateful to the Chinese, you ingrates?
m_saini
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by m_saini »

sudarshan wrote:...

a.2. The Mauryan empire (circa 200 BC) during its peak had united about 90% of India's landmass

a.3. The Mauryan empire wasn't an accident, it was a well-thought-out plan of Chanakya, who believed that India would not be safe from outside influence, until the whole of India came under one empire

...
A much better response than I could muster up. +1008 to everything!
Suraj
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Suraj »

ramana wrote:Now that 2020 is drawing close time to revive this thread.

S. Jaishankar's " The India Way" is good summary of Indian world view.
Bought this on Amazon along with doc Shivs book .
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by RajeshA »

How to tackle Anti-India Articles

I hope this is an appropriate thread.

I wanted to point out to the following article, which is intended to damage Indo-US Relations, especially in relation to India's standing in Quad.

How Long Will Joe Biden Pretend Narendra Modi's India Is a Democratic Ally?: Time Magazine

The article is by some Debasish Roy Chowdhury, who is co-author of the forthcoming "To Kill A Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism."

Such an article is being published by TIME Magazine. Then there are other articles coming up all the time intended to portray Modi as some dictator and India as some fascist country. In the years to come, there will be no paucity of similar hit pieces on India.

Question is how to counter them.

From my time on Twitter, there are some lessons that I have learned. There are two ways mostly Indians react to such articles in the Western press. By Indians, I mean, those who feel Indian.

1) Indians would explain the Truth, often with many details about the case.

2) Indians would cast aspersions on the author and charge the publication with anti-India bias.

3) Indians may use whataboutery and point out the flaws in the political systems of the West itself.

I don't find anything wrong with any of the above mentioned response types. However we need to keep in mind that media attacks in the future will only increase.

For the western public, it is not that much important to know, what are the details of the Farmers' Protests, what is the Truth. They are only interested in knowing whether their elite are in favor of India or whether they are against India. They want to know whether some leader is a good guy or a bad guy. That's all.

So when Indians protest at some article or to some tweet and try to explain the circumstances better, to the majority of the Western public, all that they perceive is that there are two opinions, and that of course Indians or Hindu nationalist trolls would try to paint the situation differently, but they as Westerners would rather believe the article published in the Western press, a magazine such as the Time. When Indians try to explain the reality in India to Western audience, the Westerners feel empowered. They feel like judges presiding over a court case against Indians, and their innate racism itself as well as their inability to process all the information offered by Indians, makes them sway towards the authority and opinion written in Western press. The whole experience of sitting as judges over Indians is probably so exhilarating that a Western audience would like more such charges to be "filed" against Indians, see more anti-Indian articles in Western Press. So all the Truth-telling by Indians does not really bear any fruit.

The second option of accusing the publication with anti-Indian prejudice also has mixed results. Even though from the tone of the article, it is clear that the article is a hit-piece, a protest actually provokes a feeling of chutzpah by the Western public, which identifies itself with the Western publication. So, even though the Westerner may secretly agree to the accusation of prejudice and bias, the biased article gives the Westerner an easy opportunity to claim that that is not the case, but is simply a higher Western moral standard with which Western people view themselves, and with which they view the world, and since Indians do not measure up to it, naturally Indians would make such accusations due to hurt feelings. The "hurt feelings" of Indians are especially satisfying for the Westerners.

The third option, one may hope, would better hit home, but it mostly triggers the Westerner to double down on the anti-Indian content of the article, because now the Westerner feels, he is being attacked. The Westerner would simply ignore all references to their own pathetic political system.

In all three cases, the Western public embraces the opinion of the article in the Western press and the response by Indians fails to be effective. What do I mean by effective?

The whole purpose of the article was to build anti-Indian opinion within the Western public. Considering the geostrategic situation between India, US and PRC, a negative Western opinion about India is useful for PRC, as an Indo-US defacto alliance does not take shape and thus does not challenge Chinese hegemony.

So what should Indians do?

We need to look at psy-ops in USA. Trump Presidency was destroyed by the Democrats simply by incessantly repeating that Trump was a puppet of Putin. Similarly Tulsi's Presidential campaign was also undermined by Hillary through her Russian asset smear against Tulsi. All such smears were without any real basis, but they were very effective nevertheless. Basically Dems took away the ability of these two leaders to claim any of their positions as a result of their own convictions, and instead showed both of them as externally controlled. The impeachment and media campaign against Trump, and the social media campaign against Tulsi eroded much of their credibility and standing among the Americans. Often a meme of Putin clapping was tweeted in response to Tulsi tweeting anything at all.

Similarly Trump also counter-attacked American media as Fake Media.

Similarly Indians too should counter-attack Western Globalist Neoliberal media which is critical of India. We need to force Westerners to strongly doubt that Western press is a representative of the Western people and thought.

All these hit pieces being printed in Western media may have been sponsored by George Soros or Hillary faction or even the CCP itself. Who knows?!

That is also what we need to claim. We should claim, that all anti-Indian articles written in Western press are not the opinion either of Westerners or of their Desi supporters, but rather of CCP. We should deny the Western publications their claim of having any opinion at all much less they being strongly opinionated. For all purposes, Western press should be considered as a pawn of CCP and be rejected as even having a Globalist Neoliberal ideology.

As such, we should go ahead and smear anti-Indian articles in Western press as a #CCPsponsoredHitPiece and the Western press as a #CCPMouthpiece. Xi Jinping clapping at the anti-India hit piece could be a powerful meme.

This strategy prevents Indians from being pitted against Westerners, at some level or another. It also erodes the respect Westerners may be having for the Western press.

With so many Indians active in social media, it should not be a problem for Indians to saturate Twitter and FB with Xi Jinping clapping.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by m_saini »

RajeshA wrote:How to tackle Anti-India Articles

I hope this is an appropriate thread.
An extremely well written and argued post! +1008

Regarding how to tackle it, imhumbleo i doubt that, claiming the articles published are the work of CCP, would work. Once you're guilty of something(whether true or false) in the eyes of a westerners, you're guilty for life.

Take Modi for example. No matter what he does or will do, he will always be the guy who massacred ropers in 2002. Modi can donate vaccines, give scholarships to ropers, give reservations to lower castes, be lower caste himself but in the eyes of westerners he will always be an upper caste brahmin, fascist hitler-incarnate who's hell bend on destroying india's secularism.

Similarly, if CCP claimed that the news of concentration camps in xinjiang is the work of hindu nationalists RSS/Modi, i doubt that would work.

This is why I really want GoI to jail/ban twatter bigshots. They're indefensible and jailing would establish guilt that can't be argued away in any opinion piece. FB/whatsapp too, they're easy targets right now since everyone in west already hates them.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by sanjaykumar »

I’m not sure those in India would get twatter. It’s not overly genteel.
RajeshA
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by RajeshA »

How to tackle Anti-India Articles (cont.)

Most of the articles in Western Press regarding India are written from the perspective of White racism. The job of Globalist Neoliberal press is to find ways and formats for Whites and their Desi Gungadins to experience racial supremacy over Indians and yet avoid feeling the associated guilt of racism.

Western press ought to be seen as Fake-Morality P0rn.

This works only as long as Western Press, Western scholars are perceived as catering solely to the supremacism demand of their Western audience.

As soon as one accuses Western Press of working for some other master, a non-White master, say for CCP, the article stops providing the orgasmic satisfaction of moral superiority to the Western audience. I am sure one can come up with an appropriate p0rn analogy for this. It brings down the moral authority of a respected Western publication down to that of a prostitute.

It is time we Indians deny Westerners even the satisfaction of crypto-racism as embodied by moralizing by Globalist Neoliberals.

They should be called out as CCP puppets and prostitutes, and made to feel sold-out and worthless, rather than be treated as judges sitting and pondering about morality of Indian behavior.
Suraj
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Suraj »

Quite often, calling western perspectives ‘globalist’ and ‘neoliberal’ are unnecessary. Maybe some truth exists in that but the point is that by and large these fancy Rs.1000 words are not needed to express the situation.

The western commentator fundamentally is confident in his/her standing , and sees it as their default status to sit in judgment. When you bring up all these fancy words to them, it flatters them even if they don’t subscribe to it. It’s like TSP folks wildly accusing this forum of being some RAW disinformation front. That sure sounds s*xy and makes me feel like cool but alas reality is so mundane.

This is the same with 95% of the English Litt BA pass types who constitute the western press. One does not equate them to a vast global conspiracy where Soros phoned them up. They’re probably thrilled that someone thinks Soros considers them so important, like I’d be excited someone thinks I’m a RAA agent.

Instead the effective response to disabuse them of any notion that they can judge others. If they’re from country X and on topic Y, rake up all the crap their country did on the same topic. Follow that up with asking who gave them the power to judge. When they ask you to return to topic and stop making it about them, you ignore and bring in even more.

If you want to learn to hone your skills, use the test series going on. English say Indian pitches are bad because they suck on it. But their pitches are fine because according to them it’s fine to have a pitch that is damp and covered in grass while it’s freezing cold and windy. Perfect cricket conditions they say.

One has to learn to stop being defensive and learn to question the authority of the person.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Tanaji »

The other tactic that can be used is to accuse them of straight up Hinduphobia and regarding Hindus as less than human. This is a low hanging fruit that can be used as it is usually true. The Jewish lobby uses this to great effect, but has to be used with nuance. Typically replacing their implied Hindu relevant portion with Islam or Judaism and asking them if they think it is okay to use in that context? If the answer is no (which it will be) then you get more ammo to get them on the defensive.

As the earlier posters have said, the aim here is not to convince but to destroy their moral locus standi to comment on our affairs.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Cyrano »

I found that asking questions to clarify question/statement the premises behind the question quickly deflates these holier than thou types.

For example, a conversation would go like this:

Q: Why is there so much caste discrimination in India?
Response: What do you know of caste system?
Q: I mean people of different castes cannot marry..
R: You mean such a marriage is illegal as per law?
Q: I mean there is lot of discrimination..
R: What discrimination are you referring to? Is it constitutional/state authorised discrimination you're talking about ?
Q: Yes
R: All Indian citizen have equal rights, since 1947. Tell me, is affirmative action a form of discrimination?
Q: No people don't intermingle or intermarry
R: Which people? You mean we should have a UCC ?
or
R: Ever wondered why there are so many surnames like Smith, Baker, Clark, Cooper, Cook, Fisher, Parker, Thatcher, Potter, Sawyer, Taylor, Turner....
Q: No the Indian society is very divided
R: On what lines?
R: Have you been to India ? Give me an example of what you saw.
Q: ??!!
etc.
R: So let me tell you...

By now, all judgemental attitude is deflated and _perhaps_ a more saner/educative conversation could be had, drawing parallels to that person's own country/society/culture.

Works quite well for me, every time. If the person is just baiting, I tell him/her to buzz off, I don't care what you think.
sanjaykumar
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by sanjaykumar »

A better approach might be:


Why do you have caste discrimination in India?

Answer. For the same reason English discriminate against the Irish in marriages, employment, housing etc.

Or, for the same reason blacks face discrimination in America.
Cyrano
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Cyrano »

Most people I come across are not trying to antagonise me, but if they were, I'd reply on similar lines as well :)
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by AshishA »

Tanaji wrote:The other tactic that can be used is to accuse them of straight up Hinduphobia and regarding Hindus as less than human. This is a low hanging fruit that can be used as it is usually true. The Jewish lobby uses this to great effect, but has to be used with nuance. Typically replacing their implied Hindu relevant portion with Islam or Judaism and asking them if they think it is okay to use in that context? If the answer is no (which it will be) then you get more ammo to get them on the defensive.

As the earlier posters have said, the aim here is not to convince but to destroy their moral locus standi to comment on our affairs.
100% agreed. These guys are afraid of being called racists , fascists and colonial mentality. Islamic community uses it to a great effect. Nobody in their right mind would support hijab. But if you mention it to the Islamists, they will brand you Islamophobic and accuse you of trying to suppress their culture. Commies, Islamists play this victimhood to perfection and use it as a stick to beat down anyone against them.

Btw is there anything we can learn from Chinese media warfare against the west? How did it fare? Were they successful?
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