[QUOTE=The Scales;54179]…[/QUOTE]
Hello Scales. Long time (3-4 days) since I last saw you.
[QUOTE=Nietzsche;54170]Once again, I am disappointed to see the Hinduism bashing routine on these forums.
Surya Deva has created a relevant thread on the persecution of Hindus. People respond by blaming it on the Karma of the Hindus, despite their lack of understanding on what Karma really is.
Surya Deva responded by posting on what the actual definition of Karma is. People respond by making personal attacks.
Lotusgirl and others who have posted on here; you know next to nothing of Hinduism. You don’t know what Ahimsa or Karma is. Your definitions are based on Eurocentric and Westernized interpretations of these two pillars of Hinduism. You are nothing but fools who should return to practicing Christianity as it ought to be practiced; with racism and intolerance.
I fully understand why our forefathers prevented most of these mlecchas, these barbarians, from ever learning our traditions. They knew they would adulterate our teachings and attempt to appropriate them. They were right.[/QUOTE]
Make that “and other certain people.”
[QUOTE=Surya Deva;54171]In the Hindu context, which is the original context, karma simply means the law of action and reaction/cause and effect. In order for there to be reactions, there has to be actions. Actions will generate reactions and reactions will get lodged in the unconscious mind as potential action. Under the right stimulus, these potential actions lodged in the unconscious mind will be released as action. In order to end the cycle from repeating itself you act differently.
Here is a working example. You get very angry at somebody because they wronged you. When you do this, the thought of that person will get associated with anger and lodge itself in your unconscious mind as potential. Some time goes by and you have no contact with this person, but one day you see this person again. Instantly, the potential is released from your unconscious and the anger returns. In order to end this cycle, you can consciously choose another action such as patch things up with that person.
Likewise, the actions you generate in the here and now are the most powerful. These actions are outside of cause and effect, they are your free will. Thus Tibet getting invaded by China was not because of Tibets karma, but it was China’s free will to invade Tibet.[/QUOTE]
Yes, there was an interesting discourse on the nature of destiny in the Mahabharata. I am not sure if I can dig through 1000 pages of 1 mm text to find it…
[QUOTE=Surya Deva;54085]I think it is rather unfortunate Pandara, that you would blame this on the karma of the Hindus. Do you blame the holocausts on the Jews? Do you blame the 10,000+ people who died in Japan’s earthquake? Do you blame women who get raped? Obviously, your understanding of karma is very simplistic and fatalistic, where whatever happens to you, has to be because of your own doing. In reality karma is a lot more complex than that.
Karma simply means the law of cause and effect. Every effect that takes place has a cause, but the ultimate causes are highly complex and depend upon an interplay of subtle forces in the universe. There are three kinds of karma which are recognised: potential karma, past karma and present karma. A potential karma is like a seed, it may or may not germinate depending on whether the conditions exist to allow it to germinate or whether the seed is still potent or not. Past karma, is karma which has germinated, and it is only a matter of time before you bear its effects. Present karma, is the most powerful karma, and that is karma that you create in the here and now. It has the power to weaken even past karmas.
Present Karma implies that we are free and autonomous agents. We can do anything with our present karma - such as go and rape an innocent person. This injustice done to the innocent person is not due to their own karma, but it is something that has been imposed on them from without. Innocent jews in Germany did not do anything wrong, they were simply born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Similarly, Hindus did nothing wrong, they were aggressed against by very evil, savage and barbaric people, for the very reason that they practiced a different religion to them. They did the same to the Persians, and exterminated them.
One of the karmas to explain the fall of India is the rise of Kaliyuga itself in 3102BCE(approx the beginning of the Mayan calender as well) The cycles of time are directly aligned to astronomical cycles, and when we enter certain stages, vice or virtue can increase on the planet. In this current epoch India was one of the most virtuous countries on the planet, having cultivated so many sages and masters and having a society centralized around spiritual development, and until the 18th century played a huge part in shaping the world and dominated the world economy commanding a 32.9% share of the GDP from 1AD to 10AD, without ever invading another country. It was the first country to have planned cities, univesities, hospitals, schools of philosophy and scientific medicine. However, in an age of vice, virtue is a liability. Virtue does not get rewarded in an age of vice.
We are living in an age where military power is respected over spiritual power; rote knowledge and fancy use of words is respected over wisdom. Where corruption is respected over honesty. Again, we can blame the Kaliyuga for this degradation of humanity, but most of all we should blame humanity for allowing this to continue.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Surya Deva;54085]
In the Hindu context, which is the original context, karma simply means the law of action and reaction/cause and effect. In order for there to be reactions, there has to be actions. Actions will generate reactions and reactions will get lodged in the unconscious mind as potential action. Under the right stimulus, these potential actions lodged in the unconscious mind will be released as action. In order to end the cycle from repeating itself you act differently.
Here is a working example. You get very angry at somebody because they wronged you. When you do this, the thought of that person will get associated with anger and lodge itself in your unconscious mind as potential. Some time goes by and you have no contact with this person, but one day you see this person again. Instantly, the potential is released from your unconscious and the anger returns. In order to end this cycle, you can consciously choose another action such as patch things up with that person.
Likewise, the actions you generate in the here and now are the most powerful. These actions are outside of cause and effect, they are your free will. Thus Tibet getting invaded by China was not because of Tibets karma, but it was China’s free will to invade Tibet.[/quote]
These responses are excellent.
And each could do well to study them because they clearly explain - in simple terms - the essential points. Thats not to say this covers it all for it doesn’t but it’s a very good introduciton / starting point.
So . . .
Bravo.
hi Fred.
The scales are tipping towards the brown guys in this little quarrel.
( isometimeswishiwasbornwithanaturaltanagain)
Panda yes - your initial post came off- to me at least - as insensitive and ignorant.
Adam - I appreciate your perspective - even if it is sometimes not in accord with reality.
lol
Lotus Girl - you just clash with these two and I think at times it makes you see in their words - things that aren’t there.
Now FIGHT!
Did I just end the persecution?
ha
Its a libra thing…
[QUOTE=The Scales;54199]These responses are excellent.
And each could do well to study them because they clearly explain - in simple terms - the essential points. Thats not to say this covers it all for it doesn’t but it’s a very good introduciton / starting point.
So . . .
Bravo.
hi Fred.
The scales are tipping towards the brown guys in this little quarrel.
( isometimeswishiwasbornwithanaturaltanagain)
Panda yes - your initial post came off- to me at least - as insensitive and ignorant.
Adam - I appreciate your perspective - even if it is sometimes not in accord with reality.
lol
Lotus Girl - you just clash with these two and I think at times it makes you see in their words - things that aren’t there.
Now FIGHT![/QUOTE]
Scales? Why are you so amazing? Thank you for siding with reason.
[QUOTE=YogiAdam;54160]I only understand karma in the Buddhist context, cause that was my religion back in the day. Obviously, like everything else in religion, there are different interpretations.[/QUOTE]
why are you no longer buddhist?
[QUOTE=Nietzsche;54198]I am not sure if I can dig through 1000 pages of 1 mm text to find it…[/QUOTE]
really?? honestly i can’t think anything better for you to be doing with your time, :p.
We Indians are indeed a despicable people. We have absolutely no unity. We let those who seek destroy us prance about and spread their havoc and discriminate against those who care for our future.
For the first time ever, I am ashamed to be an Indian.
Yes, now you see what I see in modern Indian people. The lack of unity or care for their own civilisation, it’s history, the future of their motherland. A lot of Indians I talk to think Mughal rule was good for India, and celeberate it. Similarly, a lot of Indians think the British did good for India, gave them English, railways, factories. You will never hear Africans say that slavery was good for them or a Jew that the holocausts were good for them. Indians are the only people who do not speak as a unity to the world and demand change. They have a horrible, “Chalta hain - anything goes attitude” They have internalized corruption and have very low self-esteem in their country, which they think has been a passive recepient of invasions since the beginning, and it never made any progress.
There are causes for why Indians have this inferiority complex. It was not the Muslims, because even during and after Muslims rule Indians were still a proud people. It was the British who poisoned the souls of Indians, by portrating their civilisation as poor, superstitious and one that has historically been raped, first by the Indo-Aryans from Europe, then by Greeks, then by Muslims, then by Portugese, then by French and Dutch, and then Britain. The British spread propoganda to make Indians hate themselves: Northerners to hate Southerners and vis versa and poor Hindus(Dalits) to hate Brahmins. They deliberately created an elite class of Westernized English educated Indians(brown sahibs) to oppress the masses, and that legacy has continued today.
So the result of this inferiority complex is poisoning of India by the West. In order to end it we need to reverse this poisoning process. The first step is reconstructing India’s history accurately, so that future generations of Indians are not told lies and can have more self-esteem and confidence in their own culture.
[QUOTE=vata07;54229]really?? honestly i can’t think anything better for you to be doing with your time, :p.[/QUOTE]
How about doing online assignments for school on the computer?
[QUOTE=Surya Deva;54232]Yes, now you see what I see in modern Indian people. The lack of unity or care for their own civilisation, it’s history, the future of their motherland. A lot of Indians I talk to think Mughal rule was good for India, and celeberate it. Similarly, a lot of Indians think the British did good for India, gave them English, railways, factories. You will never hear Africans say that slavery was good for them or a Jew that the holocausts were good for them. Indians are the only people who do not speak as a unity to the world and demand change. They have a horrible, “Chalta hain - anything goes attitude” They have internalized corruption and have very low self-esteem in their country, which they think has been a passive recepient of invasions since the beginning, and it never made any progress.
There are causes for why Indians have this inferiority complex. It was not the Muslims, because even during and after Muslims rule Indians were still a proud people. It was the British who poisoned the souls of Indians, by portrating their civilisation as poor, superstitious and one that has historically been raped, first by the Indo-Aryans from Europe, then by Greeks, then by Muslims, then by Portugese, then by French and Dutch, and then Britain. The British spread propoganda to make Indians hate themselves: Northerners to hate Southerners and vis versa and poor Hindus to hate Brahmins. They deliberately created an elite class of Westernized Indians(brown sahibs) to oppress the masses, and that legacy has continued today.
So the result of this inferiority complex is poisoning of India by the West. In order to end it we need to reverse this poisoning process. T[B]he first step is reconstructing India’s history accurately, so that future generations of Indians are not told lies and can have more self-esteem and confidence in their own culture.[/B][/QUOTE]
It is in this that I have faith. This statement is the very reason why I am what I am and do what I do.
Despite my current opinion of my own race, I have hope that it will ameliorate itself in the future through the actions of Indians like you and I (or humans or whatever).
Christian and Western persecution of Hindus: Past
Preface: It is important to note that while Muslim invasions of India were motivated by religious ideology to destroy the Hindus, in addition to conquering its immense wealth. The Western invasions of India were largely driven by the desire to end Indian hegemony of international trade, because Western countries could not compete with Indian merchants who were developing higher quality goods, at cheaper prices in faster time, in abundance, that pretty much the entire international market was dominated by India. Also they wanted to loots its wealth to fuel the West’s own industrial revolution and make its countries rich. So the main reason was not to wage religious wars on Hindus as Muslim invaders did, but economic. Hence why the British did not go on a temple-destroying spree like the Muslims. That said, Christian persecution of the Hindus went hand in hand with Western colonialism, and the British damaged the entire culture of Hindus more than the Muslims ever could.
The very first persecution of Hindus by Christians started with the Portugese which set up the Goa inquisitions to torture Hindus and others, and like the Muslims went about destoying Hindu temples and erecting in their place their own Churches.
Goa inquisitions
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_Inquisition
In the 15th century, the Portuguese explored the sea route to India and Pope Nicholas V enacted the Papal bull Romanus Pontifex. This granted the patronage of the propagation of the Christian faith in Asia to the Portuguese and rewarded them with a trade monopoly for newly discovered areas.[4]
After Vasco da Gama arrived in India in 1498, the trade became prosperous, but the Portuguese were not interested in proselytization. After four decades, the Catholic Church threatened to open Asia for all Catholics.[5]
Now missionaries of the newly founded Society of Jesus were sent to Goa and the Portuguese colonial government supported the mission with incentives for baptized Christians. They offered rice donations for the poor, good positions in the Portuguese colonies for the middle class and military support for local rulers.[5]
The first inquisitors, Aleixo Dias Falc?o and Francisco Marques, established themselves in the palace once occupied by Goa’s Sultan, forcing the Portuguese viceroy to relocate to a smaller residence.[10]The inquisitor’s first act was to forbid any open practice of the Hindu faith on pain of death. Sephardic Jews living in Goa, many of whom had fled the Iberian Peninsula to escape the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition to begin with, were also persecuted.[10] The narrative of Da Fonseca describes the violence and brutality of the inquisition. The records speak of the necessity for hundreds of prison cells to accommodate fresh victims.[10]
The Portuguese colonial administration enacted anti-Hindu laws with the expressed intent to “humiliate Hindus” and encourage conversions to Christianity. Laws were passed banning Christians from keeping Hindus in their employ, and the public worship of Hindus was deemed unlawful.[13] Hindus were forced to assemble periodically in churches to listen to preaching or to refutation of their religion.[14]
The viceroy ordered that Hindu pandits and physicians be disallowed from entering the capital city on horseback or palanquins, the violation of which entailed a fine. Successive violations resulted in imprisonment.[15]
Christian palaquin-bearers were forbidden from carrying Hindus as passengers. Christian agricultural laborers were forbidden to work in the lands owned by Hindus and Hindus forbidden to employ Christian laborers.[15]
The Inquisition guaranteed “protection” to Hindus who converted to Christianity. Thus, they initiated a new wave of baptisms to Hindus who were motivated by social coercion into converting.[16]
According to Indo-Portuguese historian Teotonio R. de Souza, grave abuse was practiced in Goa in the form of ‘mass baptism’ and what went before it. The practice was begun by the Jesuits and was later initiated by the Franciscans also. The Jesuits staged an annual mass baptism on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (January 25), and in order to secure as many neophytes as possible, a few days before the ceremony the Jesuits would go through the streets of the Hindu quarter in pairs, accompanied by their Negro slaves, whom they would urge to seize the Hindus. When the blacks caught up a fugitive, they would smear his lips with a piece of beef, making him an ‘untouchable’ among his people. Conversion to Christianity was then his only option.
The inquisition was set as a tribunal, headed by a judge, sent to Goa from Portugal and was assisted by two judicial henchmen. The judge was answerable to no one except to Lisbon and handed down punishments as he saw fit. The Inquisition Laws filled 230 pages and the palace where the Inquisition was conducted was known as the Big House and the Inquisition proceedings were always conducted behind closed shutters and closed doors.
According to the historian, “the screams of agony of the victims (men, women, and children) could be heard in the streets, in the stillness of the night, as they were brutally interrogated, flogged, and slowly dismembered in front of their relatives.”"Eyelids were sliced off and extremities were amputated carefully, a person could remain conscious even though the only thing that remained was his torso and head.[20]
Diago de Boarda, a priest and his advisor Vicar General, Miguel Vaz had made a 41 point plan for torturing Hindus. Under this plan Viceroy Antano de Noronha issued in 1566, an order applicable to the entire area under Portuguese rule :
I hereby order that in any area owned by my master, the king, nobody should construct a Hindu temple and such temples already constructed should not be repaired without my permission. If this order is transgressed, such temples shall be, destroyed and the goods in them shall be used to meet expenses of holy deeds, as punishment of such transgression.
[20]
In 1567 the campaign of destroying temples in Bardez met with success. At the end of it 300 Hindu temples were destroyed. Enacting laws, prohibition was laid from December 4, 1567 on rituals of Hindu marriages, sacred thread wearing and cremation.[20]
All the persons above 15 years of age were compelled to listen to Christian preaching, failing which they were punished. In 1583 Hindu temples at Assolna and Cuncolim were destroyed through army action.[20]
“The fathers of the Church forbade the Hindus under terrible penalties the use of their own sacred books, and prevented them from all exercise of their religion. They destroyed their temples, and so harassed and interfered with the people that they abandoned the city in large numbers, refusing to remain any longer in a place where they had no liberty, and were liable to imprisonment, torture and death if they worshipped after their own fashion the gods of their fathers.” wrote Filippo Sassetti, who was in India from 1578 to 1588.[20]
Christian and Western persecution of Hindus: Past
British colonialism and the East India company
The treatment of Hindus in India was cold and unsympathetic. The British could not care for the heathens or their plight, and for the most part were not interested in converting them to Christianity either. Christian missionary activity was looked down upon by the East India company, but it still went on behind closed doors, but ultimately Christian missionaries failed in converting Hindus to Christians and they were recalled by the British empire. The new strategy employed by the British empire to Christianize India and make Indian people accept the rule of the empire, was to corrupt Hindu culture.
The initial strategy adopted for Hindus was do nothing for them. Whether they live or die, was of no importance to the British. What was important for them was for Hindus to continue to produce profit for the empire, work long slaving hours for them, without food and water and forcing them to follow the whims of the empire, without giving them anything back, other than humilation. As a result Indians faced famine after famine, and within 100 years, 25 millions Hindus perished, and the rest were forced into extreme poverty. Even during these times, British forced Indian people to pay them food grain tax, despite the fact that they were starving. This is how India went from the most wealtheist country in the world to a third world country. The natives were treated like glorified pets, and signs reading, “Indians and dogs not allowed” were erected to keep Indians out wealthy places. The British created itself as a super-caste and forced Indian people to obey their every instruction.
Let us look at a scholarly article on the beginning of this economic and cultural genocide of Hindus by the British:
Publication: The Statesman, Kolkatta
Date: July 7, 2002
www.hvk.org/articles/0902/4.html
Claude Alvares in his book, Decolonising History, states that before the East India Company arrived in the sub-continent, there was nothing produced in Europe which India needed. It’s own industrial techniques, of great antiquity, had a richness and subtlety far superior to any which European traders had to offer. Such self reliance could not be permitted to endure. And the arrival of the East India Company at Surat in Gujrat in 1608 swiftly ensured that it would not do so.
Textiles from India were first used to buy pepper and spices in Indonesia. Traders of the East India Company in India originally sought to sell Britain’s principal export to Europe – broadcloth. They discovered that demand for it was negligible, and equally, that India possessed fabrics of a far finer quality than anything the British could at that time create. They started the trade in Indian textiles from Masulipatam on the Coromandel Coast, which was outside of Mughal control.
By 1620, 50,000 pieces of chintz reached England; in 1720, this reached 600,000 pieces. The muslins, calicoes and chintzes astonished with their craftsmanship, sophistication and sheer beauty. So much, that there were complaints against the imports of Indian fabrics from the very beginning. By 1700, Acts were passed which prohibited the introduction of printed calicoes for domestic use, either as apparel or furniture, under a penalty of ?200 on the wearer or seller. Cotton goods were then smuggled into the country. This was one of the first trade barriers introduced into a country which later became the primary champion of “free trade”.
But not yet. In 1720, an Act was passed, prohibiting altogether the use in Britain of “any garment or apparel whatsoever, of any painted, printed or dyed calicoes, in or about any bed, chair, cushion, window curtain, or any other sort of household stuff or furniture”. The use of cotton was decried as “the passion of ladies for their fashion”. In 1774, a law was passed, sanctioning the manufacture of purely cotton goods. but still prohibiting the import of cotton goods, thereby protecting the early industry in Britain from foreign competition.
But by 1669 – even before the bans on Indian textiles – Gerald Ungier, chief of the factory of the factory at Bombay had written to the directors, “The time now requires you to manage your general commerce with the sword in your hands”.
The relative amity in the early days is given great prominence, as befits an interpretation that sees in the relationship an easy, two-way cultural intercourse between civilisations, so that it becomes a kind of make-believe ‘forerunner’ of the claimed “cultural pluralism” of the present: the luxury of the Mughal court impressed senior employees of Company, and many mimicked the lifestyle, including wearing Indian fabrics, and taking Indian women as concubines.
In spite of this harmonious coexistence, the East India Company maintained a growing military presence, and by 1803 had 130,000 sepoys in its service; deployed chiefly at first in keeping out other European powers which had an eye on the riches of Asia, particularly the French, but later to defeat the Marathas, and the Sikhs, and to enforce the annexation of Awadh in 1856. When the Nawab of Bengal tried to oust the British from Calcutta, he was defeated by Clive at Plassey, after which Bengal became a Company province.
The raising of the land tax and the rapacity of the Company’s servants led to the Plunder of Bengal, which was reduced to destitution. The famine of the 1769-70 may have claimed the lives of one third of the population. No whisper of this reaches the promoters of the exhibition, the ideology of which is encapsulated in one of its panels that declares “Asian economies were manipulated to turn them into producers of raw materials and consumers of European, largely British, goods. Since 1945 and the demise of the British Empire, powerful Asian economies have emerged and are once again exporting sophisticated manufactured goods to the rest o the world”. So that’s all right then. Only there is no mention of the role of the transnationals in producing from the global sweatshop that many Asian economies have become. There are other elisions and silences, as must be expected in an enterprise supported by Standard Chartered Bank and The Daily Telegraph. There is nothing about the forcing of Bengal farmers to grow indigo to the neglect of their own crops, with the result at many starved.
The incursions into Asia – Indonesia, India and China – by what it has become clich? to call "the first transnational " became a story of predatory and coercive violence, in which places were indeed traded: India forfeited its vast superiority in handicrafts and manufactures, and was compelled to open its markets to inferior products from Britain.
The laws of supply and demand – emerging from an even more perfunctory view of the relationship between: textile, cotton, slavery, tea and opium – are not quite the “natural” sensitive monitors of human supposed to be, the sacred laws of supply and demand can very well be created by extreme violence.
Britain’s role as an epic pioneer in global drug trafficking receives scant attention. There was no demand in India for Manchester cottons, though these were forced on India with the ending of the Company’s monopoly in 1813, any more than there was “demand” in China for opium: the destruction of the indigenous weaving industry was described by ‘Governor – General’ William Bentinck as a misery without parallel in the history of Commerce. "The bones of the cotton weavers are blanching plains of’ India.
The domination of world civilisation by the Hindus
The wealth of India has been legendary in history. From 1AD to 10AD, economic historian Angus Maddison, a pioneer in economic historical research, has calculated that it commanded a 32.9% of the entire GDP of the world. This is the highest share any region/country has ever had in the history of the world. Foreign travellers to India and historians, give descriptions of India which describe the immense wealth this country had, the unsurpassed quality of its industrially produced products, and how well off everybody was.
I will now present information from this scholarly journal presenting an overview of Indian history and ideological forces that are distorting it, liberally quoting from it:
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/history_overview_frameset.htm
Classical period
Romans
Pliny commented on the Roman trade with India, and on the sizable trade imbalance made up by the export to India of silver coins. This report has been verified through the discovery of large hoards of Roman silver coins throught South Asia. (Attman 1981:8)
Chinese:
Accounts of travelers during this period indicate that India was a thriving, sophisticated amalgam of diverse and interrelated civilizations. For example, the Chinese pilgrim Xuan-zang, who traveled throughout India during the first half of the seventh century, describes thus the city of Kanyakubja (later called Kanauj), which was the capital of King Siladitya who at the time ruled most of North India:
This kingdom is about 4000 li [17] in circuit; the capital, on the west, borders on the river Ganges. It is about 20 li in length and 4 or 5 li in breadth. The city has a dry ditch round it, with strong and lofty towers facing one another. The flowers and woods, the lakes and ponds, bright and pure and shining like mirrors, (are seen on every side). Valuable merchandise is collected here in great quantities. The people are well off and contented, the houses rich and well found. Flowers and fruits abound in every place, and the land is sown and reaped in due seasons. [18]
Medival period
Persians:
a Persian account, the Mukhtasiru-t Tawarikh, describes India or “Hindustan” in the following manner:
India is a very large country, and it is so extensive that other countries are not equal to a hundredth part of it. Notwithstanding its extensive area, it is populated in all places. It abounds in all quarters and every district with cities, towns, villages, caravanserais, forts, citadels, mosques, temples, monasteries, cells, magnificent buildings, delightful gardens, fine trees, pleasant green fields, running streams, and impetuous rivers. On all the public roads and streets strong bridges are made over every river and rill, and embankments are also raised. Lofty minarets are made at the distance of each kos to indicate the road, and at every two parasangs inns are built of strong masonry for travelers to dwell in and take rest. At each inn can be obtained every kind of food and drink, all sorts of medicine, and all kinds of necessary instruments and utensils. On all roads shadowy and fruitful trees are planted on both sides. Wells and tanks are dug which contain fresh and sweet water in abundance. The passengers go along the roads under the shadow of trees, amusing themselves, eating the fruits and drinking cold water, as if they were taking a walk among the beds of a garden. The merchants, tradesman and all travelers, without any fear of thieves and robbers, take their goods and loads safe to their distant destinations. The whole of this country is very fertile, and the products of Iran, Turan, and other climates are not equal to those of even one province of Hindustan. In this country there are also mines of diamonds, ruby, gold, silver, copper, lead, and iron. The soil is generally good, and so productive that in a year it yields two crops, and in some places more. All kinds of grain, the sustenance of human life, are brought forth in such quantities that it is beyond the power of pen to enumerate.
European
Marco Polo wrote, concerning the fabulous wealth of gems in Sri Lanka, that
And do not believe that the good diamonds come into our Christian countries but they go and are carried to the Great Khan and to the kings and barons of these different regions and realms (of ‘India’), for they have the great treasure and buy all of the dear stones. For those which come into our country, nothing comes but only their leavings." (Critchley 1992:89)
While Marco Polo may be here or elsewhere exaggerating, the general comparison relative economic power is probably accurate.
Polo continued with his account, writing that
Leaving the island of Zeilan [Sri Lanka, Ceylon], and sailing in a westerly direction sixty miles, you reach the great province of Maabar [Malabar], which is not an island, but a part of the continent of the greater India, as it is termed, being the noblest and richest country in the world. (Wright:380-81)
Ceylon, with is wealth of gems as well as its central position on the Indo-China sea trade route, undoubtably achieved a relatively high degree of development vis-?-vis other regions of the world in the thirteenth centuries.
Elsewhere, with reference to Malabar, Marco Polo wrote that
In this kingdom there is a vast abundance of pepper, ginger, cubebs, and Indian nuts; and the finest and most beautiful cottons are manufactured that can be found in any part of the world. The ships from Manji [southern China] bring copper as ballast; and besides this, gold brocades, silks, gauzes, gold and silver bullion, together with many kinds of drugs not produced in Malabar; and these they barter for the commodities of the province. There are merchants on the spot who ship the former for Aden [in Ethiopia], from whence they are transported to Alexandria. (Wright:417)
Prior to 1AD, we have archeaological evidence of the massive trade that went on between the Indus Valley civilisation and Mesopotamia and Egypt, and again we find a massive trade imbalance, with more Indian goods being found in Mesopotamia and Egypt, than vis versa. Thus it is indisputable that the Hindu civilisation dominated the international market for much of history, similar to say America today, but by an even bigger margin. The Hindu civilisation played a key role in shaping world civilisation. But what we do not find evidence of is the use of conquest and force on foreign people, but rather free and fair international trade and free exchange of ideas.
Europe could not compete with the Hindu civilisation and its domination of the world, so it resorted to foul play, military conquest, piracy and propoganda to bring the Hindu civilisation down, like a bunch of barbarians. I will cover the barbarianism that Europeans resorted to against the Hindus in the next post.
While I’m concerned with all - and look at the world and it’s citizens as unity - I also see the enormous contributions of the individual country.
me and my buddies thought on it - well I thought on it. They always have the right answer . . . so they don’t need to think on it.
Inspiration can move a nation.
What is great or [I]was[/I] great about the nation? What is beautiful about her culture? Her ways? Her people?
What giants of the world have sprung from the bosom of mother india?
Words - especially the truth - can be powerful reminders.
And sometimes a good reminder is all anyone needs.
The barbarian campaign by Europeans began with the Portugese, who having realised they could never compete with Hindus, decided to engage in piracy and disrupt Hindu trade:
From a very real perspective, India was at the center of an international trade network that linked it with East and Southeast Asia to the east and, to the west, with Africa and the Middle East and thus, ultimately, Europe. Europe’s role in this network was rather peripheral; while Indian and other Asian goods were highly desired in Europe, Europe’s relative dearth economic resources limited it to a rather marginal role in the world economy until the sixteenth century.
Much has been made of the supposed superiority of Europeans, which allegedly led to their rise to power in the early modern world, and their creation of capitalist economies. Clearly, this was a complex development. However, to a very real extent it was triggered by a desire to access the superior goods and economy of India. Indeed, when Indian goods gained full access to European markets they put indigeneous and inferior European industries out of business. According to Morineau, “Three factors were connected in the conquest of the market by Indian products: a fashion, a recognized intrinsic quality considered not to be reproducible in Europe, and a saving in comparision with competing domestic products.” (1999: 256)
European aggression may have in part been inspired by desire for the riches of the other, while India’s apparent non-agressiveness in relations with foreign powers, may have resulted from a natural complacency born of abundance. As Abu-Lughod suggested,
The wealth of India, the raw materials from jewels to spices, the high development of her agriculture, and the quality of her industrial output made her the object of other’s desires. She sold more than she bought … Ironically, wealth rather than poverty seemed to keep her from playing a more aggressive role in the thirteenth-century world system, a system driven more by need than by satiety. (1989:285)
It was a desire to access Indian goods no longer readily accessible via Muslim controlled routes that inspired the Europeans to seek alternative routes to India. In so doing the Europeans did not create global trade networks as much as they disrupted the existing ones, using military force to usurp control over vital trade routes.
The crucial event in this regard was the Portuguese circumnavigation of Africa during the fifteenth century, which opened up an alternative sea route. According to Attman,
The position of dominance which Venice had achieved in trade with the Orient was seriously affected when the Portuguese sailed round Africa in their heavy cannon-carrying ships and established a great trading power on the coasts of the Indian Ocean. They managed to conquer Hormuz (1515) and as a result gained control of the Persian Gulf but not of Aden. By cutting off supplies from India to the Red Sea, the Portuguese tried to acquire control of the spice trade in Europe along with the power to fix prices, and thus to destroy the power monopoly previously enjoyed by Venice. The King of Portugal succeeded in breaking the monopoly, and this was the main objective of the Portuguese policy of competition. On the other hand they failed to sever Venice’s lifeline, the trade route across the Red Sea. This was due in large part to the Ottoman conquest of Syria in 1516 and Egypt in 1517. In fact the Ottoman military power was able to stand up to the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean and kept the trade route past Aden. (1981:19)
As a result overland trade continued for about a century longer, ceasing only when the Dutch and English East India Companies were founded at the beginning of the 17th century, with the purpose of monopolizing the trade with India at its source. [24]
During the sixteenth century the Portuguese increasingly traded with India via the sea route, largely paying for Indian goods with silver. (Attman 1981:34) This overall increase in trade, paid largely with silver coins, was made possible by the silver acquired by the Spanish in North and South America via the exploitation of American resources and Native American labor. [25] The Spanish “discovery” of the Americas was a result of Columbus’ misguided attempt to discover a trans-Atlantic sea route to India, a mistake which was not immediately realized. According to Hunt and Murray,
Those discoveries, of the New World and the route around the southern tip of Africa, were of course motivated by the twin objectives of securing direct access to the spices and fabled luxury goods of India and the Far East and promoting the Christian religion. This drive to circumvent the middlemen of the Near East and defeat the forces of a resurgent Islam was soon to be rewarded beyond the wildest dreams of anyone concerned. (1999:185)
Portuguese naval missions combined trade with organized looting and plundering.
According to Scammell, following the initial explorations,
the expeditions that rapidly followed were well armed and provided immense profits from wholesale looting as well as trade. The attitude of these aristocratic invaders is elegantly summed up by a historian: 'They had no wish to become growers of pepper or ginger. But the diversion from infidel control of so lucrative a commerce was, like the taking of tribute and loot, an occupation suitable for a Christian gentleman. [26]
In the early period the European “explorers” were little more than pirates, profiting off of the resources and skills of other civilizations, whose works they could not replicate even if they tried. The myth of European superiority, although based on the reality of European superiority in arms, was slow in developing and was not widely held during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the “explorers” were encountering civilizations at least as sophisticated as their own, if not more so.
The Europeans were not particularly interested in free trade, however. The Portuguese approach was to seek a trade monopoly enforced by military might. This might was initially directed at rival Muslim traders, toward whom the Europeans already felt a significant degree of hostility on account of their failed crusades over the previous few centuries. Portuguese militarization in Asia was triggered first by its conflicts with Mameluks of Egypt; this conflict was settled by their definitive defeat of a large Egyptian fleet at Diu in 1507 CE, and the fall of the Mameluks to the Ottoman Turks in 1517. (Lach 1965:112-13) Militarism was further necessitated by the increasing presence of European rivals and privateers in the Indian Ocean. The militant nature of European “trade” in Asia necessitated the seizure of key ports such as Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and Diu in Gujarat. Such seizures were the initial movements in the unfolding of colonialism, although the Portuguese themselves did not go far beyond the seizure of key ports.
Portuguese did, however, see their role in India as a “crusade”; they thus applied their militant attitude toward the Muslim world toward India as well, which may have been inspired by their conflicts with Muslim traders over access to southwest Indian ports. Lach comments that in Goa, both secular officals and the missionaries were united in their unsuccessful attempts to eradicate Hinduism:
East India Company
Colonialization appears to have been an after-effect of militarized trade. This is the case even with regard to the British East Indian Company, which came to be the primary agent of the British colonization of India. Initially, however, the British East Indian Company was founded simply to provide an alternative to the Levant overland trade in spices, which was still dominated by the Venetians. According to Chaudhuri one should “look at the rise of the English East Indian company, not as an independent commercial venture, but as an attempt to separate the spice trade from the main body of the Levant trade and to drive it by a new route.” (Chaudhuri, 1965, p. 12; op cit. Brenner 1996, p. 285).
In fact the East India Company, in the first 50 years of its existence, had no interest in the development of colonies, preferring to engage in trade only, following the pattern set by the Portuguese. This would change by 1650; during the turbulent 1640’s, the power of the old guard royalist merchants was broken, and a new class of merchants wrested control of the Company. They followed the pattern set by the colonial merchants in American and the West Indies, and sought to establish a network of colonies linking England, Africa and India in a complicated network of exchange relationships. (Brenner 1996:301-2)
Even when the Europeans had gone to the length of securing control over the trade routes, they did not thus solve the basic pattern which had long dominated trade between India and the West: Indian goods were in far greater demand in Europe than were European goods in India. Merchants might profit handsomely through the sale of Indian goods, which were of both better quality and lesser price than similar European products. The result was both a drain of bullion from Europe to India, as well as stiff competition for European producers who were unable to match either the price or quality of Indian goods.
The textiles produced in India, and in Bengal in particular, were of extremely high quality, the product of a highly skilled, efficient but diffuse labor force. [29] Trade in these goods were controlled by powerful merchant houses, who were quite the match for the East India Company. Chaudhury reports, with regard to trade in Bengal in the eighteenth century, that
The European companies hardly ever commanded the markets from time to time for particular commodities, nor did they even dominate the ‘commercial outlook’. These were the exclusive prerogatives of the Asian merchants, who, it appears, through their wealth, influence and business acumen controlled the entire wholesale trade within their area of operations. (1995:131)
The British, unable to compete with the Asian merchants in business, resorted to force, taking control of Bengal in 1757 under the pretext of the “Plassey revolt”. The result was that the British achieved Pyrric victory in Bengal, for their use of force led to the decline of the very trade they so longed to control. According to Chaudhury,
The gomastas of the Company and its servants ushered in almost a reign of terror, coercing and exploiting the weaver-artisans. The weavers were no registered with a particular gomasta and were not allowed to work for anyone else. And they were transferred from one gomasta to another ‘like so many slaves’. As a near contemporary British observer pointed out, ‘their hardship is scarcely to be described’. (1995:335)
This sad state of affairs was indeed noted even by a contemporary British historian. Alexander Dow, in his Hindostan, observed that pre-Plassey Bengal “at that time was one of the richest, most populous and best cultivated kingdoms in the world… We may date the commencement of decline from the day on which Bengal fell under the dominion of foreigners.” (op cit. Chaudhury 1995, p. 335)
European technological superiority often overrated. As Frank noted, citing the work of Dharampal (1971) and Kuppuram and Kumudamani (1990),
there are several accounts of British import of samples of Indian wootz steel, which specialized British laboratories found equal to that of Sweden and superior to any made in Britain in 1790. Moreover, among the ten thousand Indian furnaces at the end of the eighteenth century, many still produced comparable iron and steel both faster (in two and a half hours instead of four) and cheaper than the British did in Sheffield. (Frank 1998:202-3)
use of such brute force to secure a monopoly evidently replaced a much more cooperative and free, non-compulsory system of trade. As Chaudhuri convincingly argued,
before the arrival of the Portuguese … in 1498 there had been no organized attempt by any political power to control the sea-lanes and long-distance trade of Asia … The Indian Ocean as a whole and its different seas were not dominated by any particular nations or empires. [33]
In other words, unable to compete in a situation of free and uncompulsory trade, the Europeans used force to shut down free trade and position themselves as the beneficiaries of uncompetitive monopolies. Far from being the torchbearers of capitalism as Weber and others would have us believe, Europeans wielded force to construct an uncompetitative, uncapitalistic despotism which far exceeded that achieved by any of the so-called “oriental despots”.
Why Indians are poor today, 800 million living in abject poverty
Therefore, when considering the poverty under which much of India suffers today it is important to take into consideration all of the historical factors which contributed to this condition. Clearly, in the case of India, we are dealing with a situation in which one of the world’s wealthiest and most vibrant economies was transformed, over the course of several centuries, into one of its poorest and most moribund. While the causes for this transformation are no doubt manifold it is also clear that one cause in particular played a particularly important role. This, naturally, is the economic exploitation that occurred under colonial rule in India. As Romesh Dutt argued,
It is, unfortunately, a fact which no well-informed Indian official will ignore, that, in many ways, the sources of national wealth in India have been narrowed under British rule. India in the eighteenth century was a great manufacturing as well as a great agricultural country, and the products of the Indian loom supplied the markets of Asia and of Europe. It is, unfortunately, true that the East Indian Company and the British Parliament, following the selfish commercial policy of a hundred years ago, discouraged Indian manufacturers in the early years of British rule in order to encourage the rising manufactures of England. Their fixed policy, pursued during the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth, was to make India subservient to the industries of Great Britain, and to make the Indian people grow raw produce only, in order to supply material for the looms and manufactories of Great Britain. This policy was pursued with unwavering resolution and with fatal success; orders were sent out to force, Indian artisans to work in the Company’s factories; commercial residents were legally vested with extensive powers over villages and communities of Indian weavers; prohibitive tariffs excluded Indian silk and cotton goods from England; English goods were admitted into India free of duty or on payment of a nominal duty. The British manufacturer, in the words of the historian, H. H. Wilson, “employed the arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle a competitor with whom he could not have contended on equal terms;” millions of Indian artisans lost their earnings; the population of India lost one great source of their wealth. It is a painful episode in the history of British rule in India; but it is a story which has to be told to explain the economic condition of the Indian people, and their present helpless dependence on agriculture. (1950: vii-viii)
Analysis of the economic genocide by Europeans against Hindus
What the Europeans did to the Hindus economically is perhaps the greatest atrocity that Hindus have had to face, and the effect of it lingers on to this very date with 800 million Indian people living in abject poverty(80% of the population of India is Hindu) - and why did this happen? Because a pagan and heathen civilisation of brown people was doing much better than Christian white people. Europe was a relative non-entity prior to the 17-18th century in the world, and played a bit role in the world economy. It could not produce goods of comparable quality to countries like India and China, and it could not compete with their economies or their technologies. So it resorted to barbarianism: by the use of brute force it forced these economies to shut down. In India, where it was most cold and unsympathetic, it forced all its highly skilled labour into poverty and let them starve to death. Meanwhile, enjoying an industrial revolution in Europe, fuelled by the profits it was making from Indian blood. It forced its inferior goods onto Indians, and made them pay heavy prices for it. While, outlawing all traditional Indian goods. The method was pure piracy and capitalist despotism.
Thus the myth of European superiority must die. Europe got to where it is today though pure piracy, slavery and brute force used on other cultures. Here is what the famous British historian Will Durant has to say about what Europe did to India:
But I saw such things in India as made me feel that study and writing were frivolous things in the presence of a people – one-fifth of the human race – suffering poverty and oppression bitterer than any to be found elsewhere on the earth. I was horrified. I had not thought it possible that any government could allow its subjects to sink to such misery.
I came away resolved to study living India as well as the India with the brilliant past; to learn more of this unique Revolution that fought with suffering accepted but never returned; to read the Gandhi of today as well as the Buddha of long ago. And the more I read the more I was filled with astonishment and indignation at the apparently conscious and deliberate bleeding of India by England throughout a hundred and fifty years. I began to feel that I had come upon the greatest crime in all history.”
“….They taxed the provinces under the Company so exorbitantly that two-thirds of the population fled; defaulters were confined in cages, and exposed to the burning sun; fathers sold their children to meet the rising rates. It was usual to demand 50% of the net produce of the land. “Every effort, lawful and unlawful,” says a Bombay Administration report, written by Englishmen, “was made to get the utmost out of the wretched peasantry, who were subjected to torture, in some instances cruel and revolting beyond all description, if they would not or could not yield what was demanded.” ……. “Everybody and everything” says the Oxford History of India, “was on sale.” And Macaulay writes:
During the five years which followed the departure of Clive from Bengal, the misgovernment of the English was carried to such a point as seemed incompatible with the existence of society…… The servants of the Company……forced the natives to buy dear and sell cheap…..Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty millions of human beings reduced to the extremity of wretchedness. They had been accustomed to live under tyranny, but never under tyranny like this. ….. Under their old masters they had at least one resource: when the evil became insupportable, the people rose and pulled down the government. But the English Government was not to be shaken off. That Government, oppressive as the most oppressive form of barbarian despotism, was strong with all the strength of civilization.”
Whell Ghandi helped get the Brits outta where they didn’t belong.
Too bad yall didn’t have any oil or America woulda been over there in a Jiffy!
Who are the visionary Leaders in India?
Those that are looking to the future and still respect the accomplishments of the past.
Is the current government corrupt?
What is great or was great about the nation? What is beautiful about her culture? Her ways? Her people?
What giants of the world have sprung from the bosom of mother india?
Words - especially the truth - can be powerful reminders.
And sometimes a good reminder is all anyone needs.
Indeed, you are right. There are many giants that sprung from India Buddha, Mahavira, Guru Nanak, Panini, Patanjali, Kapila, Pingala, Charaka, Sushrutha, Nagarjuna, Kannanda, Gautama, Vyassa, Rama, Krishna, Guru Nanak, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Yogananda, Ramana Maharishi, Ashoka, Chandragupt Mauraya, Chandragupt Gupta, Vikramaditya, Sankara, Kalisada, Abhinavgupta, Bharahati and the countless Risis and countless more. It is important to remember them as well. However, it is important to reconstruct the entire history of India from the times of Indus valley to modern times as accurately as possible, in order to revive this civilisation in the global consciousness. There is much we can learn from this civilisation even today. However, the first step is to restore the history of it.
Is the current government corrupt?
Yes, it is the legacy of brown sahibs left by the British, an elite westernized class of Indians that oppress the masses and are deeply anti-Hindu. Most of the government is made up of Muslims and Christian MP’s. It is responsible for keeping Indians in a state of destitution, for 800 million people since the time of independence, nothing has changed.