Persecution of Hindus and ending it

Spirituality Religion
#61

[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]

Think the responses are completely understandable. I, personally have NEVER heard of this interpretation of karma. I have a few Hindu friends at work, who hold the same interpretation of karma as I do. When I was a Buddhist, we learnt (and my Hindu friends agree) that karma is the law of cause and effect, and explains why things happen in our life. The way they taught it was particularly self focused in that they would say “why do bad things happen to me when I’m a good person?.. because of karma” This seems to be a very common view of karma, and SD has presented a view that I have never heard of before. As I have pointed out, ALL religions have different interpretations of the same principles, and I believe my interpretation of karma to be possibly the most common. SD’s interpretation of karma is either a) a rare, alternative view of karma, of b) his own modification, created so that he does not need to take accountability for his own actions. I’ll let you decide which one you think best fits the bill.

#62

[QUOTE=YogiAdam;54259]Think the responses are completely understandable. I, personally have NEVER heard of this interpretation of karma. I have a few Hindu friends at work, who hold the same interpretation of karma as I do. When I was a Buddhist, we learnt (and my Hindu friends agree) that karma is the law of cause and effect, and explains why things happen in our life. The way they taught it was particularly self focused in that they would say “why do bad things happen to me when I’m a good person?.. because of karma” [B]This seems to be a very common view of karma[/B], and SD has presented a view that I have never heard of before. As I have pointed out, ALL religions have different interpretations of the same principles, and I believe my interpretation of karma to be possibly the most common. SD’s interpretation of karma is either a) a rare, alternative view of karma, of b) his own modification, created so that he does not need to take accountability for his own actions. I’ll let you decide which one you think best fits the bill.[/QUOTE]

Key word common. I.e. simplistic.

and this common view is not even really rudimentary.

Just because someone is a ‘hindu’ this doesn’t automatically make them:

a sage.
briliant.
learned in thier own religon.
giving a flip…
bringing any insight to the table…
a reader and student of the vedas

#63

The European cultural genocide of Hindus

The Muslims invaders tried to destroy Hinduism in India by sheer force, by destroying temples, murdering Hindus and forcibly converting them, but they failed ultimately to destroy Hinduism(India is still 80% Hindu despite 1400 years of Muslim and later Christian invasions) The Portugese attemped something similar in Goa, coverting Hindus by brute force, mass conversations and baptisms, torturing Hindus and destorying their temples, but they too failed. The British initially also tried in vain by importing an army of Christian missionaries to attept to convert the Hindus, which later were recalled by the British empire because of their failure to convert Hindus(only 2% of India is Christian) When they realised that Hinduism was simply too strong of a religion to convert, they decided to corrupt it instead and poison the minds of Hindus against their own religion. These men of no scruples, then started to spread propoganda against Hinduism, through exaggeration of existing social evils in Indian society and fabrication. As they controlled the media and the education system, they could publish whatever they wanted.

First they portrayed the teachers, sages and enlightened people of India known as the Brahmin class, as tyrannical clergy that controlled the masses with a caste system. This way they divided the Brahmins against the non-Brahmins. Even today, you will find Dalits cry about the imaginary oppression they face from Brahmins.

Secondly, they portrayed the Brahmins class as actually being foreign to India. They invaded India in 1500BCE, bought their Vedas along with them and imposed a caste system on the dark skinned natives to ensure racial purity. This way they divided northen Indians against Southern Indians(so called Aryans vs Dravidians) The Brahmins, they preached, were most savage people, always inebiterated on their soma drink, and sacrificing animals and humans to their gods.

Thirdly, they mistranslated the sacred scriptures of Hinduism the Vedas, and made them appear childish and primitive. These translations were circulated around in English and Hindi to make Indian people reject them. Even today, it is these translations which are used in education. It is these translations which are found published on sacred text…com
They rejected Hindu translations, saying they were fabricated by the devious Brahmins.

Fourthly, they portrayed Brahmins as tricksters who had made up the long history of India going back 10,000 years recorded in their Puranas and backdated using mathematical tricks to make it seem like they had been in India for millenias.

Fifthly, they portrayed India as a country that never made any progress due to the boogeyman Brahmins, and whatever progress they made in the fields of science, medicine, literature etc was all borrowed from Persians, Greeks, Babylonians.

This way the British negated the entire civilisation of the Hindus, their history, heritage, legacy, contributions and entire ethos. In replacement of this they said that European culture was the source of all civilisation, of all science and technology, of all history and this is why Europe was superior to all cultures and was subjugating them and had the right to subjugate them. This was all done in the guise of high level academic research, enlisting leading scholars from European universities like Oxford to do the dirty work.

Let us now look at these great European academics who poisoned and corrupted Hindu culture:

http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/h_es/h_es_malho_euro_frameset.htm

Eurocentrism of Hegel, Marx, Mueller, Monier Williams, Husserl
by Rajiv Malhotra

Hegel, Potraying India as an ahistorical people who never progressed

During the colonial era, the na?ve assumption of Western superiority was given authority by thinkers such as Hegel, who developed a “universal” theory of history, which was, in essence, a theory of European history in which the rest of the World was taken to be objects rather than subjects. For Hegel, as Said has pointed out, Asia and Africa were "static, despotic, and irrelevant to world history."1 Hegel’s view of history was highly influential, on both Marxist and humanist historiography. His rather extreme ethnocentrism should thus not be swept under the rug, but analyzed as a central aspect of his thought. Since Hegel, Ethnocentrism has often blinded the West to the parochialism of its supposed “universals”.
Particularly egregious are the attempts by thinkers such as Hegel to define as universal features that are, in fact, quite culturally specific. This includes his “universal history”, which saw Europe and America as the pinnacles of human evolution. Hegel wrote, for example, "universal history goes from East to West. Europe is absolutely the end of universal history. Asia is the beginning."2

This idea was clearly a justification of Western colonial exploitation. But Hegel took the idea even further. Since his “history” is solely defined in Eurocentric terms, any act committed by the Europeans, no matter how reprehensible, is justifiable as a necessary step in human evolution. Hegel wrote that:

"Because history is the configuration of the Spirit in the form of event, the people which receives the Spirit as its natural principle…is the one that dominates in that epoch of world history…Against the absolute right of that people who actually are the carriers of the world Spirit, the spirit of other peoples has no other right."3

Hegel also applied this “logic” specifically to his analysis of India. He depicted the British colonialization of India as an inevitable stage in his process of “evolution”. He wrote:

"The British, or rather the East India Company, are the masters of India because it is the fatal destiny of Asian empires to subject themselves to the Europeans."7

Reading through Hegel’s works, it is apparent that he based conclusions such as this on the rather warped assumption that India has no history.

Karl Marx:

The false perception that India was a stagnant, ahistorical land was further perpetuated by Karl Marx. Marx described India as being caught in what he called the “Asiatic Mode of Production”. He posited that India was trapped in a stagnant, unhistorical economic state in which “Oriental despots” wielding absolute power governed unchanging, stratified villages. His analysis was flawed by a serious ignorance of the actual economic history of India, and of the numerous underlying causes of decline. (This is why to this day, Marxists do not wish to encourage scholarship on India’s Traditional Knowledge Systems, as the historical record clearly refutes the belief that there was no progress on the materialistic front from within the indigenous culture.) From a certain perspective, the greatest despots in India were not Oriental but Occidental, i.e., the British.

These words were written in "The Future Results of British Rule in India’ on August 8, 1853 in the concluding of a series of articles on India, that were published in the ‘New York Daily Tribune’. In a letter to Engels, Marx claimed that he had written these casual pieces primarily for financial reasons and that India was "not his department"9:
“India, then, could not escape the fate of being conquered, and the whole of her past history, if anything, is the history of the successive conquests she has undergone. Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. What we call its history, is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the basis of that unresisting and unchanging society… From the Indian natives, reluctantly and sparingly educated at Calcutta, under English superintendence, a fresh class is spring up, endowed with the requirements for government and imbued with European science. Steam has brought India into regular and rapid communication with Europe, has connected its chief ports with the whole south-eastern ocean, and has re-vindicated it from the isolated position which was the prime law of its stagnation.”

Max Mueller:

The predator-prey mentality of foreign rulers and scholars working on the ancient texts of India did not fail to influence the famous Max Mueller. This is reflected in one of the letters by Prof. Mueller addressed to the Duke of Orgoil, the then Secretary of State for India. Mueller wrote on 16th Dec. 1868:

“The ancient religion of India is totally doomed and if Christianity doesn’t step in whose fault will it be.”

Furthermore, in a letter addressed to his wife in 1868, Prof. Max Mueller wrote:

“I hope I shall finish that work and feel convinced that though I shall not live to see it, yet this edition of mine and translation of Vedas will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of the souls in this country.”

In the same letter, he further observes:

“It [Veda] is the root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, the only way of uprooting all that has been sprung from it during the last three thousand years.”

The text of his letters is self-explanatory to the fact that scholars like Max Mueller often started studying Sanskrit with ulterior motives. The modern condition demonstrates that he was more or less successful in his vision.

Monier Williams

Monier Williams another important European scholar who was hard pressed by the Church. He wrote:

“When the walls of the mighty fortress of Brahmanism are encircled, undermined and finally stormed by the soldiers of cross, the victory of Christianity must be signal and complete.”

In his preface to his famous Sanskrit-English Dictionary, as the Professor of the prestigious Boden Chair at Oxford, Monier Williams reveals the objective of founding the Chair for Sanskrit studies by Col. Boden as to convert the natives of India into Christianity. He writes thus:

“I must draw attention to the fact that I am only the second occupant of the Boden Chair, and that its founder, Col. Boden, stated most explicitly in his will (dated Aug. 15,1811) that special object of his munificent bequest was to promote the translation of the scriptures into Sanskrit; so as to enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian Religion.”

Husserl

The prevalent view of most modern Western scholars is that European tradition is not simply one cultural tradition among others. The European self identity is predicated upon its distinct achievements in philosophy and pure theory, and as such, has a unique global mission to fulfill.

Husserl claimed: “Europe alone can provide other traditions with a universal framework of meaning and understanding. They will have to Europeanize themselves, whereas we, if we understand ourselves properly, will never, for example, Indianize ourselves. The Europeanization of all foreign parts of mankind is the destiny of the earth.”

Through these huge Western academics the native Hindus were taught

  1. That theirs was a hopeless ahistorical civilisation which remained stangnant for thousands of years due to an oppressive and superstitious Brahmin caste, and because of this India was a country which only ever plodded along through invasions.

  2. That European civilisation was intrinsically superior and was the beginning of democracy, science, philosophy, rationality, progress, and that is why it is natural evolution for the entire world to be Europeanized and become subject to European hegemony.

The new westernized class of Indians, which the British derogatively called “brown sahibs”, were taught this propoganda in the name of education. The result was that anybody that received an English education ended up with an inferiority complex about their own culture. The legacy continues to this very date.

#64

I’ve been reading through these posts and some of the links posted by SD. In general I’m sympathetic, but I wanted to point out this paragraph from the infinity foundation link, which is the best scholarship of the links I’ve read. My purpose is not to criticize but hopefully to provide a little perspective and maybe even some solace. In any event this is quite an education that Surya Deva is providing. I personally had no idea.

“Now, India was of course invaded over the course of its long history, usually from the interior of Asia. This is not peculiar to India, but is a pattern seen throughout Eurasia, in which sedentary agricultural societies situated along the coasts or in river valleys were periodically invaded by nomadic, pastoral peoples from the interior. This pattern is also seen in East and West Asia as well as in Europe; it is unlikely that India suffered invasions with any greater frequency than these regions. In fact, it seems likely that East and West Asia were invaded more frequently simply because they are far more geographically open to attack. China’s northern border, for example, is simply the open steppes of central Asia, whence invaders descended with alarming frequency. Lacking a natural barrier such as the Himalayan and Hindukush mountains that admirably shield India’s northern border, the Chinese expended incredible time and energy constructing a series of walls and guard posts. Naturally, no barrier is impermeable; walls can be breached and mountain ranges have passes. Since India is no exception in this regard, there is thus no good reason to particularly dwell on invasions as a motivating force in Indian history.”

#65

[QUOTE=The Scales;54260]Key word common. I.e. simplistic.

and this common view is not even really rudimentary.

Just because someone is a ‘hindu’ this doesn’t automatically make them:

a sage.
briliant.
learned in thier own religon.
giving a flip…
bringing any insight to the table…
a reader and student of the vedas[/QUOTE]

Yes, or common as in widely excepted. Why is everyone here so scared of the word common?.. are you guys worried if you live a common life, you won’t be ‘special’ enough?.. just be happy with who you are.

#66

Analysis of persecution of Hindus past and present

As was stated at the start of the thread, Hindus have been amongst the most persecuted people on this planet along the Jews in terms of how extreme it has been. In fact, what the Jews had to face over a few years, was not nearly as inhumane as what the Hindus have had to face ongoing for 1400 years. Imagine those scenes of Jews in concentration camps shown in countless movies made on Nazi germany, and prolong that by 1400 years, and you will get an idea of the massive suffering, terror, humilation, degradation and injustice the Hindus had to face. Please do not mistake the intention of the comparison, I am not at all undermining the gravity of what the Jews had to face in gas chambers etc.

The Hindus and the Jews share another similarity: they both were a highly prosperous ethnic group, wealthy, skilled and highly educated. Even today, Hindus in the US are second only to the Jews in education and wealth. This of course has turned them into hate targets in the West. Even today in countries like Australia Hindus have become hate targets and regularly become the victims of hate crimes. Only today, I saw reported on Star News, how in Australia a Hindu women was found raped, murdered and packed up in a suitcase.

Hindus, like the Jews are hated for religious reasons, but of course for different religious reasons. The Jews are hated because they are a very exclusive and insular people and you could only be a part of the Jewish world if you were born a Jew(Similarly, Hindu people are mostly born into the religion) They remained a close knit community and networked amongst each other, causing others to see them with suspicision(Even today, Jews are accused of zionists plots to take control of the world) The other reason they were hated was because they reject Jesus Christ as the Messiah and had him crucified.

The Hindus are hated because they are the mother of all pagan religion, practice and thought. They are highly free and liberal and tolerate all thought and speech and engage in philosophical thought(was considered a pagan activity by the Roman Catholic Church) They place before god, the human, and consider the development of human to be the most important and regard the human as potentially divine. Thus they regard divine humans like masters, sages as worthy of worship. They even consider human sexuality as something divine.

This makes the Hindu people the most abominable and disgusting people to the major Abrahamic religions, Islam and Christianity, even more detestable than the jews, and thus people that should be destroyed. And indeed that is what they did. The Muslims waged a physical genocide on the infidel Hindus, killing them in huge numbers and demolishing their temples in the tens of thousands, and raping and enslaving their women. The Christian Europeans waged an economic and cutural genocide on the heathen Hindus, starving them to death and forcing them into slave labour, and then systematically poisoning and corrupting their culture to destroy their spirits.

As such, it should not be surprising why a Hindu is not full of praise for these religions. From the Hindu perspective, Islam and Christianity are pure evil, savage, barbaric and inhuman religions. Their history itself condemns them. Future scholars, are not going to hestitate from naming these religions as the cause of massive destruction of humanity and for crimes against humanity. Anybody who supports these religions today, in light of knowing the evil they have wrought, is also worthy of condemnation. It would be akin to endorsing Nazism, knowing fully well what it did to the Jews.

European civilisation in particular has a lot to answer for. It is clearly very jealous of Hindus and the civilisation they established some 10,000 ago in the Indus valley before the West. The Indus valley civilisation is now widely acknowledged to be older, bigger and more advanced than Mesopotamia and Egypt put together. When Hindus were living in planned cities, multistoryed homes with indoor plumbing and underground sewage systems, Europeans were running around naked in forests painting their faces, hollering to one another and living in the wild. Sanitation did not arrive in Europe until modern times. King Louis of France only bathed a few times in his life. Plague was ramapant in Europe for this reason.

It is also clearly very jealous that the Hindus had an enlightenment before they did. Developed science, medicine, rationality and technology and charted the seas and spread its culture far and wide across the East and West, millenias before they did.

It is also very clearly jealous of how much the Hindus dominated the world economy in history and how Europe never could match up with the Hindus, neither match the quality of their manufacturing or technology of production.

All this jealousy of Hindu civilisation by Europe became the frustration of European civilisation, who unable to live down the fact that a pagan and heathen culture was superior to theirs and doing so much better than them, resorted to piracy, propoganda and poisoning against Hindus, so they could rise to the top at their behest. They rose to the top today not through fair play, but foul play. The entire wealth of the West today is built up on slavery, exploitation and looting.

Hindu civilisation is still superior and we can clearly see this. Indian production methods still produce the highest quality goods, and this clear to any foreign tourist that goes to India to buy its handicrafts, metalworks, clothes made by traditional Hindu artisans. Indian music and dance is still the most developed and refined, and great musicians like Ravi Shankar have proven this to the world. Indian medicine is still the most effective against disease and thousands of clinical trials are proving it. Sanskrit is still the most developed and refined language in the world and being studied in computer sciences for its application in AI. Indian philosophical schools still are more refined than Western philosophical schools. Indian logic is still more refined and rigorous than Western logic. Indian Yoga is still the most advanced body and mind management system in the world and highly sought after.

It is time we rid ourselves of the savage, barbaric evil system that the Abrahamic culture has produced which leads to societies of vast inequality, corruption and oligarchies where the elite few oppress everybody - and go dharmic. Lets not pretend we have have progressed, we have regressed culturally, economically, socially and spiritually.

India today is ruled by an oligarchy of an elite Westernized English educated class which command all its wealth. Meanwhile, 800 million people live in abject poverty and have neen living in this poverty for centuries. Nothing has changed for them. There are solutions though to this problem, and that is to bring back the traditional knowledge systems of India and this means lifting the ban against India’s traditional knowledge systems, so that the masses can once again gain self-suffience and earn a livelihood.

Very simple things can be done in Indian villages using traditional Hindu knowledge, which already have been done in one Indian village, previously a wasteland, is now a thriving Indian village and a model for others. It produces its own energy using natural means, harvests its own water, and shares resources democratically as was done in traditional Indian communities.

#67

This seems to be a very common view of karma, and SD has presented a view that I have never heard of before. As I have pointed out, ALL religions have different interpretations of the same principles, and I believe my interpretation of karma to be possibly the most common. SD’s interpretation of karma is either a) a rare, alternative view of karma, of b) his own modification, created so that he does not need to take accountability for his own actions. I’ll let you decide which one you think best fits the bill.

You have not heard it before, because you have never consulted an expert on Hinduism before, which I am practically am considering how deeply I have studied this religion for 10 years and read most of the primary texts. A common person will give you a common understanding, not an expert understanding. You will find the description of Karma I gave you in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

The common person understands Karma like a simplistic process - I do good, then good things will happen, and I do bad, then bad things will happen. So by that logic if anything bad happens to you, it is because of what you did. This is a common understanding by people who do not understand karma. Patanjali gives a very precise and technical description of karma in the Yogasutras. Like I said three types of karma are recognised: potential karma, past karma and present karma. It is your present karma which is the most powerful.

#68

By the way karma as a law of cause and effect is even used in the school of Indian mechanics. The word karma is used to describe force, momentum and velocity. In Indian psychology, it is used to describe mental impressions that are stored in the unconscious mind and use to explain human behaviour and important events that happen in ones life.

#69

[QUOTE=The Scales;54253]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?[/QUOTE]

Lol, probably.

Yes, the current government is corrupt and anti-Hindu.

The political party known as the Bharatiya Janata Party is considered Hindu fundamentalist by our lovable Christian/Muslim run media, despite the fact that the party has given India its most brilliant and capable PM’s to date, has little to no record of scandalous affairs, and has done the best in improving the economies of the states in which it is incumbent (especially Gujarat).

Kudos to the Indians in India for aiding the rise of a party so wholly antithetical to our future!

#70

[QUOTE=The Scales;54260]Key word common. I.e. simplistic.

and this common view is not even really rudimentary.

Just because someone is a ‘hindu’ this doesn’t automatically make them:

a sage.
briliant.
learned in thier own religon.
giving a flip…
bringing any insight to the table…
a reader and student of the vedas[/QUOTE]

I myself used to have the very same “hearsay definition” of Karma before I actually took the time to read Hindu scriptures.

In the Mahabharata, I recall reading almost the exact same definition in one parable/discourse.

#71

[QUOTE=YogiAdam;54270]Yes, or common as in widely excepted. Why is everyone here so scared of the word common?.. are you guys worried if you live a common life, you won’t be ‘special’ enough?.. just be happy with who you are.[/QUOTE]

Because common = misinformed or misinterpreted at times.

#72

[QUOTE=Surya Deva;54279]Analysis of persecution of Hindus past and present…

The Hindus and the Jews share another similarity: they both were a highly prosperous ethnic group, wealthy, skilled and highly educated. Even today, Hindus in the US are second only to the Jews in education and wealth. This of course has turned them into hate targets in the West. Even today in countries like Australia Hindus have become hate targets and regularly become the victims of hate crimes. Only today, I saw reported on Star News, how in Australia a Hindu women was found raped, murdered and packed up in a suitcase.

…[/QUOTE]

One small correction; Indian Americans are the most prosperous ethnic group in the U.S. Jews are in the second or third place now, I believe.

#73

[QUOTE=Nietzsche;54340]One small correction; Indian Americans are the most prosperous ethnic group in the U.S. Jews are in the second or third place now, I believe.[/QUOTE]

I think the Chinese and the Russians may have an issue with that. But, what about the English and the Germans? They are not native to the U.S. What about the mixed races? Aren’t they ethnic as well? Do you have stats for them? But, of course not. You are not racist at all. Only those who challenge your path of thinking are racist.

And, SD - you have presented an impressive list of abuses through the centuries. I’ve read Pandara’s question, which to me asks, why were the Hindus so relentlessly persecuted throughout history? What was it they owned that everyone else wanted? Have you given any thought to the reasons? Are Hindus standing around scratching their collective heads wondering, “what the heck did we do to deserve this?” Was it just bloodsport? Or, can any culture cite its own persecution by other cultures just as well? Can someone question a Hindu without being labelled a Hindu hater? Why does Wendy’s serve square hamburgers? Can you answer in 1500 words or less?

#74

@Surya Deva

I think you’ve done a service to your people by educating others about the history of India and the many hardships the Indian people have had to endure through the centuries. It’s particularly enlightening to hear about British colonial rule in India from a different perspective.

But by the same token, you do yourself and your people a disservice by engaging in rants like your so-called analysis. This had a couple of effects. First of all, it really calls into question your alleged credentials as a scholar. The infinity foundation article is some real scholarship. The author did a good, rational, calm analysis of the complex reasons, mostly economic, for what happened in India, especially with respect to British colonialism. So for you to come along afterward and start railing about religious persecution and jealousy really hurts your cause.

The infinity foundation article is persuasive precisely because it is calm, rational, and obviously well researched and thought out. Your “analysis” is destructive because it is not. I think that if you were to follow the example of that article and just educate people, you would find that many people, Americans, Europeans, and other people of European heritage, would be sympathetic to your cause. You [I]need[/I] sympathetic outsiders.

If you really want to do something to help the problem, you may be in the wrong business. It’s really not at all about religion, it’s about economics, and to some extent, about politics and social change. The infinity foundation article made the point that one of the biggest reasons for the decline of India was the disruption by the British military of the long established trading routes. Those obstacles have been or are in the process of being removed, and economic resurgence is already happening in India, and not as the result of any ranting and railing about religious persecution.

We secular Americans don’t care that much about religion. We don’t identify with our religion to the extent that Muslims and Hindus do. Sure there’s some resentment in the States because the Indians own all the 7-Elevens, gas stations, and Dunkin Donuts, but I’ve never heard of a hate crime against an Indian, and especially not one based on religion. I think you’re really off-base on the religious persecution thing.

You also need to be careful not to make too many outlandish claims and assumptions about what India used to be. The infinity foundation article made a very good case that India was at one time a wealthy country, with efficient and productive agriculture and manufacturing industries and a surplus of international trade. But from that information, you can’t make too many assumptions about the condition of the common people. I know you’d like to think that everything was hunky-dory for everybody all the time, but you don’t really know that.

#75

The scientists of Hindu civilisation

The previous posts have been about the persecution Hinduism had to face. We have covered the genocide of Hindus by Muslims, the Goa inqusitions by the Portugese, and the economic and cultural genocide by the British. This post is going to be a positive post, and educate about some of the greatest Hindu minds in Hindu history and Hindu accomplishments, which you will not hear about in Western text books and courses in history, simply because Western academia is jealous of Hindu civilisation. However, it is impossible to deny their existence, because we have clear records of them, which even Western historians have acknowledged. Still the status quo remains that none of this history is taught in the West, or for that matter in the Westernized education system in India either. This needs to change.

It is rather clear from what we have seen so far that Hindu civilisation was highly developed, wealthy and skilled and had a lot of indigenious industrial technologies whereby they produced goods of unsurpassable quality, allowing them to dominate international trade for millenias. Thus, clearly it must have had a highly developed scientific culture. Indeed, as legendary as Hindu wealth was, so was its science.

An 11th century manuscript, entitled, “The Categories of nation” by an Arabic author, Said al-Andalusi, a prolific author and a judge for the king in Muslim spain, says this about Hindus:

http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/h_es/h_es_kumar_spain_frameset.htm

Chapter V: Science in India (Translation)

The first nation (to have cultivated science) is India. This is a powerful nation having a large population, and a rich kingdom (possession). India is known for the wisdom of its people. Over many centuries, all the kings of the past have recognized the ability of the Indians in all the branches of knowledge.
The kings of China have stated that the kings of the world are five in number and all the people of the world are their subjects. They mentioned the king of China, the king of India, the king of the Turks, the king of the Furs (Persians) and the king of the Romans (1). They referred to the king of China as the “king of humans” because the people of China are more obedient to authority and are stronger followers of government policies than all the other peoples of the world. They referred to the king of India as the “king of wisdom” because of the Indians careful treatment of `ul?m (sciences) and their advancement in all the branches of knowledge. They referred to the king of the Turks as the “king of lions” because of the courage and the ferocity of the Turks. They referred to the king of Persia as the “king of kings” because of the richness, glory and importance of his kingdom, since Persia had subdued the kings of the center of the populated world, and because it controlled, to the exclusion of other kingdoms, the most fertile of the climatic regions. And they referred to the king of the Romans as the “king of men” because the Romans, of all the peoples, have the most beautiful faces, the best built bodies and the most robust physique.

The Indians, as known to all nations for many centuries, are the metal (essence) of wisdom, the source of fairness and objectivity. They are peoples of sublime pensiveness, universal apologues, and useful and rare inventions. In spite of the fact that their color is in the first stage of blackness, which puts them in the same category as the blacks, Allah, in His glory, did not give them the low characters, the poor manners, nor the inferior principles associated with this group and ranked them above a large number of white and brown peoples.

Greek Historians, similarly admit the greatness Hindu civilisation had achieived in science and philosophy, admitting that their own science and philosophy was borrowed from the Hindus:

http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/h_es/h_es_kumar_spain_frameset.htm

Writers such as Clement of Alexandria, who claimed that not only was Greek philosophy derived from non-Greek sources, including Buddhist and Brahmanical sources from India, [14] provide evidence for the cultural influence of these Indians living in the West.

Although Greek records themselves clearly admit their borrowing from the Hindus, and modern academics have indeed noted the similarity between Greek Philosophy and Hindu philosophy, Eurocentric propoganda continues to maintain that it was the Hindus who borrowed from the Greeks, despite the fact that the Hindu philosophical tradition was far older than the Greeks.

In a current open book I am reading, “Ancient Hindu chemistry” the author points out the Eurocentric bias. Where they can produce dates that show a Greek philosopher is earlier than a Hindu philosopher who taught similar philosophy, they claim the Hindu philosopher borrowed from the Greek philosopher. Where even by their dating methods, a Hindu philosopher is earlier than a Greek philosopher teaching similar philosophy, they argue that it was a parallel development :smiley:

It is clear to any objective scholar that Greek philosophy is heavily derived from Hindu philosophy. There are indeed many brave Western scholars who have pointed this out, but Eurocentric Western academia refuse to listen. This is because it overturns their dogmatic belief that the Greeks are the source of all science, philosophy and civilisation. And to admit, that they were just inheritors of a wisdom from another culture, pops the European bubble which like to see themselves as historically and intrinsically superior. So jealous they are of Hindus, that even when they admit the Greeks borrowed, they will attribute it to the Babylonians, Egyptians - basically anybody but the Hindus.

There are some Greek concepts which are blatantly Hindu:

Classifying the universe into 5 elements: ether, air, fire, water, earth
Classifying the body into 3 humours
Transmigration of the soul and vegetarianism
The body as a limitation of the soul and meditation
The allegory of the senses like a chariot
Categorical syllogism(premises and conclusion)
The division of the days into 7 and naming them according to the planets
The teacher-disciple tradition
Atoms

This of course is not to take anything away from the Greeks. While the Greeks did indeed learn from the Hindus, they took whatever they learned and took it to a different trajectory(Greek three humours are different to the tridosa of Ayurveda, 5 elements are different to the mahabhuttas of Samkhya) But it is high time now that European academia grows up and admits that it was not the Greeks, but the Hindus who first originated science and philosophy. Eurocentricism needs to end.

It is also important to note that Hindu science and philosophy was vastly more developed than the Greeks, and was comparable to modern levels.

We shall now look at just how developed and advanced Hindu science and philosophy was, and look at some great Hindu scientists and philosophers. First let us begin with the ancient period and what the classical texts describe:

http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/t_es/ht_es_science_frameset.htm

Size of an atom
https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/images/motions.swf

Absorption of water by a plant
https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/images/absorption_of_water.swf

Electric cell
https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/images/electrical_cell.swf

Gravitational force
https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/images/gravitational_force.swf

Mechanics
https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/images/motions.swf

Light, knowledge of it being made up of 7 rays
https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/images/Light_7clr.swf

Distillation
https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/images/distillation.swf

Heliocentricism
https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/images/sunrise.swf

The infinity foundation links obviously indicate a highly advanced scientific knowledge. However, as I have educated many times in the past on this forum in various places, the scientific knowledge of the Hindus was well up to par with what we know today. I will very briefly recap what the Hindus knew by briefly introducing the finest Hindu minds, which have attained legendary status in Hindu history - basically our Newtons and Einsteins

Kanada

  1. In the Vaiseshika Sutras of Kanada, he develops a precise classification system to classify the empirical world. He formulates 6 categories: substance, qualities, actions, similarity, difference, inherence. Using this system he goes onto describes physical mechanics, the laws of motion, laws of thermodynamics, atoms, molecular bonding . This includes:

*An object will either remain at rest or continue in a straight line unless a force is applied.

  • Every action will have an equal and opposite reaction
  • The momentum of a projectile is directly proportional to the initial force provided
  • Falling is due to gravity
  • All objects are made out of aggregates of atoms:
  • Atoms combine and discombine under heat or energy
  • Atoms only combine if the consistuent atoms are compatible
  • The states of matter, solid, liquid and gas are due to atoms with different kinetic energy
  • There are 5 types of substances: space, forces, light, fluids and solids(the order given is the order they appear in) each having distinct properties
  • The cause of attraction between a magnet and a needle is due to an invisible force

Kapila

In the Samkhya texts of Kapila, quantum mechanics, observer effects, evolution of matter, quantum entanglement, viritual quanta, expansion and contraction of the universe, and cognitive sciences are described. This includes:

  • All matter originally exists in a potential state in the quantum field(moolaprakriti = root or quantum matter)
  • The potential state is collapsed by an observer leading to manifest matter
  • All matter is interconnected by fundamental subtle forces(gunas) at the potentials state and exists in a superpositioned state.
  • The vibration of only one main fundamental force(the gunas in a state of supersymmetry) produces all matter. All matter is vibration of the quantum field
  • There are particles that meditate between the potential state and the manifest state(tanmatras)
  • The entire universe begins as a point in space, expands and then contracts due to the fundamental forces
  • Perception takes place when sense impressions are received by the senses, organized by the mind, judged by the intellect and then personalized by the ego and finally submitted to the awareness(chitta)

Sushruta

In the Sushruta Samhita, a Hindu medical encylopedia specialising in surgery, a classification of 1200+ diseases is given, with detailed etiology, symptoms and treatment. 125 surgical instruments are described and hundreds of surgical operations, 51 for the eye alone. These operations were done under a herbal anasthestic or intoxicant. This includes:

Plastic surgergy
Cataract removal
Artificial limb augumentation using wood or metal
Brain surgery(precise descriptions are given when certain nerves to the brain are cut and the resulting effects)
Repairing fractures
Removing foreign objects with precision surgical instruments
Removal of ulcers, urinary stones and tumours

Let us now quote from our favourite scholarly resource on India:

http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/t_es/t_es_agraw_susruta_frameset.htm

Sushruta describes eight types of surgical procedures: Excision (chedana) is a procedure whereby a part or whole of the limb is cut off from the parent. Incision (bhedana) is made to achieve effective drainage or exposure of underlying structures to let the content out. Scraping (lekhana) or scooping is carried out to remove a growth or flesh of an ulcer, tartar of teeth, etc. the veins, hydrocele and ascitic fluid in the abdomen are drained by puncturing with special instrument (vyadhana). The sinuses and cavities with foreign bodies are probed (esana) for establishing their size, site, number, shape, position, situation, etc. Sravana (blood-letting) is to be carried out in skin diseases, vidradhis, localised swelling, etc. in case of accidental injuries and in intentional incisions, the lips of the wound are apposed and united by stitching (svana).

Plastic Surgery

Susruta lays down the basic principles of plastic surgery by advocating a proper physiotherapy before the operation and describes various methods or different types of defects, viz., (1) release of the skin for covering small defects, (2) rotation of the flaps to make up for the partial loss and (3) pedicle flaps for covering complete loss of skin from an area. He has mentioned various methods including sliding graft, rotation graft and pedicle graft. Nasal repair or rhinoplasty has been described in greater detail, which to this day has stood the test of time and is mentioned as the Indian method of rhinoplasty in the books of plastic surgery. Lastly, labioplasty too has received his attention. In short, all the principles of plastic surgery, viz., accuracy, precision, economy, haemostasis and perfection find an important place in Susruta’s writings on this subject

Charaka

In the Charaka Samhita, a classification of 149 major diseases are given, 582 drugs and formulations are given, with their properties for treatment of various diseases. His treatise includes:

  • A description of the cause of diseases 1) Mental 2) Natural and 3) Somatic
  • A description of 20 microrganisms inside and outside the body and the diseases they cause, plus the symptoms and treatments. He also alludes to a microscope to see them
  • Rejuventation therapies to prevent aging and treat serious diseases which attack the immune system.
  • A description of poisons from plants and animals and their antidotes
  • A description of germs which attack the body and the need to practice sterlization of medical equipment, practice hygenine, use fumigation.
  • The importance of improving ones digestion to improve vitality, muscular strength, immunity, energy, life span(in Ayurveda digestion is considered the most important part of ones health)
  • The use of food as medicine because the basic elements that make it up are the same elements present in the body
  • The description of regulation systems in the body(tridosha) and how imbalances cause disease and germs to thrive
  • Description of the bodies circulatory systems which carry nutrients, waste products, sense signals. Including the cardiovascular system and how the heart pumps blood around the body
    *Descriptions of how to construct hospitals

Panini

In Panini’s Asthtadhayayi, Paini presents the worlds first work on mathematical linguistics, descriptive linguistics and generative linguistics, pretty much foreshadowing all of 20th century linguistics. His linguistic theories are so powerful, that almost all of the famous linguisits from Sauserre, Bloomfield, Chomsky, Staal have studied him, and some linguists even maintain that his work may continue to inform 21st century linguistics. Indeed, Panini has also been studied by current computer scientists, such as Rick Briggs of NASA and Subhash Kak of the university of Louisana, for its role in AI.

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pāṇini

The Ashtadhyayi is one of the earliest known grammars of Sanskrit, although he refers to previous texts like the Unadisutra, Dhatupatha, and Ganapatha.[2] It is the earliest known work on descriptive linguistics and generative linguistics, and together with the work of his immediate predecessors (Nirukta, Nighantu, Pratishakyas) stands at the beginning of the history of linguistics itself. His theory of morphological analysis was more advanced than any equivalent Western theory before the mid 20th century, and his analysis of noun compounds still forms the basis of modern linguistic theories of compounding, which have borrowed Sanskrit terms such as bahuvrihi and dvandva.
contrary to Paninian procedure."[16]

The influence of Pāṇini on the founding father of American structuralism, Leonard Bloomfield, is very clear, see e.g. his 1927 paper “On some rules of Pāṇini”.[17] Noam Chomsky has always acknowledged his debt to Pāṇini for his modern notion of an explicit generative grammar.[18] In Chomsky and Morris Halle’s 1968 text The Sound Pattern of English, the authors give an implicit nod to the Ashtadhyayi by formulating their final rule “ā → ā”, which echoes the final Pāṇini’s final rule, “a a iti” (अ अ इति । ८ । ४ । ६८). In Optimality Theory, the hypothesis about the relation between specific and general constraints is known as “Panini’s Theorem on Constraint Ranking”. Pāṇinian grammars have also been devised for non-Sanskrit languages. His work was the forerunner to modern formal language theory (mathematical linguistics) and formal grammar, and a precursor to computing.[19]

Pāṇini’s grammar can be considered to be the world’s first formal system, well before the 19th century innovations of Gottlob Frege and the subsequent development of mathematical logic. To design his grammar, Pāṇini used the method of “auxiliary symbols,” in which new affixes are designated to mark syntactic categories and the control of grammatical derivations. This technique was rediscovered by the logician Emil Post and is now a standard method in the design of computer programming languages.[20] Sanskritists now accept that Panini’s linguistic apparatus is well-described as an “applied” Post system. Considerable evidence shows ancient mastery of context-sensitive grammars, and a general ability to solve many complex generative problems. Frits Staal has written than “Panini is the Indian Euclid.” Emil Post is Panini’s modern counterpart, showing the relationship between a computationally typical natural language grammar and universal computation.

Pingala

In Pingala’s Chandashastra, a text on metre and prosody, Pingala describes the world’s first binary code system, except rather than using 1 and 0’s, he uses a morse code like system, of short syllables and long syllables, and provides a hashing system to convert things into binary.

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingala

The chandaḥśāstra presents the first known description of a binary numeral system in connection with the systematic enumeration of meters with fixed patterns of short and long syllables.[4] The discussion of the combinatorics of meter corresponds to the binomial theorem. Halayudha’s commentary includes a presentation of the Pascal’s triangle (called meruprastāra). Pingala’s work also contains the basic ideas of Fibonacci number (called mātrāmeru ).[5]
Use of zero is sometimes mistakenly ascribed to Pingala due to his discussion of binary numbers, usually represented using 0 and 1 in modern discussion, while Pingala used short and long syllables. As Pingala’s system ranks binary patterns starting at one (four short syllables—binary “0000”—is the first pattern), the nth pattern corresponds to the binary representation of n-1, written backwards.

The Chandashastra is a remarkable work which gives a list of 30 kinds of metres and a unique kind of mathematical structure used in Sanskrit poetry, where the sounds would be arranged in geometrical patterns(bandhas) like arrows, zigzags, lotus etc. Such that when read straight it would say something, and when read according to a particular geometrical shape, would say something else. There is nothing comparable in modern prosody.

Patanjali

In Patanjali’s Yogasutras we find the first complete work on psychology. Patanjali is the first cognitive psychologist, psychodynamic psychologist, parapsychologist, transpersonal psychologist, social and learning psychologist and mental phenomenologist. This treatise includes

  • A description of mental states and a classification of types of mental activities(vrittis)
  • Precise definitions of mental and emotions terms like memory, concentration, ignorance, pain, pleasure, attachment, ego, desire
  • A description of transpersonal states of consciousness(various samadhis)
  • A description of how thought association takes place and the mental representation of the outer world(cognitive psychology)
  • A description of cognitive behavioural therapy
    *A description of conscious, subconscious and unconscious states
  • A description of various psychic abilities and how to activate them(samyama)
  • The description of an entire system of Yoga to cultivate ethics, body, breath, senses, concentration and mind. Along with a classification of obstacles and techniques to overcome them
  • A description of mental impressions, how they are stored in the unconscious and how they activated through stimuli triggers

Gautama(not to be confused with Gautama Buddha)

In Gautama’s Nyaya sutras Gautama describes the entire science of logic, how to reason correctly, how to formulate arguments, how knowledge takes place(epistemology). His treatise includes:

  1. Descriptions of the means of knowledge
  2. Descriptions of the objects of knowledge
  3. Definitions on doubt and resolving it
  4. Methods of debate: constructive, destructive and rhetorical
  5. Formulating logical arguments
  6. Descriptions of logical fallacies
  7. Descriptions of rejoinders and how to respond to them
  8. Descriptions of absolute signs when a party loses a debate

More precise than Gautama is a later medivial logician Gangesha following in the Nyaya tradition, but his work is so powerful and refined, that the tradition of logic he starts is called navya-nyaya(neo-logic). His works outshines any contemporary work on logic. In fact, it is almost impossible to read and understand, that is how precise and immaculate it is.

These are some of the biggest names of scientists in Hindu civilisation and masters of their respective fields: Kananda, physics; Kapila, metaphysics/quantum physics; Sushrutha, surgery; Charaka, general medicine; Panini, grammar and linguistics; Pingala, prosody; Patanjali, psychology, and Gautama and Gangesha, logic and epistemology.

The account given in the beginning by Said al-Andalusi which describes the Hindus as the masters of science and all branches of knowledge was not an exaggeration, and nor surprising, considering Hindu civilisation is based on the Vedas(knowledge) and knowledge is worshipped as saraswati(goddess of learning)

The extent of knowledge of the Hindus was incredibly advanced if we review the above, comparable to modern standards, and some cases better than modern standards. So once again another myth of European superiority, this time in science, must end. The Europeans are not more advanced than the Hindu civilisation in science. So far it has been established, with clear evidence, that the Hindus had a a superior civilisation in terms of economy and industry, and now I think ample evidence has been provided to show that they had a superior civilisation in terms of science as well. What is really unfortunate is the immaturity of European academia to teach this in their text books. By not teaching the amazing contributions the Hindus made in science, they are effectively denying its civilisation. And the reasons for this denial are clearly stemming from jealousy. It is time Europe grew up.

#76

I would recommend the participants read the book " invading the sacred" …http://www.invadingthesacred.com

It is an eyeopener about weern academia and its role in maligning hinduism

#77

[QUOTE=Dwai;54378]I would recommend the participants read the book " invading the sacred" …http://www.invadingthesacred.com

It is an eyeopener about weern academia and its role in maligning hinduism[/QUOTE]

Indeed, this is why there is a need to condemn Western academia/European civilisation because they have actively maligned Hinduism from the first indologists Max Muller, Monier Williams et al, to the modern indologists like Wendy Doniger.

The motivation behind this is clearly religious. And they admitted it loud and clear as well. Hence, for people to pretend that these attacks are not motivated by religious ideology, is deluding oneself. The fact must be admitted Abrahamic religions have historically practiced intolerance. How can we Hindus be made to forget what was done to us by Muslims and Christians? Can you make the Jews forget what was done to them by the Nazis?

The responsibility must be accepted by members of these religions for what they have done, and what they continue to do to this very day. I am tired of hearing people defend Islam in the name of political correctness everytime there is a terrorist attack done by an Islamic group with the same excuse, “They are just bad apples, Islam is a religion of peace” What peace? The moment it was created it was used to invade, conquer, murder, maim, rape and enslave. There is explicit sanction in the Quran to not spare pagans, idolaters, non-Muslims - to behead them wherever they are. Religion of peace?
Similarly, the OT is full of accounts of god killing pagans, idolaters and explicitly ordaining in the ten commandments that no other god should be placed before him, for he is a jealous god. Religion of peace?

We Hindus have historically tried to reason with these religions, embrace these religions, forgive these religions, but enough is enough. It is high time now that these religions be bought to justice and answer for their crimes. It is high time we change the ideologies they have spawned(capitalism) and replace them with healthy, fair - dharmic systems.

#78

But by the same token, you do yourself and your people a disservice by engaging in rants like your so-called analysis. This had a couple of effects. First of all, it really calls into question your alleged credentials as a scholar. The infinity foundation article is some real scholarship. The author did a good, rational, calm analysis of the complex reasons, mostly economic, for what happened in India, especially with respect to British colonialism. So for you to come along afterward and start railing about religious persecution and jealousy really hurts your cause.

The infinity foundation journal is indeed real scholarship, consisting of professional editors, Phd’s. I am not part of the team, but I recognise their research, so I quote from them. They are writing from a dispassionate scholarly perspective, I am writing from a Hindu perspective on the matter of Hindu persecution. Thus, it should not be surprisingly, that my tone will be passionate.

You will get the same if you read about a Jews describing the holocaust or a black person describing their slavery. I am making no pretentions of being a scholar or writing from a scholarly perspective, I am writing from the perspective of a Hindu. I aleady admitted to Pandara, my blood actually boils when reading what was done to the Hindus and the ongoing persecution of Hindus. Again, I will repeat, from our perspective Islam and Christianity are savage, barbaric and evil and our enemies.

We secular Americans don’t care that much about religion. We don’t identify with our religion to the extent that Muslims and Hindus do. Sure there’s some resentment in the States because the Indians own all the 7-Elevens, gas stations, and Dunkin Donuts, but I’ve never heard of a hate crime against an Indian, and especially not one based on religion. I think you’re really off-base on the religious persecution thing.

Actually, Indian Americans own more than just the 7-elevens, gas stations and donut shops, they dominate silicon valley, medicine, NASA etc. The Indian American group are very affluent and highly educated. This is a well known fact.

Now, coming to a more important point. It is impossible to be religiously neutral and there is no such thing as secularism. That is because everybody has to make certain metaphysical assumptions about the nature of reality. Some will say it is all material, some will say it is both mind and matter, some will maintain it is all mind/consciousness, some will maintain it is all void/emptiness and some will maintain it is all relative. Some will say it is real and some will say it is illusion.

The current so-called secular society we live in is built up on the metaphysical assumption of materialism. Hence everything is geared towards materials. In this worldview the human being is nothing more than a material consumer and producer of good, competing for materials. Thus this worldview legitimates societies where the fittest survive i.e., societies that are oligarchies where the few dominate the masses. Not very dissimilar, in fact, to Abrahamic ideology where the few dominate the masses.

Why it is important to both expose and condemn the Abrahamic ideology and the system of capitalism it has spawned(born out of the Protestant work ethic) is so that people can recognise its evil and the necessity to repalce it. Thus the need to revive dharmic culture globally is underscored, and for this purpose the need to restore Indian history accurately and to study why it was so succesfull and what we can learn from it to improve our current world, is in order.

For example Indian ways of production using diffuse labour to produce really high quality good, which were then sold on the international market at relatively cheap prices in a free market world economy, can be applied to economies in the world today as well and the current system of exploitation bought to an end.
It is interesting to note that while the Indians played fair, the British and Portugese did not. This legacy continues today with Western economies economically bullying and coercing non-Western economies.

Another thing we can learn from India is the need for decentralized capital and diffusion of labour. Rather than having labour working for one huge corporation which exploits them with cheap wages, then sells the products they make at high prices and generates huge profit for itself, by having diffuse and self-sufficient labour who get paid a fair price and share the profits, we can have a more fairer and equal relationship between the workers and employers. This way capital does not get centralized but shared.

Infinity foundation makes a very convincing case for reviving the traditional knowledge systems of India in order to give the poor masses a new lease of life.

You also need to be careful not to make too many outlandish claims and assumptions about what India used to be.

I have not said anything beyond what the scholarship says.

#79

[QUOTE=Surya Deva;54381]
Another thing we can learn from India is the need for decentralized capital and diffusion of labour. Rather than having labour working for one huge corporation which exploits them with cheap wages, then sells the products they make at high prices and generates huge profit for itself, by having diffuse and self-sufficient labour who get paid a fair price and share the profits, we can have a more fairer and equal relationship between the workers and employers. This way capital does not get centralized but shared.[/QUOTE]what?? shared capital?? but…but…this would mean that the rich would have to be less rich so that others can simply afford necessities!! how dare you suggest such a thing to a westerner!! :stuck_out_tongue: such a way of thinking is not possible in the world at this point in our development.

#80

[QUOTE=vata07;54389]what?? shared capital?? but…but…this would mean that the rich would have to be less rich so that others can simply afford necessities!! how dare you suggest such a thing to a westerner!! :stuck_out_tongue: such a way of thinking is not possible in the world at this point in our development.[/QUOTE]

It is indeed possible, we simply need to realise that we are being duped by the elite and we have been made to accept a system which exploits us. The Indian traditional ways of production and social arrangement, bought up to date with 21st century technology and needs, will remedy this problem.

As we currently move into an economic crisis where we are finding that people are becoming poorer and poorer and the rich are getting richer, it will dawn on people that enough is enough. We need fairer systems of capital distribution. Does it make any sense at all that in a country where 800 million are living in abject poverty, a rich Indian billionaire is buying himself a $1 billion home in a rich surburb in Mumbai. No, it is completely senseless.

We accept these systems simply because we have accepted a religious ideology where the elite rule over the few. The first solution is to revive Indian traditional ways of production and traditional knowledge systems to help lift India’s masses out of poverty. How they got to poverty in the first place, was through the British forcing them out of their traditional industries, and forcing them into agriculture to produce raw produce for the British, which they then used to manufacture products at cheap prices, and sell them off at really expensive prices, which the Indian could not buy. In this manner the Indian was alienated from his own products. Just like recently Indian farmers commited suicide in high numbers, because they could not claim their crop because they used Western patented methods, which claimed their crop. In order to purchase their own crop that they cultivated they needed to pay really expensive prices they could not afford.

The Indian way is the right way. Decentralize the economy and decentralize labour in order that capital is freed up for distirbution across society. This will necessitate new ways social of social arragements similar to the varnashrama dharma system, where occupational divisions will need to be assigned specific duties in a social system.

The problem with the current system is no society as such exists.