>The only logic many vested interests do not want to acknowledge that Indians
>could have (or have had) a collective vision - a harmonious culture sharing
>common beliefs, holidays and celebrations.
I don't want to argue or comment on anybody's belief. But don't you think the
above is correct ie Hindus (forget Indians) don't have a collective vision? Is
not that the problem with present India? The Hindus (forget the Indians) donot
have a common harmonius culture sharing common beliefs, holidays and
celebrations. If you don't want to acknowledge that, then please cite at least
just (3) THREE things which in your opinion ALL Hindus believe. I think you
would have a hard time to answer that and find even this small section of
netters to agree with your view. In fact for the last two hundred years that is
what all scholars, Indian and non Indian, (including Vivekananda, Tegore, Ram
Mohon Roy, Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, Gandhi, Radhakrishnan and others) have been
trying to answer that question without much success. So before we blame the
West, let us at least try to understand where we are. Let us hear from you.
Rajen da
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Ram Sarangapani ; barua25
Cc: assam@assamnet.org
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 4:27 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
Ram-da and Rajen-da,
The point is not whether Jesus or Krishna or Rajen or Umesh or Ram existed -
it is that they are believed to be so - just liked USA is believed to be the
only Super Power in the world. Someone in remote India may have NO inkling what
is Roman empire or that any such country ever existed -- but that person
should or would bow down to the fact that so many educated Indians believe
it does. Why cannot someone in the West understand that most Indians (read
Hindus 800 million of them) believe Krishna and Ram lived on earth - just
Westerners (even athiests ) believe that Abraham lived on earth to the age of
800 years (as per Bible) and that Jesus was born of Virgin Mary.
Belief of a group can be put on wikipedia etc - why do westerners oppose even
that ? Why belittle it as some minor literary text characters aka Ian Fleming's
(I refer to Ram or Krishna here) -- which has no consequence to spiritual or
religious beliefs of Hindus.
The only logic many vested interests do not want to acknowledge that Indians
cuold have (or have had) a collective vision - a harmonious culture sharing
common beliefs, holidays and celebrations. Isn't it much easier to paint a
picture where every Indian was following his or her own thing --someone
worshipping in the east another in the west. One day one person celebrating ,
next day another celebrating something --so the whole city or region never saw
eye to eye ----so NO culture!!
I was surprised to learn that Krishna is the most revered person in way down
India's south Guruvayoor temple --same as in Manipur (far east ) just as in
far west at Dwarka and up above in Badrinath, Gangotri etc. But some
westerners would assert that Hindus are a bunch of individualists - who believe
different things - have no religion except caste system (the only unifying
social force or common thought).
SCIENCE:
So when a nation/civilization has no common social system except caste system
(as per above logic) then how can it have intellectuals sitting together to do
scientific work and promoting and rejecting hypothesis and building consensus.
Umesh
Ram Sarangapani <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Barua,
Just couldn't resist not butting in.
Without going into the existence of Krishna, Shiva or Jesus :)here is a
site about Ancient Math in India. Also let us not forget Aryabhatta (Math) and
Kautilya(Politics & Governance).
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Indians.html
(BTW: the site is from a UK University and NOT something conjured up in
India:)
--Ram
On 8/10/07, barua25 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
When I say FACTS AND FIGURES, I was talking not about our religious
heroes, but about Science and Mathametics.
Say for instance, what India did in case of Mathematics and when?
Can you produce any written evidence that India invented the Zero and
when? It is difficult.
I donot like to deal with mythical figures like Shiva, Krishna etc. I
consider these Indian gods to be purely mythical figures transformed from some
original tribal religious cults. In my opinion, Shiva was orginally a local god
in the Harappa civilization and Krishna was a Dravidian local tribal god. This
much history tells. Do you have any other evidence to counter that , not who
believes what?
Rajen da
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Rajen & Ajanta Barua ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; assam@assamnet.org
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 1:33 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
Rajen-da,
Good to get your response. Now about facts - would you not agree that
most Hindus hail Krishna as one of the Hindu heroes and believe that he lived
in India thousands of years back --- I wanted to put that on Wikipedia page of
Krishna - and they asked for facts -- what do you expect me to do? I believe
wiki is a good example of people over the globe trying to have "sameness" -
even here there is bias.
Second, on Jesus's wiki page I added a comment that many Indians
believe that Jesus came to learn his skills in India (and I added a BBC report
on that with weblink) and that was deleted - saying this is no research
evidence -- for Indian news on Indian culture even an obscure reference (with
no weblink) in any newspaer article in remote India is considered okay by its
editors -- incidently for Jesus they have stopped anyone from editing the page.
Anyone is free to write anything about Krshna , Ram etc -- thats free for all.
whats that to do with facts? Thats plain bias.
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:
Umesh:
What you are saying is right.
The West has a Eurocentric view of the world. They claim that the
basic foundation of the Western Civilization, especially on science, is mainly
based on Greek civilization. They even donot like to give proper credit to the
Indian and Chinese contribution in mathetics and other science. I would say,
the West is still in the Dark Age. However, they have a point. Indians
basically donot have any record of what they did. If you want to counter the
present Eurocentric view, the best (and only way) is to debate will SOLID facts
and figures and not with rhetoric.
If you have any specific issue, I would be glad to discus.
Rajenda
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: assam@assamnet.org
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2007 7:04 PM
Subject: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
Some days back a student of Indian origin born and raised in US was
surprised to learn that India had a glorious history - he hardly believed me
though.
And it did not surprise me since I have come to realize that
every civilization wants to promote itself as the best - Greek and Roman
civilization are promoted as ideals (closely followed by Egyptian one) --
Indian and Chinese ones are lesser ones.
Greek Toga costume parties are common features of Western univs
just like Indian kurta, dhoti are picking up in Indian college fashion shows.
However, the problem is that Western historians/scholars of non
Western spheres call themselves (and each other) as the world's foremost/only
reliable experts on their chosen area of expertise - namely hows and whys of
other civilization. Most believe (I believe) that those in non-western
world/developing world are too naive/unscientific/non-modern/non-rational to
understand and appreciate the distinction between good and bad; and right and
wrong.
I believe a lay westerner is more tolerant of others' views than
these experts (whose reputation and even careers depend on promoting what they
have always held as true).
I just created a wikipedia page called Hindu Reality -speaking
against this tendency (I'm sure someone will come along and remove my
arguments).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_reality - I just checked
--someone has deleted the page itself.
Wiki seems to be about might is right -
Any comments?
Umesh
Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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