If you leave out the Hispanics, you can say it
is one language in USA. As we all know, USA will
have to face the issue of two rival languages
very soon.
Also USA does not have an official language. The
reign of English as the language is due to the
fact that all immigrants had to learn the
language to get ahead. It is slowly changing and
clash of linguistic groups is bound to happen.
Dilip
barua25 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
It is all one mother tongue, one language here.
Not like India as a whole administered by a foreign language: English.
Barua
----- Original Message -----
From: "Krishnendu Chakraborty"
To:
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 9:12 AM
Subject: [Assam] Indian Political Boundary
Rajen-da
First India was never such a big united country as
it is now.
**** Applying this logic, even US should be termed as
a country that was never expected to ever be a
country. Apart from European colonization the wars,
grabbing of land from Native Americans and Speniards
continued till late 19th century (source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA#Native_Americans_and_European_settlers).
Same goes true for Canada (even may be Australia).
First India was never such a big united country
as it is now.
Even during the British Raj, there were many many
independepdent states ruled by Maharajas, where prsent
India is.
Second, the South was never under any Indian kings
except to some extent under the Moghols.
***** The map I see in wiki
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurya_dynasty) shows
that almost entire south barring present TN and Kerala
was under Mauryas.
Coming to point of Assam, Kamrup historically had a
very close tie with rest of India ... reference
Mahabharat. Culturally too, think about Krishna --
Kalika Purana mentions that the last of the
Naraka-bhauma rulers, Narak, was slained by Krishna.
As for never being ruled by any Indian King, the
argument is same as I mentioned for US or Canada or
many other countries.
The Indian situation is same. It is one
country because of one foreign language: English. Thus
the historians have a point. Today, take away the
English language fron India, the Indian democracy will
collapese overnight.
***** This is a very new argument ... never heard
this argument earlier! How many people in villages of
India do you think can speak English ... I am not
talking about proficient but at least Pigin English?
A guess will be less then half of Indian Population
speaks English. People adapt languages because of
convenience. Imagine, had you been a villager of
Assam, would you care to learn English? Or say if you
spend most of your life in Delhi or UP, can you avoid
learnig Hindi even though you might be a Hindi hater?
The issue under discussion is : "India is the
country that was never expected to ever be a country".
The above point which some historians are trying to
make is this.
First India was never such a big united country as it
is now.
Even during the British Raj, there were many many
independepdent states ruled by Maharajas, where prsent
India is.
Second, the South was never under any Indian kings
except to some extent under the Moghols.
Then the Marathas were also out.
Old Kamrup, that is present Assam and NE were never
under any Indian kings, nor under Ashok, nor under the
Guptas, nor under the Moghols. This came under India
only under the British.
Today India is one country not because of any unity
but because of its diversity which cannot be defined
under any political science.
Imagnice Europe under one country because of one
foreign language (say) Hindi. Can one imagine? The
Indian situation is same. It is one country because
of one foreign language: English. Thus the historians
have a point. Today, take away the English language
fron India, the Indian democracy will collapese
overnight.
That is the point.
Barua
----- Original Message -----
From: "Krishnendu Chakraborty" yahoo.com>
To:
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007 8:45 AM
Subject: [Assam] Indian Political Boundary
Rajenda
What can be the point here.
I see from Wiki that the Maurya India is close to
today's India
This was followed by Invasions by Greeks, Sakas etc
when it again got disintegrated.
That is because they historians and thought
leaders.
This is a good topic one can debate long.
I think they have their points.
Barua
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rajib Das"
To: "A Mailing list for people interested in Assam
from around the world"
; post.harvard.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 8:34 AM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review : India After Gandhi-
Bengal democracy
I fail to understand why SOME historians (and thought
leaders) continue to insist that India is a country
that was never meant to be.
The exact political boundaries are new (as in 60 years
old) - but there is enough political thought through
the course of history - before the Brits came in or
even before the Islamic invasion of India - to warrant
the idea of India.
--- Rajen & Ajanta Barua
wrote:
Umesh:
India is best described as 'an elected
dictatorship'.
Rajenda
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: A Mailing list for people interested in Assam
from around the world
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 11:52 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review : India After
Gandhi- Bengal democracy
Rajen-da
Good example of India-Shining rhetoric.
But just becos there is peace (despite armed
militancy in 25% of India's districts- NE, Kashmir,
Bihar, Central India, LTTE South India etc etc) and
not many are dying of starvation and voting not by
reading election manifestos but by recognizing
cartoons (election symbols) of political parties .
Even democratically elected communist govt (an
anamoly) of West Bengal is allegedly in power for
past 25 years non-stop since a nexus prevents
anyone from voting against the "party" or else
face ex-communication a-la erstwhile Pope's rule in
Europe in medieval times -as per a Bengali
researcher .
But ofcourse noone can deny that despite is
shortcomings the India that is Bharat is growing -
despite spoofs like Hollywood's "Borat" movie
(Bharat ??) from Kazakhstan (Rajasthan???)
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua
wrote:
Following may be added from another review about
the book:
India is the country that was never expected to
ever be a country. In the late 19th century, Sir
John Strachey, a senior British official, grandly
opined that the territory's diverse states simply
could not possess any sort of unity, physical,
political, social or religious. Strachey, clearly,
was wrong: India today is a unified entity and a
rising global power. Even so, it continues to defy
explanation. India's existence, says Guha, an
internationally known scholar (Environmentalism: A
Global History), has also been an anomaly for
academic political science, according to whose
axioms cultural heterogeneity and poverty do not
make a nation, still less a democratic one. Yet
India continues to exist. Guha's aim in this
startlingly ambitious political, cultural and social
survey is to explain why and how. He cheerfully
concludes that India's continuing existence results
from its unique diversity and its refusal to be
pigeonholed into such conventional political models
as Anglo-American liberalism, French republicanism,
atheistic communism or Islamist theocracy. India is
proudly sui generis, and with August 15, 2007, being
the 60th anniversary of Indian independence, Guha's
magisterial history of India since that day comes
> not a moment too soon. 32 pages of b&w illus., 8
maps.
----- Original Message -----
From: Rajen & Ajanta Barua
To: assam at assamnet.org
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 10:42 PM
Subject: [Assam] Book review : India After
Gandhi
Good review of a grand 900 page book on India
recently published:
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's
Largest Democracy by Ramachandra Guha
From The Washington Post's Book
World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by George Perkovich
A toast to India on its 60th birthday: No
country has more heroically pursued the promise of
democracy. Against the odds of staggering poverty,
conflicting religious passions, linguistic
pluralism, regional separatism, caste injustice and
natural resource scarcity, Indians have lifted
themselves largely by their own sandal straps to
become a stalwart democracy and emerging global
power. India has risen with epic drama -- a
nonviolent struggle for independence followed by
mass mayhem and bloodletting, dynastic succession
and assassination, military victory and defeat,
starvation succeeded by green revolution, political
leaders as saints, sinners and sexual ascetics. And
yet, the Indian story rarely has been told and is
practically unknown to Americans.
India After Gandhi masterfully fills the void.
India needs a wise and judicious narrator to convey
its scale, diversity and chaos -- to describe the
whirlwind without getting lost in it. It needs a
biographer neither besotted by love nor enraged by
disappointment. Ramachandra Guha, a historian who
has taught at Stanford and Yale and now lives in
Bangalore, has given democratic India the rich,
well-paced history it deserves.
Much will be new to American readers.
Large-scale conflicts in India's northeast between
tribal groups and the center have been as enduring,
and in some ways as important, as the more familiar
violence in Kashmir. The framing of India's
constitution from 1946 through 1949 should induce
awe, especially in light of Iraq's post-Saddam
experience.
In the midst of Hindu-Muslim bloodshed, a
flood of 8 million refugees, starvation, and other
profound conflicts, Indian representatives worked
out constitutional provisions to protect minorities,
keep religion out of state power, correct thousands
of years of caste discrimination and redistribute
power and wealth accumulated by still-regnant
princely states. This was done with no external
guidance or pressure. The drafting committee was
chaired by an "untouchable," B.R. Ambedkar --
analogies are inexact, but imagine if James Madison
at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention had
been a freed slave.
Specialists will quicken over insights from
the private papers of Indira Gandhi's confidant,
P.N. Haksar, who gave his papers to Guha. These
documents reveal, among other things, that it was
the Soviet Union that proposed the 1971 treaty of
cooperation and friendship between the two
countries, and that suspicion of China motivated
both nations more than was appreciated at the time.
Miniature biographies of grassroots leaders
and movements also enliven Guha's storytelling. Jay
Aprakash Narayan -- "JP" -- plays a leading role. A
onetime friend of Nehru who became the bête noir of
his daughter, Indira Gandhi, JP led a massive
movement for radical governmental reform in 1974-75,
which moved Indira Gandhi to declare a national
emergency and suspend democracy.
Some themes go under-explored: For example,
why has the Indian Army abstained from interfering
in politics, unlike the military in many other
developing countries? And why has India given short
shrift to primary education, even as it has
developed technological institutes that rival M.I.T?
Many chapters begin or end with India's future
in doubt. "India is almost infinitely depressing,"
Aldous Huxley wrote in 1961, "for there seems to be
no solution to its problems in any way that any of
us [in the West] regard as acceptable." He predicted
> that "when Nehru goes, the government will become a
military dictatorship." Guha records that "ever
since the country was formed there have also been
many Indians who have seen the survival of India as
being on the line, some (the patriots) speaking or
writing in fear, others (the secessionists or
revolutionaries) with anticipation."
Yet, marvelously, India's survival as a
democracy seems more assured than ever. Less clear
is the nature of its relationship with America.
Since 2005, the U.S. and Indian governments have
moved toward nuclear cooperation, reversing 30 years
of U.S. policy against nuclear assistance to
countries that refuse to sign the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty.
Washington clearly views India as a
counterbalance to China's strategic power. But Guha
records an important historical parallel.
In 1962, China crossed disputed boundaries in
the northwest and northeast of India. A shocked
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru abandoned
nonalignment and pleaded for emergency U.S. military
assistance. Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith wrote
to President Kennedy: "The only Asian country which
really stands in [China's] way is India and pari
passu the only Western country that is assuming
responsibility is the United States. . . . We should
expect to make use of India's political position,
geographical position, political power and manpower
or anyhow ask."
Four decades later, another Harvard
professor-cum-American ambassador to India, Robert
Blackwill, championed the proposed nuclear deal with
similar reasoning. As different as the presidents
they served, Blackwill and Galbraith were tempted by
strategic abstraction and a desire to raise "their"
country -- India -- in American priorities. Yet
supplying arms to India in 1962 did not make India
any more deferential to U.S. foreign policy.
Washington will delude itself again if it thinks
that nuclear India will be a pliant instrument in
its
=== message truncated ===>
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