Rajan lets his 'patriotism' (chauvinism?) get the better of him and ducks the point: "How is it that Indians are so fastidiously clean, but India is so incredibly dirty?" That others bathe less frequently than us is irrelevant... as offtopic as this post :-) --FN
> Valmiki-bab, > > Very quickly - I skimmed through the TOI article. > As soon as I saw the author was from JNU and a > sociologist to boot, I knew we would be wading > in hooey. > > The Western standards of personal hygiene and civic cleanliness are > relatively recent. Up until the mid-nineteenth century, Europe was a filthy > sty. Personal habits were abysmal - the number of times King Louis XIV > bathed in his entire life is said to be less than 10. > Ladies thought nothing of relieving themselves publicly at his social > functions (if I correctly > recall, he once slipped on urine and broke a > bone or two). Garbage would be tossed out > of windows onto the streets and so on. There are books written on the > evolution of Western hygiene and standards of cleanliness. > > And oh - at the beginning of the 20th C > there was a public call to people in England to bathe at least once a week, > in which it was > pointed out that "even the benighted Indians take bath once a day." To > which an Englishman > responded: "Since the Indians are unclean to begin with they need to take > frequent baths whereas we don't." > > Quotes above paraphrased from memory.