Dear FN, Rarely have I come across a talk as full of nothingness as this one. First of all, he implicitly assumes the Indian way is superior but more damning that that, he assumes that old stereotype, East is East and West is West and ne'vr the twain shall meet. In my experience, I have never come across human beings that are fundamentally different. We are cosmetically different but never fundamentally, never in aspirations and hopes. And this is what unifies us.
The world is changing because it is challenging every bit of nonsence that has been placed before us by way of religion. The choice before is not whether we shed our Indianess, the question before us is whether we shed processes that don't work. They haven't worked for centuries and they will not work in the world that we have to live in, which calls for the most efficient use of resource and concepts. And in the end, there always is a one best way of doing things. When we discover it, we call that progress. We may do this in terms of technological advancement or ideological advancement, but the evolution of human society necessarily calls for the culling of ways that don't work and embracing ways that do. This "our standards are different from their standards" is in my opinion, a lot of brown stuff being shovelled around. Best, selma