Abhijit Menon-Sen wrote: > > I said pilgrims were preyed upon by bandits where they were not > protected by the local ruler. You said "I don't think that this > was something specific to this part of the world".
You also said that this was because the pilgrims did not believe the same God the ruler did, which is what we are discussing here. > Uh, OK. I didn't say it was. In fact, I pointed out that they were the > same barriers that "outsiders" faced inside the region; and "insiders" > faced elsewhere. > I said that the fact remains that pilgrims faced monetary and other > barriers to free travel, and you said "But the point is you cannot > call a people hostile based on this". Well, free as in freedom to travel to a place. I don't think Shiv meant free as in 'at no cost'. So your argument was flawed and I was only stating that your example was not necessarily true. > Huh? What's with the bait-and-switch tactics? Don't see any bait and switch. > >> See above statement you made. I think it meant that the king was *not >> friendly*, *indifferent*. The actions of such kings can be defined as >> hostile. (1) > > So... you're saying that no kings were ever hostile? > AFAIK, not to pilgrims. > from Iskandariya (Alexander) and Gandhara, while making no mention of > any princesses or blind kings or the Mahabharata. > I was giving credit to your statement. >> http://ignca.nic.in/nl002503.htm > > Oh, very good. The perfect after-dinner entertainment. Well, it is perfectly acceptable that it may not ring true to you. You would not believe Darwin's theory of evolution, the big bang theory, string theory, membrane theory then? What about the general theory of relativity? > (I notice that they decided, after all, that the Mahabharata cannot be > dated from astronomical sources alone.) Yes, there are certain people who are trying hard to prove that the war did indeed take place. > "Dr. Kalyan Raman voiced the common desire to 'trash Western > Indological work done with motivation and instead rewrite Indian > history.' [...] Truth, he felt, should be perceived in terms of > our national heritage [...]" > > What a bloody idiot. Why is he a bloody idiot? Because he has a different set of beliefs? Would you have believed it if it was published in a foreign magazine and was quoted by someone outside India?
