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There's a pretty long list of citations at the bottom of that paper and the sample of them that I could be bothered to check for an internet article were legit.
by weeksie 10y ago
There's a pretty long list of citations at the bottom of that paper and the sample of them that I could be bothered to check for an internet article were legit. If you have any arguments against the thesis of that paper other than ad hominem I'd love to hear them.
I'm hardly a scholar of Indian history, I just did a bunch of reading during the two months I recently spent traveling the country from south to north. That was one of the articles that popped up when I was trying to find any decent information on the caste system and it's very well written and argued (and, like I said, the citations check out).
It seems to me though that the area was wildly diverse and hardly a unified entity before the Brits came along. I mean, what about Pakistan? That's not part of India. But that's only as of 75 or so years ago? Is that counted in these "national income" totals that the original parent poster was talking about? That was my original quibble with what the hell the guy meant by his statement and the historical existence of India as a nation. (A nation being a modern concept anyway, which was also at the heart of my quibble.)
Anyway, as to the analogy with Arthurian mythology, that's a good one. The area that King Arthur purportedly ruled was Britain, Ireland, Norway, and Gaul. Is that all Britain or . . . ? See the problem with that line of reasoning?
- eklavya 10y agoAlright, I took the bait. I read through the paper and it seems it heavily depends on Vedas for some of it's arguments. So your point about not considering Vedas as credible evidence doesn't stand. The paper doesn't comment anything (at least conclusively) about the Indian nation. The paper is about caste system. Some of your queries might be answered here http://sankrant.org/2003/10/why-india-is-a-nation/ http://sankrant.org/2003/10/why-india-is-a-nation/
- weeksie 10y agoThat's a shame. You didn't even read the link you were arguing the validity of until now? I still don't think you read it since you've just quoted the thesis but not referenced the notion that the idea even of "Hindu" identity just didn't exist, even though the people in the region shared many of the same texts. That's not the same as claiming that the belief systems didn't exist, or that they weren't widely similar, but that they weren't a cohesive unit. The blog post you linked me to just reinforces my point about nationhood if you'd have been paying much attention to my posts instead of getting defensive about "Indian identity" or whatever.
- eklavya 10y agoI am an Indian, do I need to read a foreign paper to know about my own nation? You are confusing two different topics, we are not discussing the concept "Hindu", we are discussing whether there was an entity "India". The paper you linked says nothing about that. I have told you how the concept of India is very old using the citations in your cited paper. The blog post I linked proves my point so I don't know what you are talking about. What do I have to be defensive about? Do you think I have identity crisis because some random person on the internet has some beliefs? lol