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And yet we seem to have fairly reasonable discussions about other contentious issues like vaccination, race, and sex. But somehow discussions of Indian politic

And yet we seem to have fairly reasonable discussions about other contentious issues like vaccination, race, and sex. But somehow discussions of Indian politics turn into flamewars and get flagged off the front page within minutes. As an outsider, I don't get to hear the parties in these debates have the kind of civil discussion this site is generally known for, and I'm left in the dark as to what's even at issue, let alone what the truth might be. This is disappointing, because India is a large, populous, and influential country, and it behooves all of us to understand what's happening there.

calvinbhai 9y ago
Country with ~1.3 billion people which is crazy diverse (in terms of number of languages, number of scripts, history, culture, cuisine, arts, religion and geography), is guaranteed to have groups of people with many different views. With such variety, in addition to the great percentage of users on HN being from India (this is just a guess), it's a difficult task to have a good debate without getting the conversation/topic/comment flagged. While much of the popular international media (CNN, NYT, WSJ, WaPo, BBC, Reuters etc) sitcks to a certain ideology, it is near impossible to expect a fair debate based on the India specific content published in these sources of news, which often tend to view everything from Right/Left or Liberal/Progressive/Conservative POV. Currently, the issue is that the history of India is written from the British POV, which has been tweaked later by Russian and American POVs. None of them really glorifying anything that is native to India. In fact a movie glorifying Winston Churchill just won 2 oscars in 2018, while people across the world, including many Indians are not aware of the artificial Bengal Famine orchestrated by Churchill, that lead to the death of 3 million Bengalis. Try inserting this in school texts, and similar uproar will occur. Similarly, contribution of ancient India to the field of science, maths, astronomy and astrophysics is almost non-exsitent. Even now, none of the school texts in India do any justice to this, nor do modern (past 19th century) literature outside India. Example: Many basic mathematical concepts like pythagorean theorem, the current numerical system etc are considered innovations/inventions from Europe and Arabian peninsula (respectively). In India, there's been enough proof available (as cited by those who believe these are Indian inventions) for many to think these are innovations from India and if not the world, at least kids in India should learn that these are Indian innovations and that Indians need to be proud of it. Now based on which side of the debate you are, you'd either dismiss this thought, or hold on to it very dearly, or take a step back and say there needs to be more research on this, and in either case, present both the cases to students who are studying in schools. Many thousand years of scientific understanding remain hidden in plain sight, because of such meddling with history, that draws many many students away from even exploring the real Indian history, from the lens of an Indian, and that is why this is a highly contentious issue. With a Left/Left-liberal/Socialistic/Marxist type of a government India had for ten years (until 2014), enough meddling with history was done at school level, and now the Right of Center / kind of Capitalist govt wants to undo that, and make up for the tweaked history in India over the last few centuries. The moment any such move is made in this direction, we have the world media of certain ideology hyperventilating on such issues and publishing clickbait articles.
- sevensor 9y ago
  Interesting, thank you for representing the argument in favor of making revisions.
  - calvinbhai 9y ago
    Thanks. Curious. which country are you from and whats your opinion based on what you have read about issues in India till now?
- kamaal 9y ago
  >>Currently, the issue is that the history of India is written from the British POV, which has been tweaked later by Russian and American POVs. From the tooth brush in the morning to the mosquito mat in the night. AntiBiotics to Cancer treatments. Electricity to Internal combustion engines. You could even breath and there would be some Western innovation that would be driving it. They invented it, so we study about them. If we had invented all this we would be studying about our people inventing it. >>Many basic mathematical concepts like pythagorean theorem These low hanging fruit science achievements were done by everyone, you could pull a Amazonian tribe randomly and there will be fairly decent algebra going on, because you if you have to live you have to do basic arithmetic and math. And then of course 0. Guess how people in the past, say 100000 years back, who hunted two deers and eat them, counted the remainder? You got it right. 0 comes to existence that moment you start counting things. India didn't produce a Euclid, heck it didn't even produce a Pythagoras, Newton or even a Al-Jabr. Let alone achieving anything, most people here didn't even have the rights to study for thousands of years. We are the only nation on earth, with all these favorable and luxurious weather and agriculture conditions, with a civilization continuity over several millenia which has nothing to show for.
  - calvinbhai 9y ago
    The current narrative suits your beliefs well, and you have no incentive in questioning it. I believe there's enough to be questioned, and want the govt to fund research that ask these questions, and provide its findings to the public. Neither you, nor I are asking for the govt to change the history blindly. Where we disagree is whether to question the history as we have been taught or not. Looking at your responses, I think we better agree to disagree and keep this comments pyramid of doom short! :)
kamaal 9y ago
>>I'm left in the dark as to what's even at issue, let alone what the truth might be. Let me try. India is a big country. And being a tropical heaven, rich with water, abundant sunlight, lack of extreme weathers, fertile soil and perennial rivers was the country to be in pre-renaissance/industrial age world. As you can see with these favorable conditions, it was easy to grow food India. Hence it was a attractive destination for a lot of people to settle/immigrate/invade. Given these luxuries, India got a massive head start over other countries in the world when it comes to thinking and developing various cultures and philosophies. Over time many people immigrated/invaded India. They bought in their own things, most of which were absorbed in local cultures and have evolved for ages. There fore many religions, languages, festivals, food habits, clothing habits, literature, science etc etc came into being in India. In short the history got very diverse. Recent one being British rule of India, and before that the Mughal empire. These events have deep cultural, literary, food, festivals and other influence on the masses. And as you can see these are associated with people following religions other the ones that existed in India several centuries back. Now this altered the way country itself is made up of. Every one in India is a minority of some sort, except on religious lines. Since Independence and in later decades there has been a rise of a political ecosystem, which wishes to assemble a vote bank on the lines of religion. This is of course in direct conflict with the affairs as they are. I mean existing cultural and other aspects(Which are diverse). Since both British and Mughal periods are recent history you can see their influences in every thing from Bollywood songs, to Kurta pyjamas to Chicken Tandoori. And of course if you want people to aggregate on religious lines you want to undo that influence. I don't know if the end goal is to make people sing Bollywood songs in Sanskrit. But stressing upon the identity that existed several thousands of years back definitely is the goal. If you get to aggregate people under one identity then may be you can make them vote as a block.
- sevensor 9y ago
  Thanks for a thoughtful response!

calvinbhai 9y ago

Country with ~1.3 billion people which is crazy diverse (in terms of number of languages, number of scripts, history, culture, cuisine, arts, religion and geography), is guaranteed to have groups of people with many different views. With such variety, in addition to the great percentage of users on HN being from India (this is just a guess), it's a difficult task to have a good debate without getting the conversation/topic/comment flagged. While much of the popular international media (CNN, NYT, WSJ, WaPo, BBC, Reuters etc) sitcks to a certain ideology, it is near impossible to expect a fair debate based on the India specific content published in these sources of news, which often tend to view everything from Right/Left or Liberal/Progressive/Conservative POV. Currently, the issue is that the history of India is written from the British POV, which has been tweaked later by Russian and American POVs. None of them really glorifying anything that is native to India. In fact a movie glorifying Winston Churchill just won 2 oscars in 2018, while people across the world, including many Indians are not aware of the artificial Bengal Famine orchestrated by Churchill, that lead to the death of 3 million Bengalis. Try inserting this in school texts, and similar uproar will occur. Similarly, contribution of ancient India to the field of science, maths, astronomy and astrophysics is almost non-exsitent. Even now, none of the school texts in India do any justice to this, nor do modern (past 19th century) literature outside India. Example: Many basic mathematical concepts like pythagorean theorem, the current numerical system etc are considered innovations/inventions from Europe and Arabian peninsula (respectively). In India, there's been enough proof available (as cited by those who believe these are Indian inventions) for many to think these are innovations from India and if not the world, at least kids in India should learn that these are Indian innovations and that Indians need to be proud of it. Now based on which side of the debate you are, you'd either dismiss this thought, or hold on to it very dearly, or take a step back and say there needs to be more research on this, and in either case, present both the cases to students who are studying in schools. Many thousand years of scientific understanding remain hidden in plain sight, because of such meddling with history, that draws many many students away from even exploring the real Indian history, from the lens of an Indian, and that is why this is a highly contentious issue. With a Left/Left-liberal/Socialistic/Marxist type of a government India had for ten years (until 2014), enough meddling with history was done at school level, and now the Right of Center / kind of Capitalist govt wants to undo that, and make up for the tweaked history in India over the last few centuries. The moment any such move is made in this direction, we have the world media of certain ideology hyperventilating on such issues and publishing clickbait articles.

sevensor 9y ago
Interesting, thank you for representing the argument in favor of making revisions.
- calvinbhai 9y ago
  Thanks. Curious. which country are you from and whats your opinion based on what you have read about issues in India till now?
kamaal 9y ago
>>Currently, the issue is that the history of India is written from the British POV, which has been tweaked later by Russian and American POVs. From the tooth brush in the morning to the mosquito mat in the night. AntiBiotics to Cancer treatments. Electricity to Internal combustion engines. You could even breath and there would be some Western innovation that would be driving it. They invented it, so we study about them. If we had invented all this we would be studying about our people inventing it. >>Many basic mathematical concepts like pythagorean theorem These low hanging fruit science achievements were done by everyone, you could pull a Amazonian tribe randomly and there will be fairly decent algebra going on, because you if you have to live you have to do basic arithmetic and math. And then of course 0. Guess how people in the past, say 100000 years back, who hunted two deers and eat them, counted the remainder? You got it right. 0 comes to existence that moment you start counting things. India didn't produce a Euclid, heck it didn't even produce a Pythagoras, Newton or even a Al-Jabr. Let alone achieving anything, most people here didn't even have the rights to study for thousands of years. We are the only nation on earth, with all these favorable and luxurious weather and agriculture conditions, with a civilization continuity over several millenia which has nothing to show for.
- calvinbhai 9y ago
  The current narrative suits your beliefs well, and you have no incentive in questioning it. I believe there's enough to be questioned, and want the govt to fund research that ask these questions, and provide its findings to the public. Neither you, nor I are asking for the govt to change the history blindly. Where we disagree is whether to question the history as we have been taught or not. Looking at your responses, I think we better agree to disagree and keep this comments pyramid of doom short! :)

kamaal 9y ago

>>I'm left in the dark as to what's even at issue, let alone what the truth might be. Let me try. India is a big country. And being a tropical heaven, rich with water, abundant sunlight, lack of extreme weathers, fertile soil and perennial rivers was the country to be in pre-renaissance/industrial age world. As you can see with these favorable conditions, it was easy to grow food India. Hence it was a attractive destination for a lot of people to settle/immigrate/invade. Given these luxuries, India got a massive head start over other countries in the world when it comes to thinking and developing various cultures and philosophies. Over time many people immigrated/invaded India. They bought in their own things, most of which were absorbed in local cultures and have evolved for ages. There fore many religions, languages, festivals, food habits, clothing habits, literature, science etc etc came into being in India. In short the history got very diverse. Recent one being British rule of India, and before that the Mughal empire. These events have deep cultural, literary, food, festivals and other influence on the masses. And as you can see these are associated with people following religions other the ones that existed in India several centuries back. Now this altered the way country itself is made up of. Every one in India is a minority of some sort, except on religious lines. Since Independence and in later decades there has been a rise of a political ecosystem, which wishes to assemble a vote bank on the lines of religion. This is of course in direct conflict with the affairs as they are. I mean existing cultural and other aspects(Which are diverse). Since both British and Mughal periods are recent history you can see their influences in every thing from Bollywood songs, to Kurta pyjamas to Chicken Tandoori. And of course if you want people to aggregate on religious lines you want to undo that influence. I don't know if the end goal is to make people sing Bollywood songs in Sanskrit. But stressing upon the identity that existed several thousands of years back definitely is the goal. If you get to aggregate people under one identity then may be you can make them vote as a block.

sevensor 9y ago
Thanks for a thoughtful response!