3 ms·

It's not a dismissal. Hitchens' Razor. If someone makes the cultural argument, the onus is on them to provide proof for such an argument. Please go ahead and

• rippercushions 4y ago
  It's hard to generalize about something as amorphous and diverse as "Indian culture" (the scare quotes are warranted), but I'd posit that religion makes a large difference between India and China. China was atheist for decades and religion remains by and large pretty marginal today, while in India it's huge right across the social spectrum. The concepts of caste and karma are very Indian too: how the poor are preordained into their lot and the lower castes are stomped down with mob violence if they get too uppity. (Yes, this may sound uncomfortably familiar to Americans.) Urban India is ditching a lot of this baggage at varying speeds and growing fast (cause or effect?), but in wide swathes of the countryside life and belief remains near-medieval.