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India is a complex country. I can confirm that Gay parties are pretty common where I live. Just the way white people saw native Indians as Savages it is easy f

by tn13 12y ago

India is a complex country. I can confirm that Gay parties are pretty common where I live. Just the way white people saw native Indians as Savages it is easy for western eyes to perceive India as a very bad land but that is not the case, despite its flaws it is an extremely tolerant society with ability cope with very diverse way of living. Before the savages of west discovered that the idea of gender is not binary and can have multiple hues, that is how ancient Hindu thought described gender [1]. One of our major God is half man half women and entire mythology is replete with all sort of possible genders. [1] http://swarajyamag.com/featured/hinduism-and-homosexuality/ http://swarajyamag.com/featured/hinduism-and-homosexuality/

tripzilch 12y ago
> Just the way white people saw native Indians as Savages it is easy for western eyes to perceive India as a very bad land While I somewhat agree with the gist of your post, you might want to reconsider this broad brush with which you're painting both modern "western eyes", and particular bunches of white people who genocided nearly an entire continent a few centuries ago. Substitute nazis/jews/"German eyes" if you don't get what I mean (going to assume I'm excused from Godwin's law when the implied atrocity was in fact larger than the Holocaust).
- tn13 12y ago
  The specific generalization was being used to show people how it feels when it is used against them. Personally I dont have a black and white view of the world. Consider the California textbooks which paint Hinduism as worst savages. There is not even passing mention that the cool things like Yoga and Meditation are Hindu practices on the contrary outright false stories which I believe were put in my missionaries are taught as "Hinduism". [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_textbook_controversy_over_Hindu_history#Opposition_to_the_edits_of_the_two_Hindu_foundations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_textbook_controversy...
  - srean 12y ago
    I am in complete agreement with the views you have expressed about the state of affairs of Indian legal system and the practices and have upvoted your comments. However, when you say that the textbooks paint Hinduism as worst savages, I have to call out that hyperbole. That is a ridiculous exaggeration. In fact I am in complete agreement with the following characterization, quoted from the wikipedai page you linked to. Dan Golden of the Wall Street Journal described the effort of the two Hindu foundations, as similar to those by Jewish, Islamic and Christian foundations. Each group, claims Dan Golden, vie for changes in texts for elementary and secondary schools to cast their faiths in a better light or in sensitive manner before children. Those foundations are nothing but harbors of shills with a supremacist, political agenda and a wet dream of churchifying Hinduism under a central church. I find a treasure trove of interesting things in the Hindu body of thought, yoga is not one of them, sorry. An over sold, over marketed artifact used to catch the gullible. To me striking things about its body of thought are its philosophical roots, the fact that they have been thinking deeply about such questions since antiquity, that not believing in any form of god is in complete harmony. That said, for people coming from an Abrahamic religion, its a difficult thing to grasp. Hinduism is not 'a religion' if one goes by the notion of a religion in Abarahamic religions. It is worse than trying to map git commands to subversion. Its a very different beast, it is a meta religion (or more accurately a diverse collection of a very large body of thought and introspection, originating from a geographical region and built over time time, that visitors clubbed into a single pool because they werent sure what to make of it). It is more like a religion factory pattern for building your own religion that includes questions you should keep visiting in that process, and a more fundamental one, why at all (and when) should one even consider building one. It lays down thought processes, questions that one should consider and critique when one is forming ones own parameterized religion. People get confused whether they are talking about the polymorphic class or the object instance. In context of its vast diversity and inclusiveness, Abrahamic religions would feel like that they are the same religion sans minor changes and all the fighting to be much ado about nothing.
    - tn13 12y ago
      Yes Thanks. The worse part is that the right wing politics in India has never invested much into intellectual efforts to highlight these important aspects of Hinduism. Instead they have resorted to sloganeering. Only handful of people like Dr. Arun Shourie, Sitaram Goel, Ram Swarup and Rajiv Malhotra now a days seem to have put some efforts.

by tn13 12y ago

tripzilch 12y ago

> Just the way white people saw native Indians as Savages it is easy for western eyes to perceive India as a very bad land While I somewhat agree with the gist of your post, you might want to reconsider this broad brush with which you're painting both modern "western eyes", and particular bunches of white people who genocided nearly an entire continent a few centuries ago. Substitute nazis/jews/"German eyes" if you don't get what I mean (going to assume I'm excused from Godwin's law when the implied atrocity was in fact larger than the Holocaust).

tn13 12y ago
The specific generalization was being used to show people how it feels when it is used against them. Personally I dont have a black and white view of the world. Consider the California textbooks which paint Hinduism as worst savages. There is not even passing mention that the cool things like Yoga and Meditation are Hindu practices on the contrary outright false stories which I believe were put in my missionaries are taught as "Hinduism". [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_textbook_controversy_over_Hindu_history#Opposition_to_the_edits_of_the_two_Hindu_foundations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_textbook_controversy...
- srean 12y ago
  I am in complete agreement with the views you have expressed about the state of affairs of Indian legal system and the practices and have upvoted your comments. However, when you say that the textbooks paint Hinduism as worst savages, I have to call out that hyperbole. That is a ridiculous exaggeration. In fact I am in complete agreement with the following characterization, quoted from the wikipedai page you linked to. Dan Golden of the Wall Street Journal described the effort of the two Hindu foundations, as similar to those by Jewish, Islamic and Christian foundations. Each group, claims Dan Golden, vie for changes in texts for elementary and secondary schools to cast their faiths in a better light or in sensitive manner before children. Those foundations are nothing but harbors of shills with a supremacist, political agenda and a wet dream of churchifying Hinduism under a central church. I find a treasure trove of interesting things in the Hindu body of thought, yoga is not one of them, sorry. An over sold, over marketed artifact used to catch the gullible. To me striking things about its body of thought are its philosophical roots, the fact that they have been thinking deeply about such questions since antiquity, that not believing in any form of god is in complete harmony. That said, for people coming from an Abrahamic religion, its a difficult thing to grasp. Hinduism is not 'a religion' if one goes by the notion of a religion in Abarahamic religions. It is worse than trying to map git commands to subversion. Its a very different beast, it is a meta religion (or more accurately a diverse collection of a very large body of thought and introspection, originating from a geographical region and built over time time, that visitors clubbed into a single pool because they werent sure what to make of it). It is more like a religion factory pattern for building your own religion that includes questions you should keep visiting in that process, and a more fundamental one, why at all (and when) should one even consider building one. It lays down thought processes, questions that one should consider and critique when one is forming ones own parameterized religion. People get confused whether they are talking about the polymorphic class or the object instance. In context of its vast diversity and inclusiveness, Abrahamic religions would feel like that they are the same religion sans minor changes and all the fighting to be much ado about nothing.
  - tn13 12y ago
    Yes Thanks. The worse part is that the right wing politics in India has never invested much into intellectual efforts to highlight these important aspects of Hinduism. Instead they have resorted to sloganeering. Only handful of people like Dr. Arun Shourie, Sitaram Goel, Ram Swarup and Rajiv Malhotra now a days seem to have put some efforts.