Ram-da and Rajen-da,
The point is not whether Jesus or Krishna or Rajen or Umesh or Ram existed -
it is that they are believed to be so - just liked USA is believed to be the
only Super Power in the world. Someone in remote India may have NO inkling what
is Roman empire or that any such country ever existed -- but that person
should or would bow down to the fact that so many educated Indians believe
it does. Why cannot someone in the West understand that most Indians (read
Hindus 800 million of them) believe Krishna and Ram lived on earth - just
Westerners (even athiests ) believe that Abraham lived on earth to the age of
800 years (as per Bible) and that Jesus was born of Virgin Mary.
Belief of a group can be put on wikipedia etc - why do westerners oppose even
that ? Why belittle it as some minor literary text characters aka Ian Fleming's
(I refer to Ram or Krishna here) -- which has no consequence to spiritual or
religious beliefs of Hindus.
The only logic many vested interests do not want to acknowledge that Indians
cuold have (or have had) a collective vision - a harmonious culture sharing
common beliefs, holidays and celebrations. Isn't it much easier to paint a
picture where every Indian was following his or her own thing --someone
worshipping in the east another in the west. One day one person celebrating ,
next day another celebrating something --so the whole city or region never saw
eye to eye ----so NO culture!!
I was surprised to learn that Krishna is the most revered person in way down
India's south Guruvayoor temple --same as in Manipur (far east ) just as in
far west at Dwarka and up above in Badrinath, Gangotri etc. But some
westerners would assert that Hindus are a bunch of individualists - who believe
different things - have no religion except caste system (the only unifying
social force or common thought).
SCIENCE:
So when a nation/civilization has no common social system except caste system
(as per above logic) then how can it have intellectuals sitting together to do
scientific work and promoting and rejecting hypothesis and building consensus.
Umesh
Ram Sarangapani <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Barua,
Just couldn't resist not butting in.
Without going into the existence of Krishna, Shiva or Jesus :)here is a site
about Ancient Math in India. Also let us not forget Aryabhatta (Math) and
Kautilya(Politics & Governance).
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Indians.html
(BTW: the site is from a UK University and NOT something conjured up in India:)
--Ram
On 8/10/07, barua25 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: When I say FACTS AND FIGURES,
I was talking not about our religious heroes, but about Science and Mathametics.
Say for instance, what India did in case of Mathematics and when?
Can you produce any written evidence that India invented the Zero and when? It
is difficult.
I donot like to deal with mythical figures like Shiva, Krishna etc. I consider
these Indian gods to be purely mythical figures transformed from some original
tribal religious cults. In my opinion, Shiva was orginally a local god in the
Harappa civilization and Krishna was a Dravidian local tribal god. This much
history tells. Do you have any other evidence to counter that , not who
believes what?
Rajen da
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Rajen & Ajanta Barua ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [email protected]
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 1:33 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
Rajen-da,
Good to get your response. Now about facts - would you not agree that most
Hindus hail Krishna as one of the Hindu heroes and believe that he lived in
India thousands of years back --- I wanted to put that on Wikipedia page of
Krishna - and they asked for facts -- what do you expect me to do? I believe
wiki is a good example of people over the globe trying to have "sameness" -
even here there is bias.
Second, on Jesus's wiki page I added a comment that many Indians believe that
Jesus came to learn his skills in India (and I added a BBC report on that with
weblink) and that was deleted - saying this is no research evidence -- for
Indian news on Indian culture even an obscure reference (with no weblink) in
any newspaer article in remote India is considered okay by its editors --
incidently for Jesus they have stopped anyone from editing the page. Anyone is
free to write anything about Krshna , Ram etc -- thats free for all.
whats that to do with facts? Thats plain bias.
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: Umesh:
What you are saying is right.
The West has a Eurocentric view of the world. They claim that the basic
foundation of the Western Civilization, especially on science, is mainly based
on Greek civilization. They even donot like to give proper credit to the Indian
and Chinese contribution in mathetics and other science. I would say, the West
is still in the Dark Age. However, they have a point. Indians basically donot
have any record of what they did. If you want to counter the present
Eurocentric view, the best (and only way) is to debate will SOLID facts and
figures and not with rhetoric.
If you have any specific issue, I would be glad to discus.
Rajenda
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2007 7:04 PM
Subject: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
Some days back a student of Indian origin born and raised in US was surprised
to learn that India had a glorious history - he hardly believed me though.
And it did not surprise me since I have come to realize that every
civilization wants to promote itself as the best - Greek and Roman civilization
are promoted as ideals (closely followed by Egyptian one) -- Indian and Chinese
ones are lesser ones.
Greek Toga costume parties are common features of Western univs just like
Indian kurta, dhoti are picking up in Indian college fashion shows.
However, the problem is that Western historians/scholars of non Western spheres
call themselves (and each other) as the world's foremost/only reliable experts
on their chosen area of expertise - namely hows and whys of other civilization.
Most believe (I believe) that those in non-western world/developing world are
too naive/unscientific/non-modern/non-rational to understand and appreciate the
distinction between good and bad; and right and wrong.
I believe a lay westerner is more tolerant of others' views than these experts
(whose reputation and even careers depend on promoting what they have always
held as true).
I just created a wikipedia page called Hindu Reality -speaking against this
tendency (I'm sure someone will come along and remove my arguments).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_reality - I just checked --someone has
deleted the page itself.
Wiki seems to be about might is right -
Any comments?
Umesh
Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up
for your free account today.
---------------------------------
_______________________________________________
assam mailing list
[email protected]
http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
---------------------------------
Too much spam? Try Yahoo! Mail and we'll help keep the junk out of your
inbox.
_______________________________________________
assam mailing list
[email protected]
http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
---------------------------------
Inbox cluttered with junk? Clean up with Yahoo! Mail._______________________________________________
assam mailing list
[email protected]
http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
