2018

All years and months

India’s Oral Tradition

A commenter argues India’s oral tradition made possible the spectrum of beliefs on what survives death, from atheism and Buddhism to Sankhya and Advaita, and that these schools all grew…

Bharata Bharatavanshi15 April 20180 comments
Review: Enter the Dragon. China’s undeclared war against the US in Korea

Omar Ali reviews Russell Spurr’s 1988 account of China’s intervention in the Korean War, praising its vivid anecdotes and its correction of Western caricatures of Chinese soldiers as undifferentiated human…

Omar Ali14 April 20181 comment
Hindus/buddhists threat perception of christianity and islam.

A short post quoting an analyst’s view that Hindu and Buddhist nationalists see their movements as defensive responses to expansionist, proselytising religions, an aspect the poster says Western coverage misses.

Bharata Bharatavanshi14 April 20185 comments
Male Misogyny

A reposted first-person article responding to the rape and murder of a child in Kathua, in which the writer describes her own experiences of abuse in India and argues that…

AnAn14 April 201837 comments
Recent Spats

Omar Ali sets out house rules after recent arguments: authors may delete comments only on their own posts, personal attacks on other authors should be avoided, and no single ideology…

Omar Ali14 April 201839 comments
free speech,freedom,truth, democracy and development

An open question asking how free speech, democracy, development, China’s growth and technology connect, and what new ideological forces may emerge over the next 20 to 150 years.

Bharata Bharatavanshi12 April 20186 comments
Ashoka, the Shungas and Buddhism

A commenter argues that Ashoka’s violence and later rulers’ patronage complicate the story of Buddhism’s decline, and quotes Ambedkar’s view that the Muslim invasions were the main cause of Buddhism’s…

Bharata Bharatavanshi12 April 20180 comments
Why Europe Pulled Ahead: Science, Printing and the Freedom to Criticise

A commenter argues that Islam, like the British, is invoked to explain India’s underdevelopment, that India once allowed freedom to criticise and produced thinkers who opposed caste, and that knowledge…

Bharata Bharatavanshi12 April 20180 comments
Final word

X.T.M announces he is leaving the blog and has deleted his account after a comment he had removed was excerpted in a post, which he calls a violation of his…

X.T.M11 April 201839 comments
Freedom leads to freedom, not anything else

A reader-style reply argues that Ambedkar did not see Hinduism as hopeless, that Hindu thinkers such as Ramanuja opposed caste discrimination, and that Islam’s arrival, not Hinduism, explains India’s relative…

Bharata Bharatavanshi11 April 201837 comments