Category: Brown Pundits Archive

Not exactly, partly true, later shunga dynasty supported buddhism as well. One has to look at the same sources that , the first state sanctioned genocide on basis of religion infact happened under Ashoka . so it was ashoka who used violence, then new empire that displaced them also used violence and since buddhist sangha was associated with mauryan empire a lot, they too suffered probably, but then again, the next generation also supported buddhism. Later period of attack by mihirakula was defeated by other hindu kings who were praised by buddhists in their writings. Infact, ambedkar writes buddhism disappeared because of coming of Islam.

“There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India was due to the invasions of the Musalmans. Islam came out as the enemy of the ‘But’. The word ‘But’ as everybody knows, is the Arabic word and means an idol. Thus the origin of the word indicates that in the Moslem mind idol worship had come to be identified with the Religion of the Buddha. To the Muslims, they were one and the same thing. The mission to break the idols thus became the mission to destroy Buddhism. Islam destroyed Buddhism not only in India but wherever it went. Before Islam came into being Buddhism was the religion of Bactria, Parthia, Afghanistan, Gandhar, and Chinese Turkestan, as it was of the whole of Asia.”

decline of buddhism

I think I would perhaps be correct in claiming India has the largest body of oral knowledge created, preserved and transmitted than any thing else in the world. Jainism, buddhism,atheism owe their origins to vedic speculations being preserved and their debating /speculating culture. Philosophical speculation is just not possible without memory being preserved in some way, it just wasnt true for anyone else except for vedic people. So, i disagree on this issue. As for Indus valley, there seem to be aspects of goddess worship of some kind and associated human sacrifice. Many cults of human sacrifice continued with Goddess worship, kali for example.

Brihadaranyaka upanishad, for example is quoted by both carvakas and Buddha himself. It is probably the most ancient upanishad, it asks the interesting question as to what survives after death, speculation is from, atman, to karma, idea of all things going back to their source, earth element to earth, water element to water, it compares the answer to what survives after a plant is uprooted, so if one qualifies question with God, what survives after death then one ends up with most of the spectrum of beliefs that come from India.

atheism- no God,no cosmic karma,no atman
ajivika- No God, no karmic force, no atman, naturalistic force, fate
sankhya- (ancient sankhya is unknown now, latest sankhya has similar model to david chalmers(they really deserve credit, this theory has been brought back independently by david chalmers), ofcourse there are differences, but one can bracket sankhya with david chalmers somewhat. consciouesness, matter being origin for everything else including intelligence.
buddhism- no God, karma cosmic force, no atman
jainism- no God, karma cosmic force, atman yes
advaita- No God, karma cosmic force,atman yes
other hindu schools have God, karma,atman etc combination of things.

There are other reasons to believe this, upanishads record sense objects, sense organs and knowing through them, this is reflective of later buddhism, One of Buddha teachers was a person who taught him an ancient form of sankhya. Buddha himself is to have spoken of different groups of vedic teachers to be authentic than others. In absense of memory preserving culture I do not know how can any of these ideas could have been speculated , recorded and preserved for generations growing into a community. This isnt possible, it might be a case that the people were from non vedic social back grounds were taking parts of vedic,Upanishads principles bit by bit as they saw fit and then have own schools but the ideas do seem to come only from vedic system of knowledge. Again, in order to have any worthwhile philosophical speculation of any kind one must first possess an ability to remember and pass it along for generations. This ability was possessed by vedic system

atire and bursting the bubble of religion should be an option, else it all becomes tribal. everyone will start counting the increasing numbers and demographic change all the time. everyone will start picking sides all the time.tribalism will increasingly become dominant as though there were no option .

we should consider the harm we are avoiding, the good that can be done. a fundamentalist group might very well complain against others including fellow religious people. what might be ok for liberal believers might very well be bad for fundamentalist believers.And in multi religious society, there is much competition on all fronts including competition by competing fundamentalist groups. For example blasphemy laws came into India first due to article 295 A, introduced by british in aftermath of ilm ud din assassinating the publisher of ranglia rasool which was done in retaliation for muslims calling Hindu goddess sita as prostitute. The result was that the publisher was assassinated, the murderer ilm ud din was given death sentence, he was defended in court by Jinnah, the founder of pakistan. His funeral attracted over 10,000 muslims and supposedly his funeral prayer was lead by Iqbal, the ideological founder of pakistan, soon, blasphemy law was introduced. Later after Independence. Nehru introduced the first amendment in article 19 (2) regarding freespeech. These two laws among others have been used to silence opponents. Consequence has been that Hindus too have begun to use these laws to try to silence. Its a show of power, a way to put people in their place.

There were no blasphemy laws in Indian history before, Therefore there are many stories that speak of ill of certain actions of the gods. Rival believers of different gods make up stories of ill action of other gods and as a result people abandon the belief in those gods to other gods or become buddhists or jains or atheists etc.

https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/jinnahs-only-lost-case-defending-the-killer-of-a-blasphemer-ghazi-ilm-deen-r-h.87158

Apparently it was the only case Jinnah lost. And he fought the case under request of Iqbal.

What I will agree though is on blasphemy for the sake of it or to intentionally keep taunting people. It is plain rude and a disgusting behavior. being sensitive to others is fine.

Islamism: Contested Perspectives on Political Islam” Edited by Richard C. Martin and Abbas Barzegar

when your cousin and head of NDTV which has a very left position and is married to sister of brinda karat, top left leader and chooses to not give you space, that is revealing as to how far gone they themselves think of her. Excursion trips to maoist camps who were declared by congress lead upa 1 govt( which was allied to the biggest block of left who engage with democracy in parliament) prime minister manmohan singh as “single biggest internal threat”, and whose stated position is to overthrow democracy and you are sympathetic to them, that tells everything. And yes, occasionally people do celebrate killings of Indian soldiers by maoists.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/dantewada-aftershocks-at-jnu-415103

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Pitched-battle-over-peoples-war-at-JNU/articleshow/5783093.cms

It might be ok for people to ally but it is foolish to not recognize the true nature of ally. My point regarding kashmir was that violence there had to do with guns that did come from across border and not killing of political activists of rival political parties purely for sake of power as it was in west bengal or in kerala. Kashmir isnt about political violence, west bengal is. There is no army posted there. The fact that the biggest internal security threat are maoists and the worst political violence was in west bengal controlled by left reveals to its nature. There should be endless volumes of literature on their violence, but if the academies themselves are covered by left ideologues as JNU among others are, who will call it out?.

HH is better than roy. There is no comparison on this. He isnt supporting or sympathizing a murderous gang of people whose stated objective is to overthrow of pakistan govt itself and throw out democracy.He didnt go to their camps and write propaganda piece in support of them. Condone their violent murders by their kangaroo system of justice where victims have no say. This is the more sinister element of left, they use democracy itself against it. Your understanding of “left” is very poor if you dont know of the nature of left in India and their history of violence and thereby your assessment of roy stands invalid.

The last one thousand years has seen a consistent and substantial shrinking of the Indian world. There are three large scale processes involved in this folding. The first is the exit of the peasantry and warrior castes from India’s margins to the Perso-Islamic world. The second is the de-Indicization of South East Asia, first with Islam replacing Hinduism/Buddhism as the main religion in much of maritime South East Asia, followed by the West becoming the main source of cultural and political influence. The third is the exit of highly educated Indians (overwhelmingly upper caste Hindus) to the West, either physically as migrants or intellectually in terms of mindspace.

The development of a sophisticated, reflective culture in India and its culmination in literary and spiritual terms as the various Indian epics and religions was enabled by the complex intermingling of nomadic and settled societies and the abundant surplus of riverine India’s highly fertile land. Consider this, the pre-industrial population of Uttar Pradesh (47 million in 1871), was more than the population of all of Western Europe combined. But the last 1000 years has seen India contribute very little to the rest of the world despite its natural and intellectual riches.

As modern day citizens of the Republic of India become increasingly self aware about their customs, language and history, their mind will turn to why India remained subdued for such a long time. Notwithstanding convenient pronouncements about India’s ‘ability’ to ‘absorb’ various influences, it remains a fact that there are no Sanskrit or Tamil high words in Arabic, and there is no influence of Indian architecture or art on Persian expression. American and British courts do not refer to Indian law or judgements. The names of Indian scientists do not populate science textbooks. It is all one way traffic.

To be successful and worthwhile, reflection on this has to turn away from simplistic pronouncements about the cruelty of India’s various invaders and betrayals by self centred insiders to allow for an interrogation of the structure of Indian civilization.

What factors allowed for the growth of rule of law and democracy in medieval England,but prevented the same in medieval India ? Such institutions did not look on the horizon even in Hindu kingdoms of Kerala and Assam. Given Fukuyama’s contention that the appearance of these institutions is linked ultimately to Indo-European culture (does this explain the relatively smooth acceptance of democracy in India versus the resistance it got everywhere else ?), it is important to understand how little England got there before us.

What made the native Indian elites at the time of the Delhi Sultanate and the later Mughal Sultanate acquiesce to Persian as the official language ? One of the first actions of the Maratha Empire was the anointment of Sanskrit and Marathi as official languages. So if Indic options were available, especially Sanskrit, why did the Rajputs, Brahmins and Vaishyas not push for its position as the Sultanate’s official language ? After all the Turkic Qing dynasty in China maintained Mandarin as the official language. It is befuddling to imagine that they did not foresee the consequences this would bring.

The conventional response to such questions has revolved around caste as a dehumanizing and denationalizing force. But we know that caste did not play

The awakened Indian lives in an odious, depressing world today. A new generation of elite and middle class appears to have virtually no interest in India beyond superficial cliches. A lifeline was thrown to Indian civilization by Gandhi and the Independence Movement.

Ajay Verghese of US Riverside is one of the up and coming political scientists who specialize on South Asia. His earlier book  “The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India” (Stanford University Press, 2016) argued that the geographic pattern of  mob-violence in India has its root in the Colonial era but in a surprising way. He argued that religious or communal violence (Hindu-Muslim usually) is associated with the former princely states (the Maharaja, Nawab states), while tribal and caste violence is associated with areas under direct British colonial rule.

 

 

I have always thought colonial studies infantalizing. Yhe british drew a few lines

Resistance against a common political actor has played a defining role in the emergence of most nationalisms around the world. The wars against the ‘French’ turned England into a nation, even before any semblance of French nationalism emerging.

People may be aware that there has been a small dustup in US media because the venerable New Yorker magazine invited Steve Banon for a debate and then withdrew invitation in face of mounting outcry. The question was that was it advisable to provide Steve Banon’s controvercial politics a venerable platform such as New Yorker. This is a debatable point. Debating Steve Banon in a celebrety gala that will surely be marked with one-line zingers rather than a substantial tussle of ideas and philosophy, is ofcourse a dabatable point. However, most people objecting were not objecting the platform but the very idea of debating with white ethno-nationalism or western nationalists (one-nation or less respectable) themselves.