From: chandra@cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: Re: U.S. Citizen NRIs Please leave India alone (Re: BJP)
Date: 27 Jan 1993 14:53:32 -0500
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept. of Computer and Info. Science
NNTP-Posting-Host: cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu

In article <1993Jan27.163315.13840@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca> f0g1@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca (Prasad Gokhale) writes:

>The Hindu culture teaches to treat one's guest with utmost honour and
>respect. The guest is to be given food till he is satisfied, even if the
>host has to starve. The guest is given the best place in the house to
>take rest, where as the host sleeps someplace else....

Actually many many cultures have this custom.  Desert Arabs are noted
for the hospitality required of them when someone visits them. (Read
D. H. Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" for some episodes of the
problems such a hospitality might cause.)

>
>The Hindus treated the muslims and europeans as guests, welcomed them, tried
>to assimilate them...but, the already barbarian people attacked the Hindus
>with all their, took away all their possession and completely subjugated
>them politically. 

Actually, this is not quite true.  There were battles in which the
local kings were defeated.  Also note that when Alexander came to
India, Porus fought him as well.  I think the real reason for the
defeat and subjugation of Hindus was that there was no self-image of a
political nation of Hindus or India.  Also, as an Arab Historian who
accompanied some of the early invaders wrote, and I am paraphrasing
here, India was full of very smart people who were very advanced in a
number of arts, but, he said, Indian intellectual elite of the time
had a conception of knowledge which was complete and closed,that they
had it all, and that there wasn't anything worth learning outside the
learned books of the ancients.  In what, if my memory is correct, he
ascribes the ease with which Indian kingdoms fell to the very
antiquated methods of warfare and armaments.  The Arabs on the other
hand were assimilating knowledge that the cultures that they
subjugated had into the Islamic culture.  

>Further, they conquered the Hindu mind thru' education 
>(this is for the Europeans). The Muslims used swords to achieve their
>objectives...The Muslims usurped all the existing Hindu monuments, scribled 
>some Islamic graffiti and claimed to have built the monuments themselves !
>Then came the (in)famous theory of grand Islamic architecture !

well, I have been to Turkey and Egypt and there are Islamic monuments there
the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, for example), which are astonishing.   I have
also been to Moorish Spain, and Alhambra is a thing of beauty.  
Islamic Architecture existed independent of India, and any attempt to take
away its achievements will be interpreted as either ignorance or malice.

>The Hindus have always been unwise and passive politically, which is why
>got subdued by ideologies like Islam.                       
>
>People always talk about the "Hinduism teaches tolerance"...this tolerance
>is the "tolerance towards other faiths" and nothing to do with "physical
>tolerance". It is of no use preeaching non-violence to a person who is about
>to slay you with his sword...If the person being attacked does not retaliate
>with a sword, he is promised a miserable death....
>

I agree with "It is of no use preeaching non-violence to a person who
is about to slay you with his sword," but this has nothing to do
with what "Indian model" to go back to, which was the original point
of my posting.


Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian