Apologies about going OT, but this topic is very important to all of us Indians and I share Hari Iyer's views and perspectives strongly on this matter.
To anyone tempted agree with Hemanth's position and extrapolate it to a cultural flaw or weakness, I will only remind them that today's Indian is the product of a Macaulayite education and that is the prime reason for failure and backwardness in all spheres that we see today. And because government policy is dictated by educated elite, it affects the poor uneducated Indian in the village as well.
The root of all such shallow viewpoints is explained here for example :
Indic Mandala - Revisiting India's History
On the same site are links to interesting short essays
Indic Mandala
In brief they are the myth of Western universalism and and triumphalist European theories of history. The reality is that Europe was the opposite of what we are led to believe - a straggler and laggard for a 1000+ years in intellectual sophistication, science and technology and economic growth, until it shot past in the last few centuries, borrowing, developing and improving upon technologies invented by the Chinese and also Indian resources to advance. The Industrial revolution would not have been possible in Britain, without India. And its not going to last as China will once again overtake them to reposition themselves as the leader of the world. It sounds chauvinistic when described thus without qualifying it with research to backup, in a brief sentence. But the research (including economic data) is there if you look for it, and I am not going to post it on an audio thread. But suffice to say, almost all perspectives on the rest-of-the-world that Indians and non-westerners are made to swallow today - the European account of history is typically a result of deficient thought process, bigotry and by indirect inference, notions of racial and cultural supremacy. Yes, one cannot but acknowledge the achievements of individuals and western minds and also the relatively recent ( by a few centuries) scientific and technological establishments and institutions in pure sciences and Maths (They do need praise and we are definitely poor and backwards in comparison, because of very specific reasons), but the larger canvas needs to be seen not just a few individual strokes of the paintbrush.
A person who has analyzed this really well is Mr. Rajiv Malhotra author of the path breaking book "Being different"
Being Different Book: Rajiv Malhotra .
He offers one of the most well researched and scholarly perspectives that can lay a foundation to begin the process of re-thinking India and its unique contribution to the world civilizations. He has also addressed the cause and effects that have dumbed down Indian thinking and traditional dynamism with a certain poverty of thought process that afflicts Indian academia (and the modern Indian) today with the current education and supposedly free media (propaganda systems) in place.
If reading the book is too much or as a primer, once can subscribe to the numerous videofeeds on youtube like
BreakingIndia's channel
Here is a sample
Rajiv Malhotra's Lecture on U-Turn Theory at Lady Sri Ram College, Delhi - YouTube
Do look out for all his book on U-turn theory soon the be published.
HTH
--Rahul
:licklips::clapping:
