03-05-2006, 10:38 PM
lets see how many of you can answer this thread with a cool head without accusing me of being a "sell-out".
what does india owe to the west??
we travel by cars, planes and trains - whcih are all western inventions.
we are using internet and computers for this forum - whcih is a western invention.
most of us dress in shirt-pants and not dhotis - and thats western.
most of us studied in english medium schools and almost all of us use english at the office.
most of the science, math and medicine we learn, use and benifit from are western inventions.
we use western legal system, use a democratic constitutional system, not rajas to govern us (tough looking at the various political dynasties like the Gandhies, this can be disputed!) etc.
so where would we be without them???
how likely is it that we could have come up with all these things on our own, had we not fallen under islam which stopped all adacemic progress in india (india was doing damned well till about 1000 AD - we knew as much science, math, medicine and astronomy as any other, and infact more than the westerners. The chief western books of astronomy, math etc till mid 1600's used to be taken from persian translations of sanskrit works).
what answer should and can we give to the world when they claim that india benifitted immensely from western science and technology and that we would have been like some backward african country without the help of "western civilization". remember this is a very tough arguement to win - i once pointed out about J.C Bose to a foreigner, and he replied. "you mean Sir J.C.Bose, who lived in the british built city of Calcutta, and used Calculus and Maxwell's equations to prove the existance of radio waves".
can we pass the entire buck to islam???
PS: as a corolarry to the original question, i ask, how come most of the inventions and developments int he world have been done by whites - when books like the "bell curve' clearly prove that indians and east asians are the smartest of peoples - apart from the jews ofcourse, who are the SMARTEST.
what does india owe to the west??
we travel by cars, planes and trains - whcih are all western inventions.
we are using internet and computers for this forum - whcih is a western invention.
most of us dress in shirt-pants and not dhotis - and thats western.
most of us studied in english medium schools and almost all of us use english at the office.
most of the science, math and medicine we learn, use and benifit from are western inventions.
we use western legal system, use a democratic constitutional system, not rajas to govern us (tough looking at the various political dynasties like the Gandhies, this can be disputed!) etc.
so where would we be without them???
how likely is it that we could have come up with all these things on our own, had we not fallen under islam which stopped all adacemic progress in india (india was doing damned well till about 1000 AD - we knew as much science, math, medicine and astronomy as any other, and infact more than the westerners. The chief western books of astronomy, math etc till mid 1600's used to be taken from persian translations of sanskrit works).
what answer should and can we give to the world when they claim that india benifitted immensely from western science and technology and that we would have been like some backward african country without the help of "western civilization". remember this is a very tough arguement to win - i once pointed out about J.C Bose to a foreigner, and he replied. "you mean Sir J.C.Bose, who lived in the british built city of Calcutta, and used Calculus and Maxwell's equations to prove the existance of radio waves".
can we pass the entire buck to islam???
PS: as a corolarry to the original question, i ask, how come most of the inventions and developments int he world have been done by whites - when books like the "bell curve' clearly prove that indians and east asians are the smartest of peoples - apart from the jews ofcourse, who are the SMARTEST.