Is the culture of India (sub-cultures, actually) one of the most important in the world?

[Anonymous]

"Most important" is a relative term. Why dispute a relative construct? Why this need to feel superior to others on an intrinsic level? Is this why you still have the obscenity of the caste system? Why do you still have a primitive need to rate your relative worth as compared to other cultures? You squat and wipe your asses with your hand. You set women on fire if they don't meet the absurd standards of the son-in-law's family. FFS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know DCUM is far from a sports fan community, but it is interesting that for a country with such a huge population, India has a few medals total in the history of the Olympics. Probably the lowest medal per capita of any place on Earth.

So not great athletes, that is for sure.

Maybe they should be congratulated for having more intellectual priorities?

Of course, since modern Olympic history corresponds to a period of stress for India, it probably suggests that they have recently had more existential priorities. Either way, what an odd suggestion that a culture's height can be measured by its jocks!

It's not a matter of measuring a culture by it's jocks. But, it certainly indicates a lack of commitment to it's athletes. Why can't a country have both jocks and intellectual pursuits?

I think if you're trying to survive day by day, finding barely enough food to eat, having clean water to drink, having somewhere to shelter, you're not going to be thinking about training for athletics. Sports and the arts are a luxury, after you can get food, clothing and shelter.

Yes. Like the Kenyans. All those world class black Kenyan marathoners are just basking in luxury all their lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. To the (probable) guy who keeps talking about India being "conquered" : I'm not asking about military might and weaponry. That's a separate question with a separate set of criteria.

I am interested in winning points about culture. The medicine point by PP was a good lead. Music, religion, language/ Sanskrit ... architecture. Yoga. Whatever. please keep the ideas coming.

But I'm not asking 'Who had the biggest [dick] arsenal?' so please stop telling me about how India can't conquer anyone.

Are you asking because you're writing a paper for school? Why are you asking? Go to the library and take a book out, then read it. We're allowed to disagree with you. Ok?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, very important.

IT's the world's largest democracy, by the way.

No, it's the word's most populous, not the world's largest...

[Anonymous]

I am not a scholar on Indian history, but I am married to a South Asian, and in teaching my children about their heritage and interacting with my in-laws, I have some layman observations.

All cultures and civilizations, just like the humans who comprise them, are curious mixes of virtue and vice, good and evil. India is a vibrant, passionate culture, and it is breathtakingly young right now, so I have no doubt it will stay on the rise, especially as the first world ages.

However, the demographic strength of its youth is offset somewhat by its rapidly increasing gender imbalance. As female fetuses continue to be aborted at alarming rates--rates that increase every single year, and will probably continue to do so as the middle class grows--the population will continue to accumulate an excess of males, and that is a destabilizing force.

This modern phenomenon traces back to the roots of why Indian civilization, for all its aesthetic beauty, has yet to be one of the most important civilizations in the world: its cultural structure is built on arbitrarily ranking human beings' worth according to a caste system. That keeps progress down, because human potential is artificially suppressed by what boils down to racism and sexism.

So as long as some Indian people are relegated to subhuman status, either by birth or gender, India cannot progress. Gandhi knew this, and official policy has tried to protect lower castes and female fetuses, to no avail yet. Indian people are their greatest resource, and they remain largely untapped due to prejudice.

I could go on about other impediments, such as the corruption (rooted in cultural norms of a tenuous relationship to truth), vendettas (rooted in cultural norms of Asian honor), an educational system that values conformity and rote learning and testing over innovation, and a kind of fatalism (if you are poor or sick or downtrodden, it is your fault for what you did in a past life, so intervention is not really necessary)...

But I have a story instead. One of my in-laws decided to run for a local office in her (American) town. She was a tireless campaigner, going door to door, but she would tell each voter exactly what they wanted to hear, no matter how untrue it was. So she would tell one person she was a pro-life Catholic, another person she was a pro-choice Unitarian, and the next person she was open-minded and agnostic. Since this was a small town, people compared notes, and she lost badly.

She was genuinely perplexed when people pointed out that she professed to hold diametrically opposed positions. She did not see any problem with it. She also operated on IST (Indian Standard Time), which messed up her campaign schedule. But she hasn't given up. She's learning.

India will learn. The only thing in the way of future greatness is old prejudices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. To the (probable) guy who keeps talking about India being "conquered" : I'm not asking about military might and weaponry. That's a separate question with a separate set of criteria.

I am interested in winning points about culture. The medicine point by PP was a good lead. Music, religion, language/ Sanskrit ... architecture. Yoga. Whatever. please keep the ideas coming.

But I'm not asking 'Who had the biggest [dick] arsenal?' so please stop telling me about how India can't conquer anyone.

Keep the ideas coming? You're interesting in winning points on culture? Are we basically doing the thinking for you on some kind of paper that you need to write for school? Really? That is called CHEATING and it's UNETHICAL. I hope you aren't stealing ideas from a group of people on the internet to write a paper but I have a feeling you are. How crappy of you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know DCUM is far from a sports fan community, but it is interesting that for a country with such a huge population, India has a few medals total in the history of the Olympics. Probably the lowest medal per capita of any place on Earth.

So not great athletes, that is for sure.

Maybe they should be congratulated for having more intellectual priorities?

Of course, since modern Olympic history corresponds to a period of stress for India, it probably suggests that they have recently had more existential priorities. Either way, what an odd suggestion that a culture's height can be measured by its jocks!

It's not a matter of measuring a culture by it's jocks. But, it certainly indicates a lack of commitment to it's athletes. Why can't a country have both jocks and intellectual pursuits?

I suppose it could have both, but it strikes me as bizarre to claim that limited present-day jockery (oh, sorry, "commitment to athletes") has anything to do with historic cultural achievement.

I probably wouldn't even accept that athletics in itself can represent any kind of admirable cultural achievement, but I can see how that argument might go. Meh.

athletics is a huge part of any culture, ancient or modern. do you think kids should not have PE Class? Of course they should, just like they should have music and art. Japan and the USA just finished a great WC finals. Where as India in that tournament? MIA as usual.

If I had to rank the top ten great cultures of the world, present and past, it would probably be something like 1. Greek-Roman. 2. China. 3. British. 4. American. 5. Japan. 6. Persian. 7. French. 8. German. 9. (tie) Incan and Mayan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys do know that "Greece" (any civilization you're referring to by that name) and Rome were both (all) conquered, right?

I don't know how valuable comparisons of "importance" can be in the first place, but there shouldn't be any question about the sophistication of historical cultural happenings in India over the millenia.

Rome fell apart for reasons too complex for this thread, and various barbarian tribes took turns plundering Rome. Of course Constantinople survived and flourished for hundreds more years. Not sure I'd agree that Rome was ever conquered.

Huh. You hang on to that, then, and I'll content myself with pointing out that Constantinople fell (to conquerors) in the 15th century.

I'll also point out that "barbarian tribes" has not been considered a scholarly way to describe those Germanic groups in some time. I haven't visited the topic in years, but somewhere in the swirling mists of my memory there's the notion that one group really occupied the heart of Rome, and that some Theodoric guy set up a new Roman empire in considerable imitation of the one he conquered. Pretty much at odds with the loss of Roman virtue followed by "Barbarian plunder" narrative you're suggesting, though it's been an influential one over the centuries.

Classicist here (grad/undergrad degrees in Latin/Greek). There is no doubt that Rome was conquered by 'barbarians' multiple times. While Rome itself was never colonized, during the late empire, it was ruled by various men who were of mixed barbarian/Roman blood. 'Barbarian tribes' is still how the Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Vandals are referred to by classical scholars. I don't know why it wouldn't be used since it comes directly from the Greek (????????) into Latin (barbarus) into English (barbarian) and even into German (barbarisch). There is no other way to translate it from the original. As far as 'Roman virtue', I don't know what you're talking about. Even Augustus Caesar complained about deteriorating virture among the Romans.

Also, until Alexander the Great, Greece was comprised of multiple city-states. Only under Alexander were they unified and that only lasted until his death. It was most definitely colonized by the Persians and Romans (among others). Greek slaves were highly desired by the Romans. Look it up on Wikipedia.

[Anonymous]

20:00 here. Looks like Greek script doesn't post correctly. The (??????) after Greek is transliterated as 'barbaros'.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys do know that "Greece" (any civilization you're referring to by that name) and Rome were both (all) conquered, right?

I don't know how valuable comparisons of "importance" can be in the first place, but there shouldn't be any question about the sophistication of historical cultural happenings in India over the millenia.

Rome fell apart for reasons too complex for this thread, and various barbarian tribes took turns plundering Rome. Of course Constantinople survived and flourished for hundreds more years. Not sure I'd agree that Rome was ever conquered.

Huh. You hang on to that, then, and I'll content myself with pointing out that Constantinople fell (to conquerors) in the 15th century.

I'll also point out that "barbarian tribes" has not been considered a scholarly way to describe those Germanic groups in some time. I haven't visited the topic in years, but somewhere in the swirling mists of my memory there's the notion that one group really occupied the heart of Rome, and that some Theodoric guy set up a new Roman empire in considerable imitation of the one he conquered. Pretty much at odds with the loss of Roman virtue followed by "Barbarian plunder" narrative you're suggesting, though it's been an influential one over the centuries.

Classicist here (grad/undergrad degrees in Latin/Greek). There is no doubt that Rome was conquered by 'barbarians' multiple times. While Rome itself was never colonized, during the late empire, it was ruled by various men who were of mixed barbarian/Roman blood. 'Barbarian tribes' is still how the Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Vandals are referred to by classical scholars. I don't know why it wouldn't be used since it comes directly from the Greek (????????) into Latin (barbarus) into English (barbarian) and even into German (barbarisch). There is no other way to translate it from the original. As far as 'Roman virtue', I don't know what you're talking about. Even Augustus Caesar complained about deteriorating virture among the Romans.

Also, until Alexander the Great, Greece was comprised of multiple city-states. Only under Alexander were they unified and that only lasted until his death. It was most definitely colonized by the Persians and Romans (among others). Greek slaves were highly desired by the Romans. Look it up on Wikipedia.

perhaps it is quibbling, but I'd argue that Rome fell as opposed to being conquered. Sure a few barbarian tribes sacked Rome, and some even hung around for a while afterwards, but by that point "Rome" was not the Roman Empire. Do you think the Soviet Empire was "conquered" or simply imploded under the weight of debt, corruption and changing times???

[Anonymous]

what were a couple centuries of European explorers seeking when they bumped into America...a better sea route to the storied wealth, riches and civilization of a certain place....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
This is OP. To the (probable) guy who keeps talking about India being "conquered" : I'm not asking about military might and weaponry. That's a separate question with a separate set of criteria.

I am interested in winning points about culture. The medicine point by PP was a good lead. Music, religion, language/ Sanskrit ... architecture. Yoga. Whatever. please keep the ideas coming.

But I'm not asking 'Who had the biggest [dick] arsenal?' so please stop telling me about how India can't conquer anyone.


Keep the ideas coming? You're interesting in winning points on culture? Are we basically doing the thinking for you on some kind of paper that you need to write for school? Really? That is called CHEATING and it's UNETHICAL. I hope you aren't stealing ideas from a group of people on the internet to write a paper but I have a feeling you are. How crappy of you.

OP again; I'm a woman in my mid-40s who asked this question of DCUMs after a near-disastrous, somewhat wine-drenched dinner party. Some of the guests disagreed with each other on my original question (one of the most important in the world, historically?). So uh, stand down asswipe.

I do thank the many of you who took the time to discuss and make points. I've learned something. And no, I'm not going to take the time to do original research in the stacks to answer this question for myself, lame as that makes me. I have 2 full-time jobs ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
This is OP. To the (probable) guy who keeps talking about India being "conquered" : I'm not asking about military might and weaponry. That's a separate question with a separate set of criteria.

I am interested in winning points about culture. The medicine point by PP was a good lead. Music, religion, language/ Sanskrit ... architecture. Yoga. Whatever. please keep the ideas coming.

But I'm not asking 'Who had the biggest [dick] arsenal?' so please stop telling me about how India can't conquer anyone.


Keep the ideas coming? You're interesting in winning points on culture? Are we basically doing the thinking for you on some kind of paper that you need to write for school? Really? That is called CHEATING and it's UNETHICAL. I hope you aren't stealing ideas from a group of people on the internet to write a paper but I have a feeling you are. How crappy of you.

OP again; I'm a woman in my mid-40s who asked this question of DCUMs after a near-disastrous, somewhat wine-drenched dinner party. Some of the guests disagreed with each other on my original question (one of the most important in the world, historically?). So uh, stand down asswipe.

I do thank the many of you who took the time to discuss and make points. I've learned something. And no, I'm not going to take the time to do original research in the stacks to answer this question for myself, lame as that makes me. I have 2 full-time jobs ...

So you are a 40 year old alcoholic, potty mouth bitch who calls people names after turning to them to use them to do research for her, basically to make her look good.

You're a real peach, a true gem.

[Anonymous]

Does your mommy know you are on the computer at 11 pm trolling web forums instead of doing your homework?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does your mommy know you are on the computer at 11 pm trolling web forums instead of doing your homework?

Does yours?