An interesting article about China`!

[Joe Shearer]

I also understand that if this is taken away, a nation as big as India would tend to lose the historical structure around which such farcical mooring are tied to. And what I state is not to create an identity for Pakistani people, but to point towards an existing one, which has been there since thousands of years and New India wrongfully seeks to identify with.

Not to mince words, you understand nothing. That trope, of inserting a disputable assertion and clothing it as understanding, is tired. If you have to waste the time of others with this airy-fairy nonsense, could we at least be entertained by good writing and fresh expressions? After all, that is the most that we may hope to gain from your convent-school play version of Horatius at the bridge. Incidentally, you might consider the cognomen of the great hero, and avert ridicule by people referring to that.

The historical structure of India does not depend on religion or on myth; it draws on religion and on myth in two specific aspects.

It draws on religion to explain changes in society in the period from 600 BC onwards. There was a shift in social stratification due to the introduction of two new religions (not one) in the first millennium. That shift unleashed many changes: a willingness to strike away from the steppe-culture, the erosion of the focus on animal husbandry, a change away from a world-view based on a contract with the Gods ensuring cosmic order and balance to a world-view based on leading a proper, upright and ethical life, the opening up of the possibilities of trade and commerce without religious sanction on travel - the list could continue but belongs to elementary history texts, of the sort that you apparently speculate about but have never opened. It does not suggest that Shiva came to earth and fought the Mughals, for instance, as your shallow and half-baked impressions seem to indicate. It merely notes the effects on society of these changes, and records them in a professional historical record. You will find similar analyses in accounts of social changes in Europe occasioned by the Reformation. It is as valid to accuse European historians, historians of Europe's history, of being silly little creatures misguided by religion as it is for you to base your audacity on such a monstrous misreading of a subject that you have apparently never read with any academic rigour.

As for mythology, I refer you to the king-lists of Pargiter. I assume that you have no knowledge of this, as of most of Indian history, as no other assumption satisfies the incomprehensible gibberish that we are repeatedly faced with. This assiduous and pain-staking scholar sought to replace a great void in historical record or in annals by looking through references in Indian literature - please note that these were pan-Indian, and were written at different times by different people in different places, but all in the geographic context of India, not even in the much broader cultural context of India.

That monumental exercise, which has been bitterly criticized, and been revised and re-presented in many different versions, remains a monument to scholarly achievement, not the least, not the most stunning achievement of the British exegetes of Indian history, but one of their typical tours de force. It covers the period, approximately, from 1500 BC to 600 BC, and stops with the introduction of external references to European events occurring in India which have a firm date. While it is a monumental effort, it is in no way a critical element of Indian history, but belongs correctly to proto-history.

Mythology not only does not play a part in India's history proper, but it also fills a gap in India's proto-history which is, frankly, largely of academic interest. The only interesting bits that emerge are our greater understanding of the shifts in power away from the north-west, to the Punjab, then to the Doab, then to the lower Gangetic plain, of one particular cultural aggregate. It does not add significantly to our knowledge of developments in other parts of India, for which we must seek other primary sources.

However, we get to take away two interesting conclusions: first, the spread and extent of the resources culled for this information; second, the focus on a single river-valley out of the nine which carry Indian civilisation.

In no other way does Indian history depend on mythology.

 

[KS]

Civilization is more about your mindset than anything else. Pakistanis, ponder on that.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Civilization is more about your mindset than anything else. Pakistanis, ponder on that.

Unlikely to happen.

One set of them is busy firing at Indian villagers and calling it responses to India slipping in armed terrorists to assault the Pearl Continental in Lahore. Why that hotel? Well, as every brigadier and above knows, that name, Pearl, is derived from the products traded with Dilmun during the IVC, and represents an irreducible part of Pakistan's heritage, dating back some 5,000 years and running at the moment (next year, it will be 6,000 years and soon it will overtake the Egyptians).

Another set is busy telling the Pakistani people that they now have an Army (oops, also an Air Force and a Navy), and the people should start thinking about a national defence policy. Better late than never; no more nanny, it's down to plain old Javed Dar in the street now.

A third set is in transit from blogging to ideologging. It's so boring making up general, random stuff. It's much more fun figuring out what a nice history could be and writing it up. If any pesky academic objects, just remind him what happened to people who talk back, and send him a basket of rose leaves. He'll get the hint, or he'll get what's coming to him.

A fourth set is determined on action today, so they're bent on getting to the bottom of that important question - should people turn out for Direct Action Day about drones, about insults to religion or about shutting down girls' schools? Reports say that the meeting is going on, and 36 bodies have been shifted to the local morgue as those participants seem to be no longer interested in the deliberations.

A fifth set has decided to wipe out India from the history books. Watch this space.

Where is the time for silly things like thinking about civilisation? Civilisation is something that people do, and nerds think about.

 

[Joe Shearer]

I also understand that if this is taken away, a nation as big as India would tend to lose the historical structure around which such farcical mooring are tied to. And what I state is not to create an identity for Pakistani people, but to point towards an existing one, which has been there since thousands of years and New India wrongfully seeks to identify with.

We are assured that this is stated not to create an identity for Pakistani people, but to point towards an existing one, which has been there since thousands of years and New India wrongfully seeks to identify with.

This is apparently a reference to the IVC. This would be amusing if it were not boring.

The denial of any intention to 'create' an identity for the Pakistani people is not surprising. We will not expect expert confectioners to agree that they are creating a new entity out of nothing; that would defeat the purpose of the confection, and the entire attempt to create some mythological identity for the new state of Pakistan.

It is also interesting that they knew nothing about this precious part of their heritage through the years, and have suddenly realized that it is an essential part of their culture and history. What were Pakistanis clinging on to until Rakhal Das Bannerjee happened along?

Bandyopadhyay is most famous for the discovery of Mohenjodaro, the principal site of the Harappa culture dating from 3000 BC. His interpretations of this civilization were published in a number of articles and books: "An Indian City Five Thousand Years Ago" (Calcutta Municipal Gazette, November 1928); "Muhen-jodaro" (in Bangla, Basumati, 1331 BS); Prehistoric, Ancient and Hindu India (posthumously published, 1934) and Mahenjodaro - A Forgotten Report (1984).

There is a historiography behind this, of course.

The original thinking behind Pakistan appears to have been a 'homeland' for Muslims. This died with Jinnah.

The next effort was the product of the hijacking of the new state by those fundamentalists like Maududi who had opposed it bitterly until 1948. This twist brought about the Islamicisation which haunts Pakistan to this day. This died with the birth of Bangladesh.

It is not surprising to the dispassionate observer that an effort should follow which would be rooted in the soil of the fragmented nation. The effort to anchor the new nation in a castle in the air, in a homeland which was India without being India, part of the land mass but not part of it, having failed, the effort to anchor it to Arabia having failed, a more concrete foundation was evidently necessary, and that was suggested by Aitzaz Ahsan, in his thesis that there was an internal consistency to Pakistan, where the proximity of the constituents of Pakistan was greater than their proximity to anything else. In other words, Sind, Punjab, the Frontier and Baluchistan were close together, in some mystic union fostered by the river flowing through their territories. This died almost immediately, as every thinking Pakistani thought about the evident differences between the four constituents and realized that this horse would never run. Exit Indus Man. Enter Horatius at the Bridge.

The present thesis being sold to us by an individual using the skills and techniques of a not very inhibited but high-powered used car salesman. We are asked to now shift from the mundane, corporeal world of the Indus River to its equivalent Land of Cockaigne. No longer do we have to deal with the dismal facts of history. No more wrestling with the insular nature of the people of Sind, of Punjab, or of the Iranian marches of Baluchistan, or the outlying mountains of the kingdom of Kabul. No, those are all figments of a religion- and mythology-based quasi-history, which never existed after all, whose kings vanish into thin air, whose Scythians, and Pahlava, and Kushans turn out to be phantoms of an over-ripe Indian/Hindu imagination. It is entirely another matter that these are mysteriously given expression by a succession of British historians, but we must not quibble when facing a grand structure and design on the scale of this winningly-priced Ford Orion 2007.

Unfortunately, we have now come full circle. From one mythical land which never existed, a secular Muslim homeland within India, to another, a direct, lineal descendant of the IVC, with its people going around in the gowns and circlets of those merchant-citizens, its female entertainers dressed fetchingly like the dancer of the museums, its 1,056 settlements built in a structured, semi-orthogonal fashion - oh dearie me, what remarkable resemblances, and what pure illusions.

But as we have seen, this was necessary to overcome the inconvenient difficulty that the constituent parts had no previous history of acting together or of any common political existence - none that our amateur historians will permit, considering their Calvinistic approach to culture, religion, mythology and history, even when the role and position of religion and mythology are clearly defined (Calvinists will not riot in the streets of Lahore, so it is a safe place-holder for what I wish to say).

How does this affect the monumental errors I have made about the UN and about Mountbatten? Let us see in some detail.

 

[KRAIT]

You always bewilder me by your acumen, Joe sir.

Good to have some one like you. Hope we can keep learning from you.

 

[Joe Shearer]

You always bewilder me by your acumen, Joe sir.

Good to have some one like you. Hope we can keep learning from you.

I am mildly surprised.

Dealing with the howlers in that comment, the points raised about the UN (no longer, thankfully, about Mountbatten's non-existent, imaginary decree), are still to come.

The trouble is that the more I read Ticker's objection, the more I am overcome with laughter. He says that I have stated that the UN accepted the Dominion of India as legal heir to the colony, India; that this acceptance was due to the need to keep things moving, for reasons of world governance, and that the decision in no way is an endorsement of the Dominion of India in any way; and that therefore my implied claim of UN acceptance of the Dominion of India's civilisational continuity with ancient Indian civilisation is wrong.

Can you spot the errors? There is more than one major error, which is a major handicap, as it makes me laugh every time I look at the nonsense written.

 

[Joe Shearer]

The earlier part of your explanation states that, there were no "international governance obligations" faced by the UN in its considered quasi-judicial decision, and that it had nothing to do with the concept of a cultural entity, nor with a geographical term.

And then you also state that, the UN decision, which was definitive, in terms of international law, was that the British colony of India, a political entity created by the British through parliamentary action in 1858, therefore consistent with the legal systems governing the world order of the day, was the origin of the Dominion of India.

Two self contradictory statements. You are growing old Joe, and need to stress yourself with better explanations next time.

Pakistan never claimed owning of a historical fact at the UN at that time, because the matter under discussion was a world governing order. Old India had treaties signed with world, had trading agreements etc etc. UN gave the New India a successor status for obligatory emendation of existing treaties etc etc within the ambiance of world governing order.

This is exactly what I stated at many places. Thank you for accepting and supporting my stance.

However, your implied argument that because an obligation under a world governance order was given to New India, it also by measure of default ordained, that India is the sole inheritor of Old India’s civilization is not only incorrect and frivolous as it sounds, it was not part of the UN decision.

We've been here before. Here is an expert who explains to us what Ticker is trying to do.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

That was Josef Goebbels, master propagandist and confectioner-in-chief for the Nazi propaganda mill. No wonder Desert Fox is one of the most ardent supporters of this line.

What had I said immediately before that? Why, that's unfair, that blows up Ticker's theory into smithereens. If you have a strong stomach and are sure you will not keel over laughing, never to straighten, here is a whiff:

First

That decision was clear and unambiguous; its scope was the scope of the Independence of India Act, 1947, and it had nothing to do with the concept of a cultural entity, nor with a geographical term. Your seeking to conflate the UN's consideration of the differences or continuity of a colony with the succeeding Dominion is a deliberate attempt at a straw horse strategy, to pretend that the UN considered cultural and geographical aspects of the situation and opined on it in a casual, informal way, and by knocking down this pretended casual, informal decision to denigrate the cultural and geographical aspects that you wish to avoid...

How much clearer can it be that Ticker is coming back again and again to a point that has been answered!

But wait! There's more:

Clearly, then, Ticker has lost the argument before it started, and is endlessly parroting his remarks in the vain hope that his repetitions will not get noticed. It has got noticed.

Apparently, the core of his argument is that the UN decision was forced on them; it was forced on them in the interests of continuity; and therefore the UN ruling that India was the successor state has no bearing on the question of contemporary Indians having inherited the culture and heritage of - what was it? Ah, yes! - Old India's civilisation.

Fallacious as usual. The UN decision was NOT forced on them. They could have decided that Pakistan was the sole successor; they could have decided, as Zafrullah Khan pleaded, that Pakistan and India were equal successors; or they could have decided, as they did, that India was the sole successor. They did have a choice; in choosing India over Pakistan, they exercised that choice.

Nothing was forced on them. Global continuity was maintained.

Was this ruling wrongly interpreted to sneak in Old Indian civilisation through the back door?

No, it was not; how many times do I need to say that what happened in the UN had no bearing on the question of India's culture and heritage. IT WAS A POLITICAL DECISION ONLY![/I]

It beats me how somebody can say that I am assuming the exact opposite of what I have stated.

It beats me how somebody can deny the existence of Indian history terming it religion- and mythology-based - but can blithely say

it also by measure of default ordained, that India is the sole inheritor of Old India’s civilization is not only incorrect and frivolous as it sounds, it was not part of the UN decision

I said exactly the opposite.

How come you are talking about Old India's civilisation, when according to you it doesn't exist.

Finally, it beats me that the Apostle of cultural Apartheid should be so bereft of examples that he has to fall back on Mrs. Nene. Too bad the IVC couldn't supply a cultural simile.

 

[ephone]

This sentence is quite correct:

"But China isn't like us. It never has been and never will be. "

worth reading```this guy seems lived (visited) in China for long

forgot to post the link`

BBC News - A Point Of View: Making sense of China

 

[Rafi]

Wow - indian obsession with us - is very apparent, their passion and frustration about what we think of ourselves, pours out of their anguished words, JS you sound like you are close to a mental breakdown, get out into the fresh air - every now and then, it will do you good.