Busting the myth of "British Railway Gift" and other gifts to India

[Fattyacids]

You have displayed it lot many times.

Of course, how else could one repeatedly exposed your re-invention of history.

Spare this forum your ad hominem

 

[BCCItheGreat]

Dear mods @@WebMaster @@Oscar @@Aeronaut
Please ban @@Fattyacids as he is not using country flags and violating forum rules...

 

[scorpionx]

Without British colonization the Indians would still be in the midst of proto-history.

People who do not exercise firm grasp over Indian History should refrain themselves from posting silly comments which make no sense and adds nothing constructive at all. It only holds high your unenviable ability to prove yourself an utter idiot in front of entire world.

 

[Kloitra]

There is not much of pre-Vedic culture that exists in India today. It's all Vedic, this is a fact.

I never said existence of pre-Vedic culture today. I said it existed before so called Aryan migration. Proof that India didn't needed Aryans to create civilization. They came, formed one, and owing to their superior numbers, became the predominant one.

India is connected to Middle east and central Asia, throughout history many invasion took place. In fact, India is a melting pot of ancient times. Himalayas only acts as a barrier against China.

Northern Pakistan is Himalayas. West of Pakistan, that is Afghanistan was pretty much rocky desert. East of India is dense forest, rainforests etc. In any case, the terrain is not suitable for mass migration and anything more than small scale trade. It wasn't until Muslim invasions that there was cultural import in India. That is what made India isolated, not physically but culturally.

There is no civilization that belonged to Dravidian or ASI. They were part of the Vedic civilization, however, dravidian culture did evolve on its own later on.

You digressed from my original point. Which was that India didn't needed any foreign entity to start a civilization. They came, became naturalized, created one, all good. But even without them, Indian civilization existed.

I was referring to ancestry, the two language families is what is remaining of our constituting ancestral races. Even the remote adivasis in South India have the part so called Indo-Aryan ancestry which geneticist call as ANI, the genes are significantly high among most of the South Indians and caste system only originated in first century. With the genetic studies, its proved that Aryan-Dravidian divide was a load of bullshit.

May be, may be not. All are theories. May be Aryan migration one is wrong. Doesn't changes the fact that Dravidian languages bear no similarity to other language group. And that the region that is India needed no foreign entity to help create a civilization.

 

[Solomon2]

While the British construction of railways was beneficial, I think as far as Pakistan is concerned Britain's introduction of English-language education, its development of large-scale irrigation projects, and its foundation of new cities like Karachi and Abbottabad all had a greater impact than the railways.

 

[elis]

People who again trust europeans for development are mostly ignorant or dumb, especially the anglo saxons

But i think it's not an excuse for everything bad in our countries: corruption, incompetence...

 

[Donatello]

If the British didn't introduce railways to India, then who did?

Lal Shastri?

Are you freaking kidding me?

Useless thread.

@Oscar @Aeronaut

Mods please close this thread before it turns into another British Bashing pro India First and best thread.

 

[Kloitra]

If the British didn't introduce railways to India, then who did?

Lal Shastri?

Are you freaking kidding me?

Useless thread.

@Oscar @Aeronaut

Mods please close this thread before it turns into another British Bashing pro India First and best thread.

Question is not that they introduced it in India, they did. But was it a gift, or just an additional tool for exploitation.

 

[American_Millenium]

I was expecting some kind of 'invasion'..

And he was unable to reply, even the state of Indian civilization at that time. There was a neat little civilization called Indus valley civilization, that existed even before the so called Aryan migration.

Your post was cut-off for some reason and this is the only part I got.

Yes, it was an invasion, as is stated in many of the pages I referenced.

Before that there was the Indus Valley Civilization, but they were destroyed by the incoming Indo-Aryans.

In fact, we don't really know who the IVC were; sure, many scholars favor a Dravidian or Elam-Dravidian ethnolinguistic community, but many others favor PIE descendants (Proto-Indo-Iranian), or even Semitic.

Harappan language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Kloitra]

Your post was cut-off for some reason and this is the only part I got.

Yes, it was an invasion, as is stated in many of the pages I referenced.

Before that there was the Indus Valley Civilization, but they were destroyed by the incoming Indo-Aryans.

In fact, we don't really know who the IVC were; sure, many scholars favor a Dravidian or Elam-Dravidian ethnolinguistic community, but many others favor PIE descendants (Proto-Indo-Iranian), or even Semitic.

Harappan language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sorry, corrected now.

About invasion theory Just quoting wikipedia:

Around 1800 BCE, signs of a gradual decline began to emerge, and by around 1700 BCE, most of the cities were abandoned. In 1953, Sir Mortimer Wheeler proposed that the decline of the Indus Civilization was caused by the invasion of an Indo-European tribe from Central Asia called the "Aryans". As evidence, he cited a group of 37 skeletons found in various parts of Mohenjo-Daro, and passages in the Vedas referring to battles and forts. However, scholars soon started to reject Wheeler's theory, since the skeletons belonged to a period after the city's abandonment and none were found near the citadel. Subsequent examinations of the skeletons by Kenneth Kennedy in 1994 showed that the marks on the skulls were caused by erosion, and not violent aggression.[79] Today, many scholars believe that the collapse of the Indus Civilization was caused by drought and a decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia.[80] It has also been suggested that immigration by new peoples, deforestation, floods, or changes in the course of the river may have contributed to the collapse of the IVC.[81]

All the recent studies suggest climate changes and thus migration of population of IVC towards Ganges. No evidence to support invasion theory.

About the language, who knows, all are theories. But it doesn't changes the fact that IVC people lived in India, started a civilization there, and later migrated to other parts of the country.

Only thing you can suggest that they, thousands of years ago, before the civilization started, came from other parts of the world, but in that case, didn't we all?

 

[American_Millenium]

Sorry, corrected now.

About invasion theory Just quoting wikipedia:


All the recent studies suggest climate changes and thus migration of population of IVC towards Ganges. No evidence to support invasion theory.

About the language, who knows, all are theories. But it doesn't changes the fact that IVC people lived in India, started a civilization there, and later migrated to other parts of the country.

Only thing you can suggest that they, thousands of years ago, before the civilization started, came from other parts of the world, but in that case, didn't we all?

Ok. The IVC was indigenous, but the Indo-Aryans are not related to the IVC anyway.

But still, if we are going to go off of scientific consensus, is it not true that the IVC is still not confirmed as an indigenous population? If they were Proto-Indo-Iranian or Semitic than they originated from Central Asia/Eastern Europe or West Asia, respectively. Of course, if they were Elamo-Dravidian or Dravidian, then they most likely originated in the area and are indigenous to it.

The point I'm making is that neither theory is held as majority opinion by a significant majority of the archaeological and linguistic community.

 

[Kloitra]

Ok. The IVC was indigenous, but the Indo-Aryans are not related to the IVC anyway.

But still, if we are going to go off of scientific consensus, is it not true that the IVC is still not confirmed as an indigenous population? If they were Proto-Indo-Iranian or Semitic than they originated from Central Asia/Eastern Europe or West Asia, respectively. Of course, if they were Elamo-Dravidian or Dravidian, then they most likely originated in the area and are indigenous to it.

The point I'm making is that neither theory is held as majority opinion by a significant majority of the archaeological and linguistic community.

I would say I am not well qualified to discuss that. Though I would raise a question, when would a certain set of people be considered indigenous? Given that all migrated from single part of the world and spread all over, when would you call them indigenous and when of different origins?

 

[American_Millenium]

I would say I am not well qualified to discuss that. Though I would raise a question, when would a certain set of people be considered indigenous? Given that all migrated from single part of the world and spread all over, when would you call them indigenous and when of different origins?

Well, if we are just speaking about language groups then it would be the Urheimat of the language group. The "Urheimat" is the origin of the language. The reason language groups are used to define races/ethnicities/pan-ethnicities (etc. etc.) that inhabited Earth during ancient times, is because each language was invented by a certain set of closely related (both culturally and genetically) people.

So the proto-PIE people are indigenous to Eastern Europe, the Semite peoples are indigenous to Western Asia, and Dravidian's are indigenous to Southern Asia. Notice that these are not racial designations like "White" or "Black", nor are they phenotypic designations like "Caucasoid/Caucasian", "Negroid", or "Mongoloid". They can be said to be a subgroup of phenotypic/racial designations, as PIE people were certainly European (and therefore Caucasoid/White) while proto-Turkic populations were certainly Northern Asian (and therefore Mongoloid), and proto-Dravidians were certainly South Asian (and therefore Australoid; closely related population to Negroids).

The reason Northern Indians tend to look more Caucasoid than Negroid/Australoid is because of the significant influence of Eastern European lineages in their DNA. If you go back as far as only 3,000 years, most Northern Indians have ancestors which inhabited Eastern Europe and had blue/green eyes and red/blonde/brown hair.

 

[Fattyacids]

I never said existence of pre-Vedic culture today. I said it existed before so called Aryan migration. Proof that India didn't needed Aryans to create civilization. They came, formed one, and owing to their superior numbers, became the predominant one.

1) Yes, but it didn't survive.

2) On the contrary, Aryans were smaller in numbers. But it's quite irrelevant really, because Indus civilization had already perished by the time Aryans came.

Northern Pakistan is Himalayas. West of Pakistan, that is Afghanistan was pretty much rocky desert. East of India is dense forest, rainforests etc. In any case, the terrain is not suitable for mass migration and anything more than small scale trade. It wasn't until Muslim invasions that there was cultural import in India. That is what made India isolated, not physically but culturally.

Wrong. South Asia had seen invasion/migration of Kushans, Greeks, Persians...since BC and early AD era. Muslim invasion only came about after 900 AD. India was never isolated, it was a crossroad between middle east, central asian and the far east. There was strong persia influence. Indo-greek empire left significant impact too.

You digressed from my original point. Which was that India didn't needed any foreign entity to start a civilization. They came, became naturalized, created one, all good. But even without them, Indian civilization existed.

Indus civilization is not entirely a dravidian one, there was significant evidence of Sumerian influence. In any case, it is a moot point, the civilization was dead!!! What you have now is vedic aryan civilization.

 

[Kloitra]

Well, if we are just speaking about language groups then it would be the Urheimat of the language group. The "Urheimat" is the origin of the language. The reason language groups are used to define races/ethnicities/pan-ethnicities (etc. etc.) that inhabited Earth during ancient times, is because each language was invented by a certain set of closely related (both culturally and genetically) people.

So the proto-PIE people are indigenous to Eastern Europe, the Semite peoples are indigenous to Western Asia, and Dravidian's are indigenous to Southern Asia. Notice that these are not racial designations like "White" or "Black", nor are they phenotypic designations like "Caucasoid/Caucasian", "Negroid", or "Mongoloid". They can be said to be a subgroup of phenotypic/racial designations, as PIE people were certainly European (and therefore Caucasoid/White) while proto-Turkic populations were certainly Northern Asian (and therefore Mongoloid), and proto-Dravidians were certainly South Asian (and therefore Australoid; closely related population to Negroids).

The reason Northern Indians tend to look more Caucasoid than Negroid/Australoid is because of the significant influence of Eastern European lineages in their DNA. If you go back as far as only 3,000 years, most Northern Indians have ancestors which inhabited Eastern Europe and had blue/green eyes and red/blonde/brown hair.

Now that makes establishing any origin to IVC people harder!
Thanks for the explanation though, would make an interesting read tonight.