There is a debate on that. The reason we were invaded frequently was because we had zero unity and our focus was never on territorial expansion beyond Bharat. Inward looking so to speak.
Which period, and which invasion are you looking at? Whichever it was, if you examine it and the origins of such invasions beyond Indian borders, you will find, without exception, that these were military expansions which swept away other civilisations and cultures and states as well.
Whether you are talking about Alexander, or the Indo-Greeks, or the Scythians, or the Saka-Pahlava, or the Kushana, or the Ephthalites, or the Huns, or Sino-Tibetan alliances, or the Ghurids, or the Ghaznavis, or the Turkish Sultanate, or the Mughals, or the Portuguese, or the Ahoms, or the French or the British, I would be happy if you could point to a single instance where the invader tried elsewhere and failed, but tried in India and succeeded.
Only the Mongols did not sweep through the country, for which we need to thank Balban and his generals, including his eldest son. This was a rare episode, and with it rank the resistance of the Ghakkars, and the Rajputs' defiance of the Ghaznavis and the Sultanate, and an internal war, the Mughals against the Ahoms, ending with the disintegration of the Mughals under the combined impact of the Marathas, the Sikhs, the Afghans, the British and their own refractory nobility.
And that is exactly what I am saying. We were quite good in the ancient era, we as a civilization and as a culture entered a period of decadance and decline post that in the medieval age.That was when we were successfully invaded.. And it kept going downhill since then.
I would like to know your definition of the ancient era. I would also like you to give up treating history like Grimm's Fairy Tales.
On the flip side, those who invaded us could never forge an identity strong enough to retain their empires and large kingdoms and fragmented into small countries whereas India with its various states agreed to join together to form one of the largest countries in the world.
Oh, please. Spare us. Islamophobia and Pakistan-bashing has its limits in terms of historical analysis.
And history always comes full circle, in the modern age, we have been gaining strength each passing decade vis-a-vis the rest of the world and certainly those that once colonized us - whether it be the Central Asians or the British.
I doubt that there's much circling involved here. It's about democracy.
BTW, there is no category called central Asian; you might be referring to Bactrian Greek, Scythian, Parthian, Yueh Chi, Ephthalite, Turks with Persian manners and culture and language, Afghans but not central Asian.
Where exactly did you find insanity in the first place?
No comment. I am not sure what this part of the discussion is about, and would like to stay out, if it is all the same to everyone.
Did any member even remotely suggest that we must keep looking to the past and not advance now? No. Each one of us knows that the key to our success and future is to ensure we are on the cutting edge of science and technology today - by building and funding universities and having a vibrant private and production enterprises.
It is only the presumptuous minds who believe that those who look to the past with a sense of pride will never look to the future as pragmatists.
The difficulty here is with false pride, inflated collective egos, and a determination to retain the social evils which continue to retard us, behind a smokescreen of nationalism. This is not nationalism, if nationalism is a virtue in the first place: I beg leave to point out that it is not necessarily so. We are threatened with schism and divisive tendencies, because there are those who are stuck to the past like flies in amber, to use your words, those who "keep looking to the past" and do not allow us to advance now, because of their rejection of the Scientific Method (as even a nincompoop should know, this is a process not limited to science alone, but is applicable to any field of enquiry) and their bellicose adherence to tradition and their supposed past - an imaginary construct which is stimulated by ideology and by theology, not by the scientific spirit.
There is little pragmatism here.
