[Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology

[umesh sharma]

Some days back a student of Indian origin born and raised in US was surprised to learn that India had a glorious history - he hardly believed me though.

  And it did not surprise me since I have come to realize that every civilization wants to promote itself as the best - Greek and Roman civilization are promoted as ideals (closely followed by Egyptian one) -- Indian and Chinese ones are lesser ones. 

Greek Toga costume parties are common features of Western univs just like Indian kurta, dhoti are picking up in Indian college fashion shows.


However, the problem is that Western historians/scholars of non Western spheres call themselves (and each other) as the world's foremost/only reliable experts on their chosen area of expertise - namely hows and whys of other civilization. Most believe (I believe) that those in non-western world/developing world are too naive/unscientific/non-modern/non-rational to understand and appreciate the distinction between good and bad; and right and wrong.

I believe a lay westerner is more tolerant of others' views than these experts (whose reputation and even careers depend on promoting what they have always held as true).

I just created a wikipedia page called Hindu Reality -speaking against this tendency (I'm sure someone will come along and remove my arguments).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_reality  - I just checked --someone has deleted the page itself.

Wiki seems to be about might is right - 

Any comments?

Umesh




  

Umesh Sharma

Washington D.C. 

1-202-215-4328 [Cell]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)




www.gse.harvard.edu/iep  (where the above 2 are used )




http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
       
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