[Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology

Fri Aug 10 13:33:30 PDT 2007

Barua,

Just couldn't resist not butting in.

Without going into the existence of Krishna, Shiva or Jesus :)here is a site
about Ancient Math in India. Also let us not forget Aryabhatta (Math) and
Kautilya(Politics & Governance).

http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Indians.html

(BTW: the site is from a UK University and NOT something conjured up in
India:)

--Ram

On 8/10/07, barua25 <barua25 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>  When I say FACTS AND FIGURES, I was talking not about our religious
> heroes, but about Science and Mathametics.
> Say for instance, what India did in case of Mathematics and when?
> Can you produce any written evidence that India invented the Zero and
> when? It is difficult.
>
> I donot like to deal with mythical figures like Shiva, Krishna etc. I
> consider these Indian gods to be purely mythical figures transformed from
> some original tribal religious cults. In my opinion, Shiva was orginally a
> local god in the Harappa civilization and Krishna was a Dravidian local
> tribal god. This much history tells. Do you have any other evidence to
> counter that , not who believes what?
> Rajen da
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* umesh sharma <jaipurschool at yahoo.com>
>  *To:* Rajen & Ajanta Barua <barua25 at hotmail.com> ;
> umesh.sh05 at post.harvard.edu ; assam at assamnet.org
> *Sent:* Friday, August 10, 2007 1:33 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
>
>
> Rajen-da,
>
> Good to get your response. Now about facts - would you not agree that most
> Hindus hail Krishna as one of the Hindu heroes and believe that he lived in
> India thousands of years back --- I wanted to put that on Wikipedia page of
> Krishna - and they asked for facts --  what do you expect me to do? I
> believe wiki is a good example of people over the globe trying to have
> "sameness" - even here there is bias.
>
> Second, on Jesus's wiki page I added a comment that many Indians believe
> that Jesus came to learn his skills in India (and I added a BBC report on
> that with weblink) and that was deleted - saying this is no research
> evidence -- for Indian news on Indian  culture even an obscure reference
> (with no weblink) in any newspaer article in remote India is considered okay
> by its editors -- incidently for Jesus they have stopped anyone from editing
> the page. Anyone is free to write anything about Krshna , Ram etc -- thats
> free for all.
>
> whats that to do with facts? Thats plain bias.
>
> Umesh
>
> *Rajen & Ajanta Barua <barua25 at hotmail.com>* wrote:
>
> Umesh:
> What you are saying is right.
> The West has a Eurocentric view of the world. They claim that the basic
> foundation of the Western Civilization, especially on science, is mainly
> based on Greek civilization. They even donot like to give proper credit to
> the Indian and Chinese contribution in mathetics and other science. I would
> say, the West is still in the Dark Age. However, they have a point. Indians
> basically donot have any record of what they did. If you want to counter the
> present Eurocentric view, the best (and only way) is to debate will SOLID
> facts and figures and not with rhetoric.
> If you have any specific issue, I would be glad to discus.
> Rajenda
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* umesh sharma <jaipurschool at yahoo.com>
> *To:* assam at assamnet.org
> *Sent:* Saturday, August 04, 2007 7:04 PM
> *Subject:* [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
>
>
> 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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>
>
>
> 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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