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History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

...on serious topics that don't fit anywhere else at present.
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Nirvanam
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#61 Post by Nirvanam » October 26th, 2010, 11:23 pm

Latest post of the previous page:

Fia, in all those different font sizes and formating I am not sure I understood you correctly. So please correct me,
you want me to show you why the early European Indologists version of Indian History is prejudiced, right?

I'll find you enough sources and inferences provided you are willing to go through them. In the meanwhile you can also have a look at the links Emma has posted on this thread about the Aryan Invasion Myth.

Also, I ask you sincerely, to help me...I want to convey that the Europeans specifically the British systematically looted and exploited the Indian subcontinent...what would be the right words to use here (assuming that the language used for referring to parties is generally how it is used when referring to Historical events).

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getreal
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#62 Post by getreal » October 26th, 2010, 11:29 pm

Also when I say your History text books teach Aryan Invasion myth I mean it as whichever grade your first History lesson about Indian civilization comes in. If you include Indian History in the 6th grade then it will be sixth grade text book. If it is only in higher studies like Undergraduate then it will be in those courses. I can tell you that in India, world History was taught to us only from the 10th grade. In 6th grade I remember there were mentions about civilizational beginnings of Humans i.e. Egyptians, Chinese, Mesopotamia, etc. So I'd not expect your schools to go in depth and teach about Indian civilization at school level. There will just be mention of Indian civilizations at school level (going by what you say). But whenever you encounter 'how Indian civilization developed' in History text books that is where you will find Aryan myth.
AFAIK Indian History is not taught at all in scottish schools at any stage. History is an optional subject after 2nd year at secondary school, anyway.
I checked the University of Glasgow's website ( who I know teach history, because a good friend's daughter is there) and cannot find Indian history as an option. They don't seem to teach it either.

You are stating AS FACT that where this is taught here, that this version of events (of which I have never heard, before you mentioned it a couple of months back) is being taught. Where? Where?

If you know that this is the case, SHOW ME! SHOW ME WHERE THIS IS BEING TAUGHT. Because for the life of me, I can't fucking find any reference to this anywhere in our education system!
"It's hard to put a leash on a dog once you've put a crown on his head"-Tyrion Lannister.

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Alan C.
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#63 Post by Alan C. » October 26th, 2010, 11:35 pm

I was hoping you would actually be friendly enough and try and help me out in finding the right word to describe what I have described as prejudice.
Nirvanam, I am friendliness personified, you offered the white flag and I accepted it, but then you took it and wiped your arse with it! Savvy?
Not the best way to make friends.

you use the word prejudice, do you even know the meaning? As far as I can see you are the only one on this forum that is prejudiced, you need to remove the chip from your shoulder,
You'll feel much better.
Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers.

Nirvanam
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#64 Post by Nirvanam » October 26th, 2010, 11:59 pm

Alan C. wrote:
I was hoping you would actually be friendly enough and try and help me out in finding the right word to describe what I have described as prejudice.
Nirvanam, I am friendliness personified, you offered the white flag and I accepted it, but then you took it and wiped your arse with it! Savvy?
Not the best way to make friends.

you use the word prejudice, do you even know the meaning? As far as I can see you are the only one on this forum that is prejudiced, you need to remove the chip from your shoulder,
You'll feel much better.
Alan continue to abuse me, I will not abuse you. You are saying the word prejudice is not the right word...I sincerely asked you to help me with what would be the correct word...can you please help me now at least if you have satiated your desire to abuse me?

Marian
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#65 Post by Marian » October 27th, 2010, 1:29 am

It occurs to me that all of your threads and the exchanges that go on in them is simply attention-seeking behaviour. I don't believe for a second that your English is bad. Nonsense and you know it. Don't use that as an excuse.

You keep throwing out the term ego one-upmanship, yet, you seem to consistently engage in this exact behaviour yourself. You seem to want everyone else to do your work for you and then when they do it, you claim you don't understand. ie. Fia's re-writing your paragraph. BS!

I'm calling you on your trollish behaviour and it doesn't matter how much you want to 'beg' me to help you. I'm not interested. I don't believe you need the help. The best way to learn is for you to experience the consequences of your behaviour and in so doing, perhaps you'll eventually learn some modesty and humility; they go a long way to making friends with others.

But I understand, Nirvanam, I was once married to someone who had the same attitude as yourself and he felt so hard-done- by against anyone who was white. He had a myriad of reasons for how and why this occurred and nothing anyone said made any difference because he wasn't listening. The whole world was doing him wrong in his eyes and he was going to make everyone else pay and what happened in the end was that nobody wanted anything to do with him.
Transformative fire...

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animist
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#66 Post by animist » October 27th, 2010, 2:32 pm

Nirvanam wrote:But whenever you encounter 'how Indian civilization developed' in History text books that is where you will find Aryan myth.
I know Nirvanam is putting people's backs up by his angry manner, but I wonder if there is a bit of misunderstanding too. I think he really means that the Aryan Invasion Theory is simply the accepted wisdom in the West; he is probably wrongly assuming that it is actually taught widely in schools. From my own very small reading of Indian history as presented in eg encyclopaedias, I think there is something in what he says: ie that the Aryans are usually described as the dominant "race" in India and that they came from outside India, probably from the Iranian plateau.

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Emma Woolgatherer
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#67 Post by Emma Woolgatherer » October 27th, 2010, 11:23 pm

I've just found this, at "Indo-Europeans in Ancient India", in Kidipede, an online encyclopedia for kids:
About 1500 BC, India was invaded by Indo-European people. These people came from the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian sea. Between 2500 and 2000 BC, many Indo-Europeans migrated all over Eurasia. Some went to Europe and became the Romans and the Greeks, some settled in Turkey and became the Hittites. Others migrated south-east instead. Some of them stopped in Iran, while others continued south-east to Pakistan and India. The slow migration did not arrive in northern India until about 1500 BC. In India, the Indo-Europeans are usually called the Aryans.

Some people have disputed this arrival of the Indo-Europeans, and if you search the web you will find some sites saying that it never happened. But there are written records of the language that these Indo-European people brought with them to India, Sanskrit. We can read Sanskrit, and we can easily see that many words in Sanskrit are basically the same as in other Indo-European languages. In addition, recent genetic evidence supports the arrival of the Indo-Europeans.
Emma

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getreal
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#68 Post by getreal » October 27th, 2010, 11:41 pm

Thank you Emma! You have managed to explain the issue in one short post.

So, what's your problem with this interpretation of events, Nirvanam? I'm not being provocative here, I would genuinely like to understand why this would be so objectionalble.
"It's hard to put a leash on a dog once you've put a crown on his head"-Tyrion Lannister.

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Emma Woolgatherer
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#69 Post by Emma Woolgatherer » October 28th, 2010, 12:09 am

Nirvanam, have you by any chance read the book by Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity? I rather like Sen, so might well have considered buying that, but it sounds as though his views are completely opposed to yours. And have you read an article entitled "Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts", by Michael Witzel, Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University: pdf file? Hmmm. Some very harsh things said in the latter. You wouldn't like it at all, Nirvanam. I still don't know what to think. Still undecided ...

Emma

Marian
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#70 Post by Marian » October 28th, 2010, 12:17 am

I have no argument with Nirvanam's quip about there not being an Indo-Aryan invasion. There is a Western scholar who has written an interesting article about the subject. http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/a ... awley.html

Unless I've read this wrong, which is possible, it seems that the Indo-Aryans were already in the region in question but these are not Aryans in the sense of being British or the forebears of Neo-Nazis. But I was pretty tired when I read it so maybe someone else can have a go.

My issue is with presentation, attitude and 'game-playing' with us as the recipients of misdirected rage. Nirvanam needs to relax. I don't mind being given an idea, calmly and without the 'chip on the shoulder' attitude and we talk about it. Without the rage, without the intensity, without the 'I know better than you' attitude which is condescending and patronizing. Nirvanam's demeanor comes across in an extremely negative and hostile way when referring to the British and the West. We are not the enemy.
Transformative fire...

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Emma Woolgatherer
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#71 Post by Emma Woolgatherer » October 28th, 2010, 12:20 am

Nirvanam wrote:Here is a link of the case where California text books had introduced this and the Indian community there had successfully challenged it.
http://www.letindiadevelop.org/irochtc/ ... 9-05.shtml
That link's a bit out of date, Nirvanam. It was dated December 2005. This blog post from Raju Rajagopal is dated October 2006: "The Great Aryan Non-Debate",
After months of controversy, the California Superior Court finally ruled in early September on the highly-contested sixth-grade History-Social Science textbooks. The judge refused to block the publication of the books, overruling objections by the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) and its Hindutva [2] allies that they discriminated against Hinduism (see my previous posts for details about this important judgment). One of the hotly debated topics during the controversy was the origin of the Aryans: The state’s curriculum standards require coverage of Aryan ‘invasions’; the textbooks themselves mostly describe Aryan ‘migrations’; but HAF and it allies insisted on using the sixth-grade classroom to legitimize their Aryan indigenity hypothesis, which had failed to take hold in NCERT books in India.

What is the reality behind persistent claims by champions of Hindutva that the Aryan Migration Theory (AMT) has been ‘demolished’?

A closer examination of their arguments over the years reveals more hype and false piety (including an international hoax) than scholarly substance. As Prof. Stephanie Jamison of UCLA recently put it, “The Indo-Aryan controversy is a manufactured one with a non-scholarly agenda, and the tactics of the manufacturers are very close to those of the ID [Intelligent Design] proponents … real scientific questions are being debated on what is essentially a religio-nationalistic attack on a scholarly consensus.”
And this is from an earlier blog post: "History or Hysteria? A Parent's Response to the Hindu American Foundation":
In opposing the prevailing scholarly consensus that the Aryans migrated to the Indian subcontinent from the west, HAF contended that “The origins of Hinduism are understandably a matter of great sensitivity to Hindus.” This is an obvious attempt to contrive a linkage between the history of the entire South Asian region and the supposed sentiments of a religious community.

Working closely with HAF and HEF in promoting this hypothesis was a line-up of western Hindutva writers -– mostly non-Historians -- who have been in their bully pulpits for some time preaching Hindus how they ought to view their history, and who accuse Indians without a trace of irony of becoming “intellectual slaves” to the west! Their animus for reputed historians like Romila Thapar and Indologists like Michael Witzel has in recent years won them special places of honor alongside Sangh Parivar ideologues.

In reality, the origin of Aryans is of little contemporary relevance to Hindu children, other than to those who have been fed a constant dose of false pride in a romanticized Vedic past predating the Indus Valley Civilization. And the ‘debates’ have been mostly confined to amateur historians, who have lately been clinging to often-contradictory genetic evidence to bolster their case, despite the fact that such studies can not possibly distinguish between events separated my a mere three to four thousand years: If DNA evidence is deemed good enough to conclude that Aryan migrations in the second millennium BCE are a myth, they can also conclude -– absurdly -- that Muslim invasions in the second millennium CE are a figment of our imagination!

In any event, considering that the debate of such historical significance has barely begun, the sixth grade classroom in California is hardly the place to settle the issue; and the Board was right in instructing publishers to merely add a cautionary note that the concept is being debated by scholars.
And there's a later blog entry, dated June 2009, that I think brings the issue up to date: "CAPEEM Loses Its Challenge to CA Textbooks".

Emma

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animist
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#72 Post by animist » October 28th, 2010, 9:58 am

Nirvanam wrote:Also, please note that (now I wanna pull your leg) this is just one instance of showing that we choose to believe based on the faith we place in who, where, and how it comes from.
this is an enormously complex issue about which I know very little, and so do most Westerners: as Emma implied, most of us are simply not interested enought to investigate it comprehensively. So I do think "faith" is absolutely the wrong word to use here, because "faith" suggests a commitment to a particular viewpoint. "Assumptions" is a more appropriate word, maybe

Nick
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#73 Post by Nick » October 28th, 2010, 9:12 pm

Nirvanam,

From your extensive knowledge of History (why the capital H?) perhaps you could tell us who is credited with originating that insulting phrase: "!The Third World"?

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Alan C.
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#74 Post by Alan C. » October 29th, 2010, 12:14 am

Nirvanam
Alan continue to abuse me, I will not abuse you. You are saying the word prejudice is not the right word...I sincerely asked you to help me with what would be the correct word...can you please help me now at least if you have satiated your desire to abuse me?
Please show me where I've abused you, then fuck off (that's abuse)
As you clearly don't know the definition, (due to your limited knowledge of English)
Don't make me laugh :laughter:
But just in case you really don't get it, I'll spell it out for you.
You come across as a racist bigot with an almighty chip on your shoulder, you make sweeping statements about "Westerners" (today) without any visible justification And you [seem to] claim to know everything about us but think we know nothing about you [India].
You're a troll Nirvanam and I' ll have no more to do with you, (unless you say something that gets up my nose) good night/morning. :finger:
Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers.

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animist
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#75 Post by animist » October 29th, 2010, 9:15 am

Nick wrote:Nirvanam,

From your extensive knowledge of History (why the capital H?) perhaps you could tell us who is credited with originating that insulting phrase: "!The Third World"?
phrases go in an out of fashion and political acceptability, and I did not even realise that "Third World" was now unacceptable. It is certainly technically obsolete, since "First World" meant the fairly rich countries of the capitalist West, "Second World" meant the former Communist bloc, and "Third World" meant the politically "uncommitted" and predominantly poor remainder. Oh dear, I remember reading a very worthy tome (and for pleasure!) called "The Third World" - this was in about 1971

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jaywhat
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#76 Post by jaywhat » October 29th, 2010, 9:24 am

I think you made yourself pretty clear there, AlanC ! :smile:

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animist
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#77 Post by animist » October 29th, 2010, 9:47 pm

jaywhat wrote:I think you made yourself pretty clear there, AlanC ! :smile:
unless Nirvanam is suspended again or permanently banned, his style is such that he is always going to annoy people, and IMO this should not be a barrier to enjoying and commenting on his ideas. I really don't care that he thinks I am ignorant about things which concern him: I am indeed ignorant, that's why I like reading other people's posts

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Emma Woolgatherer
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#78 Post by Emma Woolgatherer » October 30th, 2010, 12:29 am

animist wrote:phrases go in an out of fashion and political acceptability, and I did not even realise that "Third World" was now unacceptable. It is certainly technically obsolete, since "First World" meant the fairly rich countries of the capitalist West, "Second World" meant the former Communist bloc, and "Third World" meant the politically "uncommitted" and predominantly poor remainder.
Yes, definitely obsolete. Trouble is, the alternative "developing countries" is not without its problems, either. It does rather imply the inferiority of "developing countries" compared to "developed countries", and there's an assumption that development has to be according to a traditional "Western" capitalist model. Also, the term implies that the countries actually are developing, rather than standing still or even deteriorating. "Less developed countries" gets round the second problem but not the first. "Less economically developed countries" may be more precise, but it's a bit of a mouthful. The term "majority world" was proposed a while ago, intended as a reminded that we were talking about the greater part of the world, but it doesn't seem to have caught on yet, and I'm not sure it achieves its aim. The term I prefer is "the Global South". It's not perfect, because of the geographical positions of places like Australia, New Zealand and Mongolia (see map). But then "the West" doesn't make an awful lot of sense geographically, and that's still used all the time (albeit ambiguously). Of course, the Global South includes not only the poorer countries but also newly industrialised countries like India, China, Brazil and South Africa. If I'm talking about poorer countries, then I say "poorer countries". That seems to be the standard term used these days by the UN and NGOs, and I think the "broadsheets" as well.

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Emma

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animist
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Re: History of Humanity (Neo Nazis and other theories)

#79 Post by animist » October 30th, 2010, 6:58 am

Emma Woolgatherer wrote:Trouble is, the alternative "developing countries" is not without its problems, either. It does rather imply the inferiority of "developing countries" compared to "developed countries", and there's an assumption that development has to be according to a traditional "Western" capitalist model. Also, the term implies that the countries actually are developing, rather than standing still or even deteriorating. "Less developed countries" gets round the second problem but not the first. "Less economically developed countries" may be more precise, but it's a bit of a mouthful. The term "majority world" was proposed a while ago, intended as a reminded that we were talking about the greater part of the world, but it doesn't seem to have caught on yet, and I'm not sure it achieves its aim. The term I prefer is "the Global South". It's not perfect, because of the geographical positions of places like Australia, New Zealand and Mongolia (see map). But then "the West" doesn't make an awful lot of sense geographically, and that's still used all the time (albeit ambiguously). Of course, the Global South includes not only the poorer countries but also newly industrialised countries like India, China, Brazil and South Africa.
yes, the publication for which I work ("British Humanities Index" or "BHI") indexes these countries as "Underdeveloped countries" - BTW, changes in fashion like this are a constant problem for publications like BHI which try to maintain consistent thesauri etc; we have a synonym reference from "Developing countries". The countries which you mention at the end have their own acronym these days: "Bric" - except that this includes Russia but not South Africa. Lastly, yet another description which I actually run into more than the others (this may just reflect the periodicals I read) is "emerging economies"; there is inevitably much more need these days to differentiate between dynamic if still poor countries like China and India on the one hand, and those countries, often in Africa, which remain grindingly poor and are increasingly being "developed" by non-Western countries like China.

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