General History Thread - India : News , Updates & Discussions .

[Azaad]

so spent some time watching this and other presentations of his on this new book of his, listing out a few highlights:

- Indian sphere of influence was 6000 km to the west in rome, and 3000 km to east in SE asia.
- chinese silk road does not make sense, and a recent invention of 20th century. ancient Indian shipping lanes carried a lot of weight and in faster times than what camels would have carried along what CCP's chini silk road map claims.
- after cleopatra died and romans got control of egypt, trade with India opened up because of their control of nile. traders were even transporting elephants to rome, meaning ships were that huge.
- after rome fell and gold stopped coming in from the west, tamil trading guilds started looking east, that's when focus on SE asia started and hindusm spread towards east.
- he attributes spread of buddhism in china as court religion, to huwen tsang who we read about in our school text books. he became an advisor to a young concubine who went to become only chinese empress in their history. budhism was adopted as part of power struggle in the emperor's court against confucius theology.
- he traces the journey of hindu numerals and zero from aryabhatta->arab lands-> mediterranean->fibonacci->europe--> modern accounting--> and back to India to colonise .

and other anecdotes as well.

and as expected, in almost every presentation he made sure his audience knows that he does not like modi and Indian "RW". and for some reason, he doesn't want to acknowledge sushruta samhita, considering he has been living in India for 40 years, even i read it by my 8/9th class because my grandfather had a copy in his library.

My point is why do we need a bloody foreigner to tell us our own history that too a Scotsman of all people - who were at the very forefront of our colonization .

His work ought to be targeted at the west which it is but wonder of wonders , he'd use that validation / acclaim to sell his books here since we as a people still need western validation no matter how much higher & farther we jump at the very mention of de colonization.

I can state straight off the bat , the overwhelming majority of his sales would be from India as compared to the west where he'd get a lukewarm response sales wise.

I used to be a fan of him till these brown pundit guys & their associates primarily Prathmesh Godbole took him to the cleaners for the many discrepancies some very obvious & school boy stuff apart from his grand conclusions , when he launched The Anarchy with the result he had no defence whatsoever & did what was expected of him which is to block most of them.

 

[ezsasa]

My point is why do we need a bloody foreigner to tell us our own history that too a Scotsman of all people - who were at the very forefront of our colonization .

His work ought to be targeted at the west which it is but wonder of wonders , he'd use that validation / acclaim to sell his books here since we as a people still need western validation no matter how much higher & farther we jump at the very mention of de colonization.

I can state straight off the bat , the overwhelming majority of his sales would be from India as compared to the west where he'd get a lukewarm response sales wise.

I used to be a fan of him till these brown pundit guys & their associates primarily Prathmesh Godbole took him to the cleaners for the many discrepancies some very obvious & school boy stuff apart from his grand conclusions , when he launched The Anarchy with the result he had no defence whatsoever & did what was expected of him which is to block most of them.

so he is continuing his legacy as a scotsmen/ leeching money off of brown people.

irrespective of what his personal motivations are, this also indicates that there is some kind of revivalism of topics which stopped after emergency. there is some demand for books for such topics, those who ought to flood the field with books on these topics don't have enough resources to do so, these sort of chaps will take advantage of the situation to fulfill the demand in their own language and worldview.

and since the current nationalist regime seems to have adopted chanakyan model of governance, which does not want to be nanny state that dictates every little detail like a ashokan state, and rather allow the civil society to evolve on it's own. the ball is in civil society's court, if someone feels the fatty is being duplicitous, let the civil society respond thru criticism and academic rebuttal.

 

[Azaad]

so he is continuing his legacy as a scotsmen/ leeching money off of brown people.

irrespective of what his personal motivations are, this also indicates that there is some kind of revivalism of topics which stopped after emergency. there is some demand for books for such topics, those who ought to flood the field with books on these topics don't have enough resources to do so, these sort of chaps will take advantage of the situation to fulfill the demand in their own language and worldview.

and since the current nationalist regime seems to have adopted chanakyan model of governance, which does not want to be nanny state that dictates every little detail like a ashokan state, and rather allow the civil society to evolve on it's own. the ball is in civil society's court, if someone feels the fatty is being duplicitous, let the civil society respond thru criticism and academic rebuttal.

Present regime is more interested in Dhando. Not blaming them as bhooke peth bhajan nahin hote. After all a healthy economy can help us focus on other areas such as these.

Among the many grouses I've one of the more important ones is their total apathy to explore ways & means to free temples from government hold & evolve a suitable framework to ensure it doesn't get into unscrupulous hands by instituting proper audit mechanisms.

Another of my pet peeves is to cut subsidies to humanities & hound top institutes like IITs to focus on their charter instead of opening up a menagerie. At best all they ought to have apart from STEM based curricula are economics & law as subjects.

 

[Azaad]

View: https://youtu.be/B-rZ_GKb9xk?si=4gGSoTd-mRtZIWij

Frankly I'd rather we discuss these attempts by Indian born & based historians who've overcome what we've all gone through namely foundational level distortion in our history as taught to us in schools to transcend it & carve out his own path, which we while we ridicule Paxtan's attempts at coming to terms with its own history should also note as to how're we better placed to ridicule them ?


I hope this podcast reaches much more people than intended which is to say that people with little interest in both Tipu & the book on him penned by Vikram Sampath at least view the podcast assuming they won't be buying the book.

What also comes across quite clearly is the transactional spirit of the Hindus which even back in the 18th century was Dhandho Parmo Dharma which some one as astute as Hyder Ali immediately recognises as he calls Hindus a feeble lot not very different from the British description of Hindus being an effeminate lot ( Pranami Gandu & his non violence only underlining their thoughts & beliefs ) & Muslims being the virile ones . Strength has ALWAYS respected strength.

What's more if Tipu wasn't a megalomaniac & indulged in extreme bigotry those Hindus serving him would continue to do so ! What changed the course of events was he brought in his bigoted views to his Court & did away with them .

If this isn't the saddest take away of this podcast , I don't know what is. Plenty of other reveals awaiting those patient enough to sit through 2 hours.

Enjoy !