You are grateful India is one of the poorest countries on Earth?
I am grateful that Indian culture has survived for so long, while other countries have lost their culture to foreign invaders or in the sands of time.
It doesn't matter what it was, what matters is what is.
Yes, the caste system today is archaic and needs to be sidelined, if not completely eliminated. There is no doubt about that.
My point was that the caste system has had different effects throughout Indian history. For most of Indian history, the caste system was crucial to maintaining stability, and stability is necessary for economic prosperity. Today, its an impediment more than anything else, because it no longer serves its historic purpose.
So dead bodies get thrown in the river, billions of people bathe in it every week, cows die, piss and crap in it by the millions and that is OK because it is religion. Get real...
I've already said that religion will eventually be sidelined as economic development continues. You cannot change a mindset overnight.
The real problem is not religion anyway, but the lack of modern sewage and water treatment facilities, as well as a lack of general ecological awareness. Both problems will take time to solve.
Sanitation for one, safety for another... the way those cows are treated would be animal cruelty in Western society, ie neglect.
Obviously, the population of stray animals should be controlled to prevent overunning of cities. But I would not want them to be eliminated completely, because I for one would miss them.
And please don't mention "animal cruelty". I have seen how animals are treated in factory farms and slaughterhouses in the United States. I'd rather not talk about it.
Wasnt' that before Aurangjeb's Deccan invasion which collapsed the Indian economy? I thought so...
There was something called the Maratha Empire that emerged after Aurangzeb's failed campaign. The Marathas unified most of India, and under their tutelage the Indian economy continued to prosper until about 1800. It was only starting in the late 18th century that visible signs of economic decline began to appear, and by the mid-19th century the Indian economy was in shambles. This economic collapse is the direct cause of British economic policies, the attempts of European revisionists to blame everything on the Muslims notwithstanding.
Mughal empire had a $90 billion economy in 1700, French Empire had a $200 billion economy in 1900. Let us use the currency inflator to find what that is worth today. $5 trillion for France using US inflator... $6.7 trillion for the Mughals using the pound inflator. The British Empire was worth FAR more.
I have no idea why you are comparing the economies of 18th century India and 20th century France.
The British Empire was worth far more because it owned India, lol.
No joke, the West was coming out of the Dark Ages. They called it Dark for a reason. Then there was a little thing called the Black Death which wiped out half the European population.
I'm taking about the 17th and 18th centuries. Europe by this time was well past the Dark Ages and into the late Renaissance. The Bubonic Plague had occurred three centuries earlier; it's completely irrelevant in the context of this discussion.
It wasn't the British that collapsed your economy, it was Aurangjeb that f***ed it all up. 100,000 dead per year, the entire treasury squandered... British didn't do shyte compared to that rape.
Do you really believe that?
10 million people died in the Bengal Famine of 1770 alone, which was a direct result of British policies. Bengal was occupied by the British during this time. Tens of millions more died in the subsequent famines during the British Raj, all the way to 1943. Nothing in the history of India compares to what the British did, and this is a fact. No use debating it.
The nature of colonialism is to exploit a country's resources for the benefit of the mother country, while at the same time systematically deindustrializing the colony and making it a giant market for the mother country's goods. This is what the British did in India, and it had a more devastating effect on India than any other colonized country in the world.
The statistics are already there to show that the Indian economy and share of world income were on par with Europe's right up the early 19th century. This was long after Aurangzeb. It is obvious what the real cause of the economic decline was.
What concepts were those? Syrian steel, Arabic mathematics, Chinese gunpowder? They may have had their origins in India, but India never did jack with it. Indians never could reproduce their own steel making recipe. You snooze you lose.
India actually did do "jack", because India had the largest economy (sometimes 2nd largest, to China) in the world right up to 1800. India was the world's top source of high-quality steel until the 18th century. Ever heard of wootz steel? It's the same as the famous Syrian steel that was exported to Europe during the Middle Ages, and it was first developed in South India. Same with Indian mathematics and the modern numeral system; they weren't developed by the Arabs, but the Arabs adopted them and later spread them to Europe.
I owe my modern life to sleeping Indians? Sure...
"We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made."
- Albert Einstein
There is a little Western alliance called NATO that holds 80% of the world's firepower. What is it in the East? The SCO that can't even stop genocide in its own backyard?
NATO and SCO are both collections of sovereign states with their own laws, customs, government, etc.
They are not politically unified. They are just allied with each other because they share certain common interests.
And now the peoples of the West are living lives of luxury and peace while the peoples of the East live in war, poverty and oppression. I will take my Western life any day, and so would anyone in the East!
Yes, they would.
But I hope they wouldn't need to in the future. I am working towards that goal.
History is always being made. Change is always occurring.