Its a silly argument. I am sorry but there is no greatness in being very innovative in your evil genius. Being creative and original in your evil is no indication of the greatness of a culture. Rather it only highlights the social and moral bankruptcy your culture.
There are lots of Hitler admirers and Socialists in India, but you don't find Westerners practicing sati (widow burning) or advocating the caste system.
And widow burning does not happen in India anymore as much as witch burning does not happen in the west anymore. The west may not practice cast system but it has an its equivalent racism that's very much prevalent. And yes we have socialists in India as a result of the residual influence of the Raj but that will change soon. As for Hitler admirers, you must be out of your mind. There are hardly any Hitler admirers except for just a handful of right wing political whack jobs. In a country of one billion whack jobs are not difficult to find. We have all kinds, but at least we have nothing like the Neo-Nazis, Skin heads and Aryan Nation like gangs that you find in the west. The Hitler admiring is more because of anti-British attitude then love for Nazism. In fact many of them are victims of the European propaganda garbage (Blavatski theory) about Aryan invasion of India.
The Chinese are still calling themselves Communists, few Westerners today do likewise.
Actually the Chinese don't. Only their government calls themselves so. In fact today's China is hardly communist, its a free market economy under a totalitarian system.
Although we have let it down several times throughout history, the core idea of Western Civilization is that man is godlike and every human life therefore immensely valuable.
In India, a human life isn't worth much.
How so? How much was life worth in the West, during inquisition, crusades, pogrom of Jews, slave trade of Africans, the two world wars, holocaust, Soviet reign, and the not so old incident of the break up of Yugoslavia and the bloody massacre of Serbs, Bosnians, Croats, Slovenians and Albanians deep inside Europe and the current fighting in Isreal-Lebanon? It seems life is still worth a lot more in India then Europe despite the abnormal level of poverty that actually suppose to make life difficult to sustain. no India values human life a lot more. We may not have the bleeding heart feminists, environmentalists, animal lovers, gay rights/terrorist rights activists like in Europe but we actually value human life a lot more.
I don't deny the evils of Socialism. But even the horrors of Socialism is dwarfed by the splendor and beauty of Western Civilization as a whole.
You need to cool off on your hyperbole. Except for some temporary scientific development there is hardly anything that the west has to offer us that is worth anything of value and that which we cannot achieve through our own effort. As I said its only a matter of time. The Europe of today is nothing but a moral cesspool, a dying culture that's fast becoming a breeding ground of Islamic fascism, a paradise for socialists, homosexuals, drug addicts, feminists, and all kinds of losers conceivable. The best brains of the west no longer comes from Europe but from Asia with Indians and Chinese bagging more then half the number of patents in US universities. Almost 60% of the hi-tech startup ventures are founded by Indians alone and all the loudmouthed Euros weenies can do is brag about their greatness.
India might have invented the process of making sugar and might have produced more holy men than any other nation, but India did not invent the algebra. The Babylonians did.
To even get close to thinking about algebra let alone begin doing them, you would have to first learn how to use the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. The Binary, Hindu-Arabic numeral system, decimal and floating point numbers were invented in India. Do some research on "Pingala", "Aryabhata" "Brahmagupta" "Mahavira" "Bhaskar" "Panini", "Manjula ", "Bhaskaracharya ". Only later on came Liu Hui, Sun-Tzi, Heron, Diophantus, al-Khowarizmi.
Or simply read these:
http://india_resource.tripod.com/mathematics.htm
http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/saranagati/html/vishnu_mjs/math/math.html#Vedic-Math2
The strongest man made force in this universe is modern science. The single most important "innovation" that led to the development of modern science is the kind of calculus created by Newton and Leibniz (independent of each other), which so to say is a merge between Arabic algebra and Greek geometry.
Arabic algebra and Greek geometry lol? not Islamic rocket science? Yeah right. No wonder Europe is fading because of the Eurocentric socialist garbage that's taught in your curriculum.
Madhavacharya discovered Taylor series of Sine and Cosine function Newton Power series, Leibnitz series for Pi, Leibnitz series for the inverse Tangent about 300 years before Gregory Leibnitz, Newton or Taylor.
India and China have produced some good mathematicians but compared to the West they're nowhere near in influence.
LOL. Check this list: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Countries/India.html
And also read about this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
According to AL Basham
"Medieval Indian mathematicians, such as Brahmagupta (seventh century), Mahavira (ninth century), and Bhaskara (twelfth century), made several discoveries which in Europe were not known until the Renaissance or later. They understood the import of positive and negative quantities, evolved sound systems of extracting square and cube roots, and could solve quadratic and certain types of indeterminate equations." [6] Mahavira's most noteworthy contribution is his treatment of fractions for the first time and his rule for dividing one fraction by another, which did not appear in Europe until the 16th century."
"The debt of the Western world to India in this respect [the field of mathematics] cannot be overestimated. Most of the great discoveries and inventions of which Europe is so proud would have been impossible without a developed system of mathematics, and this in turn would have been impossible if Europe had been shackled by the unwieldy system of Roman numerals. The unknown man who devised the new system was, from the world's point of view, after the Buddha, the most important son of India. His achievement, though easily taken for granted, was the work of an analytical mind of the first order, and he deserves much more honor than he has so far received."
If you look at an important science like physics the picture is even more disheartening for Asian chauvinists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_physicists
Yes that's because that list does not include anybody who existed before the 19th century. duh! Scientific development developed did very much exist prior to the 19th century.
BTW:
Satyendra Nath Bose — India (1894–1974)
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar — India, USA (1910–1995)
Jagadeesh Moodera — India, USA (1950— )
Jayant Narlikar - India (1938 - )
Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman — India (1888–1970)
Thanu Padmanabhan - India (1957- )
Not bad for a poor country that's just taking the first steps.
India is a great nation and its culture and history sure are interesting, but for some reason people in India uncritically embrace every crackpot theory about India being the mother of all inventions, religions etc, etc.
Not the mother of all inventions, but yes among the oldest civilization and the grandest of them all and its not a crack pot idea although may Euro weenies may find it hard to swallow that the inferior dark skinned Asians were actually far more civilized and advanced then them and have preserved a culture far superior to the Euros.
If I claimed that the Vikings invented the Internet I would be called a fool in Scandinavia, if a person in India made the same claim his fellow countrymen would salute him as a great scholar.
Not at all. Much of India still gulps down the British "Indology" garbage left behind by our erstwhile colonial masters and are very ignorant about their own heritage. With better education that'll change.
My experience is that Westerners often are more self-critical than people from India.
In that case with all due respect I would have to say you have zero experience.
For instance, the theory that Vikings invented the compass long before the Chinese most Scandinavians find interesting but not 100% convincing, while the idea that Jesus went to India is something a lot of Indians uncritically believe.
A lot of Christian themselves believe so. In fact the first ones to put forth such theory were people from the west not from India. BTW compass was invented in China long before the Vikings claim to have invented it, they even claim they reached America on canoes. Sorry I don't buy any of that revisionist garbage.
Most linguists though would say the word "navigate" comes from the Latin word "navis", meaning "ship," and "agere", meaning "to move or direct".
Roman empire didn't even exist when Indians were treading the high seas. And Sanskrit is a far older language. Hardly surprising the Latin word actually came from the Sanskrit word, just the same way they adopted our number system.
Nothing wrong with being proud over your origin and your culture, but in the area of blind cultural chauvinism I think people of India are more laughable than I am.
I think Europeans are much more a victim of cultural chauvinism had have gone to abnormal lengths to emphasize their own contributions and greatness when in fact until just a few centuries ago they didn't even know the world was round. Yes it was the cultural renaissance followed by the industrial revolutions that changed the story for Europe and it was Islamic invasion that was the bane for India. The actual European story started only post industrial revolution.
Finally, let's have a look at the most important inventions/innovations humanity has made:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Notable_Innovation
I find a great deal of Western contribution to this list, but not much of Indian one.
The list includes quite a few few from India, China and other parts of Asia pre industrial revolution, but most importantly its just a list compiled on the Wiki by some unknown X,Y,Z, who included what he/she thought is important. For that matter even I can compile my own list on the Wiki.
In the long run, the nations of India and China will be able to challenge the West in areas like science and economy, but from their present position, they'll get nowhere without Western capital and and know how.
India and China are fascinating in many ways, but in general they can't compete with the West of today.
The truth is Europe is a dwindling civilization. The age of Europe is over. As for America and UK, there color is changing fast with greater influx of Asians. The US may survive as it has a greater capacity to absorb, adapt, and change but not Europe. As for technology and capital. The West itself is heavily dependent on the large human capital that comes from Asia and namely just the two country India and China. The reason why Europe is dying is because it lacks the human capital that India and China can provide (and I don't just mean population but population combined with quality education that's driving the economy of India and China). If you think its all the result of western technology and money then you are all mistaken. Human capital is worth much more than money or technology. Some of India's greatest present technological achievements is the result of home grown technology. 2007 India will be the fourth country that will launch man in space with completely indigenous technology and resources. The only other western country is the US (Soviet Union/Russia can be considered to be wedged between Asia and Europe). The other Asian country is China. India was the third country in the world to build the super computer after US and Japan again solely with indigenous technology and resources. Read about the "Param padma". The most advanced nuclear plants in India which are capable of re-processing spent fuel are totally developed with indigenous technology. There are plenty of such achievements.
Do you think Europe will be able to send man in space? Ever?
Again and again you confirm my notion that a lot of people with Indian roots simply refuse to accept reality as it is.
Simply put, their inferiority complex in the domains of cultural achievements, science, art and technology has led to a chauvinist obsession with the idea that India is the "mother" of all religions/civilizations/sciences/blablabla.
India did indeed develop a sort of civilization long before people did in the north of Europe, that's true, but it never really got off to a start.
It's easy to put forth wild theories about Indian mathematicians inventing this or that mathematical concept, but the lack of any substantial OUTCOME of these - presumtive - groundbreaking discoveries/innovations prooves that India never has been as dynamic as 19th century Britain or Renaissance Italy.
Concerning your stern belief in the importance and magnitude of ancient Indian mathematicians, It would be interesting to hear you comment on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Indian_mathematics
The same thing with linguistics. Some genius comes along and claim that "Navigare" comes directly from a Sanskrit word and uncritically, you swallow the bait.
Just because there are evident ties between Latin and Sanskrit doesen't mean that Latin is a "product" of Sanskrit or that Roman culture owed it existence to Indian culture like you seem to believe. Sooner, Sanskrit and Latin both are offsprings from a common source which we presently can not track.
While intelligent scholars and scientists work on a daily basis with these issues in universities and elsewhere, people like you have deliberately chosen to put faith in the theoretical Sackgasse and intellectual cul-de-sac consisting in the populist scam theory that India simply is "the mother" of all civilizations.
If India is that superior, why for instance has the European (mainly Greek) art of sculpture influenced Indian sculpture so much more than the other way around?
This is just one single example.
We could look at architecture and ask what India has done for the develpoment of say, the cupola. Is there any chhatris that can compete with the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore by Brunelleschi?
But of course he too went to India...
It isn't difficult to see why these, loose, unfounded, revisionist speculations are so popular among people of Indian descent and hinduphile New Age weirdos of the West.
It's all about inferiority complex and uncritical preparedness to go along with any putative authority that tells you what you wish to hear about "Mother India".
A patriotic sentiment is a natural and often benign approach to many issues. Blind cultural chauvinism on the other hand leads to mental constipation and hinders intellectual development on an individual as well as cultural level.
The widespread awareness of this truth is what separates the members of a high culture from a wannabe high culture.
This discussion in realtion to the article about Indian Mathematics is revealing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Indian_mathematics
The advocates of these theory haven't got much evidence.
It's all chauvinist speculations and interpretations.
Being Scandinavian I could easily CLAIM that the Vikings invented the compass before the Chinese. There are evidence,