Ishwa helper Reged: 03/03/02 Posts: 553

Re: The love/hate relationships between [Re: mahadeva] #14175 - 03/31/02 07:01 AM Edit Reply Quote

I agree with Mahadeva. We are Hindus, whether in north, south east or west. Even if we were on the moon or anywhere outside. About north and south In older days there was a Uttarapatha and a Dakshinapatha. These were trading routes, comparable with highways. The Dakshinayana and Uttarayana have to do with divisions of timemeasurements. Ayana = half year. The regional differences were always there from the oldest periods, but didn't prevent all to be one culturally. Though having different subcultures. Of course there were many debates between the great philosophers of any region. Whenever one became the victor it meant that his way of thinking was adopted by others no matter of what region he was. Shankaracharya was from South India, Sayanacharya and Madhavacharya too, Gautama Buddha was from Nepal, Mahavira Jina was from Bihar, Vasudeva Krshna was from Mathura, Vyasa Krshna was from UP, there were many great Sants from Maharashtra or Panjab with tremendous influence. The Gift of Exclusiveness The North-South divide is still a British virus which cant leave the Indian mind. India has to find a remedy to this (and other viri). The root problem for any society is 'divide with judgement', virus number one. A second(ary) virus is 'segregation with judgement'. The colonialists of India have planted this second virus in the Indian mind: Let us not feel similar to 'them'. Let us stress our differences from our point of view. A third virus is the 'morality with judgement' virus: Let us give 'them' a moral low position. I must say that Indian people learnt very fast. Though everything is changing slowly for the better the seeds are still in the minds of some. Note on something different I believe that racialism was something of 16th-20th century European minds. In the Roman Empire you could make a career whther you were Roman or not. In other empires that was the same case. (Of course the most powerful families used nepotism) I believe no other culture has cultivated the race = colour thinking. People didn't think in 'we are racial semites you are indo-europeans and they are racial mongols'. People only identified themselves with a group. And the strange thing happened that people who were actually not of the same group (even ethnically) did call themselves by name of the dominant other group. (I leave behind whether this was forcefully done or not) Now we have in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan people who call themselves with names like 'Khan' though not being Mongols at all. (The Mongols actually hardly reached India, it was a group of Turks, like the Mughals, who were former slaves under Mongol hegemony) But to divide on colour skin is something which was a phenomenonal system from the colonialist period. It was the first step to divide on that base in practice. The second step was to mould the history of (other) cultures in that shape of colour thinking. The third step is to make it a scientific fact, and the fourth step is to deny counterarguments. An the final step is to make the counterargumentists into nationalists. And see, this is India today.