Silent.witness

About navies — I actually had a para (that I removed because the post was already too long) in the original post about early Indian navies and the puzzling decline of Indian influence in SE Asia. I do not buy the ‘Indians are peacable folk uninterested in empire’ argument for a minute, I speculated that this was due to a change of worldview of Indian kings (from exploratory to insular).

I really don’t want to get into a pissing match over where Bhakti originated; the point is in the ultimate analysis *wherever it originated* Bhakti et al was a failure in that it failed to uproot the superstitious rot that had set into Hinduism.

In fact the rot sustains itself to this very day in the profusion of superstition (one of the best examples being cow worship because it is so deeply ingrained into the Hindu psyche) and caste — and South India is not immune to caste problems, cf. the near-apartheid state of affairs between Brahmins/Non-Brahmins in Tamil Nadu right upto the 1800s, which of course had alarming consequences post-Independence.

Re ‘intellectual peaking in the Vedic period’ – well, if you define Vedic as upto ~100BC, then yes. The ‘achievements’ you mention (Advaita, Bhakti) are interesting spiritually but you can’t live on a diet of spirituality alone.

India was once a leader in the sciences and various academic disciplines as well. That pretty much went down the toilet as India’s education system became FUBARed. And that happened as much in South India as the North. You will note that even the Keralites or the Marathas (who were coastal people and could potentially easily interact with Arabia/Europe) were unable to capitalize on the Renaissance that was happening in Europe. There were no Indian Marco Polos travelling to Florence, and that I feel says a lot about the insular nature of India in that period.

Offhand I can think of the numerous political and architectural innovations of the Cholas: pioneers in organizing local self government, budgeting, accountability frameworks etc. Probably the only Indian kingdom which encouraged and supported a merchant owned navy.

On the west coast, the Keralites where busy importing and assimilating Arab, Jewish and Christian cultures. They also were learning and using new technology developed by the Chinese.

Philosophically, the Hindu revival, the Advaita philosophy and the Bhakthi movement originated and were nurtured in the south.

So, what intellectual peaking in the Vedic period? I agree that we never caught on the whole intellectual wave of the Renaissance,but I don’t agree that we slacked off after 10BC (?!).

Who cares what you once were, at this point in time you’re a third world developing country with very poor infrastructure, a large section living in abject poverty, disease, corruption and the like.

Unless people can give up the past and live in the present (and do something about things around them), there is not much hope. My two cents of course.