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Comment by olibhel | Hacker News Reader

+1 to this, as an Indian. There's been a recent trend in my country where people, educated or not, have suddenly started finding unnecessary pride in our past - mostly centered around culture and one specific religion - Hinduism.

This pride in the past, is helping our current government win elections in great majority.

But our past, like every other country's past, is riddle with good and bad. While there are many many good things about our culture, there are several things that were wrong and they still are.

For example:

- Women rights

- Caste system

- Servility

- Human suffering, exploitation of poor by the ruling class etc

The usual narrative is - everything wrong with the country is because of people from outside (invaders, colonists etc) and everything right in the country is because of our great Hindu culture.

And most "debates" with such people will end up with them mud slinging on another religion or country.

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I'm sorry but I don't see how the original comment did any of those things... it doesn't even make mention of any of the topics you have listed.

Well, not to take a side here, but it wouldn't, would it? The topics GP listed are (allegedly) 'continuing bad things from past', so why would someone with 'pride in their past' mention them?

Where has this 'pride in their past' narrative come from except for the comment that lists those topics? The comment I appreciated kumarvvr posting makes no proclamations about pride or India or Hinduism, it talks about cleaning practices and traditional herbs almost exclusively.

> Where has this 'pride in their past' narrative come from except for the comment that lists those topics?

Nowhere, but that's the thread we're in. I was just pointing out you perhaps misread what it was a list of, because it seemed to me perfectly consistent with the rest of the comment.

> The comment I appreciated kumarvvr posting makes no proclamations about pride or India or Hinduism, it talks about cleaning practices and traditional herbs almost exclusively.

I appreciated it too - and still do - just perhaps more so before reading some of the others.

Again, not 'taking a side' here, I don't really even know enough to judge what I'm being told, if you see what I mean. Here I was only intending to make a sort of meta-comment about your reply and the comment it was on, I'd have said the same in isolation without seeing the rest of the thread/submission.

(E.g. note I said 'allegedly' and 'someone' - I wasn't making any claims about anyone and certainly nothing personal.)

Thanks for explaining!

>I appreciated it too - and still do - just perhaps more so before reading some of the others.

I think we are on the same page.

Selected excerpts from comments of the user you mentioned, in this thread:

> The highest ideal in Hinduism is "Sarve jana, sukhino bhavanthu" (All living things should be happy)

> Spiritually, It is special, in the sense that Hinduism is not a religion but a philosophical way of life, that encourages debate, discussion, logical analysis and introspection. Historically, the only gift for questioning ones religion was a beheading in the case of Christianity and Islam.

More generally, "pride in their past" comes across in every comment they posted and the narrative that "disruption from outsiders caused poverty, before then food was plentiful, poverty as described in European middle ages was not present in India":

> In ancient times, right until the attacks by Islamist marauders and "civilized" Britishers, none of what you have mentioned were an issue. Your statement reeks of colonialist attitudes of seeing natives of other lands as some sort of brutes and degenerates living in destitution in poverty.

In response to someone claiming that there were (like in medieval Europe, the topic of this post) many poor people in India in the same time period:

> Come on, you can't tell me the poor, barely able to feed themselves, lucky to have fuel for cooking food, lucky to get porable water, barely a roof over their heads, had these luxuries?

The user in question replies:

> Yeah, no. Leaving aside a few famines here and there, India was mostly self sufficient and had plentiful of food.

No one said India was not "self-sufficient", we're talking about peasants in those times, having a low quality of life.

The only source the user shared for their assertions, seems to confirm peasants lived in poverty at the time (like anywhere else in the world): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32364750

It is strange to believe that my comment must remain accurate in perpetuity.

At the time of my writing, the user had two comments in this thread, one about cleaning practices and traditional herbs (that almost no one took issue with).

>In response to someone claiming that there were (like in medieval Europe, the topic of this post) many poor people in India in the same time period:

That is not at all what was claimed by that comment.

"No. You are the peasant. No lands for you, you aren't a lord or lady, you're a peon like 99.999% of people. Almost no middle class, and you aren't upper! You're lower class." is an ignorant statement.

>No one said India was not "self-sufficient", we're talking about peasants in those times, having a low quality of life.

You don't dictate what 'we are talking about'.

What you seem to struggle to comprehend is the linearity of time. When Kumavvr made their first and second comments, the topic was about medieval bathing. Now it has changed as the conversation developed yet you think the comments made before the topic changed are expected to also cover the topic which did not exist at the time of their writing.

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