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by bangkoksbest
1595 days ago
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Liberalism is marked by comparison to abstract ideals. Whether and to what degree other areas of the world do worse in comparison to those ideals is not usually going to be something of paramount concern. This idealisation and universalisation is not only Western of course. I'm a mixed kid like your kids, but South India rather than Bangladesh, and I would be and am rather unquestionably accepted as Indian when I am there. But a major driver in the split between India and (then-)Pakistan comes down to the (novel & idiosyncratic) liberal ideals we compare to. As a final note re: the Crusades. I was not under the impression the Crusades were looked down upon because of war, but because they too often were incoherent raiding expéditions that sacked and subdued parts of Christendom even more than they won control of the Jerusalem. |
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"Liberal India" is a narrow slice of the country--more representative of the British culture that heavily influenced the Indian elite than ordinary Indians: https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-culture-wars-of-post-colonial...
Heck, my mom went to college and graduate school and had a white collar career in Bangladesh in the 1960s and 1970s. But she came from a wealthy, socially prominent family, and had British tutors growing up. It would be tremendously misleading to use her experience to talk about how "liberal" Bangladeshis are.