[spaceman_2020]

India has been getting high on its own supply for a few years now. The narrative is that all knowledge originated in ancient Indian texts and was stolen by the west. Even the ISRO chief made a comment in this vein a few days back.

Cultures that keep looking at imagined past glories, imo, are destined to become static and falter.

[local_crmdgeon]

>Cultures that keep looking at imagined past glories, imo, are destined to become static and falter.

If education was just chanting this half the day the world would be better off.

I had a Hindu nationalist recently berate me about how the "US had lost the Space Race, ISRO was the clear winner."

I mentioned the US landed on the Moon first, and he said "would rather have not landed on the Moon than live in a country with a large number of Black people" (put less pleasantly).

Weird guy! Weird political movement!

[SAS_SBS]

Indian here. Your exchange doesn't surprise me one bit. The Hindu nationalists are some of the most delusional, ultra-nationalistic, racist morons out there.

Many of them think India is going to be the next superpower and economic miracle out there. There's a large number of them working in big tech, and they'll say how fantastic India is, now that there are very high-paying tech jobs available there (almost all of them in American companies) and this gives them fantastic standards of living because they can easily afford maids and cooks aka cheap labor they can exploit. I scratch my head and wonder, if India is so good WTF are they still doing here, while also working on their Green Card petitions?

[onetimeusename]

I've seen this too. My ex is kind of a Hindu nationalist and her friend group and family are full of them. Her brother even threatened her for dating me saying he would cut off all contact and never let her see his children unless she consented to do an arranged marriage with an Indian (which she secretly came here to escape).

But then the same Hindu nationalists had this weird tendency to think they were entitled to US based tech jobs. They would claim Indians were responsible for all the tech companies in the US being successful and not Americans and that America is this awful, sad, corrupt society that they really wanted to get into despite India being better in every way apparently. It was irritating at times and sad because this isn't uncommon imo.

[witchesindublin]

A lot of the US tech industry was built on the backs of Indians. You'll find that the Indians were the second largest race involved in early computing after the Whites.

The second point is that a lot of the problems in India do stem from colonialism - in Asian culture the vast majority don't usually segregate Europe from the US, and view Americans as being just as responsible for colonialism and the benefits of colonialism as modern-day Europeans.

[onetimeusename]

Was the US tech industry built on the backs of whites also then? You're not denigrating anyone's accomplishment are you?

[rodgerd]

> I scratch my head and wonder, if India is so good WTF are they still doing here

Some of Erdoğan's most reliable voters live in Germany. It's not uncommon.

[77pt77]

> because they can easily afford maids and cooks aka cheap labor they can exploit

Is this in India or abroad?

[samarthr1]

Is ~100$ a month, for 2 hours of work a day, 3 days paid leave, support for children's education underpaying?

Oh, and the same maid works in 4 different houses, getting a reasonable monthly income.

[jcranmer]

> I had a Hindu nationalist recently berate me about how the "US had lost the Space Race, ISRO was the clear winner."

... did they give any examples of ISRO space accomplishments that predate US or Soviet accomplishment?

[ff2400t]

One important thing to know about people like these is that they don't have a rational argument They have a Believe and they like to shout it out to the world.

[jcranmer]

Oh, I'm absolutely aware of that, I was just curious if there was literally anything they could point to that could, if viewed at through significantly rose-colored lenses, be seen as support for their statement. Like maybe (given my previous experience with Hindu nationalists) some passage in the Vedas that was interpreted to mean ancient Hindus were actually a spacefaring race or something.

[local_crmdgeon]

No, he just pivoted to talking about how America is just a bunch of "Black ghettos" and then I blocked him.

[SAS_SBS]

It's mostly them dancing on "see ISRO launches satellites for so much more less cost!". Like PPP, labor and material costs being much expensive in the US are not factors that exist.

[psychoslave]

> The narrative is that all knowledge originated in ancient Indian texts and was stolen by the west.

There is plenty of objective material to feed discourses about admirable achievements that Indian people offered to mankind. I mean, think Pāṇini or Ramanujan to cite only two people whose work are well known in HN community. But obviously they are numerous example in many western scholar fields and beyond like yoga or Kamasutra.

It makes all the more ridiculous any attempt to exaggerate about glorious past: those who do prove themselves not living up the depth and fine grained nuances of their actual heritage.

[77pt77]

All languages derive from Sanskrit is another trope.

An indo-european language no less.

It's beyond pathetic.

[lannisterstark]

You misspelled Tamil! /s

or was it Telugu. I forget lol.

[77pt77]

Nope. It has always been Sanskrit.

This last guy claimed that those languages also derived from it.

And he didn't like "those people" either.

There might have been aliens into the mix as well.

[renewiltord]

Can't be Tamil, that's a Dravidian language - not Indo-European. It's usually Sanskrit because that's the High Language.

[witchesindublin]

Tamils also have a similar concept.

[kamaal]

Tamils mostly take pride in the age of their language and its continued use till date. They also make their identity around this. They don't claim that every language originated from theirs or that computers need to be programmed with Tamil.

[lannisterstark]

A lot of them absolutely do. there are plenty of memes about You lot doing the same thing. Just search for "Tamil language original meme"

[postalrat]

What countries don't look back at their past glories?

[prakashk]

I hope you aren't using the "everybody does it" argument to normalize, or worse, justify this stupidity.

That every country has its share of people who engage in such backward-looking, glorifying-the-past behavior does not make it right.

[witchesindublin]

If everyone does it then maybe it isn't stupid? Your argument isn't a valid one.

[notmypenguin]

Also, as a person who has experienced xenophobia in over 50 nations I can tell you that it’s never the best and brightest who stayed in their home town and defend it against outsiders via physical violence and harassment. I have a metal plate and five screws in my leg that tell me your proposals are a no go.

[notmypenguin]

No, it means stupid people arise from any genetic heritage given the comfort and luxury to establish said stupidity sans real world interference

[FreshStart]

Germany, the US in more lefty towns, eastern Europe were the colonial past half devoured the culture. Conquered and defeated empires.

[gostsamo]

Being from Eastern Europe, I can confidently say that being a defeated empire does not prevent idiots from reimagining the past.

Everyone looks at the glory of yesterday, but some are much more obsessed with it. It becomes issue when it leads to contradicting the facts, using it to harm others, and preventing yourself from building a better future.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Conquered and defeated empires

These are the cultures that do this most. Pointing to a mythologized and stolen past greatness is a coping mechanism for the insecurities of a flagging present.

[vkou]

Surely, you must be aware that this thing called 'Make America Great Again' is a backwards-looking 'movement' that has half the country (and a third of the lefty towns) in its thrall. (Just don't ask them to say what 'Great' is out loud, you're not going to get an answer appropriate for polite company.)

And even besides it, the US is highly backwards-looking. At its best, it's political culture is ossified and enslaved to the predominant opinions of a small group of people who are two centuries dead. (While being oblivious to the fact that within that group, there was a huge spectrum of disagreement on these fundamental questions!)

Pile on a bunch of American Exceptionalism, and you get a perfect thought-terminating cocktail of 'It is this way because it's always been this way and because we are the greatest country in the world.'

[spaceman_2020]

They all do. But too much of it and it makes you forget that there’s a future left to build.

India’s obsession with the past has coincided with a period of anaemic real growth and widespread joblessness and unemployment.

[rhaway84773]

You left out “imagined”.

[MagicMoonlight]

And yet they literally shit in the street. It’s one of the funniest contradictions in human history.

[snapcaster]

Yeah such a backwards culture. They should have the common sense to be born in my country which invented Freedom and Democracy and is a shining beacon for the entire world!