Indian people should NEVER bow their heads to no one. However, I recognize their inferiority complex has some reasons I'll thoroughly explain and prove below. But one huge problem with their inferiority complex is the fact that they are ignorant about their own reality. Just like us, brazilians, are.
One might ask: what does this nosey foreigner know about our country? Well, I don't know much because I have been there only as an intellectual/religious/cultural tourist. But, I’ve been a huge admirer of their culture for more than half of my lifetime.
Moreover, what I do know is enough to stand for what I said: Indian people have no reason to bow to no one and if they only knew better about their country and acted accordingly, many things would starting changing for good.
So, why I believe they have an inferiority complex and why they should change is a result of my views and my research below. The way I organized it is based upon the work of French born and India based Journalist Francois Gautier – “India's Self Denial”:
1. The strategy of british empire to undermine Indian self-steem and destroy it’s culture
1.1. Education
Enter Thomas Babington Macaulay, the so called (by the British) Lord Macaulay. His ideas on how to control Indian population through education became a whole doctrinal body called Macaulayism. The description of this term in the Wikipedia entry is absolutely disgusting:
"Macaulayism is the conscious policy of liquidating indigenous culture through the planned substitution of the alien culture of a colonizing power via the education system. The term is derived from the name of British politician Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), an individual who was instrumental in the introduction of English as the medium of instruction for higher education in India."
Furthermore, on his Address to the British Parliament, on 2nd February of 1835 he, himself, recognized: “I have travelled across the lenght and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief, such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-steem, their native culture, and they will become what we want them: a truly dominated nation.”
You see, my fellow Indians… Just like other ‘supremacist’ countries, many features present in today’s India were actually deliberatly engineered to make you lose connection with who you are. And you are something far greater than western cultures tried to make you believe. Nobody but yourselves have the right to tell you who you are or how far you can go. Only you. Please, never lose grasp of who you are.
The reason why I get emotional about this, is because a huge part of what I am I owe to Indian culture and their ancient texts. If it was completely wiped out, I don’t know how people like me around the world would ever be able to understand many of the spiritual mysteries about the creation of our reality and what should we do to return to “the source”.
1.2. The absolute bullshit on the Aryan Invasion
I could just kindly ask you to google “Aryan Invasion bullshit” and you’ll get an overwhelming motherlode of evidence on why this was another of the strategies of the British Crown to suck away the very substance of Indians in order to bring them down to its knees.
Instead, I’m providing a couple of good sources of evidence I found myself. Archaeology Online, for instance, is one website aimed at bringing light to such a controversial subject and if you are an Hindu and love your country and your roots, I would highly recommend you to read it. In this website, there are many scientific work on Aryan Invasion Theories proving how and why all of it were spawned from German and Britain which each of them used to achieve their particular goals.
Also in that website, French born Journalist Francois Gautier, in his extremely enlightening work India's Self Denial, with respect to The Theory of the Aryan Invasion, states:
"The first and foremost explanation for this inferiority complex could be the theorem of the Aryan invasion, which is still taken as the foundation stone of the History of India. According to this theory, which was actually devised in the 18th and 19th century by British linguists and archaeologists, who had a vested interest to prove the supremacy of their culture over the one of the subcontinent(…)"
Gautier futher explains: "(…)This was indeed a masterly stroke on the part of the British: thanks to the Aryan theory, they showed on the one hand that Indian civilisation was not that ancient and that it was posterior to the cultures which influenced the western world Mesopotamia, Sumeria, or Babylon and on the other hand, that whatever good things India had developed, Sanskrit, literature, or even its architecture, had been influenced by the West."
"Thus, Sanskrit, instead of being the mother of all IndoEuropean languages, became just a branch of their huge family; thus, the religion of Zarathustra is said to have influenced Hinduism as these Aryan tribes were believed to have transited through numerous countries, Persia being one, before reaching India and not vice versa."
"In the same manner, many achievements were later attributed to the Greek invasion of Alexander the Great: scientific discoveries, mathematics, architecture etc. So ultimately, it was cleverly proved that nothing is Indian, nothing really great was created in India, it was always born out of different influences on the subcontinent."
One of the many rational questions on the subject is: “could the coherent and refined knowledge of Bhagavad Gita be a creation of invaders and wandering nomads?” Obviously, no scientific mind in possession of their own reasonable discernement, would ever respond positively to such immoral assumption.
I just can’t keep going on here about this subject. But I’ll tell you that this is a very dangerous subject which messes with the very core of Indian culture. So, in order to provide further internet sources on this subject, I list some links about it at the reference section.
The present growth of the Indian nation, while she still needs to solve many problems such as the abyss of inequalities, proves what they can do fully imbued with their inherent and inalienable right of freedom, as such is supposed to be the right of each and every single human being.
It has been a long journey, but I believe the intellectual and cultural brilliance of that nation will enlight the world once again. Without them I believe the world would be very ugly and boring. So, I only wish Indian people knew how special and unique they are, and how they stand out in the world in a positive way for who they are, and nobody, specially outsiders, have the right to tell them otherwise.
2. The misinterpretation leading to the caste system
I actually talked about it in another answer I wrote about the reason for the writing of Bhagavad-Gita. I’ll just quote it below and comment after it:
“I don't quite understand how the Indian modern caste system works. What I do know is that the old system of Indian castes elicited discrimination and the concept of untouchability. But it has been outlawed since the very beginning of the 20th century.
What exists today is very different. It is more like a quota system which the primary purpose is to foster the existence of employment equity and social justice.
In the caste system described in the Bhagavad-Gita, they are four castes: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra.
The Brahmins are the highest caste because it congregates the holy men, that is, the Brahmacharyas and the Acharyas. The Brahmacharya are students who take upon themselves the vow of celibacy and start receiving their instructions on life and religious matters directly from a Guru. The Acharyas are great teachers who profess, teach and guide a particular belief.
For example, the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, which is the original Bhagavad-Gita added the comments of Master Prabhupada. So, at its cover is always written: A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
The Kshatriyas, as I said above, are the warrior class. They are the great kings, warriors and military; The Vaishya represent traders, bankers, farmers, etc; The Shudras are those who do physical labor, regular employees, and those who are supposed to perform tasks as requested by the other castes. There was still the Pariahs, or untouchables, those who did not belong to any caste for several reasons.
And finally, it is very important to understand that the old caste system not only was related to the kinship, but also stemmed from a completely wrong understanding of what Samskara is all about.”
So, what I’m saying is that the caste system present at the Mahabharata, which encompasses only the four original varnas, was never meant to promote social stratification, and such assumption entirely contradicts the very teachings the Vedas stand for. Instead, It was showing didactically how to understand the souls who come to this earth by fitting them into four major groups. It should be understood only this way, so as to these days it still makes every sense.
3. The Muslin barbarian hordes
No comment I could ever make would properly add something to what Gautier already said:
“Another very important reason for the negative self image that Indians have got of themselves, are the Muslim invasions. This is still today a very controversial subject, since Indian history books have chosen to keep quiet about this huge chunk of Indian history nearly 10 centuries of horrors. At Independence, Nehru too, put it aside, perhaps because he thought that this was a topic which could divide India, as there was a strong Muslim minority which chose to stay and not emigrate to Pakistan.”
“Yet, nothing has marked India's psyche or the Hindu silent majority, if you wish, as the Muslim invasions. And whatever happens in contemporary India, is a consequence of these invasions, whether it is the creation of Pakistan, whether it is Kashmir, whether it is Ayodhya, or Kargil. There is no point in passing a moral judgment on these invasions, as they are a thing of the past.”
“Islam is one of the world's youngest religions, whose dynamism is not in question; unfortunately it is a militant religion, as it believes that there is only one God and all the other Gods are false.”
“And so as long as this concept is ingrained in the minds of Muslims, there will be a problem of tolerance, of tolerating other creeds.”
“And this is what happened in India from the 7th century onwards: invaders, who believed in one God, came upon this country which had a million gods… And for them it was the symbol of all what they thought was wrong.”
“So the genocide – and the word genocide has to be used – which was perpetrated was tremendous, because of the staunch resistance of the 4000 year old Hindu faith. Indeed, the Muslim policy vis a vis India seems to have been a conscious and systematic destruction of everything that was beautiful, holy, refined. Entire cities were burnt down and their populations massacred. Each successive campaign brought hundreds of thousands of victims and similar numbers were deported as slaves.”
“Every new invader often made literally his hill of Hindu skulls.”
“Thus the conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000, was followed by the annihilation of the entire Hindu population there; indeed, the region is still called Hindu Kush, 'Hindu slaughter'.”
“The Bahmani sultans in central India, made it a rule to kill 100.000 Hindus a year. In 1399, Teimur killed 100.000 Hindus in a single day, and many more on other occasions. Historian Konraad Elst, in his book "Negationism in India", quotes Professor K.S. Lal, who calculated that the Hindu population decreased by eighty million between the year 1000 and 1525, indeed, probably the biggest holocaust in the world's history, far greater than the genocide of the Incas in South America by the Spanish and the Portuguese.”
4. The poverty
As Gautier points out, “Another reason why Indians often exhibit a negative idea of themselves, may be because India is always associated in the world with poverty : Mother Teresa, Unicef, or Calcutta. This image has been reinforced by books such as the City of Joy, an international bestseller, which takes a little part of India the Calcutta slums and gives the impression to the naive and ignorant western readers, that it constitutes the whole of India.”
He also points four things we should all know about poverty in India:
First: "(…)until the 18th century, in spite of the repeated Muslim invasions, India was known as one of the richest countries of the world, the land "of milk and honey";
Second: "(…)all the great famines of India happened during the British time. Many historians, such as Frenchman Guy Deleury, have documented the economic rape of India by the British:"
"Industrially the British suffocated India, gradually strangling Indian industries whose finished products, textiles in particular, were of a quality unique in the world which has made them famous over the centuries. Instead they oriented Indian industries towards jute, cotton, tea, oil seeds, which they needed as raw materials for their home industries."
"They employed cheap labour for the enterprises while traditional artisans were perishing. India, which used to be a land of plenty, where milk and honey flowed started drying" (Modele Indou)… According to British records, one million Indians died offamine between 1800 and 1825, 4 million between 1825-1850, 5 million between 1850-1875 and 15 million between 1875-1900."
"Thus 25 million Indians died in 100 years! The British must be proud of their bloody record. It is probably more honourable and straightforward to kill in the name of Allah, than in the guise of petty commercial interests and total disregard for the ways of a 5000 year civilisation. Thus, by the beginning of the 20th century, India was bled dry and there were no resources left.";
Third: "(…)after Independence, whatever poverty there still was in this country, there were no more famines, as India managed to become self sufficient in food through the Green Revolution (whatever negative side effects it had on India's ecology but that is another story). This is a great achievement, a tremendous task of which India can be proud off."
Fourth: "(…)there is a tremendous amount of black money in India as much as 40 to 50% of the total economy. If that money could be tapped and channelled to the White economy, it would give a tremendous boost to the nation.
But you need a government wise enough to enact laws which make people cheat less. People have been cheating since 1947, because Nehru had decided that Socialism, partly modelled after the Soviet Union, was the best tool to bridge the yawning gap between the very rich and the very poor of India.
At that time, it seemed a good idea, but as years passed, it proved a disaster, spawning a huge bureaucratic system, breeding corruption, stifling free enterprise and overall making people cheat, because it had introduced one of the heaviest taxing system in the world. And the sad thing is that Indians from the middle class to even the poorer people are some of the greatest savers in the world."
5. Ignorance about their own reality
Less than a month ago the Ipsos MORI, a british organization (how ironic is that…) specialized in market research, released the results of its latest research entitled Perils of Perception, which highlights how ignorant the populations of 33 countries are about their own nations on key issues and general characteristics.
In the survey, India ranks 2nd place as the most ignorant about their country's own reality. Brazil is close behind, in 3rd place, but as I see from our political/economical issues and from a big part of our youth, we are eager to take India's place and, hopefully, achieve the very first place! Yeah! Well… This research was just another of the information I came across that proves me how Brazil and India have many problems in common, making it much easier for me to understand some of the problems they face.
This also tells me something else to relate with this answer: India needs to perform a huge revision in their educational system. I once was told that presently, they have more children at schools than never before. Well, the same here. This is very good, but is still not enough. Having a population that big, there are many issues to overcome, inherently to their reality and which are way above my foreigner understanding.
As I lack the time now, I’ll just go ahead and post it. Hopefully soon I’ll be back with some more thoughts on the subject.
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References:
Ipsos MORI index of ignorance:
Perils of Perception 2015 François Gautier on India's Self Denial (Very important. Please read):
India's Self Denial – By Francois Gautier François Gautier’s bio (please, read):
François Gautier Macaulayism (please, read):
Macaulayism —
Please note: I used the word Caste because it is a generic term, which, in this case, is used to imply India's Varna. Please, check the image below:
iBlog 