Papillon:
Respectfully submitted. No inferiority complex here, you hear.
Respect, compassion and officiousness of Indians are mistaken for inferiority complex.
You are a papillon. You fly like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Is it that you are, as your moniker denotes, a spaniel or a submissive, fawning, cringing person? Forgive me. These statements are not mine. They are all in the dictionary.
Let us get a little serious and I would like to dissect your statements.
There are so many ways you can study a country and its people.
1: As an adversary
2: As a lover of that country.
It looks that you chose the first option. An adversary, to paraphrase Gandhi, only inspects the toilets in a house and conveniently ignores the rest of the house in order to fit his perception. Then the person is sanitation inspector rather than a building inspector.
Lived there (in India) for a total of 2 1/2 years. Living in India for a total of 2 1/2 years is not sufficient time to understand the complexities of a nation and its people, esp India. A Milecha (a foreigner according to ancient Indians, no insult is intended) came to India in the past to plunder, rape and kill, to proselytize, to establish commerce, and illegally occupy and conquer a country against its wishes. His perception and actions were one of exploitation of simple but not simple-minded people.
Just because you rubbed shoulders with Brahmins and Dalits and everybody else in between does not make you an authority on Indians & caste system. What they said after you left them is more important than what they told you on your visit. Brahmin's and Dalit's composite mind is more complex than what you give credit to.
Have you seen the movie : "The Gods must be crazy." The African's simple concept of environmental sanctity tells a lot about the African mind about the bottle throwers.
The concept about India being a world power is laughable according to your perception.
What is power in your concept? Power is expressed in terms of education, accomplishment, wealth, military strength, etc. India has that kind of power. If America and other major countries want to conduct business with India, that speaks of its power and all the ingredients that go with that.
Indian Mind and vedic mathematics
Have you heard about the decimal system and Indo-European languages?. That is power of the mind. Now you say that Indian mind is not a distinct entity. All the zeros you have in your salary or bank account etc is a concept of Indian mind. That does not mean other minds are not special.
Exaggeration: Indians are prone to it. Every country has its own points of exaggeration. No country or people are immune. People in some counties talk of their sexual prowess, monetary prowess, physical prowess, intellectual prowess, pure-race prowess, military prowess etc.
Abject poverty: How many times these poor people beat you up and robbed you ? And you have the nerve to insult them. You have not asked that poor man to recite from Ramayana or Mahabharata . O yes, you don't know and forgot to ask them.
If I was an India Muslim, I would be scared: He is much safer in India than anywhere else.
Another point Mr. Papillon: From your writing, my understanding is that your observation and expressive skills are wasted in digging into sewer and finding coproliths. You never wanted to see positive things. It is probably not in your mind set. You should not have smoked in India and it does alter perception.
Another point: You don't think and write like a native-born American.
Forgive me for my missive.
Respectfully submitted
JPR
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