How Muslim countries treat their Hindu "brothers" . . . . . .

[Elok]

Fair enough. Lessee, Aneeshm said to stick to discussion of the incident in question, so assuming the allegations are true: I think kidnap, rape and forced conversion are bad things. People should not do any of them, and especially not all three. If you disagree with me on this point, feel free to say so, but bear in mind that you're almost certain to be shouted down by digitized yells of outrage.

There you go. A wonderful, enlightening discussion, that. Or do you want us to branch out to exploring the centuries-old conflict between the ethnic groups underlying this problem, which nobody on Apolyton except Aneeshm (and maybe a dozen inactive lurkers from New Delhi or somewhere) knows about in any significant detail?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Gangerolf
Mumbai sounds like an indianification(?) of Bombay though
but I don't know

It's not. Believe it or not the name Bombay originated from a Portuguese word which the English corrupted to Bombay and which the Indians corrupted to Mumbai. Thus Mumbai is no more Indian then Bombay and in fact Bombay actually has more historical reasons for being there then Mumbai.

NPR ran an excellent article on this: Why are we calling it Mumbai?

[Dinner]

Also even in India there is conflict. The state government is controlled by Hindu nationalists who want to rename everything to make it more "Hindu" (what ever that means) while the central government is afraid that changing the names of places like Bombay and Bollywood would confuse tourists and foreign investors so they've refused to recognize the name changes.

[Arrian]

They could do what the Welsh do: list both names.

-Arrian

[Dinner]

They did the same in Kosovo though the Albanians would paint over the Serbian names so they couldn't be read.

[Elok]

I bet all the tourists who flock to Kosovo each year are horribly confused.

[Arrian]

And if they would stick to that, instead of killing each other, that would be progress

-Arrian

[Dr Strangelove]

I think that there is no reason to doubt aneeshm's claims about the abuses of Hindus in Pakistan. I wonder if any of them ever stop to consider if such practices continue, increase and spread whether the world will care if muslims in other places receive a little reciprocity. I'm fairly certain that at this point in the world's history there are more muslims living in areas dominated by non-muslims than there are non-muslims living in muslim dominated areas.

OTOH we should not forget the eagerness with which muslim civilians pitched in to help the non-muslim injured after the recent train bombings in Mumbai.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Sikander


Doesn't it seem to be a marriage between more or less typical Indo-European style religion and local traditions? Obviously many of the main gods are IE in origin, but Hinduism seems a good deal more complex than any other basic IE religion, with a good number of unique features.

As Christianity is more complex than simply being a Jewish heresy, and as Islam is more complex than simply being an addition to Judaeo-Christian monotheistic beliefs.

It's clear from texts that the inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent were viewed as 'other' by the newcomers; the Rig Veda has accounts of the Dasa or Dasyu, and the destruction of their forts or cities in battles associated with Indra- 'Purandara' the destroyer of cities. The god of fire, Agni, also makes a, ahem, welcome appearance:

Rig Veda 7.5.3.:

'Through fear of you Agni, the dark people went away, not giving battle, leaving behind their possessions, when, O Vaisvanara, burning brightly for Puru, and destroying the cities, you did shine.'

Interestingly enough, Dasa and Dasyu underwent a linguistic alteration, to move from denoting the darker skinned inhabitants to meaning demons against whom the gods contended. Rather like the subtle alteration of the Anglo-Saxon ceorl to mean churl, churlish, after the Norman Conquest.

The new people were aware of some sites that were already ruined, to do perhaps with a change in climate, using the terms 'arma, armaka' meaning ruined site or ruins.

They said this of the vanished people:

'The people to whom these ruined sites, lacking posts, formerly belonged, these many settlements widely distributed, they, O Vaisvanara, having been expelled by thee, have migrated to another land.'

It is of course a given that the invaders of India have tended to come mainly by the land route and through the north-west:

The Aryans
The Achaemenids
Alexander of Macedon
Seleucus of Nicator
The Parthians/Pahlavas
Menander/Milinda
The Sakas/Scythians
The Kushans
The Hephthalite or White Huns, also known as Hunas

The Indian Buddhists particularly feared Toramana and Mihirakula and viewed them with the same kind of affection that aneeshm reserves for the Muslims.

Interestingly enough people with gods from the Aryan pantheon also featured as rulers over a state further west- the Hurrians used Vedic gods in their treaties.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by aneeshm
though it is very difficult to believe that a ragtag bunch of nomads could displace the highly developed and geographically very large city civilisation of the Indus valley .

Yeah, that hardly ever happens in history.

Unless you're the Hyksos, Huns, Celts, Sea Peoples, Mongols, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Arabs, Seljuk Turks....

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by molly bloom
Unless you're the Hyksos, Huns, Celts, Sea Peoples, Mongols, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Arabs, Seljuk Turks....

Yeah, I was just going to say...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by LordShiva


Yeah, I was just going to say...

You'd think India had never been invaded by nomadic peoples from Central Asia.

Like the Hunas, Sakas, Turks, Mongols....


No doubt they all came in sophisticated S.U.V.s and were overawed by the Great Bath of Mohenjo-Daro which was in use as a car wash at the time.

This chap came off worse, probably with nomadic carjackers...

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Oerdin
They did the same in Kosovo though the Albanians would paint over the Serbian names so they couldn't be read.

An interesting anecdote which demonstrates which side were really the closer adherents to multi-ethnicity in the province.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Arrian
They could do what the Welsh do: list both names.

That's what they also do in Ireland, Brittanny, Corsica, Basque country etc. Pretty standard fare in places where the regional language is different from the national one.

Only in the Basque country have I seen the "standard" (Spanish) name hidden-painted by the locals.

[Flip McWho]

Well when the whole world speaks english things'll be a lot easier.