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How Akbar came to love books despite never learning to read (2019)

dailytimes.com.pk

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Re: How Akbar came to love books despite never learning to read (2019)

#61

Post by srean »

drieddust wrote: post #49
srean wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given Kieferski's qualification "tolerant the times" I dont see that he is egregiously wrong. Emperor Ashoka who is considered kindness personified had Kalinga butchered among other places -- till his empire was big enough that more campaigns and conquests were unnecessary. At that point he turned the peaceful Buddhist.

Ashoka never turned pacifist. He got converted in 4th year of his reign and Kalinga war was waged in his 8th year. He waged wars and prosecuted Jains and Ajivikas. Sources are Buddhist text Mahavamsa and Divyavadana so should be considered accurate. Before Islamic invasion started, Hindu India had a rich history of religious tolerance with Ashoka as an exception yet he finds place in our history books and other great…

You are very right about Jewish settlements in India, but the history goes far far far older, centuries older than you indicate.

Jewish settlements in India (in Kerala, for example) are far older than European settlements. India hosts one of the oldest synagogues. They are very pretty visit if you get a chance.

The so called 'anti-Semitism' (that ought to be called anti-jewish) was an European thing. In India they enjoyed great goodwill and still do.

Re: How Akbar came to love books despite never learning to read (2019)

#62

Post by srean »

drieddust wrote: post #60
srean wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is very well taken. Empire making and keeping is inherently violent, but the current trend seems to be trying to make the case that Hindu emperors achieved what they achieved with peace, rainbows and divine fairness (and some old Hindu science of flying machines, plastic surgery between humans and elephant heads. All lost because of outside invasion). Pushing this point of view has been the national agenda…

There is various degrees of violence. In Indian context Kings fought each other to grab kingdoms but that did not translate into general massacre of public for their religious beliefs until Islam arrived.Of course this comes from my little knowledge of Indian History so I will be happy to learn more. > some old Hindu science of flying machines, plastic surgery between humans and elephant heads. All lost because of ou…

> Yet it's called Fibonacci series with no attribution to its origin.[1]

I gather that you are not trained as a mathematician.

Much is made by the Hindu right wing about Fibonacci series. Before I explain, a minor correction, your comment makes it seem Fibonacci invented or claimed to have invent it. He did neither, he cited Indian publications describing the series.

Now back to the main point, hardly any mathematical result is named after the mathematician who invented the said concept, let alone first studied it. Consider Dirac delta functions. It was not invented by Dirac and neither is it even a function. Consider Taylor series, Taylor was not the first to come up with that series. Look up Stiglers law that describes the phenomenon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy True to its character, Stigler was not the first to observe this.

Its quite rare to have names correctly attributed in math's. Usually the name goes to the one who popularized the notion, the one who got the notion the maximum number of eyeballs and ears.

But no, that's not what you will be get from the Hindu right. What you will get are stories about "our rightful place was taken away from us by conspiracy".

Everywhere it is known that democracy started in Greece. Vaishali was a democracy much before that. That does not mean there is a conspiracy to do Hindu's under. A lot of it is just lack of knowledge and us not being in the forefront of human and modern civilizational accomplishments.

Tell me about one modern civilization scale accomplishment that came out of India recently that has changed the world. Artificial Satellite in space, not us. Humans in space, Moon -- not us. Computers -- not us. One computer language -- not us. Superconductors -- not us. Internet -- not us. When you lose that spot you lose the attention. No one is going to pay any heed to the fact that yeah democracy came to Vaishali before it came to Athens. They will listen even less because its the same folks who claim that Hindus had nuclear weapons during Mahabharat times, who talk about some truly genuine and notable historical facts.

> > some old Hindu science of flying machines, plastic surgery between humans and elephant heads. All lost because of outside invasion).

> I do not subscribe to this nationalistic view

Our prime minister does.

Re: How Akbar came to love books despite never learning to read (2019)

#63

Post by Ahmd72 »

keiferski wrote: post #9
Ahmd72 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His creation of his own religion might be the reason that tensions still exist in that region or maybe its just people. Interestingly, he was a brilliant commander even though people call him illiterate, he preferred his own way of studying which meant understanding topics at his own pace instead of cramming. Just shows us how only education has nothing to do with being tolerant or being brilliant.

Tensions mostly exist in the region because of colonialism and the poorly-managed independence of India and subsequently of Pakistan. If, nonetheless, you wanted to pin the blame for modern religious issues in South Asia on a Mughal, it would probably be Aurangzeb, Akbar’s great-grandson, who was definitely not tolerant. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurangzeb

Its funny how you mentioned only India and Pakistan and completely forgot about Bangladesh. There were three entities that came out of that partition, not two. These tensions are mostly man-made and not even related to independence, its mostly about India's claim that the two countries should be united and the people living there are similar to them while on the other hand Pakistan claims, they are different, Factually speaking, the Western part of Pakistan is more similar to Afghanistan and Iran, the Northern to China and only the East has some similarities with Northern India, not even the whole. Then there is Kashmir, should we blame that on the poorly-managed independence too? What about the province of Hyderabad or cities of Junagadh? Did the rulers there wanted to join India? It's not a competition about who is tolerant or not, its more about how to play this tolerance game so that they can rule easily and sadly only the common man suffers.

Re: How Akbar came to love books despite never learning to read (2019)

#64

Post by srean »

drieddust wrote: post #57
puranjay wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nations are usually built on lies. Most countries would likely fall apart if they were completely truthful about their histories. In India's case, the whitewashing of Mughal rule was a necessity because there are still a substantial number of Muslims living in India, and painting their ancestors - the Mughals - as barbaric invaders would likely lead to violence (especially when seen in the context of the Partition vi…

> In India's case, the whitewashing of Mughal rule was a necessity because there are still a substantial number of Muslims living in India .... There are substantial level of German living in Germany, let's not teach them about Nazis? Interpreted other way you are advocating appeasement of people who already have superiority complex due to their religious beliefs. History should be taught as it is? No lies. If Marath…

> History should be taught as it is? No lies.

Not going to happen. History is always written by the victorious and in a way that is more flattering towards the victorious. The way we think of Hitler nowadays, we would be thinking the same of Churchill if WWII went the other way.

https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/rethinking-churchill-...

What we can do instead is to tech people to read history well aware of this bias and mentally correct for it.

Re: How Akbar came to love books despite never learning to read (2019)

#65

Post by keiferski »

Ahmd72 wrote: post #63
keiferski wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tensions mostly exist in the region because of colonialism and the poorly-managed independence of India and subsequently of Pakistan. If, nonetheless, you wanted to pin the blame for modern religious issues in South Asia on a Mughal, it would probably be Aurangzeb, Akbar’s great-grandson, who was definitely not tolerant. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurangzeb

Its funny how you mentioned only India and Pakistan and completely forgot about Bangladesh. There were three entities that came out of that partition, not two. These tensions are mostly man-made and not even related to independence, its mostly about India's claim that the two countries should be united and the people living there are similar to them while on the other hand Pakistan claims, they are different, Factual…

Well, I couldn’t include the entire history of India in a HN comment. I didn’t include Bangladesh as the initial question was related to regional tensions and Indian-Bangladeshi relations are pretty good, as compared to Indian-Pakistani ones.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh–India_relations

I also said mostly which most commenters seem to be missing. In any case, I only made the comment to point out Aurangzeb, not engage in a debate on British India.

Re: How Akbar came to love books despite never learning to read (2019)

#66

Post by Ahmd72 »

keiferski wrote: post #65
Ahmd72 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its funny how you mentioned only India and Pakistan and completely forgot about Bangladesh. There were three entities that came out of that partition, not two. These tensions are mostly man-made and not even related to independence, its mostly about India's claim that the two countries should be united and the people living there are similar to them while on the other hand Pakistan claims, they are different, Factual…

Well, I couldn’t include the entire history of India in a HN comment. I didn’t include Bangladesh as the initial question was related to regional tensions and Indian-Bangladeshi relations are pretty good, as compared to Indian-Pakistani ones. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh–India_relations I also said mostly which most commenters seem to be missing. In any case, I only made the comment to point out Aurangz…

Fair enough but there is no "mostly" and Bangladesh used to be part of Pakistan before its independence so I am not sure how well relations actually are.

Re: How Akbar came to love books despite never learning to read (2019)

#67

Post by drieddust »

srean wrote: post #62
drieddust wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is various degrees of violence. In Indian context Kings fought each other to grab kingdoms but that did not translate into general massacre of public for their religious beliefs until Islam arrived.Of course this comes from my little knowledge of Indian History so I will be happy to learn more. > some old Hindu science of flying machines, plastic surgery between humans and elephant heads. All lost because of ou…

> Yet it's called Fibonacci series with no attribution to its origin.[1] I gather that you are not trained as a mathematician. Much is made by the Hindu right wing about Fibonacci series. Before I explain, a minor correction, your comment makes it seem Fibonacci invented or claimed to have invent it. He did neither, he cited Indian publications describing the series. Now back to the main point, hardly any mathematica…

Of course I am not a mathematician or a historian and we digressed a lot into Indian history.

I was merely refuting the premise of this Pakistani propaganda article that Akbar was tolerant. By contrasting between Akbar's ordering of beheading of 30k non combatants with Maha Rana Pratap returning his enemy Rahim's family back to him safely I hoped to demonstrate that Akbar wasn't tolerant even for his time. I believe you are from India so you would know both stories especially of Rahim.

On the subject of attributions you do know chain of custody for Dirac's function? Secondly if democracy can be attributed to Athens then why not Vaishali? They both are dead and harmless. Indians are not going to claims royalties from rest of the world for running democracies. Why deny attribution where it is due and makes sense? Anyways we can keep that aside.

What if I tell you this cultural appropriation is going on as we speak. I hope you know that Yoga and Bhratnatyam are actively rebranded as Christian Yoga[1] and Christian Bhratnatyam[2]. This appropriation should be accepted just because India is not as advanced as compared to the first world countries?

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/theconversation.com/amp/can-yog...

[2] https://www.hinduhumanrights.info/bharatanatyam-and-the-art-...

Re: How Akbar came to love books despite never learning to read (2019)

#68

Post by puranjay »

drieddust wrote: post #57
puranjay wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nations are usually built on lies. Most countries would likely fall apart if they were completely truthful about their histories. In India's case, the whitewashing of Mughal rule was a necessity because there are still a substantial number of Muslims living in India, and painting their ancestors - the Mughals - as barbaric invaders would likely lead to violence (especially when seen in the context of the Partition vi…

> In India's case, the whitewashing of Mughal rule was a necessity because there are still a substantial number of Muslims living in India .... There are substantial level of German living in Germany, let's not teach them about Nazis? Interpreted other way you are advocating appeasement of people who already have superiority complex due to their religious beliefs. History should be taught as it is? No lies. If Marath…

You have to see things in context. The "whitewashing" happened at the dawn of independence. We'd just come off a massive human rights disaster in the form of the partition. Religious tensions were simmering. The country was broke. "Truthful" (though that's a loaded term in itself) would have ruptured the foundations of the country.

We do indeed need to have this conversation as a nation. But I don't think we're ready yet. We're still too poor and desperate. Poor and desperate people rarely make mature, rational decisions, especially about topics as emotionally charged as religion.

Re: How Akbar came to love books despite never learning to read (2019)

#69

Post by drieddust »

srean wrote: post #55
drieddust wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Far from it. This is from 1987. Debate on Maratha history is still going on[1] other chapters of history is yet to be opened and taught. > Far from it. Mongols, Christians, Huns ... I will run out of space if i have to keep mentioning all the ones that I know of. Mongols were pretty inclusive and tolerant towards religion until they converted to Islam[2] Hunas never succedded in invading India. I am not sure which…

> Are you sure I am culturally "left behind"? Was not commenting you or Indian history (hence Huns and Mongols, the latter were warded off by the Delhi Sultanate, which Indian right wingers find hard to acknowledge) but the phenomena of rise of right wing pathos in the world. Most of the time it has arisen it has from a sense of being left behind, or 'stabbed in the back' narrative. In the Indian context I have seen…

> You mean Mongols did not do general massacre

Based on my understanding Mongols didn't kill people for their religious beliefs. They killed entire cities if the resisted which is very different from killing population to attain title of Gazi by killing infidels.

I would be happy to learn more if you have other resources.

Re: How Akbar came to love books despite never learning to read (2019)

#70

Post by srean »

drieddust wrote: post #69
srean wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you sure I am culturally "left behind"? Was not commenting you or Indian history (hence Huns and Mongols, the latter were warded off by the Delhi Sultanate, which Indian right wingers find hard to acknowledge) but the phenomena of rise of right wing pathos in the world. Most of the time it has arisen it has from a sense of being left behind, or 'stabbed in the back' narrative. In the Indian context I have seen…

> You mean Mongols did not do general massacre Based on my understanding Mongols didn't kill people for their religious beliefs. They killed entire cities if the resisted which is very different from killing population to attain title of Gazi by killing infidels. I would be happy to learn more if you have other resources.

I was refuting the claim that the Muslim were the only ones who did large scale massacres. You believe in a queer and ideology warped history history if you are ready to call Mongols tolerant and Islamic rulers (in particular, Akbar) not.

With massacre at that scale what difference does it make to those killed whether they were killed for religion or something else. Mongols killed those who did not accept Mongol rule.

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