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Monday, May 30, 2011

Brown and Yellow man's burden

Often we hear about the White man's burden. Whatever it seems to have been seems unimportant now and of little significance in the current world order. The world is moving towards a state wherein the West is now becoming the Brown and Yellow man's burden. Brown and Yellow Man taught the rest of the world the basics of civilization and have been the longest known sources of innovation which has changed the world. White man innovated some things in the last 300 years, went on a imperialistic rampage and that was sufficient for him to come up with phony stories of white supremacy and inherent dominance. Problem is that the Brown man and the Yellow man who were living in sophisticated societies and were reasoning the relationship between Man, God and Society many thousands of years before the white man moved out of his caves to huts and other dwellings, actually went ahead and believed this nonsensical theory for some amount of time. If 300 years of economic, military and technological domination could convince white man that he is supreme we do not understand why several thousand years of economic, military, technological, cultural and civilization dominance could not drive an idea into the head of the brown and yellow man that they could also argue that they were greater than supreme!

We at IndicRace have a theory for why this is so and will try and attempt to explain it in this post. We call it the "overnight rich" phenomena. It is very common to see that when someone becomes rich overnight their behaviour becomes entirely cuckoo and they end up acting like fools for some amount of time before sense is knocked right back into them. The newly rich suddenly want to act all sophisticated, put down other not-so-rich individuals around them and develop an air of superiority around them. This is typically the case with the White man or as they are collectively called the "West" these days.

Westerners had 2 periods in their history where they emerged out of grinding poverty, backwardness and need into sudden richness and prosperity. This happened way back around 700-600 BC. Mushrooming empires also heralded the coming out of western civilizations. It has to be mentioned at this point that Indian and Chinese empires were in places about 2 thousand years ago already when Westerners were still hunter gatherers. The rise of Greece and Rome suddenly opened the world to these people and they immediately set about coming up with theories of "supremacy". Aristotle came up with theories of Greek supremacy and how Greek warfare, art and culture was superior to all else. Then the Persians whacked the Greeks into place by invading them. Apparently the "superior" warfare tactics of the Greeks was not enough to stop the invasion. The Greeks then exacted revenge and defeated Persia under Alexander "the Great". They had dreams of conquering India. At that point India comprised of several Mahajanapadas and the most powerful one was Magadha. The contempt and ridiculing of Greeks by Indian kings was apparent in the correspondence between Purushottama and Alexander. Apparently Alexander wanted to conquer the entire world but to Indian kings and sages this appeared very strange and they wondered why someone would be so narcissist and engage themselves in such a pointless pursuit. One Indian sage also explained the futility of his expedition to Alexander but the latter was in no mood to listen. Purushottama, a king of a small kingdom with barely 30,000 troops handed Alexander a scathing and phyrrhic victory. The ferocity and discipline of the 30,000 Indian kshatriyas was barely manageable to the Greeks and Alexander's troops began to wonder that if 30,000 troops could do this to them then what would the 500,000 troops of the Magadha empire do to them? This was enough for the Macedonian troops to revolt and Alexander was forced to return albeit in another route as he had already made many enemies in the previous one. It has to be mentioned in this point that both the Indian and Persian civilizations were far superior to Greece in all terms and also actively occupied and ruled Greek populations for several hundred years but neither empire claimed supremacy over others and never had a narcissist attitude as did the Greeks. Greeks used to boast that their sculpturing was unmatched, the lie came to the fore when it was discovered that sculptures from around 3000 BC from the Indus Valley Civilization were discovered. That this was 2500 years before the Greek ones is to be noted.
Rome was no less humble. Hollywood movies depict the Roman army as unstoppable and superior to every other army. Wonder how they were humiliated by the Parthians or fell to the Huns. It should be noted that the Indians defeated the Huns that few other military powers of that day were able to do. Roman treasuries were stripped clean due to trade with India and India was a trading superpower of those days. Up until 18th century India and China well accounted for more than 50% of the world's industrial output.

The second point in history was during the 14th and 15th centuries. After the fall of Rome there was chaos in Europe and new small kingdoms came up. It was also the period of great re-ordering of races in Europe with Anglo Saxons now occupying present day England having come from the Rhine valley. During this period Europe was in the midst of dark ages and had little to offer to the world. India, China were as usual prospering and the newly emergent Islamic states were threatening the world. India and China both kept the Arabs at bay with the former defeating the Arabs in a series of battles called the battles of Rajasthan. Europe in great part fell to the Muslims and it took inquisitions to drive out the Muslims. Around the 14th century the Indian numeral system arrived in Europe. The Europeans were still using the Roman numeral system until that point which probably explains why no major technological innovation came from them for well over a millenium. Once the Indian numeral system and other mathematical/scientific knowledge started coming into Europe through Jesuit missionaries Europe underwent a transformation and scientists and inventors started sprouting up. Eastern Europe and Middle East contributed nothing as they were in a state similar to India and China with the Mongol invasions. India and China on the other hand were a constant source of innovation and science all through their history. Then disaster struck, 2 centuries earlier North India fell to the Turks and other barbarian Muslim invaders. The nation was in a state of disarray and many libraries and intelligenstia destroyed by the invaders. China was beginning to weaken internally with many revolts. The age old phenomenon of civilizations weakening from within our without disrupting their contributions to the world afflicted both India and China pretty much at the same time and this coincided with the emergence of Europe. However many westerners attribute it to Western exceptionalism and say that it was something specific to Europeans that led to the industrial revolution and other great innovations. That this is masked racism is not difficult to see. With technical ascendancy and new types of weapons at the disposal of the Europeans the next big wave of imperialist invasions began. History is witness to the fact that when the West is powerful it constantly tries to subdue other powers or engage in imperialist acts. Even in the present day American armies are scattered across the globe engaged in sporardic warfare.

As with every empire, crests and troughs eventually catch up with its dominance and glory. the British empire collapsed under economic stress, America is on the wane, the Soviet Union collapsed again under economic duress. France, Spain, Portugal and Germany today are insignificant players in the world military stage and it is only a matter of time before India and China grow so much in size that they would not matter much economically as well. The global tectonic plates of power is shifting to Asia. The decline that India and China both experienced several times in their long history now threatens the West. I just wonder how the West will react when they go down. Will they become grossly militant the way Muslims have become who are unable to accept a position of subservience to the West? Will an impoverished Europe become a hotbed of terrorism and other forms of extremism bitter with the fact that they now have to play second fiddle to India and China?

A recent report mentions that the world economic growth is driven by India, China and Brazil. Half of Europe is in economic doldrums with Spain having unbelievable unemployment rates. The American economy is kept alive by Chinese money and the whole world's economic system bar the BRIC nations appears fragile. It is now the burden of the brown and yellow man to rebuild the world's economy and keep alive bankrupt Western economies. It is now the burden of India and China to lend money to these nations whose extravagance and military bravado explains their bankruptcy. It is now the burden of the brown and yellow man to take blame from the sinking westerns that it it they who stole western jobs. It is the burden of brown and yellow man to now put up with theories that though both are rising or have already rise, will be no match to the superiority of the west when at their peak.

In the past it was the burden of the brown and yellow man to civilize the west. It was the burden of the brown and yellow man to put up with barbarian white hordes called Huns and then so-called-civilized British, Spanish, Dutch and Portugese barbarians who were frothing in their mouths with imperialistic zeal. It was the burden of the brown and white man to lose their jobs to the West who manufactured goods in a cheaper man in sweatshop conditions. It was the burden of the yellow and brown man to put up with Western barbarian ideologies like Communism Fascism and are currently having to put up with Christo Evangelism and other forms of internal subversion.

The Brown and Yellow Man's burdens indeed appear to be heavy and a long drawn one at that! It is however very pertinent to note that the "Overnight Rich" syndrome will never afflict them.

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