Critique of India

[aklujkar at unixg.ubc.ca]

On 16 Aug 1995, Lars Martin Fosse asked an important question:  <If an area
the size of India is repetedly robbed blind by
outsiders, why is it unable to defend itself? India should always have had
the resources material and otherwise to repel invaders. Why did India fail
in doing so? Small and weak peoples that are robbed or oppressed by
powerful outsiders have an excuse. Others should take a critical look at
themselves.>

One must distinguish between the political and economic unity of India, on
the one hand, and the cultural unity, on the other. The latter seems to
antedate the former by about 1800-1900 years. India as a nation should not
be projected back in time.  Nor should the so-called ancient Indian empires
be understood with the present  Western image of an empire at the back of
one's mind. 

Invaders of India (or rather the constituents of what we now call India)
seem to have been repelled more or less successfully until significant
shifts in technology occurred and led to invaders adopting unfamiliar
military-political machineriess and ideologies. So, perhaps, the  questions
should be: Why were parts of India not the first to initiate certain
changes in military technology? Why did the border regions of India not
catch on fast enough to the changes that occurred among their neighbours?

-- ashok aklujkar