A fine new Indian Hindu commenter named Janardhan has appeared on our blog, and he repeats some of the same things that other insightful Hindus such as ILOR, Rahul and Pranav. This shows us that not all Indian Hindus are bad people and that some of them are capable of looking inwards and trying to better their society. I consider both Rahul and Pranav at least to be strong Indian patriots who simply want the best for their country. As they see it, getting the best for India is going to require some massive changes, hence their critical patriotism.
Hindus have a strange mix of superiority and inferiority complexes. Deep down they massage their ego about how their civilization was ‘da greatest’ with a total ignorance about other civilizations and their achievements. According to Hindus, Ancient India compared to the rest of the world is equivalent to comparing the city of Vienna during Mozart with highlanders in Papua New Guinea. As if Ancient India was like this huge Vienna while the rest of the world were primitive.
But during the last centuries they were first enslaved by Muslims from Central Asia/Persia (whom they consider savage bloodthirsty barbarians ignoring the intellectual side of Islamic civilization which itself was plagiarized to a good extent from Greek learning) and then the Europeans.
One difference was that in the case of Islamic invaders they could hide under the carpet the invaders’ intellectual side, and they are thus dehumanized as savage bloodthirsty monsters (this label is justified though as the Islamic rulers were quite brutal). But when the Europeans, especially the British, came, they could not ignore their obvious technological superiority with their steam engines and telegraphs.
Thus the conflicting superiority/inferiority complex feelings.
They were as per their myth Numero Uno Civilization in the world, but now they are nearly at the bottom. White people with their strange but seeming superior looks and behavior give us an inferiority complex. Besides, even the Japanese/ Koreans are way ahead of us, and now the Chinese are racing ahead. Mainland Indians just cannot accept the rise of China: “Those Chinkis like the Chinkis of Nepal and North Eastern Indians going ahead of us, not possible” we say.
Thus the desire to prove ancient India being as technologically advanced as the modern world since the modern technological world is 90% a White creation and we cannot fathom a people other than us could have done so.
I think this is same with the Arabs with their Islam. Islam, the last word of God and having an Arab as its last and greatest prophet, has fallen behind the White nonbelievers. Oh, the horror.
Blacks, well most Indians consider Blacks as some savage monkey people anyways.
I would say we Indians are some of the most racist people in the world, but our racism is very subtle.
As someone who works in mental health, I would like to point out the obvious. A person with both a massive superiority and inferiority complex going at the same time is not only a common creature but this is also rather typical Cluster B personality types: Especially Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Disorders. But it associated more with narcissism than anything else.
In fact, all proper analyses of narcissism begin with the presupposition that what is going on in narcissism is often a huge inferiority complex which is apparently being compensate for by its opposite, a huge superiority complex. My view is that the worse the narcissist’s inferiority complex, the greater their superiority complex must be to compensate for it. Whereas if one feels only a bit inferior, one has only to feel a bit superior to compensate as all human beings are trying to equalize things and get at what I call the “zero state” of perfect equilibrium where everything is ok.
Many analyses of the Indian personality on this site have noted the profound narcissism apparent in most Indian Hindus. In many cases, it also looks like solipsism, but then narcissism and solipsism tend to go together anyway (Look at the Jews, the most solipsistic people on Earth).
