A great thread on how the Christian missionaries distorted Hindu intellectual traditions, trained Hindus to hate them (themselves) and created a trove of literature perpetuating colonisation of Hindu minds. Responding to Ballantine should be a response to Williams also. https://twitter.com/vakibs/status/1266268302189330434

Responses to Monier Williams have been in the form of various books and papers but not directly. Tangent movements in India seek to dismantle the British Raj and it’s remanants ! As for Ballantyne a response is necessary! As far the European science argument is concerned 2/n

responses are being written. Most responses are not direct and nevertheless are responses. The idea that Christian philosophy acts as a guide to science is dismantled by the work of Dr CK Raju and others. More work needs to be done here. What is difficult to respond to is the 3/n

inherent biases. For example Joseph Needham’s rhetoric tropes against Chinese science ! He asks why the Chinese did not develop a Euclidean method. Merely asking the reverse question is response enough. But legitimacy to it comes from political power.

While you are right in saying that folks like Williams and Ballantyne need a response, the mere writing of a book of paper does not do any good. All we have to do is to ask the same questions back to the Europeans.

The idea that Christian philosophy leads to great material progress has been shown to be intellectual debauchery not only by Indian scholars but by western scholars also. The west does give credit to Indians is a different matter. @vakibs your intentions are noble but 4/n

I think any Christian from Ballantyne to Kaye to Tony Joseph to Iliah do not necessarily want to engage in philosophical debates.The fabled superiority of Christian philosophy is given as the reason for material progress which in turn can be used as an instrument of political 5/n

Domination and social hierarchisation. Remember the argument of railways as you so nicely pointed out. Only after Christianity, through deceit disease and destruction neon political dominion over non Christian lands did they see the reason, intellectual stimulus in bibilical 6/n

preachings. In the book “The American holocaust” the Spanish travellers writing back to the minister to the Spanish crown says “the wealth and splendour here cannot be expressed even in Latin” ! Initially it was only fanatical faith and barbarism that drove the Europeans. 7/n

When folks like Playfair wrote about Indian science and technology, british colleagues would chide him for it. Any assumption of intellectual pursuit or debate on the part of the Europeans is ill assumed. This is the mistake we have made since 8th C !

The superiority of Christian philosophy or the superstition in Hindu philosophy is based on the material progress they have achieved and the subsequent political domination that progress would bring or vice versa !

Atleast that is how these arguments have been used and subjugation is what they have used to supplement. Today when the west discovers the benefit of Yog, meditation, aayurved, it digests it because it has political power. It acquired political power through centuries of 11/n

of digestion. This is an infinite regress. Today Indians have made a small attempt at checking this digestion while our political power grows. We have only scratched the surface and the castles upon castles fables have crumbled down. This is true also of conversion

Converts in villages and rural areas are easy to convert back as I have found. We don’t even have to invest and dedicate as many resources as they do. But govt politics regarding the 2 proselytising religions have not been helpful at all. Most conversions to Christianity except

for Mizoram have happened post independence ! Digestion only works when it is backed by political power. As the crescent of Islam rises on Europe, on the empire which perennially saw the sun, India shall rise. We need to fix our domestic policies re: Christians and Muslims.

As the Japanese court declared in a recent sentence (2018) (when a church in Tokyo objected to an annual ceremony of the emperor of Japan) that non Japanese do not have a say in Japanese cultural matters. This is something india could very easily adopt !

@vakibs Your point regarding responses to Ballantyne I absolutely agree with. Just wanted to point out some of the intangibles in responding and how many factors put their weight behind these projects. AIT/AMT is already a dead horse. Govt needs to show will.

History of science and philosophy in India atleast independently has started ! CK Raju, @subhash_kak @chalai71 et al. Now we need to pressurise the govt to incorporate this into the curriculum.

Blind Faith has no place in Indian intellectual traditions. But I sincerely and firmly believe in the ability of us भारतवंशि’s to survive, excel and rise once again.

@vakibs thank you for your excellent thread. Learnt a lot.