this is the kind of lazy, blinkered reportage
by Ritwik on July 9, 2013
which is the norm in the West when it comes to reporting India and is becoming the norm in India, particularly among commentators who see themselves as liberals but who have a less than perfunctory understanding of any non-Western cultural or philosophical tradition.
Note sweeping, idiotic statements like “That conflict born in the sixth century before Christ — the clash between Buddhist rationalism and Hindu mysticism, ritual and caste — percolated through the millenniums.”
As if both ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Buddhism’ [both isms are by the way recent constructs made by westerners] are monolithic entities with all of Buddhism being ‘rational’ [um, Tibetan Buddhism?] and all of Hinduism being ‘mystic’ [um, nyaya or sankhya or for that matter the philosophical part of Advaita Vedanta?]
One comment
“…draping other images of Buddha as if they were Hindu deities.”
This act which the writer and radical Buddhists find problematic IS one of the most impressive thing about the culture that has sustained itself for the last 5000 years!
by Sukhvinder Shahi on July 9, 2013 at 1:51 pm. #