The lack of respect for books in India is ridiculous. Very few use libraries, and forget temperature/humidity control: most feel no shame in mishandling books they borrow. The availability and care shown to books, new and old, in the US is very commendable.
Our prime minister and most citizens love to brag about "ancient culture" and "proud history", but preservation of our own history and public record was and is done much better by the British and Americans. It's truly nauseating.
I sometimes wonder if feeling good about "ancient culture" and "proud history" creates an attitude that there's no need (or no point) to add to any of that in the present. For how long can a people use the achievements of those who died a thousand years previously as a crutch to not to live up to those achievements.
Kinda tracks. India, Italy, Greece, pride themselves on culture and lacks in development compared to peers. US, China (after cultural revolution), Germany don't and are top among their peers.
I'd dispute the claim on China, at least for today's China. Anecdotally, the Chinese are very conscious of their/our "ancient culture" and "proud history".
`Xi said that the Chinese Dream is the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation"`
If more literally translated, this is pretty much the Chinese version of "Making China Great Again".
You're probably correct that this doesn't apply during the cultural revolution (and maybe for the most of the 20th century), but that's like a long gone boomer era.
Our prime minister and most citizens love to brag about "ancient culture" and "proud history"
Yes. I think so too.
The bragging is mostly patriotism and it wouldn't be a wonder if the same patriotism made them wish they could erase or forget their own embarrassing past two centuries of history. Most of the historic records before that point were totally destroyed or lost so feeling proud of what's left and moving on is not bad but seriously not prioritizing preservation is really ignorant.
Most of the historic records before that point were totally destroyed or lost so feeling proud of what's left and moving on is not bad but seriously not prioritizing preservation is really ignorant.
It's actually cultural. Even foreign historians from a thousand years back such as Al Biruni criticized the Indian cultural norms of focusing on oral traditions, instead of written text, and the use of assumptions, story telling and exaggerations instead of facts and accurate retelling, which in turn feeds into a culture that prioritized fantasy over curiosity. It's stunning to say how we can obtain accurate records of the locations of the homes destroyed in the Great Fire of London in the 16th century, but don't have an accurate account of many kings in the Indian subcontinent during the 19th century.
This could have been a direct result of the caste system, wherein the deep study of literature was only allowed for Brahmins - not even the kings and nobility.
What's wild to me is how British/British Americans can trace their families based on detailed records kept by random villages going back to the Middle Ages. Meanwhile my dad's legal birthday is off by six months because his village in Bangladesh didn't issue a birth certificate until he was five (in the mid 1950s) and then kind of just guessed.
This could have been a direct result of the caste system, wherein the deep study of literature was only allowed for Brahmins - not even the kings and nobility. The sentence itself shows the why the oral tradition failed to capture accurate records. From "The beautiful tree" by dharampal -> "in which it had been assumed that education of any sort in India, till very recent decades, was mostly limited to the twice-born amongst the Hindus, and amongst the Muslims to those from the ruling elite.
The actual situation which is revealed was different, if not quite contrary, for at least amongst the Hindus. It was the groups termed Shudras, and the castes considered below them who predominated in the thousands of the then still-existing schools in practically each of these areas."
My comment isn't exactly about embarrassing pasts or patriotism. There is lack of basic understanding about preserving data, records and books properly; not just the "how", but also the "why". Just go to any college in the country and see how librarians and students deal with the books they hold, and compare it to how colleges in the US/Europe do the same. The difference is night and day. This can be any type of book; doesn't matter if it's history or math.
Treat a book properly, and thousands of people across future decades will be able to peruse it. Treat it like garbage, and that knowledge won't be available in the future. It's the same with digitization. You need a plan to keep all the books you digitize, or else it's in danger of getting lost if the government/responsible person gets defunded/deprioritized.
All talk about "glorious history of culture and science" is hollow if you cannot store proof of it properly.
their own embarrassing past two centuries of history.
I think part of the problem is exactly this. We don't say Spain should be embarrassed at the Muslim conquest, yet we're expected to say India should be 'ashamed' (for what?) for their past two centuries? History just is... We should stop assigning emotional value to it.
The issue here is twofold. Firstly, India is not unique in this pursuit. China also has taken charge of constructing its own history, and sometimes it's at odds with Western thinking. Often time, the oral / traditional accounts are found to be true.
Secondly, the West also falls into magical thinking. For example, right here, you are parroting the idea that Indian heterodoxy over their own history is misguided. However, it has a clear historical basis in the fact that Britain tried to expropriate most of its history. I don't mean taking various artifacts.
I mean that, for many years, Western historians pushed the idea that the Indus Valley Civilization inhabitants were not related to modern Indians. They couldn't deal with the fact that Indians may have had one of the oldest, largest, and richest ancient civilizations. Of course history has proved them wrong.... Harappan genes are well represented in the Indian subcontinent.
So, sure, we can make all kinds of claims about Indian historians inflating their own history (I would agree), but to then say that Western historians don't is just wrong... Remember, Nazi Germany's racial policy is the direct result of a ridiculously flawed and fantastical understanding of Indian history by Western historians. Like it or not, the Nazis were western too (and besides, plenty of non-German historians agreed with them... we just like to forget about that).
Finally, we cannot ignore the impact of Nazism here. Even today, it is difficult to talk about Aryans without conjuring up images of genocidal Germans. Research has to be qualified and disclaimed so that people don't take the objective historical record and try to justify more atrocities.
For example, going back to the IVC. European historians were insistent that the Aryans civilized India, and many insisted that the IVC was Aryan, and not really 'Indian'. Again, the evidence is very clear that the Harappans have no steppe ancestry. But again, we have an example of the very sort of behavior you accuse india of, except by British historians.
India is not unique in this pursuit. China also has taken charge
No? India is unique in this pursuit because China didn't take as big of an hit as India did. The fact that The Vedas were preserved till now is well enough proof that oral accounts were not useless.
I'm an Indian. I myself can't trace my ancestry past my great grandfather lol(similar to most of the current native black Americans living in the USA) because no records were maintained as that was how insignificant avg. Indian life in India was viewed as back then, thanks to great philanthropists like Mr. Winston Churchill(not like I care). I don't think I can get through to the other comment that started out with the "c-word" and pointed out about castes and oral accounts but lineage of nobles and kings were well maintained by Brahmins and after a rough 2 centuries, very little was left to back up such claims of proper record maintenance so there's no point in fretting over it. Thanks sharing about Nazism, that's news to me.
After seeing people around me, I started to believe that Indians have an inferiority complex engraved into them due to the colonialism and they don't value books or their own history because they don't value themselves in the first place, which was the context behind my previous comment. I think it resulted as a side effect due to the helplessness they felt after what they lost, namely their heritage and their identity along with it. All this makes it seem like their inferiority complex is not going away anytime soon. Gotta see.
I've known Indians to treat books with respect. It's ingrained in the culture. Books can't be on the floor or touched with a foot. Kids spend days learning how to create books sleeves with brown crafts. Texybooks are well treated due to hand-me-down culture. Vidya (books) is specifically worshipped online home idol-houses. Pirated books or fake photo copies get mistreated, but mostly because they're printed on low budget paper backs. The state of libraries is bad, but so is the state of all infrastructure generally.
In the US, I have yet to see individuals take extraordinary care of books. Yes, textbooks worth $100+ are well treated, but anything that expensive is well treated. (I still have an old HC Verma copy). Libraries are exemplary, but the budgets are incomparable.
I will agree on the sorry state of Indian liberal arts including museums and libraries. The education, quality of scholarship and resulting professionals are subpar compared to the western world. India has excellent STEM and Medical education. The rest have a long way to go.
You're right about the respect part, but it does in fact compute. We (I'm Indian) treat books with respect, but we have no preservation ethic beyond treating them with respect. An old book is in our home until it disintegrates or termites get it. But beyond that, shrug. Humidity control etc, what's that. This is of course partly because India is a poor country, and partly because of corrupt government, but it's also because of the fatalism - we simply do not care about the past as is the norm in the West. You know how even a tinpot town's history is available in the local library in the US? Beyond rarefied academia and the odd hobbyist, India just does not have that culture.
In my experience, the worship part is purely theatrical, and is largely the reason stuff like this happens. I'd rather have books treated well for practical purposes than because "Vidya is God" - it makes more sense this way, and you aren't bound to a holy/unreachable ideal.
Feet don't have any use for books, so that doesn't matter much. Book sleeves and brown crafts are because of school rules, else those don't happen. Anyway, you should see how the books within those brown sleeves get by end of school year. Books get handed down in good shape only when a parent is unusually strict about those books (mine were, which is why I have a chip on my shoulder regarding this topic) or if the kid is conscientious. Woe betide you if you loan a book to a random friend; there are good chances it won't come back whole because of the "why-should-I-care-I-don't-own-it" mentality.
Part of it, as you imply, is the cheaper price, and thus quality and binding of the books made in India.
I don't how many are interested in preserving or knowing about indian history. Some of them might open up skeletons which might make some sections uncomfortable. Its like let bygones be bygones.
I've always argued that antiquated books, sculptures and paintings should not be repatriated back to India due to lack of preservation ecosystem and culture. Just look at the historic sites (barring a very few popular ones), they are either literally pissed on upon or become a poster board for election campaigns.
Antique manuscripts were (as the article says!) explicitly not part of this program due to Indian antiquities laws. Big [citation needed] for pretty much all of that, but it isn’t even relevant to the article being discussed.
It’s entirely relevant. The last paragraph of the article makes the same claim about the state of the libraries.
From another part:
Mr Michelson-Ambelang told the BBC that the removal of books from South Asia through programmes like PL-480 "creates knowledge gaps", as researchers from there often need to travel to the West to access these resources.
The knowledge gap is that America has the books and India doesn’t. If the books had stayed in India, I think that would have closed the knowledge gap because nobody would have them. They would have been lost just like the other copies of the books.
They said “antiquated books”. Wikipedia suggests that’s more than 100 years old. The program is more than 60 years old. I’m sure some of the million-plus books that were sent over are antiquated by now, if they weren’t already. The restriction was only on manuscripts.
No that doesn't make sense. What would memorization have to do with millenia old preserved manuscripts?
Were the Vedas et al memorized before being written down? Yes, of course. However, regular discoveries are made of ancient manuscripts in various Buddhist temples.
Before posting this have you checked the state of preservation [0] in the West? The real issue IMHO that if stolen good are returned to their rightful owners, Museums will be empty and libraries will be half empty.
Books are printed in quantities of more than one. I concede a fair amount of material might be the last copy extant, but isn't there an element of post-hoc rationalisation this impoverished stocks of Indian books?
Todd Michelson-Ambelang, librarian for South Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, wonders if vast collections from the region in US and other Western libraries took away literary resources from the Indian sub-continent.
and
Mr Michelson-Ambelang told the BBC that the removal of books from South Asia through programmes like PL-480 "creates knowledge gaps", as researchers from there often need to travel to the West to access these resources.
and
It is unclear whether all the books acquired by US universities from India at that time are still available there. According to Maya Dodd, of India's FLAME University, many books now unavailable in India can be found in the University of Chicago's library collections, all marked with the stamp saying "PL-480".
Although a charitable reading is they aren't available because of decay.
So if they digitally scan the books and publish on the internet for free then there wouldn't be any knowledge gap. These purpose of a library is fulfilled after that in my opinion
While India has a moral claim to these artifacts, it will take another decade or two of growth before there is adequate bureaucratic bandwidth to provision the necessary infra needed to maintain them at home. Until then, the status quo works.
India was one of the largest recipients of this food aid, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s when it faced severe food shortages.
Slightly tangential, but does anyone know why India faced such shortages in the 50s and 60s? I found an article on the subject [0] but it seems to come down to little more than mild crop yield variation combined with market speculation.
This is a period of India's history that I find particularly interesting by way of comparison with China's "Great Famine". The latter is often put forward as a strong condemnation of communist economics, for example in the "Black Book of Communism". But in Chomsky's article response "Counting the bodies" (which I cannot seem to find a link for) he points out that India's per capita excess mortality rate over roughly this period is in fact greater than China's.
I'm neither an authoritarian communist or a big fan of Chomsky's, but I would love to find reliable sources on this topic to come to my own conclusions.
<quotes>
Low productivity: In the context of India's rapidly growing population, the country's traditional agricultural practices yielded insufficient food production. By the 1960s, this low productivity led India to experience food grain shortages that were more severe than those of other developing countries.[1]
The effort was in fact an adoption of America's agriculture land grant system for universities on Indian soil. It helped launch what we now commonly call India's "green revolution." The U.S. Government, through the United States Agency for International Development (AID) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, partnering with the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, helped establish five state agriculture universities in India - including the Punjab Agricultural University - PAU - in Ludhiana. This was a significant joint intellectual and scientific effort: American universities sent educators and agricultural advisors to India to work side-by-side with Indian scientists and students. At the same time, American universities welcomed a corps of Indian agricultural specialists to American university campuses where they could learn first-hand about the technologies we employed in productive farming, ranching and crop science.[2]
</quote>
It does seem like outdated agricultural practices and a booming population are critical factors. But that doesn't easily explain why there was an acute food shortage in 1958-59, despite rising yields (as per the article I linked).
From the URL you posted. “There was actually no shortage of food grains, but what worried the people and the Government was the increase in food grains prices.”
I remember reading during Indian Green Revolution was the introduction of practices to prevent hoarding and speculation. Unfortunately I don’t remember the details.
By all accounts I've read, describing India as "socialist" in the 1950s is not quite right. You only need look at the article I linked to see that a big reason for people going hungry was because couldn't afford the rising food prices. The prices being determined by purchasing power and market forces. And there was a functioning parliamentary democracy. At best you could say it was a mixed economy where the ruling party had some socialist economic policies. But you could say that about many modern European countries. So I still think the comparison with China is interesting.
Food rationing has certainly happened in India's recent history. The British colonial administration established it in the 40s, and it was then revived in the 60s following acute shortages. But prior to that revival, food availability and pricing seems to have been subject to market forces. This suggests - if anything - that central planning was actually used to prevent famine deaths. But it is very difficult to find much accessible literature on that period.
India was a bastion of food, crop and spice growth however incoming invaders did not have the knowledge of agriculture in the same way local indians did (british named it indore method etc)
Comments
The lack of respect for books in India is ridiculous. Very few use libraries, and forget temperature/humidity control: most feel no shame in mishandling books they borrow. The availability and care shown to books, new and old, in the US is very commendable.
Our prime minister and most citizens love to brag about "ancient culture" and "proud history", but preservation of our own history and public record was and is done much better by the British and Americans. It's truly nauseating.
I sometimes wonder if feeling good about "ancient culture" and "proud history" creates an attitude that there's no need (or no point) to add to any of that in the present. For how long can a people use the achievements of those who died a thousand years previously as a crutch to not to live up to those achievements.
It's a bit reversed. The history doesn't make people lazy, but lazy people rationalize their laziness by claiming clout from history.
Peoples who achieved more than their ancestors have less history to be prideful of, since they are proud of their present.
Kinda tracks. India, Italy, Greece, pride themselves on culture and lacks in development compared to peers. US, China (after cultural revolution), Germany don't and are top among their peers.
I'd dispute the claim on China, at least for today's China. Anecdotally, the Chinese are very conscious of their/our "ancient culture" and "proud history".
It's also in state sanctioned ideology too, eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Dream
`Xi said that the Chinese Dream is the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation"`
If more literally translated, this is pretty much the Chinese version of "Making China Great Again".
You're probably correct that this doesn't apply during the cultural revolution (and maybe for the most of the 20th century), but that's like a long gone boomer era.
Yes. I think so too.
The bragging is mostly patriotism and it wouldn't be a wonder if the same patriotism made them wish they could erase or forget their own embarrassing past two centuries of history. Most of the historic records before that point were totally destroyed or lost so feeling proud of what's left and moving on is not bad but seriously not prioritizing preservation is really ignorant.
It's actually cultural. Even foreign historians from a thousand years back such as Al Biruni criticized the Indian cultural norms of focusing on oral traditions, instead of written text, and the use of assumptions, story telling and exaggerations instead of facts and accurate retelling, which in turn feeds into a culture that prioritized fantasy over curiosity. It's stunning to say how we can obtain accurate records of the locations of the homes destroyed in the Great Fire of London in the 16th century, but don't have an accurate account of many kings in the Indian subcontinent during the 19th century.
This could have been a direct result of the caste system, wherein the deep study of literature was only allowed for Brahmins - not even the kings and nobility.
What's wild to me is how British/British Americans can trace their families based on detailed records kept by random villages going back to the Middle Ages. Meanwhile my dad's legal birthday is off by six months because his village in Bangladesh didn't issue a birth certificate until he was five (in the mid 1950s) and then kind of just guessed.
That's a Christian thing, isn't it? Baptismal certificates are very important.
This could have been a direct result of the caste system, wherein the deep study of literature was only allowed for Brahmins - not even the kings and nobility. The sentence itself shows the why the oral tradition failed to capture accurate records. From "The beautiful tree" by dharampal -> "in which it had been assumed that education of any sort in India, till very recent decades, was mostly limited to the twice-born amongst the Hindus, and amongst the Muslims to those from the ruling elite.
The actual situation which is revealed was different, if not quite contrary, for at least amongst the Hindus. It was the groups termed Shudras, and the castes considered below them who predominated in the thousands of the then still-existing schools in practically each of these areas."
My comment isn't exactly about embarrassing pasts or patriotism. There is lack of basic understanding about preserving data, records and books properly; not just the "how", but also the "why". Just go to any college in the country and see how librarians and students deal with the books they hold, and compare it to how colleges in the US/Europe do the same. The difference is night and day. This can be any type of book; doesn't matter if it's history or math.
Treat a book properly, and thousands of people across future decades will be able to peruse it. Treat it like garbage, and that knowledge won't be available in the future. It's the same with digitization. You need a plan to keep all the books you digitize, or else it's in danger of getting lost if the government/responsible person gets defunded/deprioritized.
All talk about "glorious history of culture and science" is hollow if you cannot store proof of it properly.
I think part of the problem is exactly this. We don't say Spain should be embarrassed at the Muslim conquest, yet we're expected to say India should be 'ashamed' (for what?) for their past two centuries? History just is... We should stop assigning emotional value to it.
The issue here is twofold. Firstly, India is not unique in this pursuit. China also has taken charge of constructing its own history, and sometimes it's at odds with Western thinking. Often time, the oral / traditional accounts are found to be true.
Secondly, the West also falls into magical thinking. For example, right here, you are parroting the idea that Indian heterodoxy over their own history is misguided. However, it has a clear historical basis in the fact that Britain tried to expropriate most of its history. I don't mean taking various artifacts.
I mean that, for many years, Western historians pushed the idea that the Indus Valley Civilization inhabitants were not related to modern Indians. They couldn't deal with the fact that Indians may have had one of the oldest, largest, and richest ancient civilizations. Of course history has proved them wrong.... Harappan genes are well represented in the Indian subcontinent.
So, sure, we can make all kinds of claims about Indian historians inflating their own history (I would agree), but to then say that Western historians don't is just wrong... Remember, Nazi Germany's racial policy is the direct result of a ridiculously flawed and fantastical understanding of Indian history by Western historians. Like it or not, the Nazis were western too (and besides, plenty of non-German historians agreed with them... we just like to forget about that).
Finally, we cannot ignore the impact of Nazism here. Even today, it is difficult to talk about Aryans without conjuring up images of genocidal Germans. Research has to be qualified and disclaimed so that people don't take the objective historical record and try to justify more atrocities.
For example, going back to the IVC. European historians were insistent that the Aryans civilized India, and many insisted that the IVC was Aryan, and not really 'Indian'. Again, the evidence is very clear that the Harappans have no steppe ancestry. But again, we have an example of the very sort of behavior you accuse india of, except by British historians.
No? India is unique in this pursuit because China didn't take as big of an hit as India did. The fact that The Vedas were preserved till now is well enough proof that oral accounts were not useless.
I'm an Indian. I myself can't trace my ancestry past my great grandfather lol(similar to most of the current native black Americans living in the USA) because no records were maintained as that was how insignificant avg. Indian life in India was viewed as back then, thanks to great philanthropists like Mr. Winston Churchill(not like I care). I don't think I can get through to the other comment that started out with the "c-word" and pointed out about castes and oral accounts but lineage of nobles and kings were well maintained by Brahmins and after a rough 2 centuries, very little was left to back up such claims of proper record maintenance so there's no point in fretting over it. Thanks sharing about Nazism, that's news to me.
After seeing people around me, I started to believe that Indians have an inferiority complex engraved into them due to the colonialism and they don't value books or their own history because they don't value themselves in the first place, which was the context behind my previous comment. I think it resulted as a side effect due to the helplessness they felt after what they lost, namely their heritage and their identity along with it. All this makes it seem like their inferiority complex is not going away anytime soon. Gotta see.
Huh, that doesn't compute.
I've known Indians to treat books with respect. It's ingrained in the culture. Books can't be on the floor or touched with a foot. Kids spend days learning how to create books sleeves with brown crafts. Texybooks are well treated due to hand-me-down culture. Vidya (books) is specifically worshipped online home idol-houses. Pirated books or fake photo copies get mistreated, but mostly because they're printed on low budget paper backs. The state of libraries is bad, but so is the state of all infrastructure generally.
In the US, I have yet to see individuals take extraordinary care of books. Yes, textbooks worth $100+ are well treated, but anything that expensive is well treated. (I still have an old HC Verma copy). Libraries are exemplary, but the budgets are incomparable.
I will agree on the sorry state of Indian liberal arts including museums and libraries. The education, quality of scholarship and resulting professionals are subpar compared to the western world. India has excellent STEM and Medical education. The rest have a long way to go.
You're right about the respect part, but it does in fact compute. We (I'm Indian) treat books with respect, but we have no preservation ethic beyond treating them with respect. An old book is in our home until it disintegrates or termites get it. But beyond that, shrug. Humidity control etc, what's that. This is of course partly because India is a poor country, and partly because of corrupt government, but it's also because of the fatalism - we simply do not care about the past as is the norm in the West. You know how even a tinpot town's history is available in the local library in the US? Beyond rarefied academia and the odd hobbyist, India just does not have that culture.
An interest is antiquity is a characteristic of the Rennaisance in Europe. India has not really gotten there, although interest is growing it seems.
In my experience, the worship part is purely theatrical, and is largely the reason stuff like this happens. I'd rather have books treated well for practical purposes than because "Vidya is God" - it makes more sense this way, and you aren't bound to a holy/unreachable ideal.
Feet don't have any use for books, so that doesn't matter much. Book sleeves and brown crafts are because of school rules, else those don't happen. Anyway, you should see how the books within those brown sleeves get by end of school year. Books get handed down in good shape only when a parent is unusually strict about those books (mine were, which is why I have a chip on my shoulder regarding this topic) or if the kid is conscientious. Woe betide you if you loan a book to a random friend; there are good chances it won't come back whole because of the "why-should-I-care-I-don't-own-it" mentality.
Part of it, as you imply, is the cheaper price, and thus quality and binding of the books made in India.
I don't how many are interested in preserving or knowing about indian history. Some of them might open up skeletons which might make some sections uncomfortable. Its like let bygones be bygones.
I've always argued that antiquated books, sculptures and paintings should not be repatriated back to India due to lack of preservation ecosystem and culture. Just look at the historic sites (barring a very few popular ones), they are either literally pissed on upon or become a poster board for election campaigns.
There was an ancient temple near Mysore to which a metal plaque was attached, with corresponding rust stains.
It explains in some swirly script language, execpt for "5Rs", that there is a fine for defacing the building (I had it translated).
A 5 rupee fine was a big deal back in the Raj
Antique manuscripts were (as the article says!) explicitly not part of this program due to Indian antiquities laws. Big [citation needed] for pretty much all of that, but it isn’t even relevant to the article being discussed.
It’s entirely relevant. The last paragraph of the article makes the same claim about the state of the libraries.
From another part:
The knowledge gap is that America has the books and India doesn’t. If the books had stayed in India, I think that would have closed the knowledge gap because nobody would have them. They would have been lost just like the other copies of the books.
Again, this article has absolutely nothing to do with antiquities.
They said “antiquated books”. Wikipedia suggests that’s more than 100 years old. The program is more than 60 years old. I’m sure some of the million-plus books that were sent over are antiquated by now, if they weren’t already. The restriction was only on manuscripts.
I've done no research in this, but if this were true, why are there orders of magnitude more Sanskrit manuscripts than any other ancient language?
Because it was memorized.
Hot and humid climates result in (historically)rapid decay of plant and animal based writing surfaces
No that doesn't make sense. What would memorization have to do with millenia old preserved manuscripts?
Were the Vedas et al memorized before being written down? Yes, of course. However, regular discoveries are made of ancient manuscripts in various Buddhist temples.
What doesn’t make sense? That humidity affects the likelihood that an ancient text will be preserved?
Humidity doesn’t guarantee that something will rot. It makes it more likely.
The item will need to be protected from the natural environment. Or stored in a location that is an exception to the general climate.
Compare that to the Middle East. Where the natural climate assists in preservation.
I have always argued that homeless people shouldn't be allowed to own anything because of a lack of individual responsibility.
(I could list many similar paternalistic takes)
Before posting this have you checked the state of preservation [0] in the West? The real issue IMHO that if stolen good are returned to their rightful owners, Museums will be empty and libraries will be half empty.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crgy4w221z5o
Books are printed in quantities of more than one. I concede a fair amount of material might be the last copy extant, but isn't there an element of post-hoc rationalisation this impoverished stocks of Indian books?
I don't see any claims of negative ramifications being made
and
and
Although a charitable reading is they aren't available because of decay.
Title is missing a "How" at the beginning. Without that it doesn't make any sense - I was wondering why people were expecting food in libraries.
So if they digitally scan the books and publish on the internet for free then there wouldn't be any knowledge gap. These purpose of a library is fulfilled after that in my opinion
Yes, that is sensible.
While India has a moral claim to these artifacts, it will take another decade or two of growth before there is adequate bureaucratic bandwidth to provision the necessary infra needed to maintain them at home. Until then, the status quo works.
Does it really? It sounds like many of these books were purchased while they were still in print.
If anything shouldn't buying books/media this way be good for publishing industry in India at the time? (Arguably, a small impact if any)
as a UChicago student can confirm that this was incredibly shocking when I first saw it… the expanse of the collection is really unmatched and crazy
This is just a fascinating outcome of some public policy.
Slightly tangential, but does anyone know why India faced such shortages in the 50s and 60s? I found an article on the subject [0] but it seems to come down to little more than mild crop yield variation combined with market speculation.
This is a period of India's history that I find particularly interesting by way of comparison with China's "Great Famine". The latter is often put forward as a strong condemnation of communist economics, for example in the "Black Book of Communism". But in Chomsky's article response "Counting the bodies" (which I cannot seem to find a link for) he points out that India's per capita excess mortality rate over roughly this period is in fact greater than China's.
I'm neither an authoritarian communist or a big fan of Chomsky's, but I would love to find reliable sources on this topic to come to my own conclusions.
[0] https://www.economicsdiscussion.net/india/food-problem/food-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution_in_India [2] https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/sca/rls/rm/31553.htm
<quotes> Low productivity: In the context of India's rapidly growing population, the country's traditional agricultural practices yielded insufficient food production. By the 1960s, this low productivity led India to experience food grain shortages that were more severe than those of other developing countries.[1]
The effort was in fact an adoption of America's agriculture land grant system for universities on Indian soil. It helped launch what we now commonly call India's "green revolution." The U.S. Government, through the United States Agency for International Development (AID) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, partnering with the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, helped establish five state agriculture universities in India - including the Punjab Agricultural University - PAU - in Ludhiana. This was a significant joint intellectual and scientific effort: American universities sent educators and agricultural advisors to India to work side-by-side with Indian scientists and students. At the same time, American universities welcomed a corps of Indian agricultural specialists to American university campuses where they could learn first-hand about the technologies we employed in productive farming, ranching and crop science.[2] </quote>
Thanks for the links.
It does seem like outdated agricultural practices and a booming population are critical factors. But that doesn't easily explain why there was an acute food shortage in 1958-59, despite rising yields (as per the article I linked).
From the URL you posted. “There was actually no shortage of food grains, but what worried the people and the Government was the increase in food grains prices.”
I remember reading during Indian Green Revolution was the introduction of practices to prevent hoarding and speculation. Unfortunately I don’t remember the details.
India and China both had socialist systems at the time, so using India as some kind of foil to China's communism is not going to work.
People confuse democracy with the free market. It's not. India up until the 90s had a tightly regulated economy that rivaled China's economic control.
By all accounts I've read, describing India as "socialist" in the 1950s is not quite right. You only need look at the article I linked to see that a big reason for people going hungry was because couldn't afford the rising food prices. The prices being determined by purchasing power and market forces. And there was a functioning parliamentary democracy. At best you could say it was a mixed economy where the ruling party had some socialist economic policies. But you could say that about many modern European countries. So I still think the comparison with China is interesting.
Based on my own parents telling, I believe there was food rationing, price controls, licensing for basic businesses, etc
Yes more free than China, but not so much market wise. All centrally planned from what I understand
I could be wrong. Indian politics is not my strong point . I do think many people conflate it being the largest democracy for it being a free market.
I personally witnessed the economic reforms of the 90s as an outsider via several visits and it was interesting to see as an outsider.
Food rationing has certainly happened in India's recent history. The British colonial administration established it in the 40s, and it was then revived in the 60s following acute shortages. But prior to that revival, food availability and pricing seems to have been subject to market forces. This suggests - if anything - that central planning was actually used to prevent famine deaths. But it is very difficult to find much accessible literature on that period.
There are almost no recorded famines in India before Mughal or British rule, or after British rule either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_I...
Incorrect. Cyclical famines were common in India; records of famines go back to 500 BC: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-021-00219-1.
India was a bastion of food, crop and spice growth however incoming invaders did not have the knowledge of agriculture in the same way local indians did (british named it indore method etc)
How people are unearthing knowledge from ancient libraries using Claude
https://x.com/PrintedPathways/status/1865637416637231406