askchapo

It was one of the most politically important Buddhist doctrines that anyone, regardless of caste, gender, age, etc. can reach enlightenment in this very life, where the Hindu dogma at the time is that such a thing is impossible for the lower castes.

The very abbreviated origin story is that Buddha was a great prince who had endless bounty as you say, but due to a revelation that came from a series of hardships that he witnessed, he came to understand that suffering is inherent to the nature of our world and could not be escaped even through his wealth, because he too would grow old and die (etc.) He then set about to discover a solution to this problem, which at one point involved studying with yogis who were extreme ascetics, which escalated to him starving himself nearly to death before being nursed back to health from a comatose state by being fed rice porridge. He concluded from this that neither extreme indulgence nor extreme asceticism could save someone, but that moderation was a necessary element of right living. Following this, he meditated under a tree for 49 days and reached enlightenment, at which point he began proselytizing about the Four Noble Truths that he discovered over the course of his life, and his solution, the Noble Eightfold Path.

This is an extremely pared-down telling, so I'd appreciate if other users not jump on me, but I would appreciate any necessary corrections or additions for bettering the explanation. Probably the biggest issue is that it doesn't cover the issue of non-attachment adequately.

That is generally my understanding of it.

Sorry, It is hindutva, and it is basically a Hindu supremacist movement. They're the people that killed Gandhi.

Only the top like 5% of hippies travel to India. I think the peak of Indian spiritual export to the US was in the late 60s/early 70s. You had a lot of people looking for answers outside of their cultural norms. They did sex, drugs, rock and roll, and "eastern spirituality". A bunch of Indian "gurus" capitalized on this interest and established branches of their cults in "the west". Many persist to this day, though they mostly fall off pretty hard once the old Indian guy dies.

yeah i know the kind of people you're talking about but i actually don't think there are that many of them. i certainly havent met someone like that in years and years.

I had a ram dass period myself after my first acid trip but at least he was most wanted number 1 in the US and dealt LSD with the hells angels.

But otherwise the only people i know who actually went were either for business or part of a tantric sexcult.

India mainly sells “low value” labor products and raw materials to America. That’s literally neocolonial extraction.

That’s changing and iirc this past year was the first one where the us wasn’t the number 1 importer or trader by volume or whatever, Indias electronics manufacturing is starting to take off (lol at Apple having to gb2 China over qc tho…) and the mohdi government is keeping their options open, but self reliance isn’t the measure of decolonization, it’s your relationship to the history of colonization and your mode of production and trade. I also think it’s really hard to call a place decolonized when it’s got a strong ethnofascist movement.

Just off the top of my head, serious interrogation of these will probably lead me to clarify but not abandon these positions:

“Independence” movement started by man who wanted to be treated like the British subject he was, not one subject to black codes.

Post “independence”, made no substantial, long lasting moves to integrate or protect muslim and buddhist minorities leading to a resurgent hindu nationalist movement.

Failed to undo the caste systems effects

Extensive system of secondary educational institutions function primarily to export skilled workers to other countries where they often work under indentured servitude (like in the us) rather than build national industry.

Failed to make peace with Pakistan over the British saying “now fight!” a long time ago.

I’m really interested in your argument that significant progress has been made towards decolonization tbh. Some lib wrote comparing the outcomes of India and China over the same time period and at the time it was published there was ink to be spilled letting the whole world know how good China had done but in the present day it’s hardly necessary.

I heard Israeli soldiers sometimes vacation in India and listen to trance while taking ecstacy. Is that whitewashing in any way?

You may be right, I'm not confident in using the term whitewashing. I more reserve it for visual examples, like American football fans wearing Native American feather headresses at games with colors of their team painted on their face.

When it comes to actions, I don't have many examples... I feel that if you go into the process of spiritual self work in a space where you're a guest, and corrupt it with a white colonial attitude, that is whitewashing.

Yeah whitewashing is a great word to use because in a fence it’s a periodic activity to not just change the color of something, but to make that natural color a part of the built environment and keep the now completely dead object from decomposing.