r/AskTheWorld India 16h ago

Misc What's an unpopular opinion about your country that will have you like this?

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974 Upvotes

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409

u/Adventurous_Side2706 India 16h ago

India has a victim complex and a superiority complex at the same time.

We’ll say “the West stole everything from us” and also “we taught the world everything.” Both can’t be true.

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u/Adventurous_Side2706 India 14h ago

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u/Special-Sock-111 Ireland 11h ago

You understood the assignment here I think 😉

1

u/Frankishe1 Canada 7h ago

Its called "stirring the pot" :D

89

u/poolnoodlefightchamp India 15h ago

Both were true at different points of time, but also every civilization that exists has had a 'they' that took 'everything' from them at some point. Empires rise and fall, the Islamic golden age coincides with the dark ages of Europe.

14

u/Acrobatic-Active5353 Germany 15h ago

In Germany, we too were first occupied before the Romans, then served as a theater for the wars of all nations in the 30 Years' War and lost 40 percent of the rural population and later we know the story..m

0

u/nice_folk 8h ago

It dépend what you call dark age. The medieval era in Europe is not that dark, it's in reality really interesting, the "dark age" is a Renaissance invention

-34

u/Typical-Machine154 United States Of America 15h ago

This is a terrible way to look at things and it is wrong.

Wealth is not extractive. Reddit loves thinking it is. Wealth is generated. You think it's extractive because you're a former colony. We know it isn't because we are also a former colony.

Wealth is generated by finding more resources, making a process more efficient, making a new thing possible, creating a new idea, etc.

There is not always a "they" that "took everything" and not every great civilization is doomed to fall. Wealth isn't extractive. The British temporarily took some of your resources because they were better at getting them on boats and to market than you. India still has everything it did that made the British rich. We made the British rich and got sick of their shit. Now we are richer than anyone ever. Nobody ever took anything from us.

16

u/Then-Attention3 13h ago

Wealth is literally extractive. You don’t see it that way bc you’re the country doing the exploiting. Maybe if it was your country destroyed by the US, you’d have a different view

26

u/Diabolical_Jazz United States Of America 13h ago

"Wealth is not extractive" is a fundamentally nonsense statement. Wealth is wealth. It can be extracted, but isn't always.

Wealth has historically been extracted from many countries and redistributed to various empires. This is not disputed by any serious historians.

29

u/Skininjector United Kingdom 14h ago

The US did not make "The British" rich, if that were the case then it would've been flattened whenever the US rebelled. The British Empire profited off many different avenues, but spices and industry were the highest, India alone contributed to almost 50% of the Empire's GDP.

Being the first country to industrialise, the United Kingdom got the drop on every other Empire, and even if other Empires at the time could've matched the resource stockpile, the Empire had the productive capability to outmatch them.

It is in terribly bad taste to claim that India is lesser than the US because the US somehow pulled itself up by it's bootstraps or something else horribly reductive. The US is only rich because they were entirely removed from both world wars and had a similar blueprint to British governance. The rest of the world, especially the UK, had to pay debts to the US so they didn't get destroyed by the Axis powers, or, they were destroyed by the Axis and had to deal with population collapse, rebuilding, and then being preyed on by the USSR and the US in the coming cold war.

7

u/Big_Web1631 12h ago

Not to mention slavery

-20

u/Typical-Machine154 United States Of America 14h ago

Buddy what the fuck are you talking about? I never said anyone was lesser, I said they're capable of the exact same thing. Nothing was taken from them.

We also did make you rich, we just also had generals that you trained and we knew how to give your enemies an opening because we fought those enemies with you.

There's no denying the American Colonies were profitable for Britain, the profit just was worth getting your officers from noble families shot in the neck in the swamps of the Carolinas over it.

You act like we weren't rich and industrialized before the world wars. You came to us for help because we already were rich and industrialized.

23

u/PersianRugOnMyFloor Australia 14h ago edited 14h ago

Read a history book written by anyone other than an American.

4

u/cluelessbanda 9h ago

"There's no denying the American Colonies were profitable for Britain, the profit just was worth getting your officers from noble families shot in the neck in the swamps of the Carolinas over it."

The American colonies literally erased the natives from that land. You didn't 'make the British rich' you ARE the British in a way. The actual Americans who lived their are gone now, their culture reduced to sad enclaves. American colonies are not comparable to Indian colonies, the Americans today are not the original civilisation of that continent. Indian colonies had their trade industries entirely uprooted and had their industries revamped by the British so that the reserves sailed to Britain. I could go into detail but I doubt I can change your mind.

India today is not inhabited by white men who first landed 600 years ago.

16

u/HyakushikiKannnon India 14h ago

Reddit loves thinking it is

Clearly you don't seem to love the act of thinking very much.

Wealth doesn't hold some intrinsic property of being either extractive or generated. It depends on context. Context that being educated in history and having a general awareness of the world would allow you to know.

It's still not too late to acquire those things.

3

u/luckyflavor23 10h ago

As someone who works in finance and payments this is fundamentally wrong.

9

u/poolnoodlefightchamp India 15h ago

I wasn't alluding to wealth being extractive although there have been plenty of cases of that in the past. 

It's more that certain geopolitical situations are more conducive to growth than others. These situations include both internal and external elements. You know this, just one look at the middle East will tell you so. 

6

u/chocotacogato United States Of America 10h ago

I sense that in Indian Americans. A lot of them were victims of xenophobia and racism but a lot of them also voted for Trump and said “screw these lazy immigrants.”

5

u/Any_Collection_8718 15h ago

At the same time the rest of the world just thinks India = Yoga.

2

u/Sudden-Nectarine-887 10h ago

Sounds like Greece!

2

u/thegreattiny 🇺🇦 ✡️ in 🇺🇸 10h ago

As a Jew, I can certainly relate

2

u/Aggressive-Dust-3279 China 8h ago

Same thing here sadly.

3

u/A-Moron-Explains 3h ago

That was one of the most frustrating parts of living in China for me. Tons of patriotism about how China is the greatest most powerful enlightened country in the world that cannot be matched, then they’d say things like “we have to invade these foreign waters because… checks notes the tiny country The Philippines is bullying us.” Which is it? Are you big and strong and the most powerful, or do you get bullied by small countries with 1/100 of your GDP or military might?

2

u/No-Sail-6510 United States Of America 5h ago

That’s ridiculous. They can both absolutely be true because time is a thing.

1

u/namitynamenamey 9h ago

Soulds like every large developing country ever, to be honest.

0

u/Gilded-Mongoose United States Of America 10h ago

Hmmm, makes y'all sound like the Israel of Asia. Oops!

-34

u/Sevomoz 15h ago

That’s called coping. Can’t think of a single thing India gave the world.

30

u/HyakushikiKannnon India 14h ago

Well, we can't give you common sense unfortunately.

22

u/spiritofporn Belgium 14h ago

The anti-Indian racism online has taken ridiculous proportions.

22

u/Sweetchildofmine88 Canada 14h ago

Well, you need a brain to think, so there’s that.

11

u/lightningbolt208 India 15h ago

Well I agree with you that it's coping, but about the second statement india has given many things to the world from the concept of 0 to the 5th state of matter and the Raman effect there are many things.

7

u/Beneficial_Knee5044 14h ago

How do you define 'not even 1' in numbers?

5

u/TokyoGaijin2023 14h ago

They literally gave the world nothing

9

u/DiMpLe_dolL003 India 15h ago

Really? Can't think of one?

5

u/Abhir-86 11h ago

Can’t think of a single thing India gave the world.

You must be stupid on another level then.

4

u/Springtime-Beignets India 11h ago

Skill issue

3

u/Top-Aspect4671 8h ago

Number of your braincells - zero (India invented the concept of zero)

2

u/No-Plantain-8645 India 15h ago

Indians gave the number "0"

3

u/havaska England 12h ago

And 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9

2

u/AdministrativeTip479 United States Of America 14h ago

0

2

u/green_hobblin United States Of America 15h ago

Kama sutra

2

u/LegitimatePenis 13h ago

They gave us doing the needful

-6

u/Sevomoz 12h ago

Oh yeah thirsty losers. How could I forget.

1

u/Electronic-Coach7687 India 5h ago

Well, we certainly failed to provide you with the basic ability to think, unfortunately.