India's food shortage filled American libraries (opens in new tab)

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

A 5 rupee fine was a big deal back in the Raj

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.

Because it was memorized.

Hot and humid climates result in (historically)rapid decay of plant and animal based writing surfaces

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).

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.

>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.

> While India has a moral claim to these artifacts

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)