Disturbing photo essay: Filthy India

[Eldritch]

Okay, so sure I was aware of all this already in theory. But seeing the pictorial evidence, that's another thing entirely.

I have a hard time tolerating crowds, filth, stench and heat. Throw all of those together and you have my idea of Hell on Earth.

I also understand very well that the fact that the Indians consider the Ganges holy is the very reason that they drink the same water they shit and throw their dead bodies in.

But still I insist on my to right to refuse to see anything holy or uplifting in this ... filth. More than once looking through the pictures I found myself hoping a Biblical flood would wash it all away.

The pictures were taken by a Chinese person visiting India in 2008, and apparently caused a lot of controversity on Chinese discussion fora.

Link here (http://www.chinasmack.com/2010/pictures/filthy-india-photos-chinese-netizen-reactions.html). (again, contains many, many disturbing images of dead bodies, and severely ill and disfigured individuals)

[jerney]

Jesus that's nauseating..

[The Journeyman]

Tragic really. You'd think a civilization as old and rich as this would practice basic hygiene by now.

[Vasconcelos]

Jesus, why did I ever watch the images?..

[San Galgano]

My God.
I remember when i was young, lifeguards found a dead body of a man who was drown a week earlier in a sea beach in Tuscany where i used to go.

People was sent off the beach and the beach itself closed for some days for cleaning and disinfesting.


What they should do in India then?
A month of uninterrupeted napalm bombing all around?

I usually never blame other cultures for their own customs, but here there is something sick and not worthy of a people with such a long history.

[Óttar]

I went to Varanasi and I watched the corpses burning, smoke entering my nostrils and all. I saw Brahmins chanting and circumambulating the corpse. I took a few boat rides on the Ganges. OK the defecating in the river and drinking the water is gross, but their digestive systems can handle it. It's nice at night hearing the priests chant, the clanging of bells while performing arati, the floating candles and burning corpses illuminating the night sky.

I don't really see what's so shocking about this. People die, the bodies have to be disposed of somewhere. This was just a smear campaign done by a smug chink. For one thing, he shows images of trashpiles mostly composed of plastics. In India, it is customary to leave trash in the streets for the vultures and monkeys to consume. If you notice, the corpses were naturally being disposed of by jackals, animals associated since time immemorial with outcastes and death. The problem came when plastic was introduced, and it could no longer be done away with in the traditional way.

Contrary to what this guy will tell you, there are Western style toilets and toilet-paper available in India. This guy talks about how Chinese sanitation has improved by leaps and bounds, but doesn't mention that China has the single largest waste management/sanitation problem in the world. There is a documentary on it called Trash Inc. The Chinese government puts millions of dollars into making their city-centres look futuristic and squeaky clean, while on the outside of town, poor villagers are surrounded by gigantic landfills.

And poor villagers have been using cow-dung for insulation for hundreds of years. So what?

Life is full of death. Western people are too used to their nicely wrapped up lunch meats and vacuum packed roasts without any blood and gore. Go to a fish market in India and you'll see piles of fish and a river of blood and some flies too. But guess what? I ate the fish and I didn't die. What do you think it looks like in a Western slaughter house where they don't even have windows or let sunlight in, because people would be downright horrified by what they saw?

The Ganges in Varanasi is unclean, but the Ganges in Rishikesh is as pure as the driven snow. The water is clear, clean and one would not catch any diseases if they bathed in it. I stood in the water, chatting with friends, watching a holy man performing his morning rites. It was a beautiful place and if I had some extra money in the bank, I'd buy a house or open a hotel out there.

[Don]

Jesus that's nauseating..

... after seeing so much meat...dogs having those feasts for their bellies...

I'm hungry.

[Peasant]

Filthy bastards...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_of_the_Ganges

[hereward]

Disturbing indeed, more so when you realise this country has a space programme with grand ambitions. Western tax payers will at least know their money is being spent wisely with regards to their economic interests.:icon_arghhh:

On a lighter note, I found this in the comments section;


Actually, this is exactly how America does it, using violence to beat the Indians [Native Americans] to death, pushing the Asian, African, and poor out into the country, running the poor white people into the surrounding outskirts of the cities. America’s police are even more terrible than China’s chengguan. If you’re within two meters of a police officer, you have to raise your hands, otherwise American police have the right to shoot you dead.



No doubt written by a well travelled, balanced individual.:thumbs up

[The Lawspeaker]

After 5000 years they still don't get the basic idea of cleanliness and the last mayor outbreak of the Black Death was... some 16 years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_plague_epidemic_in_Surat). What a hellhole.

It makes it even more unbelievable that this too is India:


Sikh Pilgrim at the Golden Temper (Amritsar):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Sikh_pilgrim_at_the_Golden_Temple_(Harmandir_Sahib )_in_Amritsar,_India.jpg

[The Lawspeaker]

India's dirty big mess exposed to the public (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/indias-dirty-big-mess-exposed-to-the-public/story-e6frg6zo-1225929083779)

DECADES of progress have failed to bring basic sanitation to more than half the population.

IT is a country whose teeming millions have to be paid in an effort to persuade them to spend a penny in a toilet rather than defecate in public.

India is where human waste, discharged along the vast, 65,000km rail network, corrodes the tracks to such an extent the rails have to be replaced every 24 months instead of having a normal 30-year lifespan. This is the human waste left by the 20 million passengers carried each day by Indian Railways.

India is where staggering numbers tell a story of squalor that lies behind so much of the controversy and apprehension surrounding next month's Commonwealth Games.

More than six decades after India won its freedom from British colonial rule, 55 per cent of its people - by one count 638 million - do not have access to a toilet of any kind and defecate in the open.

Paradoxically, more people have access to mobile phones in India than to basic sanitation. A recent estimate suggested about 366 million people have access to sanitation while there are about 600 million mobile phones in service in the emerging economy.

"It is a tragic irony to think that in India, a country now wealthy enough that roughly half of the people own phones, about half cannot afford the basic necessity and dignity of a toilet," a UN report has stated.

It is hardly surprising that India's Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh has said: "If there is a Nobel prize for dirt and filth, India will win it, no doubt." He is right.

Outside of the glitz of the sumptuous hotels where many tourists stay, the reality is that despite the great strides India has achieved in some areas, hygiene standards in India remain abysmal. The notorious malady known as "Delhi belly" is rampant.

Indians have been let down severely by successive governments since independence. The sort of mindset that has allowed filth to spoil Commonwealth Games preparations is testament to that failure.

N. R. Narayana Murthy, an eminent Indian and founder of Infosys Technologies, has summed up that failure thus: "The enigma of India is that our progress in higher education and science and technology has not been sufficient to take 350 million Indians out of illiteracy. It is difficult to imagine that 318 million people in the country do not have access to safe drinking water and 250 million people do not have access to basic medical care. Why should 630 million people not have access to acceptable sanitation facilities?"

He goes on: "When you see world-class supermarkets and food chains in our towns, and when our urban youngsters gloat over the choice of toppings on their pizzas, why should 51 per cent of the children in the country be undernourished? When India is among the largest producers of engineers and scientists in the world, why should 52 per cent of the primary schools have only one teacher for every two classes?

"Our corporate leaders splurge money on mansions, yachts and planes, and our urban youth revel in their latest sports shoes. Why should 300 million Indians live on hardly 545 rupees [$12] a month, barely sufficient to manage two meals a day, with little or no money left for schooling, clothes, shelter and medicine?"

Why, indeed. And why, as diplomat, politician and writer Sashi Tharoor asks in his book From Midnight to Millennium and Beyond, is there such an "astonishing disregard for public sanitation" in a country that has otherwise made such remarkable strides in so many areas.

"It is common to find sumptuous luxury apartments in buildings that are filthy, rotting and stained, whose common areas, walls and staircases have not been cleaned in generations. Each apartment owner is proud of his own immediate habitat but is unwilling to incur responsibility or expense for the areas shared with others, even in the same building.

"This attitude is also visible in the lack of a civic culture in both rural and urban India, which leaves public spaces dirty and garbage-strewn, streets potholed and neglected, civic amenities vandalised or not functioning. The Indian wades through dirt and filth, past open sewers and fly-specked waste, to an immaculate home where he proudly bathes twice a day."

Some Indians, that is. Those in Tharoor's well-heeled circle of the wealthy elite.

Mostly, however, they're in that hapless 55 per cent who have not even the most basic toilet facilities. They include the labourers at the Delhi Games sites who have made such middens of the new toilets, unused to such facilities and uncaring about how they treat them.

Eight of my long years as a foreign correspondent have been spent in India, recently living in the heart of the up-market Lutyens district of central New Delhi, alongside former Raj bungalows worth $40 million.

Central to this area are the famed Lodhi Gardens, a green haven that is to Delhi what Hyde Park is to London or Centennial Park to Sydney, a refuge from the teeming city beyond its walls.

But those walls tell the sad story of India's abysmal standards of public hygiene. They are constantly used as urinals by streams of Indians and the stench is overwhelming. New toilets installed by the Delhi Municipal Corporation are ignored. Despite the astronomical value of the houses in the areas, laneways are piled high with rubbish over which legions of mangy pye-dogs do battle.

It's bewildering. One of the neighbours while I was there was the head of a global telecom, a billionaire on the Forbes rich list. His luxurious home was worth many millions yet the laneway outside was a rubbish tip.

It's a weird mindset, one that officials in some parts of India have tried to challenge with little success. In Tamil Nadu state impoverished locals have been paid under a novel plan that aims to persuade them to stop defecating in public and use toilets.

Then there's the story of the railways and the human waste that pours on to its tracks each day from passengers either using "open-discharge" toilets or simply defecating openly.

Ironically, Delhi was the setting a couple of years ago of the World Toilet Summit when 40 countries met to discuss how best to bring low-cost, environmentally safe toilets to people in the developing world.

The technology is easy. What's lacking is a change in the sort of attitude that led a top Commonwealth Games official, Lalit Bhanot, to say defensively this week: "Everyone has different standards about cleanliness. The Westerners have different standards, we have different standards. These rooms [in the Games village] are clean to both you and us. However, it may not appear so to some others. They want certain standards in hygiene and cleanliness which may differ from our perception."

There are suggestions Indians believe in the inevitability of their hapless fate and have a couldn't-care-less attitude to life. "Worrying about where they pee and whether it offends people is hardly high on their list of priorities," a newspaper editor says.

But it may be more a consequence of decades of deprivation, of being locked in a seemingly interminable downward spiral from which so many can see no escape.

[Óttar]

As a native kid said when I was there, "Burning is learning. Cremation is education." :D

[Daos]

It certainly confirms that gypsies are descended from indians...

[Sahson]

My God.
I remember when i was young, lifeguards found a dead body of a man who was drown a week earlier in a sea beach in Tuscany where i used to go.

People was sent off the beach and the beach itself closed for some days for cleaning and disinfesting.


What they should do in India then?
A month of uninterrupeted napalm bombing all around?

I usually never blame other cultures for their own customs, but here there is something sick and not worthy of a people with such a long history.


My pedestal was too tall to climb off,
In fact that's the reason for the high horse.

[Brynhild]

I saw footage like this in a movie called Shocking Asia more than 20 years ago, of the bodies of dead animals and humans dumped in the Ganges, while nearby, people were swimming. It was abhorrent to see back then and even more so that all these years later, nothing has changed.

[Eldritch]

"It is common to find sumptuous luxury apartments in buildings that are filthy, rotting and stained, whose common areas, walls and staircases have not been cleaned in generations. Each apartment owner is proud of his own immediate habitat but is unwilling to incur responsibility or expense for the areas shared with others, even in the same building.

"This attitude is also visible in the lack of a civic culture in both rural and urban India, which leaves public spaces dirty and garbage-strewn, streets potholed and neglected, civic amenities vandalised or not functioning. The Indian wades through dirt and filth, past open sewers and fly-specked waste, to an immaculate home where he proudly bathes twice a day."


Each to his own, I guess. I'm not going to judge. But I'm no cultural relativist either, and I find this kind of attitude incomprehensible.

Just like I refuse to be impressed by the palaces, luxury yachts and private jets mentioned in the article, while the majority of the same people live in shantytowns with no water or plumbing, and what's worse, no conceivable means of improving themselves or their children. The same reason I've always despised Saudi oil billionaires.

[Fortis in Arduis]

The reason often given is that there are so many people, and the government can only do so much.

India is cleaner where there are fewer people, and infrastructure seems better able to cope, so perhaps this is the main reason.

There are many Indians who are disgusted by unclean habits, but they know that little can be done.

[Cato]

Yuck.

[Birka]

Words fail me....

[Sahson]

Words fail me....

Have you tried sign language? :P

[Svanhild]

I don't consider something like this civilisation. Not at all. Below primitive.

[Bloodeagle]

India's civilization was cutting edge, 5000 years ago! :lol00002:
I blame the Aryan invaders for this mess. :rolleyes:

[Debaser11]

r-strategists living inside an infrastructure like that will produce those results. Great find.

[Sol Invictus]

Oh my fuck.

[~°2012°~]

Oh my .."dead bodies lying around and no one is running around screaming!!!111!1!" It should be obvious that Hindus do not share the judeo-christian idiotic fear of death nor the degenerate idea of death being repulsive.

The root cause of people bathing around corpses and shit is o-v-e-r-p-o-p-u-l-a-t-i-on (emphazizing the need for depopulation).. I enjoyed seeing dogs eating human flesh very much, a very disillusive sight.

[~°2012°~]

I don't consider something like this civilisation. Not at all. Below primitive.

...and the USA (http://farm1.static.flickr.com/122/277414804_5cb2b1164e.jpg?v=0) is??

[Sol Invictus]

I don't think Americans consider it a holy ritual to bathe in a tepid pool of human soup. I could be wrong though,

[Debaser11]

The people taking potshots at America (as if Europe were some model place in its current state) are not so unlike the slow-witted liberals who think stale, misguided George Bush jokes are comic gold.

[Peasant]

The root cause of people bathing around corpses and shit is o-v-e-r-p-o-p-u-l-a-t-i-on (emphazizing the need for depopulation).. I enjoyed seeing dogs eating human flesh very much, a very disillusive sight.

Any examples of this happening in the Netherlands or Belgium? (http://www.mapsharing.org/MS-maps/map-pages-worldmap/images-map/6-world-map-population-density.png)

Oh, and been unafraid of death makes it sensible to bathe with corpses?

[Austin]

Lol very amusing. A nice dose of reality compared to the glamorous India full of Gandhi depictions of tranquility that everyone in the West is so familiar with.

[~°2012°~]

Any examples of this happening in the Netherlands or Belgium? (http://www.mapsharing.org/MS-maps/map-pages-worldmap/images-map/6-world-map-population-density.png)

Oh, and been unafraid of death makes it sensible to bathe with corpses?

People bathe with corpses because there is no other option available, thats how the crisis of overpopulation and decay emerges over there.. of course in relation with their cultural collective consciousness. Please keep on eating your fast food, watching TV and worshiping your dog as your baby, mocking "those filthy Indians" telling yourself that you do not live in a decaying civilization.

[Germanicus]

There, see what happens when the British leave a country to it's own devises. If we were still an Empire, the buggers would be using a proper toilet and toilet paper to wipe their arses by now.. :)

[Peasant]

People bathe with corpses because there is no other option available, thats how the crisis of overpopulation and decay emerges over there.. of course in relation with their cultural collective consciousness. Please keep on eating your fast food, watching TV and worshiping your dog as your baby, mocking "those filthy Indians" telling yourself that you do not live in a decaying civilization.

Fine, I will move there, believe the water is holy and gulp down some of that rancid water. Then I will clean out the after-taste with some coca-cola.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/16/dining/india_coke.jpg

[Austin]

People bathe with corpses because there is no other option available, thats how the crisis of overpopulation and decay emerges over there.. of course in relation with their cultural collective consciousness. Please keep on eating your fast food, watching TV and worshiping your dog as your baby, mocking "those filthy Indians" telling yourself that you do not live in a decaying civilization.


I had an Indian professor at university once. He smelled terrible because he said bathing everyday was a Western thing. When he'd walk by to the podium people would turn away in disgust and revulsion.

An uncleanly culture is a depraved culture.

[Eldritch]

Please keep on eating your fast food, watching TV and worshiping your dog as your baby, mocking "those filthy Indians" telling yourself that you do not live in a decaying civilization.

That's a strawman the size of the May Day sacrificial pyre in Wicker Man.

Besides, I'd like to problematise the following ideas: 1) our culture is decaying, 2) we find death "repulsive", and 3) the previous idea is "degenerate", which is the reason Indian/Hindu culture is not decaying.

Every now and then on this forum you see someone barging into a thread firing on all cylinders, challenging all comers, and making the most bizarre, not to mention outrageous, assumptions about other posters and their opinions. But all too often, when asked to provide some elaboration and context, they go awfully quiet. I hope you won't be one of those.


...and the USA (http://farm1.static.flickr.com/122/277414804_5cb2b1164e.jpg?v=0) is??

Does the existence of fat people in a nation preclude it from civilisational status? If your answer is yes, then the answer is no. And if your answer is no, then the answer is yes. Very simple, if you actually pause to give it some thought.

[~°2012°~]

The people taking potshots at America (as if Europe were some model place in its current state) are not so unlike the slow-witted liberals who think stale, misguided George Bush jokes are comic gold.

Awww did I offend you?

[Osweo]

Bunch o' skanks.

Everyone in Europe should be made to watch this, to realise that we're NOT all the same, in the head, in our values, our standards, our mores...

Kind of hard to swallow the 'integration/multikult' package when you're in possession of the facts. And these are the REFORMED Indians. I've read shocking stuff of what they got up to before we were there, with the human sacrifices and so on... :ohwell:

[Debaser11]

^Some people still find a way, Os. Here's one of the comments:

"As for going swimming amongst dead bodies, people from different perspectives have different thinking, just like how the Chinese can’t understand how the Africans eat mice, and the Africans can’t see how the Chinese eat frogs."

You just have a different perspective, don't ya know! Quit being so judgemental. ;)

[The Lawspeaker]

Bunch o' skanks.

Everyone in Europe should be made to watch this, to realise that we're NOT all the same, in the head, in our values, our standards, our mores...

Kind of hard to swallow the 'integration/multikult' package when you're in possession of the facts. And these are the REFORMED Indians. I've read shocking stuff of what they got up to before we were there, with the human sacrifices and so on... :ohwell:
Yes. It was a very good thing that the British banned the practice of suttee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice)).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Burning_of_a_Widow.jpg

[~°2012°~]

Besides, I'd like to problematise the following ideas: 1) our culture is decaying, 2) we find death "repulsive", and 3) the previous idea is "degenerate", which is the reason Indian/Hindu culture is not decaying.Does the existence of fat people in a nation preclude it from civilisational status? If your answer is yes, then the answer is no. And if your answer is no, then the answer is yes. Very simple, if you actually pause to give it some thought.

Our culture is decaying yes, we find death repulsive yes, the previous idea is degenerate yes, Hindu/Indian culture is decaying as well. That there are billions of people over 60kg weight on this planet is recklessness. The decay is on a global level. The morons here who think they are superior to Indians are blind to the fact that their own societies are just as bad in another cultural context. Bathing around rotting flesh(East)/Beauty pageants for Dogs(West), same decay different culture. Very simple, if you actually pause to give it some thought.

[Loki]

These images make for depressing viewing, but I think our "Western" (oh I hate using that term) minds do not understand Hindu values. A few on here do (Ottar; Fortis; Dr Who). Yes, overpopulation, lack of a public sanitary system and extreme poverty leads to this. For them, this is all life they have ever known. It's nothing unusual to them.

I personally have a problem with their hygienic methods (or lack of) and age-old habits. It needs some reform, to say it mildly. It is no wonder that the country is riddled with disease and it creates a low life expectancy for them.



According to the World Health Organization, 900,000 Indians die each year from drinking contaminated water and breathing in polluted air


^^ Now I don't wonder why.

Some of their rituals and habits may be thousands of years old and sacred, but we are now in 2010 and we know better. If humans always kept to old traditions we wouldn't be humans yet, but still apes swinging from trees.

I also think it is very unhygienic to not use toilet paper. Okay, most Indians can probably not afford it. But many can but probably don't use it.

It's a shame, I actually think most of these Hindus are very good people who have an appreciation for life and the living. They're not rich, but should not be despised. It is possible our ancestors lived like that.

I must add that in the deepest darkest of Africa where I've been, hygiene is a lot better than this.

[Debaser11]

I think it's their values that lead to overpopulation, extreme poverty and a dirty environment, though. Not the other way around. That environment didn't create itself.

[Eldritch]

Our culture is decaying

Examples?


we find death repulsive

Proof?


the previous idea is degenerate

First demonstrate that your previous assertion is factual, then explain how finding death repulsive is degenerate.


That there are billions of people over 60kg weight on this planet is recklessness.

What's the combined total body mass of humanity that the planet can tolerate?



The morons here who think they are superior to Indians are blind to the fact that their own societies are just as bad in another cultural context. Bathing around rotting flesh(East)/Beauty pageants for Dogs(West), same decay different culture.

Leaving aside the fact that as far as I understand it, not many people in this thread have actually claimed to be superior to Indians: it's a pretty novel idea that bathing among decaying bodies and beauty pageants for dogs are the same or comparable thing, but whatever.

Do we Westerners think beauty pageants for dogs are holy? Do we think they flow from the fingertips of our god? Do we all idolize bpfd the same way Hindus idolize the river Ganges? Are the reactions the same when a Westerner says, "I'm signing Fifi up for a bpfd", and when an Indian says, "I'm going to dump my dead uncle into the Ganges"?

[Loki]

I think it's their values that lead to overpopulation, extreme poverty and a dirty environment, though. Not the other way around. That environment didn't create itself.

I'm not so sure of that.

[Debaser11]

Well, then what causes those things?

[Loki]

Well, then what causes those things?

I'm not sure, it is certainly not as easy as pulling out a sentence from your hat on a discussion forum. India is a very old country with a long history. It is also the birthplace of several religions that I consider far superior to Christianity or other Abrahamic ones.

[Osweo]

Yes. It was a very good thing that the British banned the practice of suttee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice)).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Burning_of_a_Widow.jpg

Man, that's HUMANE to some of the older rites there!

[San Galgano]

Indeed i have always found funny when people accuse all the western countries to be in decaying cause another place respect old religious beliefs, dump dead relatives in a river and drink polluted water while us not.



Where the fuck is the link?

[Grumpy Cat]

Man, that's HUMANE to some of the older rites there!

The Norse did something similar, actually. In Viking funerals the man's widow would be on the burning ship.

[The Lawspeaker]

Man, that's HUMANE to some of the older rites there!
I have a strong stomach and I had my dinner a couple of hours ago so... tell me more about those rites ?


The Norse did something similar, actually. In Viking funerals the man's widow would be on the burning ship.

I am glad that the modern day Scandinavians don't.

[Grumpy Cat]

Indeed i have always found funny when people accuse all the western countries to be in decaying cause another place respect old religious beliefs, dump dead relatives in a river and drink polluted water while us not.

Noble savage concept.

[Eldritch]

Well, then what causes those things?

Probably the disregard for any other issues than one's own immediate wellbeing, already mentioned in this thread, has at least something to do with it.

[Treffie]

There, see what happens when the British leave a country to it's own devises. If we were still an Empire, the buggers would be using a proper toilet and toilet paper to wipe their arses by now.. :)

Duh, this has been going on way before Britain was an entity, the Brits didn't stop them doing it while they were there.

[Grumpy Cat]

The toilets there look kind of like the toilets in Thailand, but bathrooms are usually equipped with this squirty thing that cleans your arse. They actually consider "dry-wiping" (using toilet paper) unsanitary.

[Eldritch]

The toilets there look kind of like the toilets in Thailand, but bathrooms are usually equipped with this squirty thing that cleans your arse. They actually consider "dry-wiping" (using toilet paper) unsanitary.

True. In Indonesia it's the same.

[Óttar]

Who knows if Christianity had not been forced on Germanics if we might not still hold the Danube and Rhein sacred and cremate our bodies there. The ancient Celts used to perform human sacrifice and the Vikings drank out of skulls. What sort of moral framework are you using to decide what is right or wrong? Before the British came, Bengali women walked bare-breasted and Saris did not have those little undershirts beneath them. Medieval India was very worldly as can be attested from the Kama Sutra (Alain Danelou's translation is the authoritative and best one, no prudish deletions), then the British came and as a result of Victorian prudery, that ascetic prude Gandhi and his people made Hindus ashamed of their works on sexuality (Kama Sutra, the Khajuraho temples), I am generally sympathetic to the British, but it is ludicrous to claim that Hindus became more moral after British armies and their values arrived on the subcontinent. The problem is overpopulation. China and India contain almost half of the world's population and both suffer from widespread poverty and sanitation issues.

[Joe McCarthy]

Hinduism is a great stumbling block to India joining modernity, and we should probably be happy it holds them back. When a religion emphasizes that one's bad life circumstances are dictated by misdeeds in a past life, it's understandable why such an attitude would lead to filth and squalor. This sort of theological determinism will tend to blunt any effort to better one's lifestyle. Applied nationally, it results in the many absurdities seen there, especially in the south.

[Grumpy Cat]

True. In Indonesia it's the same.

Yeah I meant to say Thailand and Indonesia.

[The Lawspeaker]

....but bathrooms are usually equipped with this squirty thing that cleans your arseThey actually consider "dry-wiping" (using toilet paper) unsanitary.
Then I think that they have a point there. I guess you are referring to a bidet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet). It's a shame that they are becoming quite rare these days in Western Europe.

[Grumpy Cat]

Then I think that they have a point there. I guess you are referring to a bidet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet). It's a shame that they are becoming quite rare these days in Western Europe.

Yeah, it's something similar to a bidet, which I thought were common in Europe. In Canada (I don't know about the US, though), only the filthy rich have them. Real working people wipe their arses. :p

[Osweo]

The Norse did something similar, actually. In Viking funerals the man's widow would be on the burning ship.
AD!!! Come ON! That's out of some comic book, not real history!

There IS the account of Ibn Fadlan, in Russia, but the situation there was rather peculiar.

I have a strong stomach and I had my dinner a couple of hours ago so... tell me more about those rites ?
I can only recommend Fraser's Golden Bough. I recall one instance of a rain-ceremony, in which the idea was to make the young girl CRY as many tears as possible, while she was being burnt to death. :....

[The Lawspeaker]

Yeah, it's something similar to a bidet, which I thought were common in Europe. In Canada (I don't know about the US, though), only the filthy rich have them. Real working people wipe their arses. :p
I am actually in favour of finding a way to integrate bidets into modern toilets because it is definitely more sanitary. The Japanese seem to be working on electronic designs that also check your health status, are heated, provide music and can flush your private area, open/close or flush the whole load at the click of a button. :thumb001:

[Osweo]

I am actually in favour of finding a way to integrate bidets into modern toilets because it is definitely more sanitary. The Japanese seem to be working on electronic designs that also check your health status, are heated, provide music and can flush your private area, open/close or flush the whole load at the click of a button. :thumb001:
I'm not entirely sure how a bidet works, to be honest. I've seen them, but never dared try. :p

But we're talking about public toilets here. That kind of implies that wet arses will need drying... You want to see the public towel beside some future Indian toilet-bidet!?!? :eek:

Or will you build in some sudden hot gush of air??? :D That'll surprise a few Chinky tourists too!


(((What's with the fonts, CB? You think you're lei.talk or summat? :p)))

[The Lawspeaker]

I'm not entirely sure how a bidet works, to be honest. I've seen them, but never dared try. :p

But we're talking about public toilets here. That kind of implies that wet arses will need drying... You want to see the public towel beside some future Indian toilet-bidet!?!? :eek:

Or will you build in some sudden hot gush of air??? :D That'll surprise a few Chinky tourists too!
I have seen Japanese designs that do include that hot gush of air so the private parts can be dried as well. There are some really clever designs out there. :thumb001:



(((What's with the fonts, CB? You think you're lei.talk or summat? :p)))
Nah. I got bored and fed up with using Verdana and I was looking for a new Font.:D

[~°2012°~]

Examples?
Proof?
First demonstrate that your previous assertion is factual, then explain how finding death repulsive is degenerate.
What's the combined total body mass of humanity that the planet can tolerate?
Should be obvious to any thinking individual in society so the questions themselves are not takes seriously, but:
1.The first obvious example is the existance of this forum, if the culture was not in decay there would be no need for reactionary forums for cultural preservation.
2. Read the Bible and study history and western philosophy
3.Study nature and observe the patterns in nature
4.Does not matter, it a personal opinion


Leaving aside the fact that as far as I understand it, not many people in this thread have actually claimed to be superior to Indians: it's a pretty novel idea that bathing among decaying bodies and beauty pageants for dogs are the same or comparable thing, and again, but whatever.

The replies here reek of smug feeling of false-superiority especially amongst the Christian Americans & English (as usual), nothing novel about it for people who are capable of abstract thinking. Obviously (or so I thought) Im using "beauty pageants for dogs" as symbol for the western worship of materialistism. Both "The bathing" example and the "beauty pagent" example are meant to show us decaying cultures that have lost the balance between their outer function and inner values.


Do we Westerners think beauty pageants for dogs are holy? Do we think they flow from the fingertips of our god? Do we all idolize bpfd the same way Hindus idolize the river Ganges? Are the reactions the same when a Westerner says, "I'm signing Fifi up for a bpfd", and when an Indian says, "I'm going to dump my dead uncle into the Ganges"?

Yes westeres see materialism as holy, have you seen a phenomenon called Christmass shopping? Not holy with same exoteric symbolism as Hindus see the Ganges river but holy non the less. Yes we idolize materialism as Hindus idolize the ganges. Yes, the reactions would be very casual and normal.

[Osweo]

The replies here reek of smug feeling of false-superiority especially amongst the Christian Americans & English (as usual), nothing novel about it for people who are capable of abstract thinking.
BLA
BLA
BLA

Yeah, but you seem to losing sight of the fact that people there are drinking and 'bathing' in

piss-shit-rottencorpse soup.

Kind of trumps just about ANY bad thing you can say about anyone else.

[Eldritch]

Should be obvious to any thinking individual in society so the questions themselves are not takes seriously, but:

No matter how obvious something seems to you, you should always be prepared to spell it out when asked. Because why should anyone take you seriously if you cannot or will not back up your allegations?



1.The first obvious example is the existance of this forum, if the culture was not in decay there would be no need for reactionary forums for cultural preservation.

That's your interpretation of the matter. It's basically saying that "European civilization is declining, because I (and others) believe so". Someone else could point to this forum as proof that Europeans care about their heritage.

How would you react if I told you that, despite the great setbacks of the 20th Century, in my opinion European, "white", culture has never been more dynamic and vigorous than it is now, and that if we play our cards right in the coming decades, it is possible that towards the end of our own natural lifepans (I'm assuming you're not very old yet) we'll enter a veritable Golden Age?


2. Read the Bible and study history and western philosophy

3.Study nature and observe the patterns in nature


No, I won't read the Bible and study history, philosophy, etc.

After all, there's no need to, since I can ask you what these topics have to teach us about the issue at hand. ;)


4.Does not matter, it a personal opinion

I would think that the Earth's maximum population capacity is the one thing here that is not a matter of opinion.



The replies here reek of smug feeling of false-superiority especially amongst the Christian Americans & English (as usual), nothing novel about it for people who are capable of abstract thinking. Obviously (or so I thought) Im using "beauty pageants for dogs" as symbol for the western worship of materialistism. Both "The bathing" example and the "beauty pagent" example are meant to show us decaying cultures that have lost the balance between their outer function and inner values.

Yes westeres see materialism as holy, have you seen a phenomenon called Christmass shopping? Not holy with same exoteric symbolism as Hindus see the Ganges river but holy non the less. Yes we idolize materialism as Hindus idolize the ganges. Yes, the reactions would be very casual and normal.

I'm sorry, but this seems like impenetrable obscurantism to me.

[Grumpy Cat]

I'm sorry, but this seems like impenetrable obscurantism to me.


Noble savage concept.

[Austin]

Our culture is decaying yes, we find death repulsive yes, the previous idea is degenerate yes, Hindu/Indian culture is decaying as well. That there are billions of people over 60kg weight on this planet is recklessness. The decay is on a global level. The morons here who think they are superior to Indians are blind to the fact that their own societies are just as bad in another cultural context. Bathing around rotting flesh(East)/Beauty pageants for Dogs(West), same decay different culture. Very simple, if you actually pause to give it some thought.


Anyone who can equate bathing near rotting flesh with holding a dog pageant is seriously misguided.....

You can't die from going to a dog pageant.....you can die from bathing next to rotting flesh.....

I knew that when I was five years old....

[Sahson]

These images make for depressing viewing, but I think our "Western" (oh I hate using that term)

You could use the Occident.


I have a strong stomach and I had my dinner a couple of hours ago so... tell me more about those rites ?

I was eating Bran flakes while looking at the pictures. I will admit i looked at the bowl to make sure I was eating bran flakes, but I kept eating...


True. In Indonesia it's the same.

It's the same anywhere in South-East Asia From Burma, to Singapore(in certain places).


Then I think that they have a point there. I guess you are referring to a bidet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet). It's a shame that they are becoming quite rare these days in Western Europe.

The ones I have seen in in Malaysia, and Singapore is a hose pipe attached to a faucet. The common thing with Malay etiquette was the mean actually stood on the seat, and did their business...

[Great Dane]

The reason often given is that there are so many people, and the government can only do so much.

India is cleaner where there are fewer people, and infrastructure seems better able to cope, so perhaps this is the main reason.

There are many Indians who are disgusted by unclean habits, but they know that little can be done.

Population density of India: 361.6/km2 or 936.6/sq mi
Population density of England: 395/km2 or 1,023/sq mi
Population density of The Netherlands: 400.4/km2 or 1,037.1/sq mi

[The Lawspeaker]

Population density of India: 361.6/km2 or 936.6/sq mi
Population density of England: 395/km2 or 1,023/sq mi
Population density of The Netherlands: 400.4/km2 or 1,037.1/sq mi
And we are a lot cleaner. We have some rough patches too but these are the areas were no Dutch live. And even those are cleaner then India.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Straat_in_woonwijk_Delft.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Zwolle_Herfte_Spoorlijn.jpg

http://www.fransmensonides.nl/foto/13prinses.jpg

I think it would be fair to say that around 99 percent of the population well equipped when it comes to sanitation.

[Debaser11]

I'm not sure, it is certainly not as easy as pulling out a sentence from your hat on a discussion forum. India is a very old country with a long history. It is also the birthplace of several religions that I consider far superior to Christianity or other Abrahamic ones.

What I'm doing is no more simplistic than what you're doing by alleging that a bunch of environmental causes are behind all of this mess. You say the environment (or some historical cause which is tantamount to the same thing) and I'm saying it's more of a behavioral/values problem. No one has a hard time saying that the Romans' behavior lead to their decline and civilizational demise but when such an analysis is made about a culture outside of Europe, people dismiss it and often do what you did and speak about how much greater the other culture is in some way over Western civilization.

And I said nothing about their religions being inferior to Christianity (but I could probably challenge your assertion that religions from that region are superior on a different thread). Do Christian societies all live up to their ideal? No. Right? I take it that other societies face similar problems created by the rift that exists between the codified, perscribed code of conduct and the way the culture actually behaves. I wasn't necessarily denigrating the ideals of the civilization by default by attributing this disgusting mess to these people's values. Just like I'm not denigrating the U.S. by default when I talk about the its underclass making poor choices.

[Grumpy Cat]

And we are a lot cleaner. We have some rough patches too but these are the areas were no Dutch live. And even those are cleaner then India.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Straat_in_woonwijk_Delft.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Zwolle_Herfte_Spoorlijn.jpg

http://www.fransmensonides.nl/foto/13prinses.jpg

I think it would be fair to say that around 99 percent of the population well equipped when it comes to sanitation.

Yeah. Europe is the most densely populated continent on Earth, so you can't blame population density.

Maybe poverty? I don't know. I work with a few Indians and they're not dirty like that, but they're richer, obviously.

But I should mention that Europe (and I don't mean this as an insult by any means) is actually "dirty" by Canadian standards, though, even though I get grossed out because it's so engrained in my culture, I think Europe's dirtiness is actually more healthy than Canada's excessive cleanliness standards. We Canadians have crap immune systems, that's why so many of our young children coming up can be taken out with a peanut. I mean, hand sanitizer at every door, there's absolutely no need. We seem to have a nationwide case of OCD.

[Eldritch]

Population density of India: 361.6/km2 or 936.6/sq mi
Population density of England: 395/km2 or 1,023/sq mi
Population density of The Netherlands: 400.4/km2 or 1,037.1/sq mi

Yep. And I've been strolling along the banks of the Thames in London several times and didn't see a single dead rotting body.

[Loki]

What I'm doing is no more simplistic than what you're doing by alleging that a bunch of environmental causes are behind all of this mess. You say the environment (or some historical cause which is tantamount to the same thing) and I'm saying it's more of a behavioral/values problem.

No I didn't say that. I said I wasn't sure as to the cause, and it warrants an in-depth look at history.

[Don]

Why some people tries to explain undesirable behaviours only by external variables?

Well, maybe there, in India, their souls are very clean, but their bodies...
They are dirty because the cleaningness is not part of their priorities in their INNER idiosyncrasy.

Look the gypsies that live in the west. Look at the places where they live, how they adapt their environment to their tastes...

On the other hand we find the Japs whose cleaningness in some cases, as a whole, as a race and culture, reaches to obsessive compulsiveness.

Population density of Tokyo 14.000/Km2..

[Germanicus]

Whenever we visit different countries most people eat local food, cooked in the traditional way, a lot of my friends have jobs in top management, and have told me of truly horrible tales of food poisoning when overseas.
My personal choice of food when holidaying in different countries is traditional well cooked food, nothing fancy, my rule of thumb is never eat something that may have been prepared by hand like: salads, prawns, and raw fruits.
Remember, we Europeans wash our hands methodically, non Europeans do not!

[Sahson]

But I should mention that Europe (and I don't mean this as an insult by any means) is actually "dirty" by Canadian standards, though, even though I get grossed out because it's so engrained in my culture, I think Europe's dirtiness is actually more healthy than Canada's excessive cleanliness standards. We Canadians have crap immune systems, that's why so many of our young children coming up can be taken out with a peanut. I mean, hand sanitizer at every door, there's absolutely no need. We seem to have a nationwide case of OCD.

When Can I move, sounds like me and Canada would get along well. :)

[Grumpy Cat]

Whenever we visit different countries most people eat local food, cooked in the traditional way, a lot of my friends have jobs in top management, and have told me of truly horrible tales of food poisoning when overseas.
My personal choice of food when holidaying in different countries is traditional well cooked food, nothing fancy, my rule of thumb is never eat something that may have been prepared by hand like: salads, prawns, and raw fruits.
Remember, we Europeans wash our hands methodically, non Europeans do not!

Yeah, I remember when I was at a pizza joint run by a Syrian dude and he walked out of the bathroom without washing his hands and then proceeded to make pizza. :puke:

But according to 23andme, I am immune to Norovirus, the most common cause of food poisoning. Might explain why when it broke out here, I was one of the only people in the office.

[Debaser11]

No I didn't say that. I said I wasn't sure as to the cause, and it warrants an in-depth look at history.

I realize I come across as flippant when I attribute this to their values (sometimes the truth hurts), but I still find this to be simplistic in its own right:

"Yes, overpopulation, lack of a public sanitary system and extreme poverty leads to this. For them, this is all life they have ever known. It's nothing unusual to them."

Essentially, we're debating about what Marxists and right wingers argue about. Does man start in the woods engaged in some environmental predicament or is man responsible for shaping his environment? You fall on one side and I fall on the other. You're content to list causes existing outside of man himself while I go the other route and say that a man largely determines his own lot in life through every choice he makes. You say it's "over" this or "lack of" that or "extreme" something. But where does all that over, lack of, and extreme come from?

What you say are the causes, I'd call the effects. And what you'd call the effects, I'd call the causes. (At least, that's how it seems to me.)

So fundamentally, our disagreement still comes down to a values versus environment dichotomy.

If people collectively create a nasty situation around themselves to the point where dead bodies are being chewed away by dogs, to me, that's not "historical causes" fault, that's the fault of the group. Just like when Western decadence turns our people into petty, vain, and conniving simpletons who act like cowards and whores. That's not the Jewish media's fault, but our people's faults. If you believe in personal responsibility, you don't need to look at history in depth to assign blame for a 500 yard field of shit or indifference toward others. People are not switches; we all have free will.

No one handed the West its infrastructure. At some point the people of our civilization took responsibility and fixed these problems because of their priorities and values. Does that mean every Westerner has superior values to every one of these poor people? Of course not. But per capita, the average Westerner is not going to keep bringing mouths into that type of world to further complicate matters. They aren't going to have five children and then stick their hand out for money on a UNICEF commercial. They're going to think, "shit, I can barely take care of myself so the last thing I need to do is bring another mouth into the world."

[Óttar]

Ha! I just saw a report on BBC America. There are over 500 corpses in China's Yellow River. Check out the pic and story below:

http://kha-nom.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/corpse-fishers.jpg

http://www.kha-nom.com/news/2010/09/the-yellow-river-corpse-fishers/
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/09/16/100691/chinese-fisherman-on-yellow-river.html?storylink=addthis

By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers

NEAR CHANGPO VILLAGE, China — From his perch on an overhang above the Yellow River, Wei Jinpeng pointed to a fisherman's cove below and began counting his latest catch. He stopped after six, and guessed that perhaps a dozen human corpses were bobbing in the murky waters.

The bodies were floating facedown and tethered by ropes to the shore, their mud-covered limbs and rumps protruding from the water.

Wei is a fisher of dead people. He scans the river for cadavers, drags them to shore with a small boat and then charges grieving families to recover their relatives' corpses. Wei said he kept the faces submerged to preserve their features. Any dispute about identity makes it harder to collect his bounty.

Wei doesn't worry about how they got here, but he's heard tales over the years from relatives who've come to claim the bodies, haunting portraits of average people crushed in the extraordinary stress of China's economic boom.

While some of the 80 to 100 bodies Wei gathers each year are victims of accidents and floods, he thinks that the majority end up in the river after suicide or murder. There's no overt sign of a crime spree, though there's evidence of many people taking their own lives. Indeed, suicide is the leading cause of death for women in rural China, and 26 percent of all suicides in the world take place in the nation, according to the World Health Organization

Most of the bodies apparently are swept downriver from Lanzhou, the provincial capital of Gansu in the country's northwest. The city boasts rows of new skyscrapers, built by a rush of poor laborers with few rights, and businessmen notorious for operating above the law.

The work of "body fishers" has received increased attention in Chinese media lately, including the release of a documentary about a clan of them who work near Wei. One English-language state newspaper described the profession as "living on the dead"; it noted that the filmmaker saw the family retrieving bodies almost daily.

Wei's fishing spot is about 18 miles from Lanzhou. A bend in the river and a hydroelectric dam slow the currents and give the bodies a place to float to the surface.

The family members who come to claim them whisper about a father who, unable to make ends meet with low pay, killed himself by jumping off a bridge. Wei also has retrieved bodies with gagged mouths and bound hands, the hallmark of criminal gangs and corrupt police. Finally, there are the remains of young women whom no one recognizes, which Wei eventually cuts loose back into the river, he said.

"Most of the bodies that are not claimed by relatives are female migrant workers who had moved to Lanzhou," said Wei, who drives a red motorcycle and wears large circle-rimmed sunglasses. "Most of them have been murdered. ... Their families don't know; they think they're still working in Lanzhou."

The families who are left to search for the deceased often do so without much help from the police and, instead, have to haggle with men such as Wei over the price of the dead.

A Lanzhou business journal wrote in 2006 about a local firm that got a call from a body fisher who'd found a corpse floating in the river with employee identification. When a company representative, identified only by the surname Wang, went to collect the body, he was told that it would cost 200 yuan (about $30) to view the face and 6,000 yuan ($895) to take the dead man away. Wang and the body fisher argued, finally settling on 4,000 yuan ($597). The news article expressed outrage at the situation and quoted police as saying there'd be a crackdown, something that almost four years later has yet to happen.

Body fishing is by all accounts a thriving business in Gansu province; practitioners advertise their names and phone numbers by painting them on the sides of buildings near the river. Chinese newspapers and news websites have run stories recently about body fishers working from the southwest mega-city of Chonqing to the eastern coastal province of Shandong.

Wei and others said they called the police when they'd found murder victims, though it isn't clear that's always the case.

"They're not only making a business from this, but they're cheating people," said Zhu Wenhuan, a Lanzhou man who's visited Wei twice looking for his mother after she vanished June 3.

Police in the area refused interview requests for this story.

However, Lanzhou residents and news accounts confirmed much of what Wei and his colleagues said.

For example, the wife of Lanzhou resident Zhang Daqiang went missing on May 22. On the suspicion that his wife had flung herself into the river because of problems at work, Zhang has posted fliers and made the rounds of local body fishers. In a telephone interview, he told McClatchy that his wife was facing increased pressure at work after management withheld pay and canceled holidays. She's one of three workers who've disappeared since employees at the company staged a strike in March to protest the conditions, Zhang said.

Lanzhou is a dusty outpost compared with the glitter of a Shanghai, but it anchors a province whose economic output more than doubled from 2004 to 2009. There are BMW and Audi dealerships near towering office buildings in what once was a part of the old Silk Road.

Dong Xiangrong, a Lanzhou university student, said that everyone knew the other side of that new wealth: Workers in the city of some 2 million people, especially migrants, are at times treated like cattle.

"Sometimes their bosses don't pay them, and when they go to argue, the bosses beat them and dump them in the river," Dong, 21, said with a matter-of-fact tone.

Sitting at a nearby park, the Ma brothers paused to consider the issue.

"Some employers don't pay the staff, so their employees commit suicide," said Ma Yinglong, a 55-year-old retired factory worker.

Ma Yingbao, a 44-year-old who's out of work, added: "There could be many reasons for a body to be in the river. ... Some people are under too much pressure."

Before Wei got into the business in 2003, he ran a pear orchard and made some 4,000 yuan a year. He now charges 500 yuan when a farmer comes to gather a body, 2,000 yuan if the customer has a job and 3,000 yuan when a company is covering the bill.

Wei acknowledged that some in the community criticize the work as profiting from tragedy. He pointed out that it's a job that few others are willing to do. Several people in Lanzhou agreed that without Wei and others scooping up bodies, there'd be no way to collect the dead.

Just down the road, Wei Yingquan and his two sons, who were profiled in the documentary, have diversified from sheep farming to body fishing. They charge people 300 yuan (about $45) just to turn over corpses to see whether they recognize them.

"Some people say that I am a swindler, that I am kidnapping bodies," said Wei Yingquan, a 64-year-old with tobacco-stained teeth and a grimy white sweater. Nevertheless, he said, "people come every day to look at the bodies."


Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/09/16/100691/chinese-fisherman-on-yellow-river.html?storylink=addthis#ixzz1641R0roC

[Osweo]

Ha! I just saw a report on BBC America. There are over 500 corpses in China's Yellow River. Check out the pic and story below:

LOL, irrelevant! Nobody deliberately puts those bodies in there, and then knowingly drinks and washes in the water while they know they're still there and rotting!

[Eldritch]

^^^ As incredibly sinister as that story is otherwise, at least the relatives of the dead care enough to claim the bodies. Otherwise the whole profession (as well as the article describing it) would not even exist.

[Óttar]

LOL, irrelevant! Nobody deliberately puts those bodies in there, and then knowingly drinks and washes in the water while they know they're still there and rotting!
No, but it shows this smug chink should take the log out of his own eye. China has major sanitation problems and its regions could bust out in revolt at any moment.

[CelticTemplar]

What a filthy country.

We should make it a colony again, bring some real civilization back to this land.

[Bloodeagle]

On the subject of Filthy India, there exists a group of people known as the Parsi (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FParsi&ei=ipz6TOLgAcWqlAf-_tWXDA&usg=AFQjCNEe4BAqOz4JGZlXUQOLijYFNea9gg), Zoroastrians who arrived in India 1200 years ago from Persia.
The Zoroastrians practice a totally different but equally shocking way of dealing with their dead.
They are taken to Tower of Silence or Dakhma.

Zoroastrian tradition considers a dead body—in addition to cut hair and nail-parings—to be nasu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasu_%28Zoroastrianism%29), unclean, i.e. potential pollutants. Specifically, the corpse demon (Avestan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avestan): nasu.daeva (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daeva)) was believed to rush into the body and contaminate everything it came into contact with[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence#cite_note-0), hence the Vendidad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendidad) (an ecclesiastical code "given against the demons") has rules for disposing of the dead as "safely" as possible.
To preclude the pollution of earth or fire (see Zam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zam) and Atar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atar) respectively), the bodies of the dead are placed atop a tower—a tower of silence—and so exposed to the sun and to birds of prey. Thus, "putrefaction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putrefaction) with all its concomitant evils" "is most effectually prevented."[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence#cite_note-1)
The towers, which are fairly uniform in their construction, have an almost flat roof, with the perimeter being slightly higher than the center. The roof is divided into three concentric rings: The bodies of men are arranged around the outer ring, women in the second circle, and children in the innermost ring. Once the bones have been bleached by the sun and wind, which can take as long as a year, they are collected in an ossuary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossuary) pit at the center of the tower, where—assisted by lime—they gradually disintegrate and the remaining material—with run-off rainwater—runs through multiple coal and sand filters before being eventually washed out to sea. The ritual precinct may be entered only by a special class of pallbearers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallbearer), called nasellars, a contraction of nasa.salar, caretaker (-salar) of potential pollutants (nasa-).


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Parsee_Tower_of_Silence%2C_Bombay.jpg/220px-Parsee_Tower_of_Silence%2C_Bombay.jpg
http://www.99chan.in/cute/src/125503716916.jpg

[Eldritch]

I don't think this practice is shocking at all, actually. It's clean and dignified, and it recognises that a dead body is just a pile of hazardous waste, and manages an elegant solution to the problem thus presented.

In fact, in my view, it's about as far removed from just chucking everything from human excrement to dead bodies to ferment all in the same river, and then drinking and swimming there afterwards as can be.

Didn't some North American native tribes have a similar way of dealing with the dead btw?

[blan]

On the subject of Filthy India, there exists a group of people known as the Parsi (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FParsi&ei=ipz6TOLgAcWqlAf-_tWXDA&usg=AFQjCNEe4BAqOz4JGZlXUQOLijYFNea9gg), Zoroastrians who arrived in India 1200 years ago from Persia.
The Zoroastrians practice a totally different but equally shocking way of dealing with their dead.
They are taken to Tower of Silence or Dakhma.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Parsee_Tower_of_Silence%2C_Bombay.jpg/220px-Parsee_Tower_of_Silence%2C_Bombay.jpg
http://www.99chan.in/cute/src/125503716916.jpg

personally i think being burned is the best option and having my ashes spread in the sea, but these people as strange as there ritual is makes sense in there country and culture, as far as not doing burial in a place like india you need all the space you can get and if you use up the land with burial your in trouble.

[Óttar]

Parsis are dying out due to their adoption of Classical Hindu exclusion taboos and not allowing conversion. Very few of them still dispose of their dead in this way.

[blan]

Parsis are dying out due to their adoption of Classical Hindu exclusion taboos and not allowing conversion. Very few of them still dispose of their dead in this way.

are some the parsis the ones who are considered to be Caucasians? i know there is a small segment within the cast system who draw there blood lines to the aryan peoples, i have met many east indians who almost pass for european and are almost white when compared to the dravidian east indians

[Óttar]

are some the parsis the ones who are considered to be Caucasians?
Parsis are Caucasoid, but they are not a part of the classical Hindu caste-system. They came to India fleeing the Islamic expansion into Persia, and were offered asylum so long as they adopted some Vedic rituals. The story goes that an Indian king, thinking that his territory was full, sent the Parsis a bowl full of milk (i.e. "We're full"). As a response, the Parsi emissary sprinkled sugar into the milk and sent it back to the raja. The influence of Hindu caste taboos have made them a very insular people, such that they do not accept intermarriage or conversions. They may die out within a few generations.

[blan]

Parsis are Caucasoid, but they are not a part of the classical Hindu caste-system. They came to India fleeing the Islamic expansion into Persia, and were offered asylum so long as they adopted some Vedic rituals. The story goes that an Indian king, thinking that his territory was full, sent the Parsis a bowl full of milk (i.e. "We're full"). As a response, the Parsi emissary sprinkled sugar into the milk and sent it back to the raja. The influence of Hindu caste taboos have made them a very insular people, such that they do not accept intermarriage or conversions. They may die out within a few generations.

they sound amazing, i try to engage east indians in conversations about these types of people but it seems talking about these things have become taboo within the culture looks like PC culture has hit east indians as well

[Osweo]

I don't think this practice is shocking at all, actually. It's clean and dignified, and it recognises that a dead body is just a pile of hazardous waste, and manages an elegant solution to the problem thus presented.

In fact, in my view, it's about as far removed from just chucking everything from human excrement to dead bodies to ferment all in the same river, and then drinking and swimming there afterwards as can be.
Agreed. In fact the only thing repugnant to me about this custom is the attitude they have to dead remains. I assume that they don't like the idea of touching them in any way? Or is it the case that the immediately deceased are not contaminated for a short while?

Didn't some North American native tribes have a similar way of dealing with the dead btw?
Similar things went on in neolithic Britain.

[Eldritch]

Agreed. In fact the only thing repugnant to me about this custom is the attitude they have to dead remains. I assume that they don't like the idea of touching them in any way? Or is it the case that the immediately deceased are not contaminated for a short while?


I tried browsing through the links in Bloodeagle's post briefly, but didn't immediately come across an answer.

Perhaps some outcast in the community is tasked with taking the dead bodies up there? Or maybe they just resign themselves to touching "pollutants" briefly, and just try to get it over with as quickly as possible? :shrug:

[Bloodeagle]

I find the act of being devoured by birds strange and almost sacrificial in nature but not dirty in the least. It would appear that cleanliness is very important to these followers of Zarathustra, (The most ancient monotheistic religion).
I know that in Tibet, some also practice exposure of the dead, known as a sky burial (http://hack87.blogspot.com/2010/01/photo-tibetan-sky-burial.html)- Brutal Photos, Beware! :eek:

From what I have read, the real threat to the Parsi custom of exposing the dead is that the vultures of India have become so rare through environmental toxins that the bodies simply lay to rot in the sun.

Towers of Silence (http://godheadv.blogspot.com/2010/03/towers-of-silence.html)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v661/supine/blogstuff/towerofsilence550.jpg

The ancient Zoroastrian tradition tells of how human flesh, once dead and decomposing, is so unclean it will pollute everything it touches. Holding the elements of earth and water as inviolably sacred, their religion did not permit the dead to be interred in soil or disposed of in the sea. Fire above all was worshipped as god-given and pure, and burning the dead would be the greatest of desecrations.

In acts of elaborate ritual the dead would be carted out into the forbidding desert by the nasellars, ritual pallbearers of Zoroastrianism. Far from settlements, they were taken up winding slopes up stark and ragged sandstone hills, to the Towers of Silence.

A Tower of Silence, known as dakhma in the sacred avestan tongue, is a large, cylindrical structure with a plateau of slabs laid in concentric circles surrounding a center pit. Its sole purpose was to leave dead bodies exposed to the searing desert conditions, though most importantly, to ever-circling, ever-present voracious birds of prey (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v661/supine/blogstuff/392_09-Birds_on_Ledge.jpg).
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v661/supine/blogstuff/towerofsilence_concentric300.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v661/supine/blogstuff/towerofsilence_interior550.jpg

Through a peculiar religious loophole, Zoroastrians had found a solution to the problem of the elemental pollution of putrefaction. Men outermost, then women and children, were laid supine in separate circles, leaving animals to feed on the dead at will, and so evading the defilement of earth, water and fire. It was considered to be a person's final act of charity (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v661/supine/blogstuff/393_09-Two_Dead1.jpg). When after as long as a year nothing remained but sun-bleached skeletons, the nasellar would collect the bones, disposing of them in the vast center ossuary pit, built to hold the bones of thousands.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v661/supine/blogstuff/383_09-Many_Skulls.jpg


Unusually, the tradition of burial by exposure is still upheld by modern-day Zoroastrians. While Iranian dakhmas were banned in 1970, parsi Zoroastrians in Mumbai and Karachi still maintain Towers of Silence, though not without difficulty. An assortment of factors have combined to reduce the modern-day population of birds of prey in the region to a mere 0.01% of what it was. Despite modern ventures such as vulture breeding and solar panels to speed up decomposition, without vultures to feed on bodies, the dead are left to rot unattended, offered up to empty skies, in concentric silence.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v661/supine/blogstuff/towerofsilence_fromcave550.jpg

[lei.talk]

(((What's with the fonts, CB (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/member.php?u=218)? You think you're lei.talk or summat? :tongue1: )))

we are striving to diminish
the http://i53.tinypic.com/av34si.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#History) archive appearance of the forum. :)

it is unattractive to viewers.

care to participate? :icon1:

[Osweo]

we are striving to diminish
the http://i53.tinypic.com/av34si.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#History) archive appearance of the forum. :)

it is unattractive to viewers.

care to participate? :icon1:

:p Um... I actually prefer things to be plain and functional. :D Though I may permit myself a brief flutter of indulgence, over the festive period... ;)

[blan]

I find the act of being devoured by birds strange and almost sacrificial in nature but not dirty in the least. It would appear that cleanliness is very important to these followers of Zarathustra, (The most ancient monotheistic religion).
I know that in Tibet, some also practice exposure of the dead, known as a sky burial (http://hack87.blogspot.com/2010/01/photo-tibetan-sky-burial.html)- Brutal Photos, Beware! :eek:

From what I have read, the real threat to the Parsi custom of exposing the dead is that the vultures of India have become so rare through environmental toxins that the bodies simply lay to rot in the sun.

these towers are perfect places for scenes in a horror film, or a action film for a fight scene, use your imagination, all the possibilities. :D

[Cato]

The towers of silence are a burial custom of the Parsi Zoroastrians, I believe; I don't know if the Iranian Zoroastrians practice this same sort of custom or not. I've not heard of it going on on Iran, just in India.

[Bloodeagle]

The towers of silence are a burial custom of the Parsi Zoroastrians, I believe; I don't know if the Iranian Zoroastrians practice this same sort of custom or not. I've not heard of it going on on Iran, just in India.
I read that it was outlawed by the Iranians in 1970. :)

[Cato]

I read that it was outlawed by the Iranians in 1970. :)

It's unsanitary (and should be outlawed), as the pictures attest. Rotting bodies left out in the open are a breeding ground for all kinds of pestilence.

[Bloodeagle]

It's unsanitary (and should be outlawed), as the pictures attest. Rotting bodies left out in the open are a breeding ground for all kinds of pestilence.
It certainly looks bad, but these towers were located away from human settlement and were rather clean, safe and natural to the environment, compared to our modern method that pollutes the groundwater with formaldehyde.
Though, I am aware that many cities had grown to and around these structures. I had read of birds dropping body parts from the sky into the street and if there are flies breeding in these structures, every thing they come into contact with will be made unclean.

[Cato]

It certainly looks bad, but these towers were located away from human settlement and were rather clean, safe and natural to the environment, compared to our modern method that pollutes the groundwater with formaldehyde.
Though, I am aware that many cities had grown to and around these structures. I had read of birds dropping body parts from the sky into the street and if there are flies breeding from these structures, every thing they come into contact with will be made unclean.

Were being the important word, which isn't the case now.

As far as I go, it's cremation and not inhumation. Zoroastrians don't do this, believing that flame is sacred, and that it'd be polluted if it burns a corpse.

[Osweo]

It's unsanitary (and should be outlawed), as the pictures attest. Rotting bodies left out in the open are a breeding ground for all kinds of pestilence.

Zoroastrians got along well enough for a few millennia with it. The corpses dry out pretty quick in the sun, anyway.

And Muslims will soon be using the same excuse to ban dogwalking on our streets, so sod 'sanitation' where age old customs are concerned.

[Cato]

Cremation is the safest, cleanest form of inhumation, so to speak, that I can think of. I imagine I'll be burnt to ashes, put into a little urn, and then put into a crypt or somesuch. I also get the willies when I think of, oh, someone rifling around my grave and upturning my bones decades or centuries after my death.

[Debaser11]

Just to be clear, when they're poor whites in the photo(s), they're white trash racists. When they're poor Indians, they are creatures to be pitied and understood who have a great culture 'n' stuff.

[Cato]

Tat tvam asi = git r done.

[Óttar]

In the 19th century, the Thames (the river that people in London drank from) was filled with sewage.

[The Lawspeaker]

In the 19th century, the Thames (the river that people in London drank from) was filled with sewage.
Yap. And they learned their lesson. Big time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak) !
Another nice example (http://forums.canadiancontent.net/science-environment/77853-poisonous-fish-found-thames-shows.html) of how clean it is now.

[hajduk]

http://www.segabg.com/online/IMG/8011/0065-large.jpg

the local indians in bulgaria
very interesting photo

[hannah]

Jesus, that's disturbing, haven't they got any idea of digging a hole and berry the dead

[Cato]

Jesus, that's disturbing, haven't they got any idea of digging a hole and berry the dead

Religious taboo or somesuch, methinks.