Summary of "Indien. Ein Länderportrait." by Bernhard Imhasly, Berlin 2015.

HISTORY AND SOCIETY

• 1813 removal of trade monopoly of East India company
• 1882 liberal Lord Ripon becomes viceroy: Indians allowed to become lawyer
• friend of this viceroy (Allan O. Hume) and the first british member of the House of Commons, who was of asiatic origin (Parsi D. Naoroji),founded a commission for self determination (Swaraj)
• Around 1900 all inhabitants of India were called Hindoos (there were "muslim Hindoos" as well, and Brahamans were seen as separate from the Hindoos
• idea of democracy influenced Shudra from Pune (Jyotiba Phule), who fighted the caste system and broke taboos, like marrying a widow and giving lessons to children of Dalits and shudras and founding the first school for girls in India (Phule was called "Mahatma" Great Soul, by a congress of non-brahamans in Bombay)
• Gandhi played with his dress (dressed like a Gujarati-farmer), motivated with the cry "Do or die!", was killed by a Brahman (N. Godse) who falsely claimed Gandhi was responsible for the division of India into India and Pakistan (2900 km border, still no treaty for it - "Line of Control" LOC) - Land of the Pure (Pakistan) wanted by Mohammed Ali Jinnah. 
• ....Bigha = measurement for area..
• 21 official languages, 1579 other languages, over 5000 dialects; since 1952 riots against official languages
• 1947 10 Mio moved
• since 1950s more and more states (1971 17, 1981 23, 2015 29; maybe 2020 32 with separation of Uttar Pradesh)
• division of the separation of power: 1993 the constitution gave power of decision to an ancient form of village councils (Panchayat) - often they are more powerful than mayors

RELIGION

• deities: local, family, mystic Sai Baba of Shirdi
• Tuesday is the traditional Sunday of the Hindoos
• feast of Karvachoth in October/November: women feast for their husband one day
• Gurus become helpers of day-to-day life (Jaggi, Sathya Sai Baba, SriSri Ravishankar, Amritanandamayi, Mata Amritanandamayi)
• English men prohibited mission; Christs in India longer than in Europe
• defendors of Hindutva dont accept separation of state and society (Hindu Mahasabha since 1924), think tolerance is only good towards tolerant religions; Gowalkar founded RSS in 1926; murderer of Gandhi was member of RSS; RSS never resisted caste division; Modi also of RSS but luckily also self proclaimed pupil of Ramakrishna, a pupil of Swami Vivekananda, who accepted all religions and liked social equality of islam and christianity)
• only 13 percent Muslims (before partition 35%)

CASTE

• 1927 foundation of congress of the disenfranchised (Ambedkar)
• officially no castes acc. to constitution
• Adivasi 7% (744 groups "ST" Scheduled Tribes), Dalits 15% (1108 groupsScheduled Castes (SC))
• social reformers: Narayana Guru (established Shiva as god as he was also as a God from a low caste); Tamil E. Periyar
• Brahamans have become the disenfrenchised
• Other Backward Classes (OBC): 3742 castes of them  became part of the Quota rule additionally to Dalits an Adivasis in 1990 => OBC, ST, SC get 50% of all university places (also without quota there are 1000 students for each place at univerity) (very unjust, but made because 64% of Indias population are OBCs), also Modi is an OBC
• Modi is a Ghanchi from the caste of oil mongers, a Shudra; but this caste was included in a higher caste "Housing Society"
• nearly half of the 55 billionaires of India are Baniyas from Gujrat (e.g. Mittal) and only three Brahmans, all from South India (e.g. founder of Infosys); they are not philantrophic, e.g. nobody of the 20 richest indians is in the billionaire congress of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates

MINORITIES

• Parsi came in ca 900 AD to Gujarat via ship, Persians send them milk jug to tell them go away here you have some supplies for the travel, but Parsis send the Milk back mixed with sugar
• Tatas are also Parsis
• 69 000 Parsi in India, 30 000 abroad
• India never signed the Geneva Convention on Refugees
• Millions of nepalese live in India where they can vote also, without having an indian passport
• indian schoolkids learn that christians and muslims were always conquerors, not that they were refugees
• Sufis were refugees from orthodox muslims and were inspired by Bhakti-worship
• with the muslims in North India the clans of the Ashrafis took over the place of Brahmans. They boasted of being the scions of the Prophet (Sayyids) or mongols (Mughals, Pathans). Those who were not the Ashrafis were the indians converted to islam
• most of communists are brahmans
• Syrian Christians = church of the Brahmans; Latin Christians = subcastes; Sects = Dalits
• indian state doesnt admit foreign missionaries anymore
• special laws for muslims indian muslim disadvantaged if she gets divorced; 1986 india prohibitied islamic support of widows; 
• there are tax advantages for Hindus (being a part of a "Hindu undivided family")
• difficult to convert Hindus: converted Hindu looses her/his right to heritage if she or he is the only person in the family to convert and a converted Hindu woman loses heir right to care for her children bcs of a conversion to islam or christian faith
• "Indic Religions" Hindu, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, have a different status than "Foreign Religions" although Christianity is in India since 2000 years
• Hindoos incorporate other religions (Jain Tirthankara are gods, gautama buddha is avartar of Vishnu)
• although Jains (- ahimsa - nonviolence) cannot eat vegetables, one of the biggest traders of onions in Mumbai is one; in Delhi they have a "Jain Bird Clinic" who only give surgery to no meat eating birds of prey as real patients, birds of prey are outpatients
• muslim Bohras are like Jains and Hindu-Baniyas a caste of trade from Gujrat; they dont lend for interest

POLICY

• the basic law of the five months of election campaigns is the "Model Election Code", which tells how much a candidate or a political party can invest, how loud they can be etc, and also that every 1000 voters should have one polling place, which shall be less then 2 km away
• election donations less than 20 000 Rupies dont have to be noted down in books
• Modis catch words "Vikaas", "Maximum Governance", called Rahul Gandhi "Crownprince" and AK Anthony and A Kejriwal he called AK (like the AK 47 Kalashnikovs); presents itself as an "Mazdoor" which doesnt mean the industrial fabric worker (middle class job in India) but the day labourer, but wearing Bulgari glasses and Movado-clock, montblanc-pens
• In Uttar Pradesh Amit Shah visited "Sammelans" (congress of caste deputy)
• since 2014 very less percentage 3% of parlamentarians are muslims 

FAMILY

• Joint family
• 85% of indian companies are in hand of family clans
• acc. to Sudhir Kakar an indian psychologists indian boys cannot perform Freud's break with the father
• acc. to 2011 magazine Humsafar 70 % of homosexual men were married
• if second child is like the first a girl she is called Nakusha (the unwanted)
• in Haryana a woman can have many men (who are brothers)
• Gothra is a clan
• Khaps protect family values
• three heads of countries who won against modi are celibatery (Bangla Banerjee, Tamil Nadus Jayalalithaa, Odishas Patnaik)
• Modi pushed through a law which prohibited clerks and ministers to give jobs in their purview to family members 

ECONOMY

• state inefficiently gives money for the farmers by buying grain and selling it at Fair Price Shops; its inefficient bcs the transport industry wasnt ale to store and transport the grain so that 20% of it decayed
• modern village-hostile ideology of J. Nehru
• in 1980s everything was cheap and operated badly
• up to 1993 talking via phone was a luxury
• in 1970 a lot of industries privatized
• 1950-1980 only 3,5% growth of economy
• socialism in bureaucracy came along with corruption
• since 15 years the stake/proportion of industrial production hasn't risen
• every year 12 Mio new people ready for working, only 10% of them get jobs in the industry
• company Cipla made Anti-HIV-Cocktails which helped to fight HIV in poor countries
• since IBM was pushed out of India in 1978: growth of IT industry 

DIASPORA

• most of indian immigrants to italy are sikhs
• "free passage indians" in Britain
• 60 000 Gujratis in Uganda (fordced to emigrate in 1970s by military leader Idi Amin), half of them fled further to Brtain, some to USA
• 60% of US highway rest stops are owned by families from India, 1/3 of them by the Patels (Motels = "Potels")
• after 1972 many jewellers from Palanpur went to mumbai who dealt with foreign jewels (bcs indian mines were/are empty). As the import of cut jewels was prohibited, the Palanpuris went to Antwerpen (an old centre of jewellery, but after 1940s with death of Jews less jewellers there); the export of cut jewels transports more foreign exchange to India than the export of tea
• Non Resident Indians (NRI); most of them in USA (3,1 Mio Indian Americans)
• indian american dream: Rajat Gupta from Kolkata
• Brain Drain because of Brain in the Drain in India
• highest suicide rate in India is in female Kerala inhabitats between 20 and 40 years, bcs many husbands are away 
• more than 70 billion Dollar a year come from foreign countries to India every year
• NRIs with indian passport <=> People of Indian Origin  (PIOs) and "Overseas Citizens of India" (OCI) without indian passport

ECOLOGY

•  150 000 t trash /day in India
• 2011 53% of Indians dont have toilets (description: Naipaul; an area of darkness)
• classical scripture "Devi Purana"prohibits Hindus to shit or pee in or around the house => RSS Hindutva people against toilets (Modi is an exception)
• profession of toilet cleaner (Mehtar or Bhangi), still 750 000 people employed like this
• since 1986 state tries to put up toilets, 22 billion dollars went to it in 2000 -2015
• slum inhabitant only takes 50 l of water a day, whereas  amiddle class human takes 400 l a day; up to 50 germs are in the water; 200 000 children under 5 years old die of diarrhea every year; every second Indian woman is anemic
• Chinas soil less fertile than Indian one; Indian Elefant once called asiatic elefant, but China didnt use them in war also since 1662; 
• 5% of indian soil national parks

SPORTS

• Vivekananda liked mother godess Kali and liked football; first asian football club 1888 in Kolkata (Mohun Bagan FC) who succeeded against england football team in 1911
• although Gandhi didnt like Cricket he was helping to let it become the national sport. They play it also when wind is blowing; now not five day test cricket nor one day cricket but twenty20 (3 h) cricket; Sachin Tendulkar (100 runs per game, got "Bharat Ratna" in 2013, successor Dhoni from Jharkand;
• many indian sportsmen are doped; less olympiac medals (first individual gold medail by Abhinav Bindra 2008, 108 years after the first indian membership in an olympiad) <= state isnt able to put through a collective self discipline which only recognizes performance as a critera
• football is played in Kerala, Goa, Bengal and the North East
• 2017 junior games football in aizawal; the team of this city won the Santosh trophy in 2014; but political problems in the "Seven sister" states in the north east; in Manipur there are 27 underground organisations within 3 Mio people; Armed forces Special Powers act (therefore Sharmila hungers since 2000); 2012 Mary Kom boxer, first female sportswoman about whom a  Bollywood film was filmed; ringers (daughers of Mahavir Phogat)
• Kabbadi (mixture of ringing and rugby)

CULTURE

• solution to inhibit male pissing against walls: putting pictures of gods on the walls
• Kumbhakarna: whose wish was misunderstood by Brahma who gave him sleep instead of protection
• Krishna: left friend Sudama
• Modi used Phoolan Devi (female Dacoits, feminist icon of 1990s, murdered), Eklavya
• Amar-Chitra Katha booklets often first contact of Indians with mythology
• plays of "Ram Leela" by poet Tulsidas of 16th century
• 1987 later termed the birth year of television in India (wanted to see play "RAm leela", bought Televison)
• sceptic Romila Thapar: publically the relationship of Ram and Sita is described too positively
• 2011 Ramanujam text "The Three Hundred Ramayanas" was prohibited in universities bcs of RSS
• 2013 Wendy Doniger "The Hindus" was against the "religious feelings" acc. to §295a; 
• fight between Durga and buffaloe Mahish-Asura = victory of caste Hindoos over Dalits
• artist Tyeb Mehta
• muslim artists Ghulam and Nilima Sheikh about hindooistic picture traditions
• Maqbool Fida Husain died 2011 indias most famous artist; muslim
• sufis say: truth is like a broken mirror
• Modi promised to work 2 h a week for a clean India (for Mahatma Gandhis 150th birthday in 2019)