Indian Heritage & Culture Class Quiz 2024 PDF

Summary

This IIM BODH GAYA quiz on Indian Heritage & Culture covers Western Universalism for the class of 2024. The quiz includes questions on the values and ideas of the West and their impact on other countries.

Full Transcript

09-01-2025 Indian Heritage & Culture Class Quiz : Western Universalism Dr Vittal Rangan S 2024 1 Indian Heri...

09-01-2025 Indian Heritage & Culture Class Quiz : Western Universalism Dr Vittal Rangan S 2024 1 Indian Heritage & Culture Indian Knowledge – Quiz Q1: Because of the Power of the West, its idea of history, philosophy, science and values seem to have become Universal. This becomes a Gold Standard for rest of the Countries to follow. What does the Author call this phenomenon as? Ans: Western Universalism. Vittal S/ IIM BG 2 2 1 09-01-2025 Indian Heritage & Culture Indian Knowledge – Quiz Q2: People in formal colonies like India, evaluate the West as their Gold Standard. Accordingly, Indian’s are unable to reject/ reverse the whole process. What is the reason for this as per the author? Ans: Indians are not sufficiently educated about their own civilization to be able to reverse the process and say, according to our (India’s) gold standard, how are they (the West). Vittal S/ IIM BG 3 3 Indian Heritage & Culture Indian Knowledge – Quiz Q3: “China is contesting Western Universalism. China has come up with Confusion thought, Confusion Universalism. It is the term they coined for Confusion ethics, Confusion modernity”. What do they mean by this? Ans: By Confusion Universalism, Chinese mean: “We are becoming modern, but that does not mean that we are becoming the West. We can remain Chinese. Follow our philosophy in the Confusion way and within its parameters we can be as modern, as scientific, technological as anybody else” Keeping our Chinese Way intact, we will be #1 in all these domains” Vittal S/ IIM BG 4 4 2 09-01-2025 Indian Heritage & Culture Indian Knowledge – Quiz Q4: Japanese, French, Russian, Europeans are clear about their distinctiveness. Is it about superiority? Ans: No. It is not about superiority. It is only that we are different. It is just that we need to honor and respect one’s own distinctiveness. Vittal S/ IIM BG 5 5 Indian Heritage & Culture Indian Knowledge – Quiz Q5: “If we look at Indian History of Indian Science and Technology, it is filled with huge amount of pioneering work in a few fields”. Give any three fields. Ans: These are well documented: Metallurgy, Steel, Zinc Distillation, Textiles, Ship Building, Water Harvesting Vittal S/ IIM BG 6 6 3 09-01-2025 Indian Heritage & Culture Indian Knowledge – Quiz Q6: “Earliest records in Greece and Rome talk about importing Indian steel. It was sold like Gold. It was very valuable. Only India had that technology” What was it called? Why was it imported from India? Ans: It is called “wootz steel”. It was very tough and useful in making weapons, swords and shields because one could not pierce it. Vittal S/ IIM BG 7 7 Indian Heritage & Culture Indian Knowledge – Quiz Q7: Author says “One of the person in University of Massachusetts went to find out about Portuguese trade in Goa. He wanted to find, how Portuguese built huge colony there, what were they doing…He had the Indian Government open-up the old and huge achieves, which nobody bothered to read. He found that the major item of trade was …....... Portugal was acting as middlemen buying it from India and supplying to the entire Europe” What was that? Ans: What they classified as spices is actually medicinal plants. Vittal S/ IIM BG 8 8 4 09-01-2025 Indian Heritage & Culture Indian Knowledge – Quiz Q8: Places like………………………. (no marks) University & 20 other Universities in North India, were like today’s Harvard, MIT, Stanford. These Universities were attracting the brightest people from all over Asia, not by imposing their army or by putting their ideas of India on them, but differently. How did they do it differently (has marks)? Ans: Actually, People from other Countries all over Asia were soliciting this knowledge. They all preferred places like Nalanda because they were appreciative of learnings they were getting from these Universities. Vittal S/ IIM BG 9 9 Indian Heritage & Culture Indian Knowledge – Quiz Q9: Nalanda University library was destroyed by the Invaders. How are we reconstructing it today? Ans: We are reconstructing these from foreign students records. Foreign students from various Countries who studied there went back and wrote diaries in their own languages. They published and these have got preserved. There is a multi-volume series of what was the curriculum, who was the faculty, etc was reconstructed from foreign students accounts. Vittal S/ IIM BG 10 10 5 09-01-2025 Indian Heritage & Culture Indian Knowledge – Quiz Q10: How does the Indus Valley Civilization compare with say, Egypt Civilization Ans: The structure shows, it was not centrally administered. Nor Centrally controlled. Very decentralized. Not like other civilization like Egypt where it has one big fort where the emperor lived everybody else is living in tents. There is no huge centre of power. All were egalitarian middle class structure. We keep hearing that our society is very hierarchical in nature, by physical evidence of Archeology shows it is not the case. We do not know when it became hierarchical. Vittal S/ IIM BG 11 11 Indian Heritage & Culture Indian Knowledge – Quiz Q11: Oldest city Harappa: the oldest Civilization. It had over 2000 villages spread over the area of half-the size of Europe. This civilization lasted for over 2000 years covering the areas of…..? Ans: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Rajasthan, Punjab, Gujarat, right upto Delhi. It had by then, had the latest technology of weights, times, e.g. binary weights of 1:2:4 & so on. Length, Width, Height of the tiles also had binary ratio. It was not centrally administered. Nor Centrally controlled. Very decentralized. Not like other civilization. Vittal S/ IIM BG 12 12 6 09-01-2025 Indian Heritage & Culture Indian Knowledge – Quiz Overall inference: India was a Knowledge economy It is not just a recent phenomenon that we have our intellect from IIT and IIMs all over the world adding value from NASA to ISRO. It has been there for a while. Vittal S/ IIM BG 13 13 Thank You Question & Answers Vittal S [email protected] 14 7

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