I've been to India in 2013 for two weeks accompanied by my partner at the time, specifically to Bangalore (their tech hub) then to Hampi (a historic ruin site which is an overnight bus-ride north of Bangalore). It was a fantastic time with fantastic people... we had been thinking it would be slumdog millionaire, but everyone was polite, educated, and the food at the restaurants and hotels we stayed at was the best I've ever had. That said, it was an escorted tourist trip, so did not have a localised nor randomised experience.
Like any trips, there were some notable peculiarities or issues:
1. We had originally planned to spend a few months in India and travel around, however at the time, there were mass rapes in the north of India being reported, so we decided against it.
2. We quickly realised that my partner would require an escort everywhere, which the conference staff dutifully arranged. It's too long ago now to recollect how this need was recognised, I have a faint memory it was due to a rickshaw driver harassing her and a companion after only dropping her to the corner instead of the hotel proper.
3. In one hotel, the health faucet (a hand bidet) was jam-packed with mosquito corpses.
4. No one ate with cutlery, it was hands everywhere. People did not wash their hands either, as they did not trust the water, preferring to trust their own knowledge of where their hands had been. Neither of us got sick.
5. In our accomodation in Hampi, there was a proper toilet, but no health faucet nor toilet paper in the toilets, just a bucket with water and a ladle — this is typical in rural south east asia - you need to carry paper with you if you don't want to use your hand.
6. Rickshaw drivers would never get us to where we needed to go on-time, even despite insisting they take the route on our GPS. I later discovered that they cannot afford spectacles, and have too much pride paired with desperation to admit that they cannot read the phone, so they rely only on the ways that they know and asking for directions. To get anywhere on time, we required Ubers which use GPS and are rich enough for eye-care.
From this experience, I always wondered why everyone who had visited India as tourists said it was great, but everyone who had motorbiked through it said it was an absolute shithole and their biggest regret, and that they would never do it again — c90 adventures comes to mind. Watching that quoted documentary above, it makes me finally understand.
I had been planning a motorbike tour of India for 2026, specifically of Kerala and Sri Lanka. However, after that documentary, and after observing an Indian acquaintance's regression into an undesirable association*, I've recognised that life is too short to bother with such a trip — there are so many places to tour that have fantastic scenery and food, but also have a respectful and humanising culture.
* For the Indian acquaintance's regression, he always had a disposition to misogyny which was able to be curtailed with guidance, however in recent years, from what seems to me like a post-covid nationalisation and propagandisement of their internet and social media to extreme patriotism, he has radicalised to the point of evil and ignorance to things already discussed in this thread; rampant misogyny, deflecting blame to others, dehumanising all muslims, blind loyalty to Israel, that hindus are at war with muslims, that anything and everything is justified in times of war, only losers always play fair... and so on.
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As for why India is the way it is, seems to me to stem from the primitiveness of Hinduism. Originally, I had thought it was polytheism to blame, that is the inability to evolve one's personifications of the rules of life into a coherent supreme hierarchy — however, Japan and Ancient Greece/Rome are/were polytheistic, without the issues that India has. Greece naturally evolved into a monotheism. Japan's spirituality is still polytheistic, however unlike India, Japan's theism is not man worshipping gods, but man alongside gods (much like Ancient Greece/Rome). Hinduism's moral relativism prevents its civilisation from reaching domestication; where its communitarianism vehemently defends its ability to maintain deplorability; whereas civilised societies, including communitarian Japan and even east-Indonesia, practice a spirituality that still integrates with the progress of mankind and civilisation to a supreme progressive ideal of mankind's continual refinement. Hinduism on the other hand, is just a "you do you, no matter how depraved, as long as you identify as Hindu, and leave me/us alone".
When thinking about it philosophically, some philosophical perspectives come to mind:
- Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil posited the master-slave mindset dichotomy, where a master/ubermench is someone who has achieved salvation (claim of their destiny, self-authorship of their future, equality with God) by the memetic evolution of "How can I know what is good or evil, when I cannot even prove that it is I that thinks my own thoughts. Regardless, I am a natural man, in a natural world, and I must act. So which action? There are actions that I can control that produce observable universal progress, and actions that I can control that produce observable universal regression. Therefore, I will act supremely, and in doing so, realise thyself." without such, one assumes a slave character, a more primitive mindset, in which they have rejected personally uncovering the supreme, and by doing so, relegates to a fate of being subservient to extrinsic forces, rather than intrinsic ones.
- Jung in Aion posited that mother/god/nature/idol worship is primitive compared to father/God/civilisation/supremacy worship. Jung requires a quick glossary: god = a personification of a natural force, natural force = nature/evolution/civilisation pressure, God = the personification of all natural forces culminated into competitively-supreme hierarchy which by definition is unknowable in its entirety but can be progressively uncovered, sin = stepping away from God, idol = worshipping something that is not God (remember progressively discoverable but ultimately unknowable), child = dependent capable non-agent, man = independent capable agent, human = unlike animals humans are capable of salvation, salvation = same def as earlier when discussing Nietzsche. Jung viewed masculine monotheism as a civilising force towards God, requiring agentive disciplined action towards supremacy/God to go from human and child to man, in contrast the various feminine theisms (e.g the polytheism of Hinduism, Animism, Paganism, etc, but also the Virgin Mary worship of lower Europe and the Phillipines) are worshipping a temperamental deity that must be appeased in relative ways to nurture them as children, always remaining in a state of degraded agency and moral relativism.
- Ultimately, it seems Hinduism is a belief system / coping mechanism adopted to take pride in/inside one's existing self, without necessitating any change besides identification. Buddhism likewise seems designed as a belief system / coping mechanism rolled out to pacify those in repressed/oppressed economic/agentive situations to not want nor expect extrinsic betterment (this also applies to Mary worship in Philippines in which material progress is reset every year by natural disasters). Karma likewise seems adopted/propagated as an inverse-santa-claus sold to bitter people to placate their vindictiveness so they don't throw stones or revolt, believing instead a wishful power will do it, allowing abuses to continue and multiply, because the victims became pacified instead of revolutionary.