I live in India, I was born here too. Even though I agree that there are stupid customs, mostly in the remote areas, the cities, towns and many places are well “advanced” here. The politics sucks big time, and that is the main cause for all these stupidities. When the beurocrats are more busy getting bribes, what else do we expect?

Seems these guys have been taking way too many notes from the Christians…

I’m in the middle of a great book by Matt Ridley, Nature via Nurture, and he mentions that after the great enlargement of our brains in the last couple million years, human brains have actually been shrinking for about the last fifty thousand years.  One theory is that we are domesticating ourselves.  Domestic animals have smaller brains than their wild forbears, and they are less aggressive.

How is this related to the topic?  In New Guinea, until recently one out of ten adult deaths were murders of so-called “witches”, mostly men.  The theory is that the brainier and more aggressive of our ancestors were weeded out, as communities grew and were imperiled.  No idea whether it’s true or not, but intriguing.

By the way, greetings to all from Corfu.  Poli kala!  Cheers, zilch

The only difference between these Indian bigots and North American bigots is that North American bigots don’t deliver the heads of their victims to the police station.

JP: That said the most metropolitan and educated among us are still prone to the most stupid superstitions.

Yeah – stupidity and superstition breed all sorts of evil stuff like ‘bigotry and racism’, gay-bashing and abortionist bombings, be-heading those thought to blame for sicknesses, Pat Robertson blaming gays for AIDS, Afro-Americans’ slide from faith causing Katrina, prayers to god to break the drought, stem cell research, etc.  … stupidity and superstition is all around us in the ‘civilised west’.

People wonder why aliens have steered clear of humanity, it may have something to do with the signs telling them to stay away from such unevolved biological specimens.

And then I realize the United States has people in it that are only slightly more sophisticated.

Where did you find those?
Seriously, this is a fine example of tribalism in action. Anthropologists studying a group of monkeys in the jungle noted that when one of them was removed and painted green and returned, the others fell on it and killed it. The herd instinct for survival, here. We call it bigotry or racism. Fortunately some humans have developed beyond the herd level and actually use their brain to elevate the human life condition above that of animals. That is amazing!!

Honestly I don’t. Not anymore than I judge all Christians by the idiots I write about on occasion.

The engineering company I’m currently working for has a significant number of folks from India as employees and I’ve had the pleasure of working with lots of people from India in the past and they were all quite reasonable people.

That said, the number of people involved in this incident and the barbarity of it is shocking and discouraging to say the least.

And these are the people we’re calling about our computer problems? It boggles the mind that a country can be so advanced in one sense and so backwards in another.

Its not that we’re advanced in one sense and backwards in another. Rather we’re advanced in some areas(geographically) and backwards in others. That said the most metropolitan and educated among us are still prone to the most stupid superstitions. But please dont judge all of us by those people.