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If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to watch better television, or watch less crap television, yay, me too. And smart people like us can start tonight, with the first two episodes of the BBC’s six-part 2007 series, The Story Of India, which makes its US premiere on PBS at 9pm, and will continue each Monday through January 19. Look, learning is fun!
Here’s a short excerpt from the first episode:
The series, hosted by Michael Wood, was originally part of the series India/Pakistan ‘07, but it seems the programmers think Americans can only handle the history of one country at a time or they’ll lose us to Rock Of Love 3, which is probably true. So tonight, in the interest of using my DVR for good instead of evil, I’ll be expanding my mind by eagerly absorbing the amazing, enduring, and beautiful culture that sprang out of the Indus Valley thousands of years ago and changed the world forever. It’s going to be such an odyssey of the mind. I can’t wait! Next stop: Mensa!
And then I’m going to watch the season premiere of The Bachelor.
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Total Kal Penn daydream fodder.
I really hope they don’t skimp too much on The Partition of ‘47, especially if PBS doesn’t plan on showing any of the “/Pakistan” part. C’mon guys, I’m sure if we all tune in they’ll just have to air the rest of it!
excellent! my dvr was starting to look down on me. this should shut him up.
I spent 4 months in India last year and I find this man a patronizing little shit most of the time. I hate his stupid commentary! But India kicks ass so I’ll probably continue watching it because that’s the kind of person I am.
I saw the first showing of the Story of India and I enjoyed most of it, but Michael Woods makes two serious mistakes:
1. When he talks about great religious minds and mentions Buddha and Mahavira and Greek philosophers he gives credit to Greek philosophers for introducing the role of “reason” in human decision-making. According to the late American philosopher, Joseph Campbell during his presentation on Eastern religions on public television, he had said that it was the Iranian prophet Zarathushtra, (also known as Zoroaster by Greek philosophers who studied his teachings) who introduced the importance of rational thinking when he preached his montheistic religion some 4,500 years ago, and not the Greeks as is commonly taught.
2) Michael Woods wrongly mentions that the oldest charter of human rights was the one that King Ashoka of India declared, and that it was also in the United Nations. History records that the oldest human rights charter inscribed on a clay cylinder was the one that Persian Zoroastrian King Cyrus the Great declared after his defeat of Babylon and freeing of Jews from slavery, sometime around 538 B.C. The clay cylinder also known as the Cyrus cylinder is preserved in the British Museum and a replica of that cylinder is also displayed in the United Nations.
The Wikipedia has an article on the Cyrus Cylinder that confirms the above.
Maneck Bhujwala
Co-founder, Zoroastrian Association of California
Co-founder, Zoroastrian Association of Northern California
I watched episode 5 as my first exposure to this series and was struck by Mr. Wood’s patronizing manner. Surely, India is a fascinating place and there is enough history and culture to fill a series 10 times as long, which I would probably watch. But I perceived this as more a presentation of a cultural apologist than that of a professed non-Indian Indiophile. Subtle snide comments are interjected, such as [paraphrasing] “Isn’t this the way it always is, even today, where the extravagances of the upper class are paid for by the sweat of the masses.” A minor complaint, perhaps, but Mr. Wood reveals a staggering ignorance of modern capitalism, and would do well to abandon his moral relativism. Nevertheless, I will seek to watch the other installments of this production.