Biased-Wonders
(CHAKRA Blogs) Every school kid in India [at least in the 70s-90s] was indoctrinated with the “Ancient 7 Wonders of the World List” that appears to be solely created to obtain bragging rights for the West.
The Colossus of Rhodes
The Great Pyramid of Giza
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Lighthouse of Alexandria
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
The Statue of Zeus at Olympia
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
Generations of Indian children were taught that that there were no wonders worth mentioning in ancient India (or in neo-India except the Mughal Taj Mahal), or South-east Asia or South America, but remarkably, were all bunched together around the middle-east and Mediterranean. Hope these silly lists have been expunged from the curriculum and/or replaced with something more reasonable.
Rajiv Malhotra, author of Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlinescommented the following: “A very important post. People should ponder and add substantive comments. Same also applies to international awards, institutions, laws, aesthetics, etc. Western Universalism is normative across civic society, with the exception of pop culture which is not where power resides. See my two videos on lectures at india international center in 2005. I explain the difference between pop culture and deep culture. The latter is where Western Universalism resides.”
I would have to agree. While it would be rude to say that the Ancient 7 Wonders were not deserving of the title “wonder” (since they were clearly awe-inspiring for the time), it is unreasonable to think that no other great architectural feats existed elsewhere. In fact, we know this is not true.
I do not think teaching the 7 Wonders should be banned from the curriculum, but rather an intelligible explanation should be made as to why these wonders focused around the Mediterranean basin – because when the list was made by a Greek, this was the area that was the “known world” – the ancient peoples rarely ventured further and it would have been a very risky and frightening proposition to do so.
It should be “The 7 Wonders of the Ancient Hellenistic World”. Simply to indicate it’s proportion.