Already covered. Not space whales, though.
http://baen.com/series_list.asp?letter=B Scroll down to Belisarius saga. Actually 6 books, I got the number wrong.
Help me make an Evil Hindu Empire!
- Thread starter Alkahest
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Already covered. Not space whales, though.
http://baen.com/series_list.asp?letter=B Scroll down to Belisarius saga. Actually 6 books, I got the number wrong.
Belisarius series by Eric Flint and Drake: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Flint#Belisarius_series
Starts out kinda awesome,[1] but fails to live up to its promise.
And the whales were the most advanced type of Pantopized (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Blish#The_Seedling_Stars_.28Pantropy.29 ) humans, becuase who doesn't want to be a magical space whale?
Bruce
[1] If deeply annoying to anyone who knows anything about your average 6th century religious figure
This seems relevant.
Hah! Yes, but in the Maaga setting you would be able to tell who the zombies are by skin color or language or what sort of hats they favor...
Bruce
If you want militant Hindu, the Rajputs could be your best bet, however the Empires formed by the Magadhans could work too. The only problem is, that there isn't really such a thing as Hinduism, so beyond the modern day you'll see a lot of fighting amongst Indians, and then even more fighting with other empires. I suppose if you idolize Shiva as your number one god and slowly build that into something akin to monotheism, it could work.
i can tell you few things like the cruelest kind (bigot, discrimination) of hinduism existed in kerala of all the south indian states.(i am a south indian so i will talk about south first) being remote is one reason i can think of and land and power was in the hands of brahmins. no where in south such situation existed and the cruelty is mind bogging to rest of SI. untouchabality is at peek, discrimination at peek, gender inequality you cannot believe. i also came to knew that these namboodri brahmins rituals are most closely followed to vedic rituals and they became keepers of many ancient temples in different parts of india. my take is make orthodox brahmin sects (should be isolated also) as the wealthiest of society with power, money and madness. the oppression of india and unification will be done in a jiffy. raising militant army and conquering world la evil hindu way done. you just need to figure out an emperor and dynasty start with south and go north, east, west and middle east.
Ashoka is a wrong choice because it shoud be done before maurya dynasty started may be our legendary king vikramaditya (make him and bhatti orthodox brahmins) can be used.
though i wrote this for pun sake i believe and realize in my heart of hearts the tremendous work for millenia done by brahmin caste. they have been our teachers, reformers, thinkers and stabilizers for hindu society living a very poor and impoverished lives for themself. they are not only our keepers of rituals but are keepers of wisdom. i am not a brahmin.
They were on their way out before Islam came on the scene, that is almost unstoppable. And if a start up Islam can takeover Persia, a huge stable Hindu empire could do it.
Flocculencio, not a brahmin but from the South if I am right, porrted a more nuanced portrait of the situation - the 'brahman-aryan oppression' is/was a bit also darkened by southern, dravidian nationalism, no?
Flocculencio
Donor
But the thing is that that wasn't an unchanging situation. The extremely strict caste divisions between the Namboothiris, Nairs and the rest only really rose in the 16th or 17th century. For the non-Indians who may not be as familiar, Namboothiris were a brahmin caste who were extremely concerned with purity and considered all other castes untouchable. Nairs were the warrior caste which assisted them (sort of like samurai) and who also considered all to be untouchable.
If you're working with a scenario set earlier than that the situation is going to be completely different.
However that 17th/18th century Kerala model may be a useful starting point for the original posters scenario.
One thing to note was that it wasn't religiously intolerant- Christians, Jews and Muslims were integrated into the caste system with the Syrian Orthodox being put on a level just below the Nairs.
If a really powerful empire covering the entire subcontinent and beyond was to be developed the POD should be sufficiently earlier,say before Christ.In the deep south,the three kingdoms of the Cheras,the Cholas and the Pandyas had existed at the time of the Mauryan Empire and survived almost until the thirteenth century.But none of them, save the Cholas for a short period, could expand north to establish a pan-Indian empire,mainly due to unending quarrels among themselves.If there was only one kingdom in their place,perhaps it could have developed into a pan-Indian empire.A South Indian kingdom with its original capital at Musiris developing to cover the whole of the Subcontinent and beyond during the twenty plus two or three centuries,blocking all external enemies will be an interesting AH story-line.
Even beyond my Maaga stuff, looking at a lot of the older Indian philosophies, there is a lot of diversity and lots of interesting concepts that you could spin in different ways. So if a straight-out Evil Hindu empire (like the Mahadeva cult in Belisarius) is too simple, you can easily find some sect or belief structure you can warp in different ways.
Then again, if you just wanted to go the simple route, you could just make a relatively paint-by-numbers Evil-Hindus-as-Nazi analogue. Replace Jews with Parsis, and Slavs with Tamils, and it seems straightforward enough. Aryan identity and swastikas come pre-prepared
One concept I came up with and I don't think I included in any of my Maaga stuff was their vision of demons. Just as in the West satyrs and other pagan things eventually warped into horned demons with goats feet, in the Maaga setting the suppression of the Haruman cult led to Maaga demons in art and sculpture being portrayed as sinister, warped ape-like beings. Odd things like that might be cool to include in an dark Hinduism vision.
Then again, if you just wanted to go the simple route, you could just make a relatively paint-by-numbers Evil-Hindus-as-Nazi analogue. Replace Jews with Parsis, and Slavs with Tamils, and it seems straightforward enough. Aryan identity and swastikas come pre-prepared
One concept I came up with and I don't think I included in any of my Maaga stuff was their vision of demons. Just as in the West satyrs and other pagan things eventually warped into horned demons with goats feet, in the Maaga setting the suppression of the Haruman cult led to Maaga demons in art and sculpture being portrayed as sinister, warped ape-like beings. Odd things like that might be cool to include in an dark Hinduism vision.
Hinduism, in its course of development, has experienced several turns and twists as it was influenced by the advent of native religions like Buddhism and Jaihnnism and also the arrival of foreign faiths like Islam and Christianity.During the Vedic period Indra was the chief deity and gods Varuna, Mitra, Vayu, Agni, Yama etc. were also important. But by the time of Puranas the Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva became prominent.Though Indra was still the King of gods, he was subordinate to the Trinity.Vishnu was hailed as Devadeva or the God of gods and Shiva was called Mahadeva or the Great God, respectively by the Vaishnavaites and the Shaivaites. Brahma,the creator did not get the importance of the other two members of the Trinity.Shakti,the Mother God was also worshiped by Shaktheyas. Hinduism gives you the freedom to choose your favorite deity for worship. So you can choose any deity and weave a thread of cult around him.
My favorite part would see this evil hindu empire fall apart in the most traumatic ways- as traumatic as it's rise