^^^
US navy vetoed the sparrow.

even when they made the offer US knew it had no chance of being accepted. ambassador bowles was the only one who supported the F-104, state and pentagon people were completely against it.
look in memos after the above date.

in hindsight, it was all for good, given the respective histories of the F-104 and the mig-21.

BA, it was tied to canceling mig-21 production in India and the aircraft offered, F-6A was a generation old. at the time it was being withdrawn from service in US.

I don’t think he weighed it or the american helmet. it might have been mentioned in his write-ups, I will try to locate those.

I don’t remember what he said about the suits but did mention that the f-16 cockpit was very cramped and uncomfortable. why don’t you PM him ? he might answer us here.

Empires that rose & fell, including one which was explicitly non-Indian in origin & at times (I know, not always) tried to impose a pan-Islamic identity . . . come, come.

BTW, the British monetary system up to 1971 was the last survivor (except for the nams of currencies, where it still hangs on) of the early mediaeval Frankish empire, an adaptation of the money of the Roman empire which it claimed to be the heir to. Spot the similarity? That empire survived in shadowy form until 1806, & its monetary system was used by much of western & central Europe for many centuries. There are still European currencies named for Roman money.

ah, so mughal India was non Indian and hence could not have any factor in an Indian identity but british India created modern India ? interesting, to say the least. 😉

edit : btw, aren’t the current british royals german in origin ? 😀

empires rose and fell but people identified themselves with the nation rather than whoever occupied the throne at that point of time.
coming to modern examples, the french national identity didn’t vanish into thin air just because it was under german occupation for a period of time. neither did germany become a different nation created by soviets and US/UK/France because it was divided and kept under the thumb of 2 blocs for large parts of post WW2 decades.

the major angle you seem to have missed regarding the currency example is that the roman currency system, was roman, not british. while the mauryan system was created by Indians, in India. even the taj mahal is made to the architectural measurement system used in the mauryan era, as described in the arthashastra 2300 years ago (which in turn is found to be same as that used in indus valley cities). in kerala (and elsewhere), which quadbike would have us is one of many ‘unique’ cultures of India unconnected with each other, traditional masons continue to build houses to the same system to this day.

throughout what is now India (and pakistan and bangladesh) there is immense continuity and closeness in culture, language, food habits, administrative systems, scientific and architectural traditions from ancient times. enough to easily discern a common identity that strings through most of the country.

please cool down quad, I do not wish to make fun of you.

I have torn your arguments to shreds.

sure. :p

I can corroborate what I talk with evidence. Can you ?

yes, but not here. not that it would convince you anyway. nothing can be done if a man refuses to see.

My ignorance ? What makes you more qualified than I am to speak about Indian History ? Tell me who your favourite Historian is and what books you have read ?

please, I am not interested in a p!ssing contest. I have known enough ignorant PhD’s and enough highly knowledgeable simple graduates to mistrust academic qualifications at face value.

you may not be a marxist but your version of history certainly is, even though you seem to be unaware of that. there is no way to pass out of Indian education system with history without being indoctrinated with the marxist version.
let me reiterate, this is not the place to continue this discussion and there’s a reason why I did not reply to your post but swerve’s.

quad, thanks for the last post. you will note that I deliberately avoided replying to your post.
as I said.

I know quite well the extent of your knowledge and opinion.

I rest my case. 😉

corrosion, it has nothing to do with what part he comes from, most people from that part are far more intelligent and informed. no one has monopoly over idiocy and ignorance as dear quad is hell bent on proving. 😀

No evidence for that I know of. India resembles Europe in many respects, & a sense of nationhood was, until relatively recently one of them. There wasn’t one.

swerve, if I may ask, what is your exposure to historical texts of India that you can so confidently state that the idea of a national identity did not exist ?
nearly every text from the 1 century BCE onwards start with an explicit description of the geographical extent of the land of Bharata (which is what Indians call India, in case you did not know. as well as being the official name of the country according to the constitution. Indian Air Force is thus Bharatiya Vayu Sena), without reference to any political power. even back then the difference between nation of people and political nation state was widely recognised.
one example, from the vishnu purana,

“The country (varṣam) that lies north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bhāratam; there dwell the descendants of Bharata.”

Bharata referred to here is a Rig Vedic tribe that emerged victorious in dasrajna (battle of ten kings) and the name bharatavarsha or bharat for short derives from it.
whichever corner of India a text was written in, it started with a similar declaration.
in some ways it was similar to the greek city states, if an european example helps in your understanding. even though they all had their individual identities and frequently fought savage wars among themselves, there was always the recognition of an overarching hellenic identity.

Read a few stories from the 1950s & ’60s, & you find, e.g., old soldiers describing how recruits from what are generally regarded as core parts of the country (i.e. not Nagas or the like) identifying with their local linguistically or otherwise defined local group rather than calling themselves Indian. Urdu-speaking Muslims seem to have tended to feel more Indian than many others, perhaps because they lacked a local focus.

perhaps not as much as you say (not 50’s and 60’s but earlier) but there is some truth to that. Indian identity was never a melting pot type, it still is not. it is more like a thali where local allegiances maintain their identity but come together to make a whole dish.
ironically, for all the hoopla I hear about how the british united India (the worthies of the India office must be turning in their graves) local identities did become much more prominent in british India, especially among the uneducated. helped in no small measure by segregating the BIA into little regional regiments. national identity became the preserve of the educated who could see through the divide and rule machinations.

these same people however had no problems fighting together in much tougher circumstances in organisations like INA.

Europe had great empires covering much of it. It had multi-lingual states with no ‘national’ identity, defined by their ruling dynasty. Sound familiar? It had an overriding religious identity, bringing together many diverse peoples, scholars who spoke the same language & felt themselves part of a wider community than their own country, local identities that carried on regardless of empire or kingdom they happened to belong to this year. There was a palce called Europe, & people who considered themselves European, but they didn’t think of it as a nation. It was on top of other identities. Sound familiar?

sure, because I know a bit of european history. 😉
but I do not think it is very similar to India. if I am not wrong it was napoleon who argued for a pan european identity and that was essentially a top down identity. European identity is not yet at the same stage of evolution.

Thinking of ancient Indian identity as national in the modern sense is anachronistic. It projects modern attitudes back in time, & ignores the different feelings & thoughts of people who lived in a different world.

only if you apply thoughts that are clearly modern in origin. national identity is not a new thing, it has only changed its form. it did not emerge out of nowhere in post medieval europe, as some would have it.
a doctor from 1st century CE is still unmistakably a doctor even though he may not wear a stethoscope or know what MRI is.

Nationhood is often made by political unity. E.g. there’s a strong sense of German identity now, but that’s pretty new. Italy was just a geographical expression in the 19th century, until a relatively small group forged a state which is now a nation. India is the same. There was a process of nation-building, which may never have come to fruition (there have been failed examples elsewhere) without independence as a unified state, just as in Germany.

if your argument is that of political boundaries then British India was hardly the first time it happened, control of most of India under one political entity has happened multiple times, some of which were larger than the current domain of India.
mauryan empire (most of what we identify today as Indian can be traced back to this 4th to 2nd century BCE empire. even the coinage system used right up to british India was a modified version of the mauryan coinage system till it was changed to a decimal system post 1947. this is just one example),
gupta empire, sunga empire, harshavardhan, dharmapala’s empire, rashtrakuta, mughal empire, maratha empire leading on to british India and finally independent India.

But we digress. Back to aircraft.

by all means.