https://pparihar.com/2017/05/22/modern-inventions-stolen-fro...
And the BBC reported on some instances of this sort of thought at the Indian Science Congress in 2019:
> I think the implication was that there was some sort of systematic campaign to erase Indian records of that knowledge
The blog post is more specific than "Indian records". The blog post is talking about the Vedas in particular. I don't know much about the Vedas, but this looks a lot more like biblical literalism to me. The references to the Raj and to stolen knowledge are used to bolster the Vedas as a primary source of truth.
> Even by today’s standards, if properly applied, these Vedic Sutras can create most advanced technological instruments and mammoth machines ever known to mankind.
> Science expanded its views in the area of observation as well. Thomas Edison developed the light bulb and the motion picture based on Vedic principles. Sun rays emitting illusory rainbows, speed of light and its composition are all explained in Vedas. The idea that light defines or makes our universe visible can be found as explained by Shrila Prabhupada in his purport to SB 2.9.4 “In the darkness one cannot see the sun, nor himself, nor the world. But in the sunlight one can see the sun, himself and the world around him.”
FWIW, I think that it's pretty straightforward to suppress knowledge though. You can record knowledge into books, but it's not really known if no-one is reading the books or using that knowledge. You can suppress metal-working know-how by eliminating metal-working jobs. The Raj had a profound control over India which affected the available areas of work, which would affect what people wanted to learn. You don't have to explicitly ban a topic to make people not want to study that topic.
As to why it works, I completely understand. We just want reasons to feel superior. It is why in high school jocks define metrics as strength and why nerds define metrics as intelligence. It's why we have "well I have street smarts" and other things like that.
They explain that part by using the idea of 'traitors'. They are often the minorities of that land(whom they currently hate, and serve as a nice punching bag in the whole process, and in the overall scheme of hate process).
The 'traitor' part is like a constant theme in these stories. Super advanced ancestors, but also very nice, accommodating to everyone. Some savages from the outside invade, traitors help them from inside. Savages win, they are colonised. Traitors benefit. The monuments, symbols and anything to do with the traitors is now demonised and the 'treason' is used as a casus belli for a genocide/ethnic cleansing.
I’ve never understood this kind of messaging. You see it in all sorts of supremacists.
But how is it a credit to you and your ancestors that they had the ability to create nuclear power or fly, etc and then they just lost it!
That’s a sign of deep shame. The particular group of people you’re claiming are superior are so incompetent they weren’t even able to keep knowledge they already had.
Seems like the group of people you think are so superior have been getting dumber with every generation and you therefore are the dumbest of your lineage.
What’s there to be proud of about that?