Author: Rajeev Srinivasan
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: August 16, 2002
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/aug/16rajeev.htm
Why is the life of the common man
in India so often nasty, brutish and short? It is because the State is
failing, or more accurately because the State is predatory. In general,
I support a strong State, a necessity for nation-building. However, the
Indian State is not dependable, which is why I am nervous about the Prevention
of Terrorism Act, POTA: I fear that it will in fact be used not for the
common man, but against him.
The Indian State is not able to,
or willing to, or even interested in, protecting the interests of its citizens.
The State is a dangerous entity whose primary interest is self-preservation
and self-aggrandisement. This is because the State -- such as it is today
-- is a vestige of imperial structures, intended to exploit the citizenry.
The rapacious State is not a universal
phenomenon. There is a good reason why in the US there was little retaliation
after 9/11 against Muslims by individuals: there is strong enforcement
of the law, plus the populace is confident that the government will wreak
vengeance. But the Indian State is not capable of wreaking vengeance on
wrong-doers. It has shown its inability to contain violence perpetrated
by anybody.
This has been shown time and again.
The Rajiv Gandhi government failed to protect the Sikh citizens of Delhi
when Congress goons went on a rampage against them. A number of governments
in Srinagar and Delhi have failed to protect the Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist
citizens of Jammu and Kashmir who have been murdered, raped and ethnically
cleansed. The Modi government in Gujarat failed to protect Muslim citizens
all over Gujarat, and Hindu citizens in Godhra.
The Indian government failed to
protect Hindu Reang tribals in Tripura from being ethnically cleansed by
Christian fundamentalists. The Indian government failed to prevent its
soldiers being tortured to death by Pakistan and Bangladesh. Most egregiously,
the combined power of several states has failed to capture notorious poacher
Veerappan.
Why? It is because the State does
nothing against criminals and barbarians. This is because the State itself
may be criminal and barbarian.
This is the reason many people,
and Hindus in particular, have lost faith in the State. They see Hindus
being the victims of State indifference everywhere. Alien terrorists in
Jammu and Kashmir need fear no reprisal when they eject hundreds of thousands
of Hindu Pandits to a miserable fate in refugee camps in Delhi. Who cries
for these refugees? See the documentary And the World Remained Silent by
Ashok Pandit.
What did the State do when 35 Sikhs
were massacred by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir? What about when Hindu
pilgrims going to Amarnath were killed by terrorists? What about when two
Hindu priests were beheaded in Jammu and Kashmir? What about when a Hindu
priest was shot dead in his temple in the Northeast? How about when 28
Hindus were massacred in a suburb of Jammu?
The Indian State did nothing. The
State wrung its hands and shrugged its shoulders. Contrast this with the
situation in the US. There were letter bombs; they found the Unabomber.
The Oklahoma building was bombed; they executed Timothy McVeigh. The recent
pipe bomber in Nevada has been caught. There is a feeling that the US State
can and will punish wrongdoers. There is no escaping from the long arm
of the law: even if you hide overseas, the US will extradite you and try
you, ask the guests of the nation in Guantanamo Bay. Some may quibble that
the US sometimes punishes innocents, which it does; but an implacable image
is created --and that is a deterrent against crime.
But this is not true of the Indian
State. The State, as it appears to most people, is a monstrous thing that
is to be feared if you are a normal person; only politicians and criminals
can get anything done by the State for them. You have no faith in the State.
Then why is everyone surprised when
vigilantes take matters into their own hands?
The Indian State is such that it
is because it is a continuation of the predatory imperial State. Nobody
knows how the ancient Hindu/Buddhist State was before the coming of the
Muslims so I won't talk about that. But it is clear that India has been
governed by predatory States ever since. We have had a succession of the
following:
* A predatory Muslim State whose
objective was conversion and looting
* A predatory Christian State whose
objective was grand theft and conversion
* A predatory Marxist/Nehruvian
Stalinist State whose objective is grand larceny and self-
preservation
India has had the unique and dubious
distinction of having been governed by all three of the Semitic faiths.
It is a wonder that India has survived.
Note that nowhere in the job descriptions
of these Semitic tyrannies is there any mention of the rights of the people.
Of course, much sloganeering happens in the name of the 'rights of the
people', but that is all for show.
The Muslim State was clear in its
objective of capturing the wealth that had accumulated in India. As I have
said before, Indians collectively chose butter over guns a thousand years
ago; and we then did not have the guns to protect our butter. This is the
answer to those who wrote to me regarding my column Sport as metaphor asking
why the money spent on a modern navy would not be better spent on alleviating
poverty. The answer, folks, is that they wouldn't be poor in the first
place if we had decent defense.
Several readers have questioned
my characterisation of the colonial period as a 'Christian state.' I do
so in analogy with the widespread use of 'Hindu/Buddhist' period, 'Muslim'
period, etc. Why not then speak of the 'Christian' state? If assorted Turk,
Afghan, Arab, Central Asian invaders are lumped in under 'Muslim,' why
not assorted British, French, Portuguese, Dutch barbarians under 'Christian'?
Besides, British imperialists were highly influenced by Christian evangelistic
ideas. See the following quote from Subhash Chakravarthy, The Raj Syndrome:
A Study in Imperial Perceptions Penguin India 1991, pp. 62:
'Examining the Christian forces
at work in the administration of India and the mutual relations of the
British Government and the Christian missions between 1600 and 1920, Arthur
Mayhew, a director of public instruction in India declared: 'Often unconsciously,
and sometimes with protestations to the contrary, those responsible during
a century and a half for India's welfare had been concerned not only, as
Kipling suggested, with the Law of the Prophet, but also the spirit of
the Gospels' [all references here are to Arthur Mayhew, Christianity and
the Government of India, An Examination of the Christian forces at work
in the administration of India and of the Mutual Relations between the
British Government and Christian Missions 1600-1920, London, undated].'
'[The author] suggested that the
Simla secretariat was engaged under episcopal supervision in translating
the Sermon on the Mount into official jargon. "Our policy has been moulded
by men who have come gradually to see that the distinction between Christian
missionary and administrators in India was one of scope and method rather
than of aim or motive power." '
'Increasing readiness on the part
of the Government to honour Christian obligations, educational progress
and gradual enlightenment of public opinion, the author opined, transformed
prophets and pioneers into men distinguished by unobtrusive and impersonal
activity more anxious to gain colleagues than disciples.'
'Advancement on Christian lines
had moved apace especially during the period covered by William Bentinck
and Dalhousie with John Malcolm operating in the west, Thomas Munro in
the south, Alexander Duff in Bengal, John Wilson in Bombay and Jonathan
Duncan in Benares.. Subsequently,. Mayhew asserted. [that] Christian missions
and institutions were included within the governmental infrastructure.'
There, in black and white, in the
official prose of empire, is the evidence of the unholy nexus between Church
and State. The officials of the British Empire in India colluded with the
missionaries. It was a self-consciously Christian State.
The Christian State is infamous
for how it looted five to ten trillion (yes, that is trillion, 1,000,000,000,000)
dollars from India to the UK. I am certain, and the British historian William
Digby ('Prosperous' British India) and the Indian historian Rajni Palme
Dutt (India Today) would agree, that the Industrial Revolution would not
have taken place had it not been for the 'venture capital' provided by
loot from Bengal. Note the amazing coincidence: the Battle of Plassey,
1757. The spinning jenny, 1764; the water frame, 1769; the steam engine,
1785. Money chased innovations -- and the innovations appeared.
Just to give you an idea of how
predatory the Christian State was, look at the great droughts and famines
of the late nineteenth century. Consider what happened during famines.
According to Mike Davis (Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and
the Making of the Third World, Verso, 2000) there were 31 serious famines
during the 200 years of the Christian State, as opposed to 17 during the
previous 2000 years! And in the famines of the 1870s and 1880s, as many
as 30 million Indians died. Yes, 30 million, one California, 10 per cent
of the population.
And this continued into the Bengal
famine of the 1940s which killed 4 million people (see the Satyajit Ray
film Distant Thunder): purely artificial. There was plenty of grain, it's
just that it was more profitable to ship it out so that speculators in
the futures markets could make a wartime killing.
See my earlier column on Europe's
hypocrisy to get an idea of British famine relief: the ration was one pound
of rice per day for an able bodied male. An absolute starvation diet. At
the same time, during the height of the famine, they exported record amounts
of wheat and other grains from India to Britain! Millions were starving
to death in India, and thousands of tons of grains were exported to Britain!
Furthermore, it is clear that before
the Christian State was established in India, the British were on average
poorer than Indians. Bengal, in particular, was wealthy. By destroying
India's industries (in 1750, India accounted for 25 per cent of world manufacturing,
compare that to the US with its 23 per cent share today), the colonialists
ruined potters, weavers, smiths and other skilled artisans and made them
landless laborers. Instant impoverishment: from a respected craftsman to
an indigent so that white people in the 'Satanic mills' and factories of
ye olde England could have a better standard of living!
This is not mere rhetoric on my
part. Here is fact: at the time of the French Revolution, Asia dominated
world manufacturing, and 'the largest manufacturing districts in the world
were still the Yangtzi delta and Bengal, with Lingan [Canton in China]
and coastal Madras not far behind,' says Mark Davis. Prasannan Parthasarathi
suggests that 'there is compelling evidence that South Indian labourers
had higher earnings than their British counterparts in the eighteenth century
and lived lives of greater security.' Even outcaste agricultural labourers
in Madras earned more in real terms than English farm laborers, he further
suggests. (Rethinking Wages and Competitiveness in Eighteenth Century Britain
and South India, Past and Present, February 1998).
Shares of World Manufacturing Output,
1750-1900
|
1750 |
1800 |
1830 |
1860 |
1880 |
1900 |
| Europe |
23.1 |
28.0 |
34.1 |
53.6 |
62.0 |
63.0 |
| UK |
1.9 |
4.3 |
9.5 |
19.9 |
22.9 |
18.5 |
| Tropics |
76.8 |
71.2 |
63.3 |
39.2 |
23.3 |
13.4 |
| China |
32.8 |
33.3 |
29.8 |
19.7 |
12.5 |
6.2 |
| India |
24.5 |
19.7 |
17.6 |
8.6 |
2.8 |
1.7 |
Source: adapted from B R Tomlinson,
Economics: The Periphery in Andrew Porter (ed), The Oxford History of the
British Empire: the Nineteenth Century, Oxford 1990.
A very clear trend: Battle of Plassey
and the rape of Bengal begin in 1757, and within a hundred years, India
had been thoroughly deindustrialised. The Chinese held out a little longer,
but they too succumbed eventually to British strategy: opium to enervate
and enslave.
By destroying age-old irrigation
systems, the imperialists also made the country vulnerable to the disruptive
El Nino oscillations that make monsoons fail. For millennia, India had
dealt with wayward monsoons through systems of canals and of local stocks
of grains. With the railways, imperialists were able to siphon off these
local stocks to be sold in grain markets abroad. Result: widespread famine.
Thank you so much, Britain, for
'giving' India a railway system (it was fully paid for through Indian taxes,
and it was wonderfully convenient for British troop movements). Much like
Tibetans should be 'thankful' to Han China for building a railway line
to Lhasa. Says Davis: 'The newly constructed railroads, lauded as institutional
safeguards against famine, were instead used by merchants to ship grain
inventories from outlying drought-stricken districts to central depots
for hoarding (as well as protection from rioters). Likewise the telegraph
ensured that price hikes were coordinated in a thousand towns at once,
regardless of local supply trends.' Ah, the wonders of technology!
================================
Title: Taming
the predatory State of today (Part II of II)
Author: Rajeev Srinivasan
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: August 17, 2002
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/aug/17rajeev.htm
The predatory Christian State lives
on India in the bureaucracy: the 'steel frame' of the erstwhile imperial
state. Do you notice how the district administrator is still called a 'Collector'?
And what is he collecting? In the old days, he was the tax- collector,
the monstrous one whose job was to squeeze water out of a stone. It is
clear that the steel frame has rusted badly, as the bureaucrats now seem
to outdo the politicians in venality. As an example, take Harsh Mander,
and his simultaneously holding on to his IAS seniority while drawing a
princely sum from the NGO ActionAid. Not to mention the fact that allegations
of conversion activities apparently disappeared as soon as Mander became
head of ActionAid. Curious coincidence, isn't it?
As for the Nehruvian-Marxist State,
the examples of its viciousness are legion. You just have to walk into
any government office. I mentioned in my previous column Two strikes about
how Kerala government employees returned to work after losing a month's
salary. The trade unions, for once, got their comeuppance. Reader Chandra
wrote, perceptively, that they lost even more in untaxed, unreported bribes
that they have become addicted to: classic 'rent-seeking' behaviour.
With the failure of the 2002 Southwest
monsoon, attributed by some to yet another El Nino in the Southern Pacific,
we will see hardship and starvation; but there will not be a famine. This
would be a good time, however, for India's bureaucrats to thoroughly read
the superb Mike Davis book, which compares the results of El Nino droughts
over several seasons and over several continents. To give credit where
it is due, the Nehruvian Stalinist State has managed without a single major
famine since Independence (something the Chinese Stalinist State did not
manage, by the way).
The State and its institutions have
nevertheless been hijacked by self-seeking individuals and philosophies.
Look at the State-run educational system: the Nehruvian Stalinists and
the Marxists have successfully subverted the curriculum to alienate Indians
from their patrimony and heritage. They have simultaneously failed to provide
universal mass literacy. The only successful schools are the for- profit
private schools: nobody queues up or pulls strings or gives donations to
admit their child to a government school. And the Macaulayite curriculum
still teaches children to despise everything Indian: perfect for imperialists,
but today? What a contrast with China's curriculum that teaches raging
jingoism and contempt for outsiders! No wonder Indians grow up into anti-national
'secular' 'progressives' and Chinese into hyper-nationalists.
I had to laugh when I heard Comrade
Sitaram Yechuri declaim at a conference that more and more schools need
to be brought under the public sector, as if they hadn't screwed up enough
already. He is right from his selfish perspective though: that is the only
way more children can be brainwashed into Marxist drones. See my previous
column on historicide and an item in The Telegraph of August 2: a 1992
examination paper in West Bengal in which students were required to write
an essay on one the following topics (thanks to reader Ravi):
* National unity and integrity are
false political slogans
* In Hindustan, there is no place
for Hindu and Hindi
* Five-year plans are a sham
* Statistics on national development
are a fraud
* Democracy is a conspiracy
* National revolution is the only
way for progress
* National means of broadcasting
are useless.
Personally, I would choose 'Five-year
plans are a sham.' In 'Statistics on national development are a fraud,'
they must be talking about their fatherland's accomplishments in this area:
see my previous column, India vs China: Startling Economic Facts.
In another question, students could
write an essay on: 'Red Flag in Red Fort, that is the demand of Hindustan.'
I must be confused -- I thought the Marxists supported the Islamist desire
for the Green Flag over the Red Fort.
Alternatively, the students could
write a précis of the following paragraph:
'The guardian of national, politics.
Delhi, is a heartless administrative seat, on which sit not elected representatives
of people, but anti-social poisonous snakes coming out of the caste jungle.
Progress has been destroyed by tradition, education by the English medium,
religion by political secularism, human beings by greed, idealism by dirty
consumerism. Litterateurs have turned alcoholic, democratic representatives
and administrators have become national villains, who only like secret
accounts in foreign banks.'
As usual, the Marxists show that
their only allegiance is to their own worldwide brotherhood. An illusory
brotherhood, it has disappeared; alas, it is only in West Bengal and Kerala,
and nowhere else in the world, that such dinosaurs still strut about taking
themselves seriously! But they have managed to do plenty of damage already.
Look at the electricity boards,
at the (erstwhile) telecom monopoly, the public airlines. Not one of them
offers you the services that you as John or Jane Doe deserve. They insult
you, humiliate you, act as though it were a great favour that they serve
you, whereas they are paid to serve you. I find especially instructive
the 'volume penalty' imposed by the phone company: that is, if you make
more calls, you must pay more per call. In most systems, there are 'volume
discounts,' that is, good customers get to pay less per call, but not here!
This is another example of an interfering, failing State.
What is the solution? I honestly
don't know. I present this analysis so that at least we are aware of the
problem.
For one, I think the Indian Administrative
Service needs to be revamped. I say this even though I know dedicated,
intelligent and wonderful human beings of great integrity who are in the
service. But the system has been thoroughly corrupted, because of political
interference and the lure of money. I look at the Singaporean model: there
the civil service is incorruptible because they are paid extremely well
and because they are not under the thumb of the political class. Is this
possible is India? Clearly there has to be administrative reform.
Another possibility is performance
related appraisals in the vast bureaucracy, in addition to the proposals
of the Fifth Pay Commission. The commission asked the government to reduce
its strength by 30 per cent, if I am not mistaken, and to increase salaries
by 20 per cent. The first recommendation has been ignored, and the second
implemented, naturally. The fact of the matter is that the bloated imperial
bureaucracy is not needed. When government employees went on strike in
Kerala, life continued as usual, nobody missed them at all. As I keep suggesting
in the case of India's hapless cricketers, let us give the bureaucrats
a mechanism of 'Management by Objectives:' their goals are well laid out,
and if they meet them, they get incentives; else they get fired. It is
important that public sector jobs are no longer sinecures for bribe-seeking.
Since much of the problem in the
State arises due to politicians, there needs to be thoroughgoing reform
there too: for instance, insisting on standards of moral probity and on
full disclosure of assets. In other words, no criminals, and only those
who have some transparency in their financials will be allowed to stand
for elections. And defections will be banned altogether: if you wish to
change parties you have to resign and run for elections again. And, oh
by the way, the cost of the by-election will be charged to you, personally.
This will work wonders for stability, and see the end of the ameba-like
asexual reproduction of political parties based on somebody's idiosyncrasies,
the effects of which Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress demonstrates
daily.
The other, perhaps more important
thing to implement, is true democracy, where all citizens are treated the
same under the gaze of the law. A uniform civil code is an absolute necessity.
The definition of 'minority' is meaningless in India, since everyone is
a linguistic or communal minority because of the proliferation of caste
based identity in India. I would be very surprised if anyone thinks of
himself as a 'majority person:' for everyone owes their allegiance to their
linguistic and caste peers; and in pretty much all cases, these groupings
are minority groupings. I think the State has to treat everyone equally,
with a few selective affirmative action benefits given to the truly deserving,
instead of blanket, loophole-ridden preferences given today to 'minorities:'
I do believe in reservations as they have demonstrably helped the truly
downtrodden.
Finally, the government itself needs
to change its attitudes: instead of being the omniscient and omnipotent
Big Brother, it needs to redefine its role as an infrastructure provider,
whose main role is law and order, defense and external affairs and the
protection of national interests in multilateral and bilateral world for
a: a shameless mercantilist State, just like all the other major powers.
Postscript
Rajiv Malhotra mentioned an astonishing
forthcoming book, Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime
by Veena Talwar Oldenburg. The author argues that 'these killings are neither
about dowry nor reflective of an Indian culture or caste system that encourages
violence against women. Rather, such killings can be traced directly to
the influences of the British colonial era. In the precolonial period,
dowry was an institution managed by women, for women, to enable them to
establish their status and have recourse in an emergency. As a consequence
of the massive economic and societal upheaval brought on by British rule,
womens' entitlements to the precious resources obtained from land were
erased and their control of the system diminished, ultimately resulting
in a devaluing of their very lives.' More good things thanks to the Christian
State.
Speaking of Malhotra, I would recommend
his extraordinary article at sulekha.com, The Axis of Neocolonialism for
the insights into how the representation of India through a new Orientalism
continues to follow the trends set by the predatory imperial State.
Fortunately, the Traditional Knowledge
Systems of India have not died a complete death despite the best efforts
of the Christian State, which banned, among other things: Ayurveda (burned
all manuscripts it could find), Kalari Payat (destroyed all kalaris it
could find), smallpox vaccination (declared the application of cowpox pus
'barbaric'). See the note on Dharampal at the Infinity Foundation's mandala.
Happily, there are plenty of tinkerers still around: here is a heartwarming
story about India's 'barefoot inventors' and the Honey Bee database at
the Good News India site.
