Author: M.V. Kamath
Publication: Organiser
Date: September 11, 2005
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=95&page=12
In 1958 an American journalist, Harold Isaacs, wrote a book on India. It was called Scratches On Our Minds: American Images of India and China. The book was written on behalf of the Centre for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a prestigious institution. It was a study of how Americans perceived India and China between the years 1953 and 1957. India, then, was between seven and ten years old. China was desperately poor and on its way to get out of the Civil War mess. And yet Americans had a desperately poor opinion of India.
Isaacs had interviewed not a few dozen but over a couple of hundred people from all walks of life. And what did they think of India? The images were visual: "Sacred cows roaming the streets: mobs of religious fanatics hurling themselves in the Ganges, naked ascetics, scrawny fakirs on nails, the burning ghat, the multi-armed Goddess, obscene Hindu sculpture, phallic symbols". They were also judgmental: "A debased hopeless sort of religion, a complicated alien mass, mystic nonsense, stupid taboos, a benighted, superstitious, fatalistic philosophy, fanatical, barbarous religiosity..." One person interviewed who was quoted in detail because he was well-known said: "I almost despise the people; have contempt for them; feel irritation, impatience, aversion, disdain, resentment. "Another spoke of Indians as "always being conquered, always ran away, the country has never shown strength to defend her right and herself..." Yet another American thought that the average Indian was marked by "passivity, inertia, docility, despair, lacking vigour, stamina, persistence, enterprise...". Still another said Indians were like "slaves, inert, whipped cur, hopeless..."
In contrast the Chinese came through as hard working, dependable, honest, etc. They seemed to possess every virture in the eyes of the Americans that Indians did not possess. This was in 1958. Things subsequently worsened as India was on the brink of famine and had to go looking for food subsidies. Resentment against India was total, especially in administrative circles. Even more was contempt. India, it was felt, talked big, gave lectures on morality and spirituality but could not feed itself. The way the then President Johnson treated India with such disdain is a case in point. India's foreign exchange reserves were near a couple of billion dollars and Delhi was the laughing stock in Washington.
What, one wonders, would Harold Isaacs have discovered were he to take a poll of what his fellow countrymen think of India today.
In a recent speech delivered by President A.P.J.Kalam in Kolkata he said: " In Indian history very rarely have we come across such a situation all at once: an ascending economic trajectory, a continuously rising foreign exchange reserves, continuously reducing rate of inflation, global recognition of technological competence, energy of 540 million youth, umbilical connectivities of 20 million people of Indian origin in various parts of the planet and the interest shown by many developed countries to invest in our engineers and scientists..."
Presently, thanks to the Green Revolution, India can not only fight any prolonged famine, but can export foodgrains; Indian scientists have all but taken over America's Silicon Valley; it was on European scientific assistance that the United States built its first atomic bomb. Indians built an entire nuclear arsenal all by themselves; their scientists did not steal foreign technology. When the United States succeeded in dissuading developed nations (including the Soviet Union) from supplying a cryogenic engine, Indian scientists went on undaunted to make one on their own. And they produced a super computer better than many developed countries could even dream of.
True, in some way, India is still behind China. But no one dare insult India and get away lightly. Time was when the United States wanted China to attack India, China's Prime Minister Chou EnIai had a very low opinion about Jawaharlal Nehru. Now, the United States is practically coming a begging to India.
As The Economist July 23 of London put it: "American and Indian officials stress that the two countries" relationship is independent of their respective relations with China. Yet America's state of ambition to help India become a great power in the 21st century cannot be detached from apprehensions about China's looming might." In 1972 the US wanted China to contain India; in 2005, the US wants India to contain China. The bare truth is that just in the last one decade or so, India has started gaining its selfrespect. True, thousands of Indians in the past quarter century had left India to better their prospects in the United States. Currently, young Indians know that they can do just as well in India. In the first quarter of our Independence, Indians still looked to the West for higher studies. Today our Indian Institutes of Technology and our Indian Institutes of Management can boast of equal if not higher standards, In pre-Independence days to get a degree from Oxford or Cambridge or the London School of Economics was the last word in social sophistication. Who on earth really wants to have a degree from Oxford today? India does not want patronage from any country for anything. It can hold its head high among the comity of nations.
A Hindustan Times poll taken in August showed that 68 per cent of those between the ages of 15 and 30 interviewed preferred to live in India. What made them so proud of their mother country? Some 25 per cent said it was India's great heritage; another 24 per cent attributed their pride to India's culture and values ; 17 per cent admired India's sheer diversity. The rest were proud of India's intellectual capital and democracy. Indians have given up their inferiority complexes which they had in pre-Independence days.
In another two years India would be celebrating sixty years of Independence and by then it would have made even larger improvements in industry, technology and social development. Undoubtedly India is on the march. And no power on earth can stop it. Indian enterprise is taking on the world and the Mittals are now the second largest producers of steel; Indian businessmen are giving lessons to the British in how to do business. The important thing is that Indians are beginning to understand their own capabilities. In all these years India looked to the west for its value system; now India is looking inwards to gather strength.
There is a "fundamental" change in US attitude towards India. Cows still roam through our city streets but Americans are not looking down on the streets but looking up at the skyscrapers. A different India has come into existence which is going to be unbeatable, despite those who try to drag India down, like the CPM and the Leftists will soon be shown their door. If India can increase its rate of growth from say 7 to even 9 per cent in the next twenty years, it would then be truly India of our martyrs' dreams.