INDIA CRITIQUE

What ails India?

Introduction
After 60 years of independence, India has failed to impress. It is saddled with huge problems - socio-cultural, economic and political and has failed to deliver basic needs to the people. The whole South Asian region seems intractably backward and unstable - a failed region. The region, part of the British Empire for some 200 years, seems not to have recovered from its colonial hangover. The rest of Asia - West, Central, South East and especially the East - is generally flourishing. In particular, Japan, S Korea, China and Vietnam which have gone through fiendish American aggression have emerged dynamic and vibrant.

This suggests that much of the blame for South Asian chronic poverty and underdevelopment may well lie with its inadequate leaders, their lack of vision and flawed policies. India, the largest member in the region, has shown little leadership or diplomatic acumen to hold the region together and move it forward. It hardly gets on with its neighbours and Pakistan has been an implacable foe for over 60 years.

So what ails India and holds it back?
The following reasons are suggested:
- historical inferiority and the spirit of defeatism,
- the grip of caste and rigid socio-religious practices,
- unending poverty, failure to provide basic needs to the people,
- Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) and the BJP,
- internal unrest and state repression,
- decaying institutions, flawed democracy, defective vision,

1. A deep inferiority and defeatist spirit derived from centuries of foreign presenceThe native Hindus have been under Muslim domination for several centuries before the British arrived - from about 1000 CE. See Timeline 600-1818. The Hindu elites are no doubt painfully aware and demoralised that they failed to resist and fight back the invaders.

There had been sporadic resistance from regional groups like the Marathas who fought both the Mughals and the British. The Indian Mutiny 1957 was a better motivated large scale rebellion against the British that eventually failed.
Visitors from Europe, Iran, Central Asia and China came to HIndustan but the Hindus did not venture outside - there were no Hindu adventurers, explorers or conquerors.

For centuries, the peasant masses toiled in dire poverty and squalor, put up with caste-based discrimination and sought comfort in religious rituals. They became insular and inward looking. The first Mughal Emperor Babur in his memoirs commented insightfully on the conditions and people he encountered. The British (with their know how and weapons) had little difficulty overcoming the natives from the Punjab to Burma

As rulers, the British
1) treated the Indians brutally, routinely abusing them verbally and physically,
2) taxed and plundered ruthlessly and
3) let famines starve the natives by the millions.
Nevertheless, the Indians hold the British in respect and are grateful to them for unifying the country as a nation,
- introducing basic infrastructure (roads, railways, telegraph),
- establishing the education system (English language, schools and colleges)
- and state institutions (offices, legal system, army, police, courts, etc).
Both Gandhi and Nehru are products of the English educational system.

The Mughals did introduce cultural refinements and build splendid monuments but differences between Hindus and Muslims have not been resolved and persist to this day. As historian William Dalrymple put it in his review of Naipaul's work, the long Muslim dominance and destruction of the last Hindu bastion (Vijayanagara, capital of the South Indian empire) in 1565 was a "wound in the psyche of India, part of a long series of failures that Naipaul believes still bruises the country's self-confidence.. the Hindus tended to retreat, to withdraw in the face of defeat."
The net outcome of the long subjugation has been a smouldering resentment and periodic violence against the Muslim minority (some 150 million, 15% of the population) but an attitude of subservience to the West on which it still depends for ideas, technology and security.

This defeatist spirit continues to manifest itself when it comes to foreign threats. Indians fail to grasp a crisis situation and respond swiftly. They are always taken by surprise and seek help.
Consider the Chinese invasion of 1962. Nehru became complacent and unresponsive over Chinese demands. Whereupon the Chinese crossed the border and were soon some 200 miles within Indian territory. Nehru was alarmed and begged the West for help. But the Chinese were gracious enough to withdraw unilaterally; they could have easily occupied Delhi or Calcutta.

Khushwant Singh, editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, wrote a wide ranging article We Indians. It was meant for Independence Day issue of 1978 but was published a couple of years later in the Week.. Here's a relevant passage: "We Indians have bitter memories of despoliation of our land by a succession of savage conquerors,. followed by a couple of centuries of economic exploitation and racial humiliation. As a result is we have inherited a fear of the powerful and an inability to act decisively in crisis..."

At Kandahar (31 Dec 1999), an Indian airliner was hijacked by 5 Muslims who demanded the release of 3 of their colleagues ('terrorists') held in Indian detention. Vajpayee's government promptly gave in. India Today (17 Jan 2000) commented in a piece headed "The Shame of Kandahar"; sub-headed: "Flaws in our national character make India an easy target."
"India entered the millennium looking soft and pathetically vulnerable. India is soft not just because of the inept and corrupt government machinery but inevitably by the onrush of defeatism. India, unlike Israel, cannot blend flexibility with ruthlessness. After a 1000 years of servitude, the Hindu can only put on a posture of civilisational superiority... (A Hindutva leader) Savarkar tried unsuccessfully to reinvent the Hindu.
"After this national humiliation in Kandahar, can we defeat terrorism?"

The Mumbai terror attacks (2008) was the next test. It again caught the entire Indian security apparatus unawares. A few armed young men nonchalantly massacred civilians in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels before the police, the elite Security Guard and the Marine Commandos could respond. Frantic calls for help went out to the usual powers - UK and US.