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On that basis alone, and from a historical perspectives, perhaps it is not important for India to crave the superpower mantle, with the adulation, prestige and title that goes with it.
Though it is suggested that India along that egotistical process first needs to stop taking foreign aid, and the begging bowl to Paris each year to the donor countries. In addition, perhaps seriously consider leaving the Commonwealth, which is essentially a celebration of the greatness of the British Empire, and none to subtle history of the subjugation of South Asia by the East India Company, and later the British Raj-----under both of which 30 million Indians perished, and about $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion worth of India's assets were transferred from India to London.
I say with pure intentions let the USA along with China pursue the Superpower mantle.
It is not important for India to be a superpower now or ever, and it was never important historically for thousands upon thousands of years. India's strength lies in its quiet influence around the world through the work of its priests, and merchants, covering many centuries.
The egotism of superpower status attainment is both illusionary and false.
The egotism of superpower status attainment is both illusionary and false, if it is especially being shaped by the USA for certain agendas which bring no long term strategic benefits for India.
It is perhaps most dangerous to bask in the illusion of a great power, which only generates more natural enemies near and far, through the miscalculation of poorly formulated security and foreign policy which may have unintended adverse effects on other nations, but the egotism of the illusion of being a great power blinds one to the injustices of ones own failed foreign policies.........it becomes thus dejeur an entrenched state policy which is never reflected on. (Sri Lanka as an object lesson 1980--2010: Tamil Tigers created by RAW; 80,000 troops to SriLanka; Indian army humiliated by its own created monster; assassination of Rajiv Gandhi; the death of 150,000 Sri Lankan's in a civil war; the Tamil's in a worse situation before 1980......defeated subject race at the mercy of the Sinhalese majority at present and the subject of an UN crimes against humanity investigation possibly)
It is dangerous to think one is a great power, with all the burdens of a great power when one actually never may be a great power.
I do not deny that India must robustly defend herself, and thus in this process build a credible security structure to meet the challenges of its actual size and depth of potential internal and external foes, but in doing so, such an important objective should not be clouded by false pretentious illusions of grandier, and wasted expenditure of military programs which do not meet India's real security needs.
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Passage to world power
by Randeep Ramesh of the Guardian
The reality of India I saw was often grim. Yet the country still confounds those who write it off.
(Indeed it is grim, filthy, smelly, dirty, dusty, poverty stricken.......80%......skinny malnourished people, breeding more malnourished children so that India not to far in the future, by 2020 will over take China with the largest population in the world; a record India can do without; a failure of India's post-colonial Anglophile elite and especially the Congress party run by the Gandhi dynasty mafia)
The Indian norm since Independence.
In my six years there, it was hard not to be infected by the hubris of India – a nation that feels part of history, an essential actor on the global stage. Yet even as I admired a country that had thrived as a democracy despite unbounded poverty, mass illiteracy and entrenched social divides, experiencing India as a reporter was a string of enervating and dispiriting episodes.
( The hubris of India....which India? The 80% poor; the middle class or from the elite?.........OBVIOUSLY from the elite educated at Oxbridge etc...
Hubris definition: Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance: "There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris" (McGeorge Bundy).
from wikipedia: Hubris (also hybris) means extreme haughtiness or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of touch with reality and overestimating one's own competence or capabilities, especially for people in positions of power.
Jewish Hitler intimately tied to the Great Jewish banking houses of London and NY.
............In its modern usage, hubris denotes overconfident pride and arrogance; it is often associated with a lack of humility, not always with the lack of knowledge. An accusation of hubris often implies that suffering or punishment will follow, similar to the occasional pairing of hubris and nemesis in the Greek world. The proverb "pride goes before a fall" is thought to sum up the modern definition of hubris. It is also referred to as "pride that blinds", as it often causes someone accused of hubris to act in foolish ways that belie common sense. Victor in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein manifests hubris in his attempt to become a great scientist by creating life, but eventually regrets this previous desire. More recently, in his two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler, historian Ian Kershaw uses both 'hubris' and 'nemesis' as titles. The first volume, 'Hubris', describes Hitler's early life and rise to power. The second, 'Nemesis', gives details of Hitler's role in the Second World War, and concludes with his fall and suicide in 1945.
One can detect and find Hubris in the USA naturally being the richest nation on earth, amongst its Jewish elite with its $1500 billion security budget and 800 military bases around the world, or Israel, or in tinpot dictators such as Idi Amin or Pol Pot, but hopefully not too entrenched in India with its multiple problems which require addressing first, and foremost.
Hubris is an emotion that can come and go)
Whether I was visiting a rural police station where half-naked men were hung from the ceiling during an interrogation, or talking to the parents of a baby bulldozed to death in a slum clearance, the romance of India’s idealism was undone by its awful daily reality. The venality, mediocrity and indiscipline of its ruling class would be comical but for the fact that politicians appeared incapable of doing anything for the 836 million people who live on 25p a day.
(Yes the Indian police is amongst the worst police forces in the Pura Duniya, as I discovered researching for a Masters paper on the Human Rights Commission of India with the backdrop of the use of TADA etc.....that was in 1996, and not much has changed I see, despite India Shining and all that........though the Supreme Court keeps sending directives to the states to reform their police, which essentially surely is the job of the "Do Nothing" Congress Party, mandated into power, with the all important control of the national purse strings.
The IPS with its heritage from the British Raj is awful. If you are a foreign colonial power, and you want the natives cowed, fearful and timid, .....then you institute an aggressive criminalized police force.......but surely India has achieved "Independence" since then, and after 63 years shouldn't the "Do Nothing" Congress Party "aggressively" and urgently pour money into and reform seriously the police force once and for all, rather than sit on mountains of reports from parliamentary police reform commissions which end up gathering dust and not much else.)
The selling of public office for private gain was so bad that the only way to make poverty history in India would be to make every person a politician. (Indeed for this very reason ALL Indians are budding politicians.....you get in a room with 2 Indians and you end up with 3 political parties) Last year the wealth of local representatives in the northern state of Haryana rose at an astonishing rate of £10,000 a month. Their constituents were lucky if their income increased by a few pounds.
(If you are talking about corruption, you should start with Bihar first, and end with Mumbai and the Siv Sena there after)
The burden of democracy in India, to borrow from Yeats, the Irish poet influenced by mystical Hindu thought, was that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”. Yet the country continues to confound those who write it off.
(The great and the good couldn't survive in contemporary Indian politics, where 25%---30% of current serving MPs in the Lok Sabha face some sort of criminal charge, or conviction...and public office all too often is seen as an escape route from the law........conversely in such a political landscape if one is well connected to the Mafia types, one is assured political power and patronage. The Gandhis Congress especially, BJP to a lessor degree)
I saw India redeemed repeatedly by three quirks of history: a written liberal constitution, religions rendered ethical, and a talent for sabotage. Take the last first. India won independence not through war or revolution but through non-co-operation, protest and the quiet subversion of the economy.
(If Gandhian pacifist noncooperation against the Raj was not revolutionary, during which up to 50,000 Indians died....The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre 1919, through to the Quit India Movement 1942....with 500,000 Indians beaten and imprisoned {1919---42}, then what was it?
In light of 63 years of water under the bridge, we can make certain new observations about Gandhi's role in Indian independence, which isn't Gandhi centric or sanitized for the sake of British history, and narrative. .......Gandhi says nice and politely " Oh please Raj can you leave India", and the Raj replies......."oh of course, what a splendid chap you are, and what a splendid idea, why hadn't we thought of it earlier"
According to Clement Attlee Gandhi's role in the Independence of India in 1947 was MINIMAL........further one could argue that once the East India Company had been disbanded in 1858, after the Great Liberation War, a long gradual process of handing power over to Indians in the major Indian states had already begun predating Gandhi's arrival at the "Liberation" scene, and thus by default setting the steps for eventual independence unintentionally.........Indian Councils Act of 1909.
Further what ultimately DID make the British Raj leave India after WWII?....Because of Gandhi alone? Many Indian historians upon reflection say no..........but rather:
1) The surrender of 140,000 British Commonwealth troops without a fight in 1942 to 30,000 Japanese troops, lightly armed on bicycles.
2) The activities of the INA.
3) By 1945, there were 2,500,000 Indians with military training and experience at war.......by 1945 the Indian army numbered 2,000,000 with many Indian officers, up to the level of General/Brigadier??
4) The Royal Indian naval Mutiny 1946, by Communist elements in the service.
5) Pressure from America to give India Independence----Roosevelt unsung legacy to India, and the general adoption of the position that European Colonialism must come to an end, after the war....thus the creation of UN, and adoption of the UDHR. Lend lease was not instituted to sustain the British Empire, but to protect and defend Britain from the Nazi war machine, so the Roosevelt argument went.
6) Britain was financially and physically exhausted from the 6 year war (1939---45).
In that sense Gandhi's contribution to Independence was MINIMAL as per Clement Attlee, and thus it is seriously misguided to say "India won independence not through war or revolution"........India DID win independence through war and revolution ultimately)
Civil society in India has acquired an unrivaled mastery of such skills, and campaigners have been quicker than politicians to realize that democracy will not prevail unless its proponents show success at governing. Consequently, it was activists who shamed the government last year into enacting a law to make children’s education compulsory.
(Small victory, but not the common denominator of the overall corrupt political "Do Nothing " Congress Party land scape......for the likes of Singh, and Sonia its much more fun going around prancing about posing for the fucking camera within the staged media, internationally and domestically)
India’s constitution, the longest in the world, has become a moral compass for justice in a society where violence had been the best measure of one’s power and standing. When homosexual sex was legalized by Delhi’s high court last summer, the judges said the old law criminalizing the gay community was in violation of the constitution. By appealing to the highest sense of being Indian, the bench ended years of homophobia.
(Again a small victory.......a liberal law effecting a small minority of 5--10% Indians in a society where the justice system simply DOES NOT work for the common people, or even for the Middle Class.......the huge back log of cases, judicial corruption, police corruption, in a society where minor crimes are heavily punished, whilst major crimes are unpunished.....AND that very often the law operates outside of the norms of society, and vast swathes of Indian society don't relate to or rely on the colonial legal system of India.
For the majority in many senses, the Indian constitution, its major and minor details, and the Indian legal system is irrelevant)
To claim faith has enabled Indians to come together might seem far-fetched. British India was rent asunder by religion, and one of my first reporting tasks was to visit Muslim victims of state-sponsored pogroms. Yet such violence appeared more political than theological.
(Muslim/Hindu riots became prominent after 1880, when the Congress Party was established and was tentatively trying to create a Indian political base and platform, to make claims for ALL Indians. These communal riots were organized by the Raj as a crude divide and conquer strategy...........practiced most recently in Iraq by British forces with deadly consequences, where 1,300,000 Iraqis have died since.
The British Raj also created the Muslim League in 1905, with Lord Curzon playing a prominent behind the scenes role. Then they created the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920's in Egypt to counter the efforts of Egyptian nationalists. Then they politicized and recruited mullahs in Iran, including one Rohullah Khomenei in the 1950's, to counter the modernizing nationalist forces of Iran.
The intensity of these communal riots by the Raj increased with the acceleration of the call for independence.........please watch the DD TV drama Tamas (1987) to get a hint of what was actually going.
Hindu/Muslim riots are not a natural occurring phenomenon since Muslim and Hindu Indians are the same race, with similar smells....garam masala with fried onion in gee, eating similar food, culture and love for goonda Bollywood movies and the stupid boring game of cricket. Rivalry between the two religions would normally be expressed on the basis of a Hindu ruler against a Muslim one in a battle field.....high politics, with Muslim generals in the Hindu Kings army....Ibrahim Khan Gardi in the Maratha army in the Panipat battle, and Hindu generals in the Muslim kings army.....Man Singh as head of the Mughal army.
Modern communal riots also often relate to local petty goonda politics, and rival turf wars......and not purely a Hindu Muslim issue)
Indeed, during my time in India it was Europe that appeared unable to embrace religious diversity. While I awoke each day to the sound of the muezzin, the Swiss voted to outlaw the construction of minarets. France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy wants to ban the burka; Britain’s Jack Straw asks women to remove veils in meetings and the Turks wait, still, to join the EU. Europe’s liberalism looked like a straitjacket of unspoken Christian values.
(So being butchered or burnt alive by Modi's mobs in Gujrat while the local police look on, or better still assist in the massacre has got to be better than assimilating, or appearing to try and assimilate into advanced post industrial rich, filled with oppertunities, Liberal Democracies???????!!!!! duh!!!!.......so its a left of center rag, and bashing right wing politics is good, ok)
India’s philosophy emphasized not what you believed but how you behaved. Lead a compassionate, religious life and the state would leave you alone. This thinking meant Indian streets are shared by people who look, dress and pray differently – making them a celebration of the nation’s diversity.
Diverse, yes: but it’s an open question whether the society being created by these forces is a fair one. India is perhaps the most unequal country on the planet, with a tiny elite engorged on the best education, biggest landholdings and largest incomes. Those born on the bottom rungs of the social hierarchy suffer a legacy of caste bigotry, rural servitude and class discrimination.
(55 billionaires, whilst you have 850 million surviving on 20 rupees a day, and one meal a day consisting of rice and nothing else, not even vegetables......you could say Indian society is slightly lopsided AND ripe for REVOLUTION.
This clearly is NOT "development" in the holistic sense)
Politics in India is increasingly becoming a debate about the haves and have-nots, and this is given violent expression by a rise in bloody Maoist guerrilla terror. Delhi’s stance in global talks is being reduced to the impact on poverty.
(naturally)
Whether the matter is climate change, trade talks or nuclear weapons, India has forced wealthier nations to acknowledge that international relations are about power and morals.
(In reality India traditionally has not been that assertive......the recent assertiveness is the result of forming alliances with other Third World Nations with similar interests, which is not a bad thing, strength in numbers, and the realisation of common interests on some, but not all issues)
It negotiates with a hand yet to be dealt: in a few decades it will be the world’s third largest economy.
(At present number four economy by PPP at $3500 billion, but within a few years, NOT DECADES, will be numero teen........India throughout history has either been the richest nation on earth, or the second richest.......before the arrival of the East India Company, India in 1750 accounted for 25% of the worlds manufacturing)
Coming back to London has meant returning to a country that lives in the shadow of its former colony.
(Lets not compare India with the UK like that; the two countries are very different inhabiting different spheres of the earth.
Its also a highly subjective tiring left-wing comment........The UK is still a major Middle ranking power. Its a nuclear power; has a UN security Council veto; defacto heads the Commonwealth which celebrates each year the British empire; London is one of the leading financial centers of the world; still sends troops out into the world to "civilize" those parts which need "civilizing"; Is the 6th largest economy on earth PPP wise at about $2000 billion; Is through its language and culture an important nation still, way beyond its size; AND if I recollect still exercises more diplomatic clout in Pakistan and Bangladesh than neighbor India.
Britain in many ways is a paradise compared to many parts of the world, and especially many parts of India. The poor wretches of the world try and go and live there.
Relative to the UK's unique position acquired in a small blink of history largely in the 19th century, the rest of the world is/has caught up and passing the UK, which is a natural phenomenon; that does not mean the UK is falling behind in ANY SENSE. The UK economy has grown by 5 times since 1950, and the average Britisher is enjoying life like never before..........but of course perceptions vary, and there is the very British affliction known as envy)
Britain may see itself as a major power, sending troops to pacify Islamist insurgents and spreading good governance globally.
(Within the establishment there is still the perception that Britain is a great power, which matters. In addition, and this is the more negative aspect, there is still a nostalgic rose tinted view of the British Empire with all its pomp and jingoism, expressed significantly through the British media, and observed acutely and written about by Salman Rushdie, in his 1984 essay, "Outside of the Whale" )
These delusions will leave us morbidly disappointed. Unlike Indians, we are not on the cusp of a stirring transformation. Overspent and overstretched, we perch instead on the crest of a falling wave.
(Iraq was a sorry adventure that bought no benefits to Britain in any sense, but cost $13 billion, soldiers died, and the country's reputation impaired.......Afghanistan is the same, though certain criminal elements based around London, and the "The City" are benfitting from the huge heroin importation by the British military, but then again what is the cost of cheaper heroin in British streets year in year out since 2002?)
