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The
Truth About India's Independence - Part 2 by François Gautier
Continued From Part 1...
"In the concluding part of the true story of India’s
independence, François Gautier, correspondent in South Asia for
"Le Figaro", France’s largest circulation daily,
argues that History books should be rewritten."
…All right, in 1947, Nehru got his 'tryst with destiny',
although a truncated tryst. India was free and everything was
anew, the sky was the limit and a new glory was awaiting the land
of Bharat. But what did Nehru and the Congress proceed to do with
this new India? Writes French historian Alain Danielou, one of the
rare indologists to have understood this country : "The
Hindus who had mostly supported the Congress in its fight for
independence, had thought that the modernist ideology of an
Anglo-Saxon inspiration of its leaders was only a political weapon
destined to justify independence in the eyes of Westerners. They
thought that once independence was acquired, the Congress would
revise its policies and would re-establish proper respect towards
Sanskrit culture, Hindu religious and social institutions, which
form the basis of Indian civilisation. But nothing doing, the
minority formed by the Congress leaders was too anglicised, to
reconsider the value of what they had learnt. Few things changed
in Indian administration, only the colour of the skin of the new
rulers, who were most of the time lower ranks officials of the old
regime".
And indeed, on top of the Partition tragedy, there is the other
calamity of modern India: namely that under Nehru's leadership, it
chose to turn its back on most of its ancient institutions, social
and political and adapted blindly and completely the British
system, constitutional, social, political, judicial, and
bureaucratic. For not only the Greatness that WAS India was
ignored, but unconsciously, it is hoped, one made sure that there
would never be a greatness that IS India.
Democracy was then the new name of the game for India. But Sri
Aurobindo, India's great Sage and philosopher, had very clear
ideas on "western democracy: "I believe in something
which might be called social democracy, but not in any of the
forms now current, and I am not altogether in love with the
European kind, however great it may be an improvement upon the
past. I hold that India, having a spirit of her own and a
governing temperament proper to her own civilisation, should in
politics as in everything else, strike out her original path and
not stumble in the wake of Europe. but this is precisely what she
will be obliged to do if she has to start on the road in her
present chaotic and unprepared condition of mind". This was
written, mind you, on January 5 1920 - and it was exactly what
happened. Sri Aurobindo also felt: "The old Indian system
grew out of life, it had room for everything and every interest.
There were monarchy, aristocracy, democracy; every interest was
represented in the government. While in Europe the Western system
grew out of the mind: they are led by reason and want to make
everything cut and dried without any chance for freedom or
variation. India is now trying to imitate the West. Parliamentary
government is not suited to India..."
Socialism certainly has its values, as Sri Aurobindo observed in
1914. "The communistic principle of society is intrinsically
as superior to the individualistic as is brotherhood to jealousy
and mutual slaughter; but all the practical schemes of Socialism
invented in Europe are a yoke, a tyranny and a prison". At
India's independence, Nehru opted for what Danielou calls
"romantic socialism". Was socialism best suited for
India? It was maybe a matter for the best in the worst, to
forestall a complete take-over by communism, which would have, as
in China, entirely killed the soul of India and damaged for ever
its Dharma. But if Nehru and the Congress leaders had not been so
anglicised and had known a little more of the exalted past of
their country, they would have opted for a more indianised system
of socialism, such as the ancient panchayat system (which Rajiv
Gandhi would attempt to revive later). Their socialism, although
it was full of great and noble intentions, created great evils in
India. Writes Danielou: "But this socialism was empty of
meaning, for there existed no class struggle in India, nor social
conditions similar to those in Europe. The controls established by
a an incapable and corrupted bureaucracy, the ruin of private
property, the incredible taxes slapped on capital, the
confiscations, the dictatorial exchange controls, and the heavy
custom duties, plunged India in a terrible misery. The lands of
the zamindars were distributed to the poor peasants, without any
institution of agricultural financing, and farmers depending 100%
on the loan shark, got completely ruined and agricultural
production went into a slump. The prohibition to export profits as
well as the excessive taxes, forced all capitalist to flee the
country."
One of the worst legacies of Nehru and the Congress is political.
Like the British, Nehru centralised all the power at the Centre,
the states were formed in an arbitrary manner and very little
political autonomy was left to them. This created a land of babus
and bred corruption. In turn, it triggered in certain states such
as Tamil Nadu, whose culture has been preserved much more than in
North Indian states, (maybe because it was more sheltered from
Muslim incursions by the Deccan plateau), a resentment against the
Centre, who was trying to impose Hindi on them, for instance, and
fostered a seed of separatism. And why should the Centre try to
impose Hindi on all Southern states? Hindi is a language which is
spoken only by a few Northern states. And why for that matter
should the Centre impose anything on the States, except in vital
matters such as Security and External Affairs?
Nehru also initiated the entire bureaucratisation of India, which
was a terrible mistake, if only because it was a system
established by the British who wanted to centralise and control
everything from the top. It was all right when the English were
there, they were the masters, they made their riches out of
plundering the country and had no need to be corrupt. But how do
you give so much power to an insensitive babu, who earns only a
few thousand rupees a month? Hence corruption and bureaucracy
flourished together in India under Nehru. The Soviet-type
industrialisation, such as massive state industries, big steel,
mills and mega dams, have already proved a failure in the West;
yet Nehru and his successors all went for it. India became a state
owned country which produced sub-standard quality goods. The only
merit it had was to shelter her from a take-over by multinationals
and allow her to develop her own products, however deficient.
Indians are so proud of their judicial system; but isn't it a
carbon copy of the British one, with as a consequence, a flurry of
problems, whether it is the political interference in the naming
of judges, the incredible backlog of pending cases, or the
overcrowding of jails? Again, the Indian judiciary relies for his
judgements on western values, on European jurisprudence, which are
totally unfit for India. Once more, it is proud of its
"secular" values and often comes down heavily on the
fanatical bigots, meaning the Hindus. In education, Nehru carried
on with the British policy of imposing a westernised English
system: more and more the universities and schools of India, many
of them run by Christians missions, produced a generation of
English speaking diploma holders, who did not belong any more to
Hindu society, but only to a fake bureaucratic society with
westernised manners.
Finally, Hindu-bashing became a popular pastime under Nehru's
rule. Jawaharlal had a great sympathy for communism, like many men
of his generation and indeed of the generations thereafter till
the early 7O's. We have all been duped by communism, whose ideal
is so appealing in this world of inequalities, but whose practise
was taken over by Asuric forces, whether in Stalin's Russia, or in
Maoist China. Nehru encouraged Marxist think-tanks, such as the
famous JNU in Delhi, which in turn bred a lot of distinguished
"Hindu-hating scholars" like the venomous Romila Thapar,
who is an adept at negating Muslim atrocities and running to the
ground the greatness of Hinduism and its institutions. Today even,
most of the intellectuals, journalists and many of India's elite
have been influenced by that school of thinking and regularly ape
its theories.
But ultimately, whatever his faults, Nehru was part of India's
soul. He fought for her independence with all his heart; and when
freedom came, he applied to India the ideals he knew best, however
misconceived they might have been. He was lucky enough to be in
office while India went through a relatively peaceful period of
her post-independence history, except for the first war with
Pakistan and the China invasion. And he must have felt gratified
to see his beloved country through the first stages of her
recovery from the yoke of colonialism.
* Based on the book Rewriting Indian History (Vikas, New Delhi),
by François Gautier.
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