India At War: For 1200 years Desert Bloc Has Been At War With India

India has been is at the forefront of 1200-year aggression by Desert Bloc spear-headed by multiple religious factions.

Indian & Foreign Corporations are colluding to increase their power against We, the People | Cartoonist Adam Zyglis in 2010; source & courtesy – cagle.com

The War of 1200 Years

How does India defeat मायावी mayaavi religions – without becoming intolerant, or persecution and suppression of dissent?

Desert Bloc has used religions (there are only 3 religions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam) against India now for 1200 years.

Indian polity, भारत-तंत्र Bharat-tantra based on the four freedoms – धर्म (dharma – justice), अर्थ (arth – wealth and means), काम (kaam – human desires) मोक्ष (moksha – liberty) has a unique challenge.

With some degree of success

An easy marker of Desert Bloc success is if we begin to think any religion as ‘better’ or worse.

The self-congratulatory claim of the Christian West to represent freedom of speech as opposed to the supposed tyranny of silence imposed by Islam doesn’t stand the scrutiny of history. The Inquisition, under pain of torture, silenced Galileo’s ‘heresy’ against the Christian belief that it was the sun that moved around the earth, and not vice versa. The Vatican’s list of prohibited books still includes many world classics, and a number of American schools partly or totally ban Darwin’s theory of evolution in favour of the church-approved doctrine of ‘intelligent design’.

Perhaps the problem is not what fundamental Islam and fundamental Christianity don’t have in common, but what they do have in common. And that is that both are assertively proselytising faiths which actively, often aggressively, seek converts.

When my faith enjoins me to get you to change your faith, and your faith enjoins you to do the same with me, confrontation becomes inevitable. Proselytisation implies not just the superiority of my faith to yours; it totally denies the validity of your faith and narrows the scope of dialogue or even peaceful coexistence in mutual tolerance.

Ironically, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all come from the same semitic source. Indeed, Islam has always considered Jews and Christians to be ‘people of the Book’, referring to the overlap between the Old Testament and the Quran and, as such, not to be seen as adversaries. Over the centuries, the material and technological dominance of the West has upset this equilibrium, and pitted the ‘free’ West against an ‘unfree’ Islam.

via Juggle-Bandhi : Jug Suraiya’s blog-The Times Of India.

Faced with: –

1. Well-funded armies that invested in more cannons and expensive horses.
2. An Islamic leadership that could build impressive monuments (Taj Mahal, Qutub Minar)
3. State-funded intellectuals who were retained by the State to wage a propaganda war (maya); promote official agenda (Akbar’s nav-ratan).

Indian leadership had a unique challenge in front of itself. How could India: –

1. Sustain its system of 3-Rights – ज़र (jar – gold), जन (jan – human ties) and जमीन (jameen – property)
2. Retain a thin State (with no monuments)
3. Maintain guarantees of four essential freedoms (dharma, moksh, kaam, arth).

The Bhakti saints and reformers promoted the ideological structure of

1. How the guru can be more important than god
2. As the guru leads you to god.
3. Different people can have different gurus.

Guru Nanak went ahead and reduced the need for ‘One’ holy book – by extracting from the writings of many gurus – including from the Koran.

After Independence, India bought peace with the Western world by adopting Western standards of democracy, laws, currency, human rights etc.

Not that it happens anywhere in the world, but additionally Indians also had to prove that we could ‘protect’ minorities.

Sixty years after the Indian Republic, we need to understand modern realities.

Better.

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• Iranian Christian Convert: I Live a Life of Fear (foxnews.com)
• Channel 4 documentary Islam: The Untold Story receives 1,200 complaints (guardian.co.uk)
• Indian Hindu Rally against Jihad at Consulate: “Save India from Islam” (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
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What is Bharattantra

Unlike, भारत-तंत्र Bharat-tantra

भारत-तंत्र Bharat-tantra is the Indic political system that guarantees four freedoms – धर्म (dharma – justice), अर्थ (arth – wealth and means), काम (kaam – human desires) मोक्ष (moksha – liberty) and ensures three rights – ज़र (jar – gold), जन (jan – human ties) and जमीन (jameen – property) for all.

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Shyamchi Aai – Bringing up children

Shyamchi Aai - Book Cover from edition by Pune Vidyarthi Gruh Prakashan. Image courtesy - prashantb.wordpress.com. Click for larger image.

Spare the rod

There is an exceptional story from Indian पौराणिक pauranik texts on bringing up children.

Yashoda-ma, Krishna’s foster-mother, angry with Krishna for some prank, asks him to open his mouth, to see what he was eating. After some threats by Yashoda-ma, Krishna finally opens his mouth. And what Yashoda-ma sees is the entire creation in Krishna’s open mouth.

The shadow of Satan

Children, in Indic society, are seen as nandlala नंदलाला and balagopal बालगोपाल. On the other hand, in the Desert Bloc, naughty children a result of Satan’s influence. In Christian theology, children are born in sin. Children in Urdu are admonished for शैतानी shaitani – meaning behave like Satan.

This starkly brings out Indic attitudes compared to Desert Bloc. Reading Jane Eyre (on Adele Varens) or Charles Dickens children, one can see this negative attitude towards children. This was subdued, in modern West, partly and possibly, due Maria Montessori’s avant-garde  ideas on teaching children. Montessori taught the West that children learn during play. Play is part of the learning process, Montessori opined.

English speaking India

In modern times, in India this theme was explored by the Marathi writer, Pandurang Sadashiv Sane (better known as Sane Guruji) in his best-seller, Shyamchi Aayee – Shyam’s Mother.

Except for the fresh coat of oil paint, nothing much has changed in the 8×10 feet cell of Circle 4 in Nashik Road Jail, where Pandurang Sadashiv Sane (better known as Sane Guruji) wrote Shyamchi Aayee – one of the most moving and inspiring works in Marathi literature.

The book deals with his childhood in the Konkan with special emphasis on his mother’s influence on him.

The dimly-lit cell and high prison walls may not be the ideal settings for a writer, but for Sane Guruji (1899-1950) it was just fine. He finished writing the classic inside his prison cell (Circle 4) in just five days, between February 9 and 13 in 1933.

Sane Guruji was sentenced to jail for around one year after he participated in the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930. (via Sane Guruji gets lost in the details, Lifestyle – Sunday Read – Mumbai Mirror).

Still from film - Shyamchi Aai (Image courtesy - http://default19in.blogspot.com). Click for larger image.

Spreading ripples

Translated into Hindi, Japanese and English, the book was also made into a film. It won the first national award for Best film. Later on, the film version, triggered a satire, on how a ‘modern’ Shyamchi Mummy behaves.

With such an ideological inheritance, to see India top in female foeticide, makes me search for the external ‘stimulus’ behind this behaviour.

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Last train out

EXULTANT Militants waiting to cheer an assassin threw rose petals. (Picture courtesy - nytimes.com; picture by B. K. Bangash/Associated Press)

In Pakistan,

the ruling elite cannot be expected to change things because the majority already has one foot out of the door. Most members of the ruling elite have dual nationality, which means that if the situation deteriorates further they can always leave, along with their capital. This saves them from taking responsibility for improving social conditions and the country’s politics for the benefit of all. http://is.gd/krkPC

Who cares …

On 4th January, 2011, Salman Taseer died. Shot dead by his own body guard. His support for non-Islamic minorities in Pakistan coupled with his support for removal of blasphemy laws from statute books angered extremists. Leading to this killing. Salmaan Taseer’s other bodyguards did nothing against the killer. Many ‘powerful people’, afraid, did not attend Taseer’s funeral.

Like this author points out, the State of Pakistan is in the hands of people who have interests, capital, and a life outside Pakistan. Pakistan needs complete, total commitment.

Anybody home?

Another hate crime

On the other side of the world, on Saturday 8th January, 2011, in the advanced world, there was a similar incident. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, during a public event at a Safeway grocery store on the north side of Tucson, was shot.

Call to arms! Against Gabrielle Giffords. What is the difference between USA and Pakistan!

Giffords — who in 2006 became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, at 36 — has, for more than a year, been the target of violence-tinged rhetoric from political opponents and of threats that appear to have come from right-wing activists.

Sarah Palin’s political action committee posted a map of the US, showing the locations of the 20 Democratic members of Congress, including Giffords, it was targeting for defeat. Each location was marked by an image of a gun crosshairs.

Palin’s camp dismissed charges that she was encouraging acts of violence, saying she had spoken out against violence. But Giffords herself was one of many who spoke out against the image, telling MSNBC: “When people do that, they’ve gotta realize there’s consequences to that action.”

In June, the campaign of Giffords’ Republican opponent in this year’s midterms, Jesse Kelly, placed an ad that read: “Get on target for victory in November/ Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office/ Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”

The website for Kelly, a former US Marine, depicted him with holding an automatic weapon.

Today, Kelly said in a tweet: “We are all deeply saddened by this morning’s shooting. Gabrielle Giffords, the other victims, and their families are in our prayers.”

It is unclear why Gabrielle Giffords was shot. Was is it because she ‘approached the immigration debate in a nuanced fashion, mixing requests for more Border Patrol agents with calls to increase the number of work visas granted to foreigners.’ Or was because she was the first Jewish woman to be elected Congresswoman from Arizona.

Sarah Palin's and the vicious right wing agenda. Chickens come home to roost.

Desert Bloc parallels

Gabrielle Gifford and Salman Taseer were ‘marked’ for supporting ‘Others’. Christian intolerance, Islamic extremism. Any difference. Sympathy for ‘kaffirs‘ killed Salman Taseer; supporting ‘aliens’ hurt Gabrielle Gifford. USA & Pakistan-Siamese twins?

Pakistan is evading the blasphemy issue. USA will ‘investigate’ if xenophobia behind Gabrielle Gifford attack. Christian intolerance + Islamic extremism = Desert Bloc behavior. Proof  – Attacks on Gabrielle Gifford & Salman Taseer.Last train out

After putting Gabrielle Giffords in the cross-hairs, the job of pulling the trigger was left to some 'radical'.

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• Gabrielle Giffords shot in Arizona – Sarah Palin ‘has blood on her hands’ (archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com)
• Bhutto pledges to defend minorities in Pakistan (reuters.com)
• Salman Taseer assassination – BBC News (news.google.com)
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Champions at Genocide – Taimur Leng and Churchill

Cartoonist Leslie Illingworth's faithfully reproduces Churchill's views on India. (Cartoon courtesy - cartoons.ac.uk; Published - Daily Mail, 20 May 1947).

Hitler believed that the so-called Nordic race, which in his view included Germans and Britons, was destined to rule the world. He sought to emulate, not supplant, the British Empire: the German empire would comprise the Slavic countries to the east. As he saw it, the United Kingdom would retain its colonies but assume the role of Germany’s junior partner in world domination. (read more via Churchill’s Dark Side: Six Questions for Madhusree Mukerjee—By Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine).

Eat what you can digest

Looking at the lukewarm  coverage, desultory reporting and the general indifference to Madhusree Mukerjee’s masterly work on the Bengal Famine, I am drawn to some intriguing conclusions.

‘Modern’ Indians can be satisfied with perception and propaganda. Easier to digest, I presume. Empirical evidence be damned. Between the Rightist Islamic-atrocities and the Marxist effete-feudal theologies, Indian history suffers. At this rate, India will become another case of ‘forget-nothing-learn-nothing’.

Indian military might

The commentators are very enamored by ‘victims-of-Islamic-atrocities’ narrative – even though India’s military might would have reduced these ‘invasions’ to extensive plunder-pillage-massacre expeditions. In the few cases where these ‘invasions’ were able to consolidate, the regimes were short-lived.

British jaziya tax?

The crippling taxes that these Islāmic ‘invaders’ were able to impose, were less crippling than Western colonial extraction. At the end of the Mughal Raj, India was still a formidable economy. Even after, the Mughal rulers had bloated their treasury to the largest in the world. By the time the British were sent packing, Indians were left struggling for roti-kapda-makaan.

Taimur and Churchill

The Delhi massacre of Taimur Lame, the Mongol looter accounted for less than 2 lakh victims (most estimates are 1,00,00). The Bengal Famine engineered by the British accounted for 40-50 lakh victims (British estimates are 10,00,000-20,00,000). Taimur was a Hindu-hating Islāmic plunderer. Churchill and the British Raj oozed the milk of human kindness? From every pore and orifice of their bodies?

Westernization – the new religion

So enamored with the new religion of ‘Westernization’ are we, that no criticism will be accepted or tolerated. Compared to the ‘co-operation’ with the Islāmic plunderers our ‘collaboration’ with the West is in no way less damaging or in any way less culpable.

Not a welcome message, I guess.

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Eat what you can digest

Looking at the lukewarm coverage, desultory reporting and the general indifference to Madhabi Mukherjee’s masterly work on the Bengal Famine, I am drawn to some intriguing conclusions.

‘Modern’ Indians can be satisfied with perception and propaganda. Easier to digest, I presume. Empirical evidence be damned. Between the Rightist Islamic-atrocities and the Marxist effete-feudal theologies, Indian history suffers. At this rate, India will become another case of ‘forget-nothing-learn-nothing’.

Indian military might

The commentators are very enamored by ‘victims-of-Islamic-atrocities’ narrative – even though India‘s military might would have reduced these ‘invasions’ to extensive plunder-pillage-massacre expeditions. In the few cases where these ‘invasions’ were able to consolidate, the regimes were short-lived.

British jaziya tax?

The crippling taxes that these Islamic ‘invaders’ were able to impose, were less crippling than Western colonial extraction. At the end of the Mughal Raj, India was still a formidable economy. Even after, the Mughal rulers had bloated their treasury to the largest in the world. By the time the British were sent packing, Indians were left struggling for roti-kapda-makaan.

Taimur and Churchill

The Delhi massacre of Taimur Lame, the Mongol looter accounted for less than 2 lakh victims. The Bengal Famine engineered by the British accounted for 40-50 lakh victims. Taimur was a Hindu-hating Islamic plunderer. Churchill and the British Raj oozed the milk of human kindness? From every pore and orifice of their bodies?

Westernization – the new religion

So enamored with the new religion of ‘Westernization’ are we, that no criticism will be accepted or tolerated. Compared to the ‘co-operation’ with the Islamic plunderers our ‘collaboration’ with the West is in no way less damaging or in any way less culpable.

Not a welcome message, I guess.

Related Articles

• The case against Indian historians (quicktake.wordpress.com)
• Books: Churchill’s Shameful Role in the Bengal Famine (time.com)
• The Ugly Briton (time.com)
• You: INDIA: CHURCHILL DENIED RELIEF TO BENGAL FAMINE VICTIMS, BOOK SAYS (menafn.com)
• The Dark Side Of Churchill (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Today’s power-grabbers (quicktake.wordpress.com)
• Not his finest hour: As a young man, Churchill’s views on race and democracy beggared belief (independent.co.uk)
• Not his finest hour: The dark side of Winston Churchill (independent.co.uk)

Shortlink

http://dlvr.it/CQTYh

The Do-Gooder Industry in India

The Church and pedophiles go back a long time

 

Mowitha attended the same therapeutic project in India where Maria Mosterd went to get away from her loverboy. There are photos on the table of her dressed in a sari, a beaming girl with curly hair and freckles. For a time, after she had returned to the Netherlands, it seemed as if she were coming to her senses and wanted to lead a normal life. But then she slid back into prostitution, and her mother felt that her only option was to send her to the juvenile prison. (via Schoolgirls Controlled by Loverboys: Math Class in the Morning, Turning Tricks at Lunchtime – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International). 

Strange story

Rich countries. Advanced societies. Educated families. And the daughters turn to prostitution. Then sent to India for therapeutic projects. There is something missing in this story. A very vital element. 

What is the therapy? Was it looking after ‘poor’ Indian orphans, who were ‘worse’ off than these girls? Was living in a different society – a vastly different society that was the therapy? I am not sure I like this at all! 

Mother Teresa (Cartoon by John Spooner @ http://www.chrysalis.com.au)

 

The last time we had such cases in India, we ended up with Australians pedophiles. 

The do-good industry 

An Australian do-gooder was arrested for sexually assaulting children of an orphanage in Puri.  

Sometime back, two other orphanage administrators, and alleged pedophiles, Duncan Grant and Allan John Waters were convicted (their conviction is now under appeal-review). In a television channel interview, it was alleged that Margaret Thatcher, senile but yet powerful, was behind the legal challenge mounted to acquit these two British peadophiles – oops alleged peadophiles.  

Further back, Wilhelm and Lile Marti, a Swiss couple, again in the do-good industry, were granted bail in a paedophilia case. After bail, they promptly fled India.  

Do we really need these do-gooders? 

Mother Teresa, another do-gooder raised hundreds of crores in the name of Kolkatta’s poor. A few hundreds of the Kolkatta’s poor benefited from that money. But many missionaries rode on the backs of these poor Kolkattans, raising even more money. The PR machine of the Vatican has done a great job on this scam. Even if India can’t take care of its poor, we don’t need these do-gooders!  

Away!! Begone!  

Should we say, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan!!’

The enigma of Buddhism

2000 years later, other religions have not been able to match the Buddhist spread! And remember all this without the sword!

Confucius, Lao tzu and Buddhist Arhat by Ding Yunpeng (ca. 1547-1628) a Ming dynasty painter, painting at the Palace Museum, Beijing

Power Play By Buddhism Monks

In a 1000 years. By 500 AD Buddhism had spread to Britain, China, Central Asia. We can look at a popular medium like cinema to gauge the power of Buddhism.

For instance in Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee undertakes the mission given to him by the Government Intelligence Department after it meets the approval of the Buddhist monk. In Tom Yum Goong, only after seeking advice from the Buddhist teacher does Kham (essayed  by Tony Jaa) go on a rampage in Australia. The Buddhist teacher cautions Kham about playing with ‘fire’.

Chants and Idols?

Trite messages like follow-the-path-of-ahimsa, life-is-full-of-misery, respect-life, could not have gained Buddha so may followers. Esoteric ideas like Nirvana, dukkha, et al, could not have been the reason. People don’t change so much for so little! Or resist change so much when confronted by the sword!

This was obviously not because Buddha’s statues were prettier than the statues of previous deities. Or because Buddhist chants sounded better. If that, anyway, was the reason, the statues of previous divinities could have been prettified.

In the meantime, in India

Viktoria Lyssenko, a Russian Indologist, makes an interesting linkage – a linkage that is lost to India, forgotten and dismissed as ‘ancient’ and irrelevant (interview extracted below).

Buddhism for long disappeared from the Indian scene, but the fundamentals of its philosophy were formulated as part of Indian philosophical thought with its traditional polemics and constant exchange of ideas between different schools. This deep familial link of Buddhism with the Indian philosophical soil that engendered it is being missed by both Buddhist and Hindu philosophy studies. Buddhists study six Hindu darshans, but in a rather formal way as if these were dogmatic systems. Specialists on darshanas also formally study Buddhism. In my opinion, the important aspect missing is the mutual enrichment of both traditions, their constructive impact on each other. (via ‘Branches of Indology like religion flourishing in Russia’ – The Times of India).

So, what made Buddhism so attractive?

The axis of Confucian-Platonic authoritarian, ‘wise’ rulers, who were not accountable, was (and remains) the overwhelming model for the world. Property rights remained with less than o.1% of the people. Under the CRER principle, (cuius regio, eius religio, meaning whose land, his religion; CRER) even the most personal religious beliefs of the individual were subject to State approval, as per law.

Analects of Confucius - book written by Confucius (551 - 473 BC) before Socrates and Plato with Zhu Xi's commentary. A pre-Meiji Restoration Japanese edition. (Picture courtesy - iastate.edu).

The only exception to this was the Indic system of polity – where property rights were vested with the user, justice was decentralized (did any Indic king dispense justice?), religion was maya and dharma was supreme. The modern Indian State has acquired the Desert-Bloc-Platonic-Confucian authoritarian principles of the State as parens patriae. So, the power of the Indic ideas is something that India seems to have forgotten, missed and lost!

Compare and Contrast

Contrast the faith that the Chinese have in Buddhist teachers with the negative representation of Church and priests in Hollywood. One set has been able to maintain trust and faith for more than 2000 years – and the other set seems to have lost it in less than a 1000 years.

Is it any surprise that the common Chinese loves and venerates the Buddha – and the Chinese Government lays so much emphasis on Confucianism?

How Buddhism became a religion?

Indian religion and culture shapes half the world even today. China (Buddhism), Indonesia (considering that Mahabharata is their national epic and their use of Sanskritic names), entire South East Asia (except Philippines) and of course, India. What makes the Indian success remarkable is that this status has been acquired without significant military cost or economic expenditure.

After the destruction of Takshashila, in 499 AD(?), without access to the ‘Indian thought factory’, Buddhism soon became a religion outside India. Buddha in India, was another, in a long line of teachers. Not so in the rest of the world. Cut off from Indian philosophy, Buddhism soon stopped growing.

Remember all this without the sword! 2000 years later, other religions have not been able to match this spread!

‘Pagans’ blamed for blasphemy killings!

David Horsey's cartoon inverts the religious equation!

You got this one wrong

David, you are tracing blasphemy to people (like me) who worship rocks, trees, birds, animals, air, water, rivers, seas, mountains, fruits, sunrise, sunset, the waxing and waning of the moon, the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, tools and weapons, water and milk – in fact (and in short) everything. And we are the subject of your cartoon.

Pagans, we are called by ‘others’. Probably, you too. And no, we don’t have the concept of blasphemy. So, David you got this one wrong!! Completely wrong. We, (who are mostly called Pagans) don’t and didn’t do the killings over blasphemy! Because,

We don’t worship The One!

History of blasphemy

If you are looking at a ‘modern’ phenomenon, like blasphemy, it is the history of Desert Bloc that you must look at. Over the last nearly 2500 years. During this period, the cornerstones of ‘modern’ societies, from the Desert Bloc like One God, One Book, One Holy Day, One Prophet (Messiah), One Race, One People, One Country, One Authority, One Law, One Currency, One Set of Festivals, et al were popularized.

From this Oneness, we get the One Currency, One Language logic  – fallacious syllogisms, all. This quest of ‘Oneness’ is the root of most problems in the world – including blasphemy.

Birth of religions

David Horsey corrects himself. The Desert Bloc is where blasphemy, persecution, conversion, ethnic cleansing come from. (Cartoon by David Horsey; courtesy - sfgate.com). Click for larger image.

Modern religions are a construct of the West Asia-Middle East – and the birth place of the 3 major religions of the world. Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In the Indic system, belief structure centres around dharma – धर्म.

In the last 1000 years, India has also become ‘religious’. Indic people have started describing themselves as ‘Hindus’ – a geographical appellation, apart from /Buddhists /Jains /Sikhs. ‘Modern’ blasphemy laws in India  are also derived from colonial roots of Desert Bloc origin.

The difference between धर्म dharma and religion? Major!

For one, religion is about worship. There are many other differences also – in method of worship (how you worship), object of worship (what you worship), frequency of worship (e.g. every Sabbath; five times a day, etc.), language of worship (what you say, in which language), etc.

Indic worship practices are infinite. Even non-worship to is acceptable – for instance, the Charvaka school of Indian philosophy was atheistic and did not prescribe worship. Structure and deviation from worship practices are a non-issue in Indian dharmic structure. धर्म Dharma has no equivalent in the ‘Desert Bloc’ vocabulary of religions. धर्म Dharma is the path of righteousness, defined by a matrix of the contextual, existential, moral, pragmatic, professional, position, etc. धर्म Dharma is more than moral and ethics.

Many more … and more on the way

The really big difference between religion and धर्म dharma is the holy books. Judaism, Christianity and Islam have one Holy Book each. No deviations. Indian धर्म dharma tradition has thousands which are more than 1000 years old – at last count. And some more on the way.

David, your two Pulitzers notwithstanding, you must do better than this. You cannot let your beliefs, prejudices, ‘received’ wisdom come in the way of ‘truth’.

Or your lack of knowledge!

Related articles

• The Final Testament of the Holy Bible is shocking. Shockingly bad, that is | Mark Vernon (guardian.co.uk)

Public debt imperils world economy

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has warned that the world’s 30 leading industrialized economies will see their indebtedness grow to 100% of output in 2010, a near doubling from the percentage 20 years ago. (via Public debt imperils world economy – International News – livemint.com).

Till the fat lady sings

The debt spiral is not ended yet.

Like the Dubai crash shows, the world economy is not yet out of the woods. Struggling firms, in the face of a weak consumer and industrial markets, may just keel over. A domino effect may set off yet another round of closures, bankruptcies, mergers, and defaults.

More importantly, are Western Governments. With public debt (read that as Government debt) exceeding 100% of GDP for every Western Government – Ireland at more than 1000%, Britain at nearly 200%, US at more than 100%, they are the vulnerable soft-spot of the global economy.

I want more

The shopping bill for Western welfare state is not going away – except up. Welfare bills are getting more ambitious – and the domestic lobbies want more ambitious schemes. High cost economies are being protected by barriers and stockades.

Run … hide … but you can’t turn your back

The political constructs of the West have hit a wall – and there is no way but down! Since the West is busy hiding elephants in the room, the need for a different political ideology remains unaddressed.

An ideology like भारत-तंत्र Bharat-tantra.

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What Kapil Sibal does not know and hurts us

Before the western model brought by the British or the Church, there were ezhuthu pallis, or writing schools, run by ezhuthu ashans, or writing masters. There were also schools run by wealthy individuals in their homes for their daughters.

In these tutorials, generations learnt to read and write using writing nails, palm leaves and sand, paying fees in kind. Outside Kerala, gurukuls functioned successfully for centuries. And these were always privately-funded. Is this model better than pumping in more public money into inefficient government schools?

That is the question that James Tooley, a British researcher and writer on education, asks in his recent book, The Beautiful Tree. He sees existence of private education in pre-British India as an argument in favour of low-cost private education that can cover every child. He finds virtue in the large number of private schools that are run in the slums he visited.

This goes against the thinking of development experts, including Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze. A study by the latter argues that the solution is to improve government schools rather than close them.

Madhav Chavan, the founder of NGO Pratham, which in its study found that the poor also preferred to send their children to private schools, sat close to Tooley at the launch of the book. But he made it clear he did not share the views of the author.

To say that private schools hold the key to universal education is to say the unspeakable. As unspeakable as saying that the king has no clothes. (via Sreelatha Menon: A new lesson).

End of the road … the bankrupt model

The health care (USA), social welfare (USA), employment benefits (UK), showcase countries (Japan), are running countries into the ground. India has, as yet, not gone down that path. Though, the Indian State has been trying – quite hard.

My first glimpse of this model was through the draft of Parag Tope’s forthcoming book – Operation Red Lotus.

I say without fear of my figures being challenged successfully, that today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the root like that, and the beautiful tree perished. (Gandhiji, at Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, Oct 1931 – extracted from Indian Models Of Economy Business And Management By Kanagasabapathi; Page 60).

Gandhiji, in correspondence with Sir Philip Hartog, (chairman of the Auxiliary Committee on Education), laid out the the pre-colonial scenario, which has now been buttressed by research by Dharampal, a Gandhian, in his book, Beautiful Tree, Indian Education in the 18th century.

Sreelatha Menon, seemingly, depends on Tooley’s own PR handouts to write this up. In the entire post in Business Standard, she never makes a mention of Dharampal, whose work is the most authoritative today. Tooley, a (for sometime) IFC-World Bank employee, this research resulted, (funded by the Templeton Foundation) in a book – of course called, The Beautiful Tree.

Between a rock and a hard place

Dharampal’s pioneering work, in 1983, has, not surprisingly, been ignored by the Amartya Sens and The Jean Drezes of the world – all their avid followers in India. Kapil Sibal has been trying to further the colonial British efforts by laying out a red carpet for foreign universities – while tying up Indian institutions into-knots-into-knots-into-knots. The ‘modern’ theory about Indian education goes that all credit for Indian education should go either to the British Colonial Raj or the Christian Missionary Benevolence.

This Indian education model was, till about a 150 years ago, unique in the world. With the highest literacy ratio in the world, and completely privately funded, it set global and historic benchmarks. This model has been buried under a mound of silence – and once in a while you get a glimpse of this.

‘IT players failed us in financial inclusion drive’- says the RBI

The rich target the poor ...

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has accused IT giants of being indifferent towards the cause of financial inclusion in India. “The scale of business in financial inclusion is so big that we need participation from big IT companies,” said KC Chakrabarty, deputy governor, RBI, speaking on the sidelines of a financial inclusion seminar organised by Skoch, a consultancy firm. He added lack of interest and involvement by big IT companies was making banks’ endeavour of financial inclusion unsuccessful.

According to Mr Chakrabarty, involvement of big IT companies was important to bring down the transaction cost. (via ‘IT players failed us in financial inclusion drive’ – The Economic Times).

How India missed out …

Due to our well-cultivated tunnel vision about English language (amongst many other things), India missed out on Japanese investments, technology and business. Indian loyalty to English language exceeds the loyalty of the British themselves to their language – and we refuse to see how this affects us.

Reforming Indian education

India urgently needs to put more languages in lingual-education basket – instead of putting all our eggs in the English language basket. We can’t do business with the French or Germans, Spanish or the Arabic speaking world. The Chinese and Japanese are out of bounds to us – as are the Swahili and the Bantu.

The Indian language basket also calls for diversification. India needs to learn more foreign languages. But with our bankruptcy of ideas on restructuring Indian education system or the vested interest banging begging bowls in front of the Indian tax payer!

The Indian software ‘success’

The great ‘software’ success story is actually two countries – US and UK who give between 70%-80% of Indian software business! This is coolie labour! We are missing out on the massive Japanese, French and the Spanish markets because we have not invested in those foreign languages. Same story in Europe also – major opportunities overlooked and ignored. And we have missed out on computing in Indian languages, because we have not invested there either. So, RBI’s peeve is right – but the solution is somewhere else.

Is it due to the apparent Indian decision to tie its future to the sinking ship of the Anglo Saxon Bloc?