No “Sone ki Chidiya”(Golden Bird) this time!

India was the most prosperous society once. So much so that any dacoit or looter targetted India first and foremost. From Gazni to Mughals to British.. all came with the purpose of looting and exploitation and left it in tatters. The erstwhile “Golden Bird” or “Sone ki Chidiya”, as it was called, had itself molested, each one of its beautiful, colorful feather of culture, tradition even its pride was plucked away and it was barely left alive. When British came, India was over twenty percent of global GDP. Then, with every production outsourced to Britain and every economic pillar demolished, with 45 trillion Pounds looted and tens of millions killed, when they left, India was two percent of global GDP and a rate of growth of one percent or less with average life expectancy of 38 years. The British scoffed at this creation of their’s and called it Hindu rate of growth. The exclusionist ideas Abrahamic religion’s driven forced conversions and untold atrocities there-off in Goa, in Kerela, where kids were forcibly snatched away to be indoctrinated was all part and parcel of India’s looters mindset and India’s travails. Like India needed more of it after the millions of native Indians were murdered by Mughals, and the outsized atrocities of Aurangzeb, even by Mughal standards, in prior centuries. Then there was the wound of partition as a go away gift. But somehow India survived.  Somehow it survived, as the only ancient civilisation still standing on this planet, with roots and traditions dating back to tens of thousands of years. That spectacle is availble nowhere else on Earth. Only in India. Only in Bharat. 

Now what does that really mean? What is it that is being so tom-tommed about the history and culture and traditons that is so unique and remarkable. Don’t all countries have cultures? Aren’t they all the same, give or take? 

Well, even for a casual observer, when you go from one end of India to another, just the variety of cuisines and languages and traditional attires are so many and so unique that you can travel through continents elsewhere and you won’t find anything anywhere even close to compare. Our women can look devastating beautiful by putting a sheer little bindi on their foreheads or by dressing up in sarees in dozens and dozens of different ways. The words PitaJI or MataJI or Pandit JI or Guru JI, are such unique concepts that they don’t exist in other languages, reflecting a value system that has intrinsic respect for parents, teachers, elders and people who have acquired knowledge of any kind. The literature associated with dozens of separate unique languages goes back thousands of years. This culture aside from having a history of tremendous affluence, invested itself deeply into understanding the inner world( atma, concience, awareness) and came up with Yoga and Meditation practices that have no parallel. The only culture ( starkly opposite to Abrahamic religions) where the feminine form and energy is literally worshipped for nine days in its nine different facets or avtars. There is no place else, where  the understanding of the Universe and its workings and its engagement with the individual has deliberately been studied and explored in as much detail. And on that bedrock, the current India is taking off even more assertively, more compassionately and with more certitude than you get to see in many other countries, especially in this neighborhood. 

The stark difference is that in India, in Bharat, its culture of compassion and acceptance has defined its religious views and in rest of the world, the Abrahamic religions and their exclusionist ideas, have defined their cultures. 

Talking of Religion, the word itself is a complete and absolute misnomer in the context of this land. It is so fascinating that in a country and landmass where every stone seems to be waiting to be carved into the statue of another deity, there was no concept or construct of “Religion” for its 10,000 years plus of known Civilizational history. Its seems a rather odd statement to make, but let me explain. 

The word Religion translates to a doctrine or a set of rules, underscored by a belief system(Jesus was the son of God and savior, took all sins upon himself; or Mohammad was the Prophet and the last direct messenger of God). These kind of beliefs with no underlying possibilities of validation have had no place in Eastern thought(Read Indian thought). Instead what this land has wrapped itself around is the word Dharma. Dharma translates to Dutiful Living, or Riteous Living and not to a doctrine. Underscoring the word Dharma are debates and arguments like in Gita by the seeker and the knower, or examples of riteous living like in Ramayana or the messages by seers such as in Vedas and Upanishads, that are all experiential and are being shared but not mandated to be part of any rigid inexplicable hardened belief system. When the followers of rigid prescriptive doctrines came to Bharat, in search of loot, they were unable or unwilling to understand the pursuit of truth that the Indian mind was in and overwrote Religion in place of Dharma and called it Hindu Religion, the word Hindu coming from bastardization of the word Sindhu according to some or since we were across the Hindukush mountains, according to others.

When other sects like Jainism led by Mahavira or Budhism led by Gautam Budha or Sikhishm led by Guru Nanak sprouted in this rich land of ideas and spiritual pursuit, to explain the Universe and its truths as perceived by them, they were engaged with, debated with and accepted or rejected without the sword having to be used for that purpose for thousands of years. 

Heck there were traditions such as Charvaks, led by Brihaspati, which was an atheistic tradition and it thrived for decades if not centuries, with its followers going from village to village debating their philosophy with the ones who believed otherwise. No swords needed though. These are numerous descriptions in Budhist and Sanatan (Hindu) literature, debating those ideas. Imagine that. No swords, no “sir tan se juda” chanting crowds. 

However it took lots of swords and atrocities to push the rather untenable narrative of “Religion” into the ethos of this land. These struggles are alive and well and the tensions palpable to this day. 

So Sikhism, Jainism, Budhism are called “panth”… ie a different way to worship the Nirakar Brahm. (shapeless faceless divine) and the in place of hard doctrines there are advisory tenets such as such as the eightfold path in Budhism or Karma Yoga etc on Hinduism, saying that you will reap what you sow, no matter what belief you carry. 

Fast forward to 2022. First half of 2022 is showing a growth rate over 13 percent, in what is  already the fifth largest economy in the world in absolute terms and the third largest in Purchasing Power Parity terms. That is a staggering number for many reasons. 

The first reason is that unlike China, India’s growth seems to be organic. It is not orchestrated by government subsidized property bubble or purely export driven growth. So there is a fair likelihood of this momentum having legs. 

Reason number two is that the world order is changing and there is a massive trust deficit between world’s erstwhile factory of China and any nation that cares for its own well-being. Whether the predatory loan schemes to gobble up parts of poor and developing countries, or its reponsibility in leaking, denial and subsequent obfuscation regarding the Pandemic, or its economic behavior during the Pandemic regarding medicines and such, using the dependence of west as a weapon; all these and many other economically nefarious schemes such as forcible transfer of IP etc., have left a trust deficit that will be hard to bridge for at-least one generation. This has started and will continue the shift of supply chain of world’s economy away from Chinese shores and dependence, which stands to benefit India massively. In parallel, India’s aggressive investments and a whole set of achievements in enhancing the hard infrastructure of India, such as roads, railways and waterways, is already well underway and showing promise. Over the next decade these functioning arteries of commerce will bear massive fruits, accelerating the transition of global supply chains to India and enhancing India’s own indigeneous growth even further. 

Now to India’s magical renaissance. These external factors are coinciding with India, now Bharat, finally unshackling itself fom its colonial past. It’s people, a majority them, a substantially bigger number then ever before(due to GST), are contributing in this economic revival. Then there is the unseen factor of Bhartiya people taking pride in being Bhartiya, taking pride in their own languages and culture and not seeing them as less than English and Western, but more. Their own Dharma and values being just as good or better than those found anywhere else. An intrinsic pride in the people of Bharat has been unleashed that is causing a bounce in their step like never seen before. Sure, the value of English as a language of business, and for now, even connectivity across India and the world is very much there. But far fewer people now and in next 10 to 25 years will scoff at someone speaking in their own accent and mother tongue. Infact someone like me, who has had these feelings for quite sometime was surprised at my own emotions when I heard a bunch of Indians on the top of Half Dome in Yosemite happily chatting to each other in Tamil. Normally It would have been a non-event. But I recognized that these beautiful people, were speaking a language that is thousands of years old, older than the entire western civilization, older than most all other languages still alive and being spoken. They and their forefathers had kept it alive and vibrant. What a fantastic achievement despite all that India has gone through over the last thousand or so years of invasions and bloody past. India or Bharat or the world’s oldest indigenous people had fought through the odds and survived and were begining to thrive again. 

The path that India is on, is not an easy one. Over the next quarter century, India is showing potential of becoming a developed country with basics of health, education and opportunity available to all its, perhaps two Billion people by then. According tona recent Mckinsey study, a full twenty percent of hlobal talent pool with be sourced from India. Imagine that! So for this growth to happen, this momentum must continue and accelerate. 

But India has enemies, outside and challenges inside. The outside enemy primarily is China, whose expansionist ideology( Communism is expansionist in nature) and dreams of dominating Asian region and subsequently the world is in conflict with India’s own vision of living to its full potential. China and India share a border of over 2,000 miles and Chinese have demonstrated enough number of times their intentions and actions of violating India’s sovereignity. They attacked and annexed Tibet, an independent nation and they will continue their aggression into India, unless pushed back hard. That India needs to learn to do. Recently launched aircraft carrier INS Vikrant and many others like that, Nuclear-Subs, Cyber-Warfare, Space-Warfare, indigeneous production of top notch Aircrafts and Missiles are not luxuries but necessities. There is no better way to avoid war then to make its prospect very very expensive to the enemy. 

India’s inside challenge is the limited participation of twenty percent of its population in earnest in its renaissance and economic growth story. Their contribution to GDP is far short of their population mix. It is because a mindset and an ideology, driven by religion that has thwarted the progress of a substantial number of the twenty percent muslim population of India. A majority of them owe their allegience to Islam and Ummah and not to their motherland. They look to the desert land for inspiration about their world. They won’t join the armed forces because one day they may have to fight against Pakistan, which is a muslim country. They send their kids to Madarsas, who come out throwing stones and chanting sir tan se juda, instead of becoming CEOs of global corporations that rest of India is doing. Half of that population , which is women, is economically neutralized by not being allowed to work, hiding from all men behind burquas except their brothers and husbands. Their primary goal, they are taught is to bear as many children as possible, even tolerate other wives of their husbands, in the service of Islam. The end game for a majority if this population, as force-fed into their heads by mullahs and maulvis is to to forcibly change the demographic of the country to gain political power and then subject India to the rules of Islamic state, ie Sharia. In other worlds, non-muslims who are hell bound anyway, either convert or get to have a second class citizen status and be happy with that. If and when the daughters of non-muslims get to age, they will be abducted and raped and married to muslims for bearing more muslim children. That is the formula that has been used by people of the same land for 75 years in the neighboring country of Pakistan and also Bangladesh where the minority Hindubpopulations have decreased from percentages in teens to one or two percent. It is a tried and tested formula. It has been executed in 50 other countries that are now muslim, once the demographics shifted. Sure, a large portion of our muslim brothers and sisters are just living day to day and have no axe to grind. But like we saw in the birth of Pakistan, like we saw in Kashmir, when the swords come out after demographic shift, they are mute spectators to the whole drama. That is agenda, that is the game plan and that is the soft underbelly of democracy. That is what this civilization has to defend itself against internally. This population has to be brought into the progressive fold by bringing in  a few laws such as :

1. Uniform Civil Code that brings everyone in India inder the same law, so muslim men do not have 4 wives and 20 children.
2. Controlling the artificial population explosion by enforcing severe limitations on having more than 3 children. 
3. Banning Madarsas, so that young children cannot be brainwashed and their economic oppprtunity stolen and they become a liability to the state instead of an asset.
4. All children be sent to schools with recognized broad based curriculum and religious instruction be left to parents or outside the main school activity, like it is the Law for Hindus. 
5. Controlling the borders, so the massive influx of refugees stops and the madarsas sprouting along the borders by the thousands are brought under government oversight. 

Some of these are hard facts, hard to hear and even harder to state. But they must be talked openly and without fear or prejudice because what is at stake is the only surviving civilization of antiquity, with over a Billion people wrapped around in its fold. 

These along with a few additional reforms can unlock the economic potential of this huge latent force in India’s demography and help India achieve its true potential. Indian muslims need to be freed from their mullahs and given the fresh air of economic well-being and pride in their homeland. 

So this time around, let India not be a “Golden Bird”, i.e. “Sone ki Chidiya” that can be trifled with. Let it be a “Golden Tiger”. Beautiful, valiant, strong and not to be messed with, by insiders or outsiders. 

The alternate path to becoming a “Golden Tiger”

is what we have seen happen to American Indians who are now relegated to some encampments, Zoroastrian civilization is gone, ancient Chinese Civilization runover by Maoist/Communists. No more confuciousism or Budhist traditions… all gone. Only the sterlized, homogenized society as approved by Chinese Communist Party is now available to the world. So is Indonesia, Lebanon, Syria… list is endless. 

You be the judge. Is Bharat worth sav(our)ing!

It is a World Heritage Sub-Continent! is it not?