will we return to ‘hindu rate of growth’?

8/10/2019 Will we return to Hindu rate of growth?

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Will we return to Hindu rate of growth?

In a footnote in The Black Swan(2008),Nassem Nicholas Taleb wonders whether all it

takes to effectively construct a nation is a flag, a few speeches and an anthem! What

is a nation? The Oxford English Dictionary defines nation as a large group ofpeople sharing the same culture, language or history, and inhabiting a particular

state or area.

The best way to create a newnation, independent Indias incipient leaders thought,

was to destroy the existing structure, consisting of culture, languageand history, much

as we demolish an old building to construct a new one. With some help from our

colonisers, they have been assiduously attempting to erase, deface and disown our

national cultural ethos, not to speak of languageandhistory, in order to artificially

create, what the left-liberal crowd likes to call a composite culture. The leftist

economist Raj Krishnascoinage, Hindu rate of growth is but a small part of the

larger scheme of things aimed at demolishing the old structures.

The left-liberal pamphleteers constantly aver that it wasIndias fabulous

wealth, which attracted the invaders. (It is as if causing genocide and

plundering are some kind of noble pursuits sanctioned by the gods.) If

India was so fabulously rich, how could one attribute the poor

economic growth rate to Hindus, especially when others ruled India

for over ten centuries? Speaking in multiple voices and obfuscating

inconvenient facts that do not fit into their narratives are techniques,

their eminences perfected to a fine art.

William H. Avery, a former US diplomat and global business strategist points out

that India had been rich and powerful for most of Human history.Averys

book, India as the Next Global Power(2012, Amaryllis, New Delhi.) cites the British

economic historian Angus Maddison (1926-2010) who painstakingly compiled

statistics of world economic growth from the first century AD. Here are someinteresting facts from Averys book:

Indias recent centuries of poverty are an exception in its history of

wealth. For most part of the past two millennia, India accounted for

one quarter or more of world GDP. It was the single largest contributor

to world GDP until around 1500, when it relinquished that position to

China

It may be superfluous to point out that seven centuries of benignMohammedan rulemust have taken its toll, for Avery points out:


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Indias share of world GDP, which was close to thirty percent for

much of the first millennium, began a long term decline thereafter.

As an interesting aside, narrating the reign of Akbar, he points out that Indias percapita GDP was a bit over half of Englands at the time. Yet the Mughal ruling class

enjoyed even a higher standard of living than European aristocracy. This was

because of their exploitation of the lower classes. We were taught that Akbar was a

benign (and more importantly secular) emperor who ruled his subjects as his own

children!

The downward slide of the Indian economy continued during the British rule until it

reached its nadir by the twentieth century when it fell to below five percent of global

GDP. Averys next observation is enlightening for the fan boys of Nehruviansocialism and Nehruvian legacy:

[T]here was an uptick in Indias fortunes in the beginning of the

late twentieth century. Its share of global wealth has continued to grow

since then.

This clearly means that Jawaharlal Nehrus economic policies were not responsible

for the uptick. In fact, his pernicious socialismsent the Indian economy spiralling

down to the bottom. It was Nehru familysbte noire P. V. Narasimha Rao, who

ironically, brought about the positive change.

Conquerors often used psychological offensive as a ploy to tighten their hold on the

vanquished. They ordered history writing to this effect. Avery documents how

British historians laboured to create negative images of India.James Mill was one

such who toiled for twelve years to produce his three-volume The History of British

India (1817), without ever bothering to visit India. Here is what Avery says about Mills

work:

Mill must have sensed his audiences hunger for negative judgements

about India, and he did not disappoint. His general criticism of India

([it has] in reality made but a few steps in the progress to civilisation)

is supplemented with specific dismissals of Indian achievements in

math and the sciences. He give no credence to the claim that Indian

mathematicians invented the decimal system, and mocks the notion

that Indian astronomers (including Aryabhatta and Brahmagupta)

once postulated the existence of gravity and a rotating earth. Of course,Mill would see no reason to believe that such ideas could have


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originated in India, as he had roundly dismissed native (Indian)

scholars as having a general disposition to deceit and perfidy.

What makes the narrative more poignant from an Indian perspective is how it

shaped Indian thought. Avery observes that

[] Many Indians themselves imbibed colonial biases.

Although Mill aimed his work at his British audience, he largely succeeded in

planting negative images of India in Indian minds. One of the reasons for this could

possibly be, his work influenced Indians who flocked to England to

pursue Englisheducation but came back with a Bohemian outlook and derision for

all things Indian. Our left-liberal intellectuals (a double oxymoron) echo Mills

derision to this day. They never bothered to enquire about the veracity of suchaccounts but imbibed them as gospel. So much for the vaunted scientific temper,

which Nehru wanted to inculcate in Indian citizens.

The decades after independence were frittered away by an elite that became

physically free but remained an ideological slave to European thought

processes.India began to experience severe poverty and shortages that she did not in

centuries, in the decades after independence. The poverty and shortages were so

severe that Indians began sentimentally recalling the good times of the British rule.

Everything from food grains to kerosene, cement, and steel were severely rationed.

Many fast moving consumer goods were either not made or were of such poor

quality, that Indians developed a craze for foreign goods.

Telephones, electronic goods and motor vehicles were for only for the rich. There

was a long period of waiting to obtain a telephone connection and motor vehicles

were not available off-the-shelf even for those who could afford them.

So inefficient were the public sector undertakings (the prime component of Nehrus

mixed economy), that they made losses even in sectors in which they had a

monopoly! Indias external debt mounted and mounted. Any external aid was used

to servicedebts, which in plain English means paying interest on it.

Indian citizens might not have been aware of even the number of articles that

comprise the Indian Constitution but they all read about US public law 480, P. L. 480

for short. It is the law under which the US supplies food grains to indigent nations

against payment in their own currencies.


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The reason for the sorry plight does not require rocket-science to decipher. It was so

simple; any sophomore student in economics could have told the rulers that no one

could distribute something that is notproduced.

Hopefully the nation had learnt its lessons and there would be a return to sanity.Will we return to the true Hindu rate of growth?

will we return to ‘hindu rate of growth’?

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