India as the globalization microcosm

FRONT PAGE: "Mumbai Attacks Politicize Long-Isolated Elite," by Somini Sengupta, New York Times, 7 December 2008.

Interesting phenom to track: India's rich have long lived a future dystopian sort of lifestyle in which they hide behind gated communities and tinted glass.

They awoke with the Christmas Tsunamis of 2004, and for the first time, overwhelmed India's official government aid response in terms of charitable giving. That was their sense of duty.

They awake again now over the Mumbai "invasion." This is now their sense of entitlement talking.

And that's a good thing.

India cannot grow up as a serious world power without its elite acting in this manner: simply saying, "This is an intolerable situation and must be improved."

India's looming progressive era (recalling America's own) will be as important to world history as China's.

The pessimists will point to events like the Mumbai attacks and see only the fulfillment of their death-wish fantasies.

I look upon them and see the best instincts of human nature triggered.

Now is the time for Ratan Tata to turn into Andrew Carnegie for real.

Comments

[stuart abrams]

Comparisons between India and the US are fascinating. TPMB's argument that the US is a unique nation because it is defined only by a ruleset governing a geographical region, really applies equally to India, as the country really should be called "The United States of India." Indian history would be as though the American Civil War started immediately after independence, except in India, the Brits supported the secessionists, something CF Adams prevented in our case, and secession happened. Imagine if the Confederacy had succeeded - American history would have been dominated by the ongoing competition between the Union and the Confederacy over control of the West. Very similar to the history of India/Pakistan. Historians should downplay the roles of Nehru and Gandhi (especially him), and pay more attention to Dr. Ambedkar (the Indian Madison), who set forth the rulesets that will enable India to make it in the 21st Century.

[Tom Barnett]

I would disagree in the sense that Indians definitely define themselves very strongly through religion and culture and caste in ways that often trump their citizenship. Their devotion to the Gandhian ideal of the village is downright Jeffersonian in its stubbornness--a big problem.

The key thing for us is that anybody can become American. That just isn't the case with India, on a lot of levels.

But I like the analysis on the Civil War comparison, even though I think the Hindu-Muslim divide is huge there.

[Lexington Green]

Good to see Dr. Ambedkar mentioned here. He is a true hero, too little known. His contribution is well-described in Ramachandra Guha's book India Since Gandhi. "The Indian Madison", if anything, understates his contribution. At least the Americans of Madison's day were used to having elections. Dr. Ambedkar had to set up all the apparatus for nationwide elections across a gigantic country speaking many languages, where many people were illiterate, and he pulled it off. A very moving tale.

[stuart abrams]

Tom and Lexington:I guess what I was trying to say is that India's challenge is to re-define what it means to be an "Indian", because the country is so big and diverse, and being "Indian" doesn't really have any intrinsic meaning. It will have to move beyond a Hindu identity, and in many ways the concept of "Hinduism" as a unified religion is an artificial creation of the British mania for pigeon-holing. Again, this is another reason why I find Ambedkar to be such an interesting and important figure. He ultimately rejected Hinduism, in part because of his own caste experience but also because he rejected its provincialism (Gandhism) as being damaging to India's future, and converted to a very modernist conception of Buddhism. He wrote a fascinating essay on Buddhism vs. Marxism, which I recommend.