Return of the Tiger .... Part 1

There has been a lot of discussions that this century shall be the 'Century of the Asians" - esp. India and China. Every day news is all about new economic world order blah blah... No. I am not going bore you with "Thump your chest" stats which you will anyway receive on every Jan 26th / Aug 15th.

India, from being the richest country in the world in 17th century, was one of the poorest till the mid of last century is rising again to be among the top nations. How can we as a nation undergiong few hundred years of exploitation & colonization could jump back in just about 60 years back to the world stage? This is the question which prompted this blog.

Let us pause and reflect on our inheritance. The historian Angus Maddison has painstakingly constructed the structure of world income over the past three centuries and shows us that in 1700, before the dawn of the industrial era, India, China and Europe accounted for similar shares of world income. (I have this very interesting excel sheet which estimates the GDP for the last 2000 years!... mail me if you want a copy). Each had a near 23% share of world income. By the middle of the 20th Century India’s share was down to a paltry 3%, China’s down to 5%. Europe and the United States together accounted for more than 50% of world income.

But this has not happened by accident but through a systematic process of exploiting India, erasing our link to the past and introducing English language to subjugate us. I am not sure how man knew the following facts:

1. We follow an education system (Macauly's system) introduced by Lord Macauly in 1835 or around that. Lets see his letter and his intentions of introducing English:

In his address to the British Parliament in 1835 , Mecaulay told - "I have travelled across the lenght and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation" In his own words: 'We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.

'In a letter to his father, a Protestant minister, Macaulay wrote: 'Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious. ...It is my belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence.'

Macaulay's protégé Max Muller happily concurred in a letter to his wife: 'It the Rigveda is the root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last three thousand years.' As Max Mueller, the propagator of the Aryan invasion theory, wrote to his wife, "It took only 200 years for us to Christianise the whole of Africa, but even after 400 years India eludes us, I have come to realize that it is Sanskrit which has enabled India to do so. And to break it I have decided to learn Sanskrit."

On this foundation of two+ lost centuries, a systematic eradication of our education system, introduction of a new language, Onus of integration of multiple states, partition of a great country into 2 and then 3, a civil war at the time of partition, almost 3 wars within the next 20 years we have tried to rebuild our home.

Compared to a near zero rate of growth of national income per year in the period 1900 to 1950, the Indian economy registered a 3.5% rate of growth between 1950 and 1980 and over 5.5% growth per annum between 1980 and 2000 and over 7% since 2000.

Though difficult, i wanted to short list one factor which contributed to our meteoric spring back to world stage in such a short span of time.

Lets see the reasons in the next blog ... wait for Part 2.

Happy reading!