Srinagar, October 25 (KMS): Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control and the world over will observe Black Day on the 27th October to convey to the world that they reject India’s illegal occupation of their motherland.
Call for observance of the day to be marked by shutdown in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir has been given by the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, Hurriyat forum led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and other pro-freedom organizations. On 27th October in 1947 Indian troops had invaded Jammu and Kashmir and occupied it in total violation of the essence of Partition Plan of the subcontinent and against the Kashmiris’ aspirations. The Hurriyat forum in a statement issued in Srinagar said that since October 1947, tens of thousands of Indian troops continue to illegally occupy the territory. It appealed to the Kashmiris living across the globe to hold anti-India and pro-freedom rallies and protests on the day to draw world’s attention towards the unresolved Kashmir dispute and the suffering of the people living in the occupied territory.
The Democratic Freedom Party in a statement terming the 27th October as one of the darkest chapters of Kashmir’ history said that the invasion was a naked aggression and an atrocious attack on the political and democratic rights of millions of Kashmiri people.
Meanwhile, posters continued to surface in Srinagar and other areas appealing people to observe complete shutdown on Tuesday to register their protest against India’s illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir. The posters were displayed by different pro-freedom organizations.
A former mujahid succumbed to wounds at a hospital in Srinagar, today, ten days after he was shot by unknown gunmen in Pulwama district. The deceased, Tanveer Ahmad Sofi was fatally attacked on October 15. Delegations comprising senior Hurriyat leader Ghulam Muhammad Khan Sopori and members of Jammu and Kashmir Youth Social Forum during visits to the families of the youth, recently martyred by Indian troops, in Srinagar, Islamabad and Pulwama made it clear that India cannot subdue Kashmiris’ resolve for freedom through use of brute force.
Hooligans associated with the ruling BJP barged into the Jammu office of Mehbooba Mufti-led Peoples Democratic Party and beat its office bearers. The attack came hours after PDP President Mehbooba Mufti refused to raise the Indian flag.
An anti-India protest demonstration was held outside the Indian Embassy in Frankfurt, Germany, against the rising violations of human rights by India in IIOJK. A large number of Kashmiri community members participated in the demonstration which was organized by the EU-Pak Friendship. Speaking on the occasion, the participants including the EU-Pakistan Friendship President, Ansar Mahmood Butt urged the international community to give Kashmiris their right to self-determination.
The Huawei complete Google alternative is being built out – You will hear about Petal again – Maps, Docs, Search, Browser and probably every app you use.
Huawei solved its map problem with Petal Maps and has just unveiled Huawei Docs, which, supports document viewing and editing of 50 formats including PDF, PPT, and DOC. With real-time syncing enabled by cloud capabilities, Huawei Docs lets users can work on the same document on different devices logged into the same Huawei ID, enhancing the smart office experience. [MORE]
Chinese experts see the central bank digital currency (CBDC) as a vital means of facilitating cross-border transactions and expediting the internationalisation of the renminbi. The Chinese central bank announced the commencement of trials of the CBDC in April 2020 across four cities, including Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu and Xiong’an, while in August the Hebei province government issued a notice calling for cross-border e-commerce transactions in Xiong’an to make greater use of the renminbi, as well as exploration of the use of the digital currency for cross-border payments. Pan Helin (盘和林), head of the Digital Economy Research Institute of the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, said to 21st Century Business Herald that the digital renminbi could be the solution to the current difficulties involved in making cross-border payments.
“At present the main problem with cross-border payments is that the period of time for needed funds to reach accounts is long, the speed is low, fees are high, procedures are numerous and efficiency levels are low,” said Pan. “The biggest advantages of the digital renminbi are convenience, high-efficiency, high timeliness and low cost, and for these reasons it can overcome the existing deficiencies with traditional cross-border payments methods.”
“Survey data indicates that occupation of liquidity is the biggest cost for the SWIFT cross-border payments system. Blockchain technology raises the efficiency of cross-border payments systems, reduces cross-border payments timeframes, and reduces the liquid funds used. The cost for financial institutions to conduct cross-border payments will be reduced.” Liu Bin (刘斌) a financial researcher from the Pudong Reform and Development Research Institute, said that the CBDC could also help to expedite internationalisation of the renminbi, pointing in particular to the following areas of development:
Driving the use of the renminbi for trade between China and ASEAN countries and China and Belt and Road countries;
At present free trade zones throughout China are exploring cross-border financing, and in future these free trade zones could serve as drivers for international use of the digital renminbi;
Overseas consumption by Chinese tourists and travellers could expedite the use and circulation of the digital renminbi abroad, in turn driving the establishment of corresponding systems and coordinating mechanisms abroad. [MORE]
Gross National Happiness
IPSOS: China the happiest nation on earth. Six in ten adults across 27 countries (63%) are happy, according to the latest Ipsos survey on global happiness. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevalence of happiness at an aggregate level is nearly unchanged from last year. The happiest countries surveyed, i.e., those where more than three out of four adults report being very or rather happy are China, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Canada, France, Australia, Great Britain, and Sweden. Those where fewer than one in two adults say they are happy are Peru, Chile, Spain, Argentina, Hungary, and Mexico. Among 29 potential sources of happiness measured, people across the world are most likely to derive “the greatest happiness” from:
My health/physical well-being (cited by 55% globally)
My relationship with my partner/spouse (49%)
My children (49%)
Feeling my life has meaning (48%)
My living conditions (45%)
In comparison to the pre-pandemic survey conducted last year, the sources of happiness that have most gained in importance globally pertain to relationships, health, and safety. On the other hand, time and money have ceded some ground as drivers of happiness. Globally, happiness is as common this year as it was last year, dipping by just one percentage point from 64% to 63%. However, it has increased by five points or more in six countries, namely China, Russia, Malaysia, and Argentina, while it has decreased by five points or more in 12 countries, most of all Peru, Chile, Mexico, and India.
The happiness leader in 2020 is China, where 93% say they are happy (up 11 points from last year and moving from third place), followed by the Netherlands (newly added this year) with 87%, and Saudi Arabia with 80% (up two points). Canada and Australia, last year’s leaders in happiness, register a notable drop this year: Canada with 78% (down eight points) drops to fourth place in a tie with France (down two points) and Australia with 77% (down nine points) falls to sixth place. [MORE]
SOCIETY
Farmer Li Zhifang is being crowned a “Food Hero” by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on World Food Day, for his efforts to keep food cheap and accessible to residents of Wuhan during the worst period of the city’s lockdown during the pandemic. Li is marketing manager of the Wuhan Qiangxin Vegetable Production and Marketing Cooperative. He strived to keep food prices affordable and food supplies accessible during an unprecedented lockdown in the city where the virus began and many were forced to stay in their homes for months. Vegetable prices rocketed at the beginning of the pandemic when the situation was still developing.
Li not only persuaded farmers to sell produce at “normal” prices but also helped to increase deliveries from cooperative members to supermarkets, including Hema, also known as Freshippo, a Chinese fresh food supermarket chain owned by Alibaba. During the pandemic Li volunteered to help the local government distribute necessities to districts where there was a shortage of fresh food, including communities adjacent to the Huanan Seafood Market, thought to be the original epicenter of the pandemic, which people were scared to visit. “Someone must be brave when the battle begins,” the “Food Hero” was quoted as saying. People have praised Li for his contribution and commented that his new title on this special day shows that the UN approves of China’s anti-pandemic policies. “As a Wuhan local, I could buy vegetables at reasonable prices during the lockdown, thank you so much!” “Wuhan relied on these ordinary heroes to recover from the pandemic,” one popular comment read. [CAIXIN].
ASEAN
US-funded agitators in Bangkok block downtown roads–like US-funded agitators in Hong Kong.
Anti-government protesters in Thailand organized by billionaire-led opposition parties and funded by the US government have openly committed themselves to the “Hong Kong model” of US-funded unrest. This includes targeting public infrastructure to create maximum instability for the vast majority of the public and undermining Thailand’s economic recovery in the wake of the global COVID-19 economic crisis. The protesters are committed to the “Hong Kong model” despite it having failed completely in Hong Kong itself with most of the leaders either sidelined, jailed, or having fled abroad. Knowing that this model is ultimately doomed to failure but committing to it and the violence, disruption, and instability it implies anyway – does not even benefit the opposition itself – because it surely did not benefit Hong Kong’s opposition but instead effectively ended it.
Instead – this campaign of violence and disruption will only benefit the protest’s US government sponsors – a US government determined to undermine China and its allies and obstruct Asia’s global rise. Overturning Thailand’s political order is one goal – but simply dividing and destroying Thailand to deny China a prosperous ally is another. As it stands now – Thailand is benefiting from China’s regional and global rise – but should protesters have their way – the economy they claim to be upset about will be further destroyed as they seek to cut ties with China – Thailand’s largest trade partner, foreign investor, source of tourism, and a key partner in several important infrastructure projects including a high-speed rail network that will connect Thailand to China via Laos. The US and Europe have no ability now nor will in the foreseeable future to replace the ties Thailand currently enjoys and is benefiting from with China. Tony Cartalucci – ATN. [MORE]
Geopolitics
Guest Editorial by Billy Bob, who is married, 45 years old, with two young kids 8 and 6 and a full time job in the medical field that he does not want to lose: “For several years now I have been using my facebook profile to raise awareness and engage with folks regarding the political and economic issues facing our planet”.
As the West churns out more anti-China propaganda designed to defame, malign, and facilitate the decoupling of Western industry from China, China continues to lead the world in economic growth and expansion. The problem for the Western ruling class is that China is too lucrative of an industrial base and too appealing as a perspective market for any self respecting capitalist to turn their back on such potential wealth creation. For individual Western capitalists to forgo the opportunity to profit in China, actual laws will need to be passed and it’s not clear the ruling class can get it’s act together in order to legislatively force such a decoupling. It’s not as if there exists a central authority that can simply dictate the behavior of thousands of industries and force them to sacrifice their own individual economic well being on the alter of the greater class interest. Even though Trump has attempted to tweet such demands in the past, absent some major catalyzing event, there is no way individual Western industries are going to relinquish the incredible economic opportunities that China offers. Such are the limitations of Western capitalism.
What the ruling class really needs is “a new pearl harbor”. This time however, instead of Islam, China must be declared the alleged antagonist. Only then can the ruling class force individual intransigent corporations and industries to decouple from China and move to India.
Too be sure, India is central to the West’s grand strategy. Modi and his Western backers have convinced themselves that they can emulate China’s success and that they can offer the world’s capitalists all the economic opportunities that China can but without the threatening demonstration of the superiority of social planning and a Marxist Leninist communist party.
The ruling class will never be able to pull this off. China has already won. The West will flail around in futility and watch as the inevitability of China’s economic steam engine rolls over every malign strategy and subversive plot they conceive. China has set in motion a chain of events that is impossible to curtail. The speed at which China is growing and developing and the wisdom with which it is overcoming every challenge is both astonishing and exhilarating.
If you are curious about the information which informs my statements and perspective, if you haven’t internalized and don’t honestly embrace wholeheartedly the truth about China I shared above, you are cheating yourself and missing out on the knowledge that represents the most important development of our lifetime. In 1936, Mao comprehended a faint shadow of what was to come when he wrote:
“When China finally wins her independence, then legitimate foreign trading interests will enjoy more opportunity than ever before. The power of production and consumption of 450,000,000 people is not a matter that can remain the exclusive interest of the Chinese, but one that must engage the many nations. Our millions of people, once really emancipated, with their great latent productive possibilities freed for creative activity in every field, can help improve the economy as well as raise the cultural level of the whole world.” ***
The Two Undersides to Geo-Politics: At the explicit level, today’s geo-political struggle is about the U.S. maintaining its primacy of power – with financial power being a subset to this political power. Carl Schmitt, whose thoughts had such influence on Leo Strauss and U.S. thinking generally, advocated that those who have power should ‘use it, or lose it’. The prime object of politics therefore being to preserve one’s ‘social existence’. But the prize that America truly seeks is to seize is all global standards in leading-edge technologies, and to deny them to China. Such standards might seem obscure, but they are a crucial element of modern technology. If the cold war was dominated by a race to build the most nuclear weapons, today’s contest between the U.S. and China — as well as vis à vis the EU — will at least partly be played out through a struggle to control the bureaucratic rule-setting that lies behind the most important industries of the age. And those standards are up for grabs. So where are we in this de-coupling struggle? China’s intent now is not simply to refine and improve on existing technology, but to leapfrog existing knowledge into a new tech realm– by discovering and using new materials that overcome present limits to microprocessor evolution. They may just succeed – over next the three years or so – given the huge resources China is diverting to this task (i.e. with microprocessors). This could alter the whole tech calculus – awarding China primacy over most key areas of cutting-edge technology. States will not easily be able ignore this fact – whether or not they profess to ‘like’ China, or not.
Which brings us to the second ‘underside’ to this geopolitical struggle. So far, both the U.S. and China have kept finance largely separate to the main de-coupling. But a substantive change may be underway: The U.S. and several other states are toying with Central Bank digital currencies, and FinTech internet platforms are beginning to displace traditional banking institutions. Pepe Escobar notes: “Donald Trump is mulling restrictions on Ant’s Alipay and other Chinese digital payment platforms like Tencent Holdings…and, as with Huawei, Trump’s team is alleging Ant’s digital payment platforms threaten U.S. national security. More likely is that Trump is concerned Ant threatens the global banking advantage the U.S. has long taken for granted. Team Trump is not alone. U.S. hedge fund manager Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital argues Ant and Tencent are “clear and present dangers to U.S. national security that now threaten us more than any other issue.”
The point is two-fold: China is setting the scene to challenge a fiat dollar, at a sensitive moment of dollar weakness. And secondly, China is placing ‘facts on the ground’ — shaping standards from the bottom up, through widespread overseas adoption of its technology. Just as Alipay has made huge inroads across Asia, China’s ‘Smart Cities’ project diffuses Chinese standards, precisely because they incorporate so many technologies: Facial recognition systems, big data analysis, 5G telecoms and AI cameras. All represent technologies for which standards remain up for grabs. Thus ‘smart cities’, which automate multiple municipal functions, additionally helps China’s standards drive .[MORE]
Selections and editorial comments by Amarynth. (Go Get that newsletter – it again is packed with detail and each time I read it, it becomes clearer that a country of 1.4 billion people requires a specific kind of cohesion to make it work. And so far, it is working. Take a look for fun – How to take a 7,000-tonne building for a walk).
For quite some time, I have been alarmed with the general lack of understanding on modern India among the readers and activists (Indians and foreigners alike). As soon as “India” word appears on the paper or computer screen, a section of the readers start imagining the philosophical and religious connotation of the word, they try to realise how great saints spent whole life to get insights of ‘life’, ‘death’, and ‘moksha’! Another section of the readers on hearing the word “India” get an adrenaline rush through their body, their mind gets full of apathy bordering on hatred about ‘uneducated’ people who would continue to get screwed by their master perpetually. A third kind of readers feel India is a land of religious fascists, so no point in thinking about it.
The truth is, like any other civilization, the Indian subcontinent also has both glorious and sordid past. As a truth-seeker in political-social-economic domain, my concern is with the present state of affairs in India. However, in order to understand the present society, one must look back into the recent past – this article takes the interested readers and activists into a journey through the significant historical facts, politics, society and economy from around 1720 CE till March’2020.
A word of caution – readers who wish to read about how present ruling party mixed up the question of governance and economy with Hindu religion/spiritualism to bring back ‘ancient glory’ OR readers who wish to broaden their understanding on how covid-19 wrecked Indian economy since last week of March 2020 till date, won’t find this piece of article at all useful.
1. Introduction
In the post-colonial modern era, the South Asian landmass consists of the following countries:
India claiming an area of 3287.26 thousand sq. km. with 1352.64 million population in 2016
Pakistan claiming an area of 881.91 thousand sq. km. with 212.23 million population in 2016
Nepal claiming an area of 147.18 thousand sq. km. with 28.09 million population in 2016
Bhutan covering an area of 38.39 thousand sq. km. with 0.75 million population in 2016
Bangladesh covering an area of 147.57 thousand sq. km. with 161.37 million population in 2016
Sri Lanka covering an area of 65.61 thousand sq. km. with 21.23 million population in 2016
Each of the above 7 modern political entities possess quite a few characteristics that would enable them to qualify as a ‘nation-state’, while there exist a number of other peculiarities that would render such definition of ‘nation-state’ as pretentious. So, for our discussion in this write-up, I would like to identify any entity listed above as a ‘country’ – it is simple and expressive of the actual meaning. A ‘country’ has a geographical boundary, a population, and sovereignty of governance within the geographical boundary.
South Asian landmass, as a whole, has a very significant characteristic – ever since the Palaeolithic age dawned over this subcontinent, may be around 10,000 BCE, the only common thread that links geography of all regions and history of all eras of this landmass had been / has been – DIVERSITY. In this respect, South Asia is very similar to the European subcontinent – just like South Asia, with a wide variety of clan, tribe, language, religion, custom etc. Europe could / can never come near to a homogeneous society (other than genocide, which was once tried as a political project). Similarity doesn’t end there – in case of both South Asian and European subcontinents, formation of political entities had/has been a dynamic idea and reality! So many republics, principalities, protectorates, kingdoms and empires dotted the landscape for past 4000 years, that the most uncommon feature of political processes across the South Asian and European subcontinents had been / has been – CENTRALISATION.
Without getting into the details of past history or trying to cover the entire south Asian subcontinent, I’m restricting myself within the region of Indian subcontinent (presently India plus Pakistan plus Bangladesh) from Maratha domination around 1719 CE till liberation from British empire in 1947 CE, and partitioned India from 1947 to 2020 CE. Through a thorough but brief survey of the significant political and economic narratives of recent 300 years of history of the Indian subcontinent, I want to establish the following hypothesis:
a) English East India Company (EIC) created world’s first ‘corporate-state’ in Indian Subcontinent – that fete is being repeated now by Indian oligarchy
b) Behaviour of wealthy elites didn’t change over time – EIC’s primary objective of exploitation and extortion now taken up by Indian oligarchy
The journey will begin with review of Indian society as well as economy during Maratha domination and British era, then discuss the post-independence Social Democracy, and Neoliberal Oligarchy era. I will end with current semi-fascist corporatocracy, but won’t discuss future possibilities.
2. Maratha-Dominated Indian Subcontinent
2.1 Expansion of Maratha Empire & Fall of Maratha Confederacy
Had Maratha power appreciated the diversity of India and tweaked their expansion policy to acknowledge the significance of alliance, as well as assigned importance to economic affairs as similar to military affairs, the Maratha empire would have seamlessly replaced Mughal empire as the central power based in Delhi – the British imperialist history of Indian subcontinent would be, in that case, aborted by 1790.
2.1.1 Starting from 1674, Maratha king Shivaji and his two sons built a kingdom in west region of India primarily on the basis of their expertise in guerrilla warfare against the Mughal empire. Shivaji’s grandson Shahuji, in 1713 CE appointed Balaji Vishwanath Bhat as Peshwa (the governing authority of Maratha kingdom). He marched to Delhi in 1719 CE and deposed the Mughal emperor. Thus the century of conflict started with sacking of Delhi, capital of Mughal empire by Maratha kingdom in 1719, thereafter Maratha kingdom grew into an empire, then transformed into a confederacy, and, with comprehensive defeat of Maratha Confederacy against the British East India Company in the Third Anglo-Maratha War in 1818 the Maratha power was defeated and century of conflict ended.
During this period, marauding Maratha cavalry became a nightmare in northern, eastern, and southern regions (which were part of Mughal empire until a decade back and subsequently the ex-Mughal governors became independent rulers). Maratha power would extract annual tax chauth (levied at the rate of one-fourth the annual revenues of the region) and sardeshmukhi (additional 10% levy on top of the chauth) from all such regions as extortion tax. In the trend-setting incidence, in 1719, the-then Mughal emperor granted Shahuji the chauth and sardeshmukhi rights over the six Deccan provinces in exchange for his maintaining a contingent of 15,000 troops for the purpose of Mughal emperor.
2.1.2 After death of Balaji Vishwanath, his son, Bajirao was appointed in 1720 CE as Peshwa by Shahuji. An able military leader, Bajirao soon transformed the Maratha kingdom into Maratha empire. By the time Bajirao died in 1740, Maratha empire became strong and Maratha army was unconquerable. The regions under the Maratha empire in 1740 were:
Western part of present India except Solapur, Nanderh, Kutch, Junagarh regions
entire Central region of present India
Northern part of present India – Malwa
The Persian emperor Nadir Shah invaded the crumbling Mughal empire from January to May 1739 and sacked the capital, Delhi after defeating Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah. The loot was so ‘fabulous’ that Nadir Shah didn’t collect tax in Persian empire for next three years following his return. From that event onwards, effectively Mughal empire became a dead corpse which would still be showcased in Delhi, until 1857 when British forces would bury it. Three political powers active in India who were seeking expansion of their existing domain, got alerted – Maratha empire, Nizam of Hyderabad (erstwhile Mughal governor), and British East India Company (that didn’t have any territory by in 1740 apart from trading outposts).
The Mughal empire still had jurisdiction over the following regions in 1740:
Northern part of present India except Ladakh, Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan
The governors/kings of erstwhile Mughal empire became independent rulers:
Northern region of present India – Uttar Pradesh (Awadh, Rohilkhand), Rajasthan (Jaipur, Jodhpur)
Eastern region of present India – Bengal-Bihar (Nawab of Murshidabad)
Southern region of present India – Maharashtra (Nizam’s portion), Telengana-Andhra (Nizam’s portion), Karnataka (Mysore), Tamil Nadu (Nawab of Arcot)
2.1.3 After death of Bajirao, his son Balaji Bajirao was appointed in 1740 CE as Peshwa by Shahuji. He expanded the Maratha empire to greatest height, but during his reign, lack of diplomatic statesmanship and lack of appropriate military strategy caused irreparable damages to the empire. Shahuji died in 1749. By the time Balaji Bajirao died in 1761, the Maratha empire established direct rule and indirect control over:
Western region of present India except Kutch, Solapur, Nanderh regions
entire Central region of present India
Northern region of present India – Malwa, part of Rajputana-Haryana-Punjab
Eastern region of present India – Orissa
Southern region of present India – part of Tamil Nadu
In 1751–52, the Ahamdiya treaty was signed between the Maratha and Mughal powers. Through this treaty, Mughal rule was restricted only to Delhi (currently greater Delhi). In 1752 when Ahmad Shah Abdali annexed Lahore and Multan, the Mughal Emperor entered into an agreement with Holkar and Scindia for protection against external and internal enemies granting the Marathas chauth tax of Punjab, Sindh, and Ganga-Yamuna Doab plus subadari of Agra and Aimer.
Ahmed Shah Abdali plundered Delhi in 1756, and Maratha army raided Delhi after Afghan withdrawal, defeating the Afghan garrison in the Battle of Delhi. Maratha power conquered North-west India successfully wresting Lahore, Attock, and Peshawar. However, Ahmed Shah Abdali came back soon to reoccupy lost territories. Afghani emperor Ahmed Shah Abdali invaded north-west and north India 8 times. During 1760-61 invasion the Afghani army took on the Maratha army. Afghani army in alliance with the army of Awadh and Rohilkhand routed Maratha army (with contingents from Maratha chieftains like Holkar, Scindia, Bhonsale, Pawar, Gaikwad etc.) which didn’t feel requirement of any alliance. Marathas maintained poor relations with most of the Rajput and Jat kings. Due to the defeat of Maratha military in January 1761 in the Third Battle of Panipat, Maratha power lost the wherewithal to replace Mughals to rule majority of Indian subcontinent from Delhi.
2.1.4 After death of Balaji Bajirao, his son, Madhavrao became Peshwa in 1761 CE. Maratha empire regained some of the lost glory during this period. In order to effectively coordinate the large empire through the satraps, Peshwa Madhavrao allowed autonomy to the most prominent of the satraps, and the Maratha empire became Maratha confederacy. However, after death of Peshwa Madhavrao I in 1772 CE, following chieftains became de facto rulers in far-flung regions of the empire:
Peshwa of Pune
Holkar of Indore
Scindia of Gwalior (Chambal region) and Ujjain (Malwa Region)
Bhonsale of Nagpur
Gaekwad of Baroda
Pawar of Dewas and Dhar
Even in the original Maratha kingdom of Shivaji many jamindars were given semi-autonomous charges of small districts like Aundh, Bhor, Phaltan, Miraj, Sangli etc.
There were two undercurrents simultaneously getting played out in Maratha confederacy:
Struggle for prominence and revenue collection among the Maratha chieftains
Struggle for capturing power within Peshwa family
There were two outstanding military leader-cum-statesman during the confederacy period:
Mahadji Scindhia controlled entire central and north India regions crushing all opposition from principalities and protectorate kingdoms of Jats, Rohilla Afghans, and Rajputs to Maratha rule between 1761 and 1793 CE – the period was termed as ‘Maratha Resurrection’. However, it remained one of the unresolved mystery of Indian history, why, even at the zenith of his power, Mahadji Scindia didn’t attempt to put a Maratha leader as the ‘emperor’ in Delhi.
Yashwantrao Holkar during the period 1799 through 1811 CE rebelled against the policies of the-then Peshwa Bajirao II and fought against the rising British power teeth and nail. He tried to unite all Maratha chieftains as well as other significant kingdoms of the-then Indian sub-continent communicating to them “First Country, and then Religion. We will have to rise above caste, religion, and our states in the interest of our country. You too must wage a war against the British, like me.” With most other dominions, principalities and kingdoms ruled by Indians signing treaties with the British, Yashwantrao Holkar had to also sign peace treaty in 1805 CE. His plan for final assault on British-held Indian territories didn’t materialise because of untimely death in 1811 CE.
2.1.5 Apart from seizing territory to expand the Maratha empire/confederacy, Peshwa also created a network of tributary/protectorate states all of which were part of Mughal empire in not-so-distant past. Maratha power imposed annual tax/protection money from these erstwhile provinces of Mughal power, while those erstwhile Mughal provinces/tributaries balked at paying extortions at any opportunity:
Nawab of Bengal (Bengal and Bihar; Orissa ceded to Marathas)
Nizam of Hyderabad (part of Maharashtra, part of Karnataka, Telengana, part of Andhra)
King of Mysore (part of Karnataka, part of Tamil Nadu)
Rajput kings of Rajputana (Rajasthan)
2.1.6 British East India Company played the role of ‘king-maker’ when it changed the Nawab (ruler) of Bengal-Bihar by winning the Battle of Plassey in 1757. However the significance of next British win in Battle of Buxar fought in October 1764 between British East India Company and combination of Nawab of Bengal-Bihar, Nawab of Awadh, and Mughal (Delhi) emperor was immeasurable – British East India Company became the de facto ruler of the largest revenue earning province of Mughal empire – Bengal-Bihar. By 1770 British company brought the following regions under direct ‘rule’:
Western region of present India – Mumbai (Bombay trading outpost)
Eastern region of present India – Kolkata (Calcutta trading outpost), Bengal, Bihar
Southern region of present India – Chennai (Madras trading outpost), coastal Andhra (Northern Sircars)
The most ferocious period of the 100-year conflict took place between 1766 through 1818 when eight significant wars were fought among British East India Company, Mysore, and Maratha (Hyderabad Nizam most of the time supported English EIC):
First Anglo–Mysore War (1766–69)
First Anglo-Maratha War (1777–83)
Second Anglo-Mysore War (1780–84)
Maratha-Mysore War (1785–87)
Third Anglo-Mysore War (1789–92)
Fourth Anglo-Mysore War (1798–99)
Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803–05)
Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817–18)
Third Anglo-Maratha War resulted in the British control of most of the Indian subcontinent either directly or through dependency/protectorate treaty. Through meticulous planning, cunning diplomacy, and psychological manipulation of the Indian states, the British power defeated/subdued all of them, and spread their empire across Indian subcontinent.
2.2 Administration & Revenue system of Maratha Power
The Maratha king (Chhatrapati) had an enlightened Council of Eight ministry through which the Maratha empire was administered: Prime Minister (Pantpradhan / Peshwa), Finance Minister (Amatya / Mazumdar), Secretary (Pant Sachiv), Interior Minister (Mantri), Chief of Military (Senapati), Foreign Minister (Sumant), Chief Justice (Nyayadhyaksh), and Highest Priest (Panditrao). After 1761 during the confederacy times, the administration of became quite complex with central Peshwa following the old ‘council of eight’ concept while the autonomous chieftains introduced some new processes. Maratha empire-turned-confederacy was avowedly military-state. The chauth collected across Indian subcontinent was primarily distributed for military purpose – two-thirds remained with Maratha chieftains for maintaining their military troops, 25% went to the King (Chhatrapati), 6% went to the office of pant sachiv for managing the royal secretariat.
Maratha empire was administratively divided into two regions: directly ruled by the king (regulation areas) and ruled by the semi-autonomous/autonomous chiefs (non-regulation areas). Land revenue from regulation areas were based on assessment, accounting and other factors, but revenue from non-regulation areas were not based on any realistic assessment. More vociferous chieftains would resist demand of king’s tribute and pay less compared to more docile chiefs. The assessment-based revenue was almost fixed during the 18th century, with minimum change in valuation.
The regulation areas had ‘vatandar’ system wherein land rights (including right to sale) would be vested in a brotherhood of patrilineal relatives. Vatandar units of about 20 to 200 villages was under a Zamindar termed as Deshmukh. Vatandars were co-sharers of the produce of ‘land’ as well as ‘revenue exempt land’. There were two types of tenants: resident cultivators with hereditary rights of occupancy, and temporary cultivators.
During late 1750s and 1760s, Peshwa completed the ‘tankha settlement’ considering old and new arable land, quality of land, and thorough measurement (king’s share became one-sixth of the produce). 1790s onwards when the Peshwa needed more revenue to pay for mobilisation of armies and obligations to the British, revenue collection target was raised.
The administrative systems in the semi-autonomous statelets called ‘saranjam states’ (Holkar, Scindia, Bhonsle, Pawar, Gaikwad etc.) were similar in principle, but each of the statelet would run its administration in its own way. Both – land revenue collection system within territory as well as extortion tax from neighbouring statelets, were managed by a well-structured bureaucracy (more often than not, these appointments were done within extended family).
2.3 Economy & Commerce
Summarising the economy in Indian subcontinent during Mughal era (assuming 1526 CE to 1739 CE), The Cambridge Economic History of Indian mentioned “Centralized administration, a uniform revenue policy, a network of inland trade fostered by Mughal peace and active encouragement to an expanding overseas commerce created conditions in which economic stimuli travelled fast enough from one part of the empire to another.” A few propositions stated above wouldn’t fit while describing the Maratha empire-cum-confederacy era between 1719 CE and 1818 CE, two factors especially stood out – firstly, ‘centralised administration’ was replaced by decentralised statecraft within Maratha confederacy and few other powerful statelets, secondly, ‘peace’ was elusive during this tumultuous period. Trading and crafts manufacturing activities in large urban cities like Delhi, Agra, Surat, Lahore, Dhaka etc. took a hit during the period of 1710s through 1720s. During this period, for common people (small landholders, agricultural labourers, craftsmen, soldiers), daily life became more stressful.
2.3.1 An estimate by Angus Maddison (Table B-18 in The World Economy, Paris: OECD, 2001) shows that, in early modern era the GDP of Indian subcontinent as a share of world GDP was highest during Mughal era and lowest during British Raj:
1600 CE
1700 CE
1870 CE
GDP (million 1990 int. $)
% of World GDP
GDP (million 1990 int. $)
% of World GDP
GDP (million 1990 int. $)
% of World GDP
Britain
6,007
01.80
10,709
02.88
100,179
09.10
Western Europe
65,955
20.02
83,395
22.46
370,223
33.61
China
96,000
29.14
82,800
22.30
189,740
17.23
India
74,250
22.54
90,750
24.44
134,882
12.25
World
329,417
371,369
1101,369
A safe conclusion from the above estimate can be made that, even if the internal disturbances during Maratha domination were detrimental to the economic growth, the drastic reduction in Indian subcontinent’s share of world GDP in 19th century had minimum linkage with 18th century Maratha era.
2.3.2 While discussing the economy of 18th century Indian subcontinent, it must be mentioned that there is an uncanny similarity with imperial China of that period – close to 80% of total population were rural peasants. While Mughal power was deriving their land revenue primarily from north, east and south regions (as well as tax revenue from trade in west, east, and south regions), Maratha power grew out of west and central India where agrarian settlement reached limits of its development. That resulted in persistent pressure of the Maratha power into stimulation of higher productivity in more fertile areas (under their direct rule) like Doab region in north, and Tanjore region in south.
The Maratha rulers adopted revenue collection based on concessional assessment (istava) and extended facility of loans. Another significant policy was encouraging/rewarding the citizens to build and repair agricultural facilities like dam. Fukuzawa has noted that state promotion of agriculture and revenue management system by the Maratha rulers made considerable impact to medium and large plot-holders (18 acres to 108 acres of land)
He further noted that, over the years 1790 to 1803 the small plot-holders completely disappeared while the large land holders increased in number. The economic condition of vast section of rural peasantry and rural labours worsened considerably due to increased population and increased taxation, apart from prices of food grains.
During the power transfer process from Mughal to Maratha era, the families of privileged and powerful aristocracy (state ministers, deshmukhs, military officers, financiers and traders) who combined multiple functions simultaneously, became controller of rural resources and source of income through hereditary offices, tax collection, tax-exempted land etc. More often than not, these families were from non-cultivating background.
2.3.3 Medium and small sized mints were a feature of market towns. Copper and cowries were imported in large volume to meet the demand of highly ‘monetized’ local markets. People in western region of India were paid daily and monthly wages for handicraft production, agricultural labour, and other services. Records dated 18th century pertaining to monetary and contractual dealings, loans in cash and kind, etc. were found.
Apart from cultivation of staple food, cash crops and manufacturing were part of the economy in western, eastern, and southern regions. The crafts manufacturing in the northern region were negatively impacted due to the continuous warfare in Maratha era. Credit institutions operating in town and countryside were not only a vibrant part of economy, but it also played a not-so-impressive role of creating an indebted nobility class.
2.3.4 Development of market forces had impacted the subsistence character of Indian agriculture. Even though the peasantry met family requirements of food out of his own produce, very poor peasants would depend on moneylenders for seed and food-grains during non-cropping period. By mid-18th century non-food grain production (mulberry, poppy, indigo, sugarcane, tobacco, maize, and mango) increased substantially. However, the rural areas could never become source of ‘demand / consumption of goods’ due to poor purchasing power, and remained only ‘producers’ in spite of housing vast population.
In a somewhat similar trend as that of China, the rural peasants were also involved in manufacturing (like spinning of coarse cloth) for their own consumption as well as partly for disposal in the market. For production of agriculture-based products like raw silk, indigo, sugar, oil, and salt peasants were responsible. This type of rural manufacturing co-existed with urban artisan industries (which was independent from rural influences) that catered to a growing export market.
At the village level, there were marketing complex (mandi), which were permanent wholesale markets attracting traders and commodity sellers from both neighbouring and distant locations. Part of the produces would distributed across the country as well as pushed into overseas commerce. Surat, Masulipatam and Hugli were famous centres of export, and Agra and Burhanpur were significant inland commercial centre. By 1770’s English EIC almost monopolised the overseas trade through privileges from which the native Indians were excluded.
2.3.5 The arrogance of provincial rulers and the avarice of government officials during late Mughals (as against the philosophy of ‘good governance’ espoused by the early Mughal emperors) had curbed the enterprising spirit and prevented the accumulation of capital over generations. That type of administrative shortcomings were in place even during the Maratha domination in the subcontinent which deterred many traders and financiers who commanded immense resources (even if they had considerable influence with the political authorities). In fact, during 1750’s and 1760’s few prominent the-then Bengal traders-financiers conspired with English EIC officials against the Bengal Nawab (erstwhile Mughal provincial governor) to bring English EIC as the ruler of Bengal-Bihar-Orissa by enticing the commanders of Bengal Nawab’s Army. These Indian traders-financiers expected EIC would provide good governance and extend special privilege to them for business – it was a short-lived affair that permanently changed the history.
2.4 Significant observations on Maratha-dominated Subcontinent:
2.4.1 Between 1757 and 1819 the English EIC established control of most of the Indian subcontinent. Due to factors like (a) disunity, distrust, and rivalry among the Maratha chieftains, (b) short-sighted “hindutwa” policy of Maratha Peshwa who didn’t want to ally with Mysore Sultan because of few cases of forced religious conversion programmes in south India carried out by the Sultan, and (c) consistently pro-British stand of Hyderabad ruler Nizam and other small kingdoms, seven most prominent statelets of the-then Indian subcontinent (four Maratha statelets- Maratha Peshwa, Gwalior Scindhia, Nagpur Bhosle, Indore Holkar, Mysore kingdom, Hyderabad Nizam, and Sikh kingdom) never joined forces to fight the British forces. History showed that, had any four of them formed a united front and fought the English EIC forces, British forces would got vanquished. On the contrary, Maratha Peshwa, Gwalior Scindhia, Hyderabad Nizam, and Sikh king allied with English EIC at different point of time for their fight against other Indian statelets!
2.4.2 Compared to the early modern Europe and China, early modern Indian subcontinent had been a laggard in application of science and technology in to agriculture and crafts manufacturing. Apart from spinning, canon, and ship, labour-saving techniques in different sectors of economy remained elusive. However, with arrival of French and British companies, the subcontinent started absorbing new techniques and technologies like raw-silk reeling, indigo and saltpetre manufacturing, cloth printing etc. An intriguing observation by Indian scholars including M K Gandhi was that, specialisation and division of labour based on caste and clan got developed in Indian subcontinent since ancient era which kept the economy of villages self-reliant and all households had near-guaranteed employment that at least ensured subsistence. This old heartless and inefficient but effective system didn’t bring any impetus for major technological changes and labour-saving. The English EIC brought technological and management changes that started to break down the entire rural economy and urban crafts manufacturing as early as 1770s.
2.4.3 During the 15th century late medieval era, southern region, western region, Deccan region, and Rajasthan region witnessed emergence of powerful families (mostly upper caste Hindu Brahman-Kshatriya-Vaishya) who, across generations, accumulated various rights, offices, and capital (land, labour, money) and contributed to state building under different kings/emperors (both Hindu and Muslim). During the same time, northern region, north-western region, and eastern region witnessed emergence of powerful Turkish-Iranian Muslim families who similarly accumulated various offices and capital under mainly Afghan and Mughal Muslim sultans/ emperors. This aristocratic wealthy ‘class’ had been involved in state administration (including land survey, revenue accounting, and record keeping) in dual role – as land-owner and as administrator. They were also main driver for commercial ventures (export and shipping) and banking matters. Maratha domination up to 1818, didn’t change the existing structure, but reinforced it with induction of hundreds of aristocrat families based in west India most of whom were upper caste Hindu.
3. British Rule in Indian Subcontinent
3.1 Road to Corporate-State Passed Through Bengal
English East India Company (EIC) was established in London in 1600 December through a royal charter from English monarch Elizabeth I for monopoly trading with Asia. Initially, EIC formulated separate joint stocks for each voyage, whereby investors would decide to allocate capital on the basis of individual voyage. The EIC became a permanent joint stock corporation in 1657 CE. A new company was awarded the monopoly of Asia trade, but with the old company decided to merge with the new one in 1709 CE – after that EIC became a pillar of public finance through its loan extended to the British exchequer. EIC became a colossus for Britain accounting for between 13 and 15 per cent of all Britain’s imports between 1699 and 1774. EIC trading outposts in Indian subcontinent were established in Masulipatnam, Surat, Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta by 1710 CE. In 1717 CE the company received privileges (firman) for duty-free trading rights in Mughal empire.
3.1.1 Since beginning of 18th century English EIC had a strong base in Calcutta. Due to proximity to good raw materials, and highly sophisticated division of labour, Bengal offered the world ‘an unbeatable combination of high quality and low prices’ and ‘immense diversity, with over 150 different names for the textiles … covering muslins, calicoes and silk, along with mixed cotton and silk goods’. Bengal’s share of total EIC imports (into Europe) climbed to 66% by 1738–40 from just 12% in 1668–70. Few prominent Bengal-based traders-financiers like Jagat Seth, Amir Chand, and Nabakrishna Deb came close to EIC officials owing to business relationship. These Indian merchants-bankers teamed up with the commanders of Bengal Nawab’s Army and conspired with Robert Clive and few other English EIC officials against the Bengal Nawab to remove him and place the-then Army Chief Mir Jafar as Nawab. The ulterior motive was to remove the anti-British Nawab and make way for the English EIC, which in the long run, would ensure special privilege awarded to those Indian merchants for business and trading.
Coup at Plassey in 1757 was followed by looting of the-then Bengal’s treasury at Murshidabad by English EIC – according to heresay the EIC shifted the treasury’s gold, silver, and jewels to their base at Calcutta by a fleet of over 100 boats. If the reality was even a small fraction, the Battle of Plassey not only paved the way for creation of British Empire in India, but it also resulted in a windfall one-time revenue equivalent to hundreds of millions of pound in those days – apparently, most of it was personally distributed among Robert Clive, few senior EIC officials, and few Bengal conspirator financer-merchants. After winning Battle of Buxar in 1764, English EIC got the Mughal emperor’s authorisation as “diwan” of government tax collection in Bengal province (the-then Bengal-Bihar-Orissa) August 1765 onwards. Robert Clive calculated that, from this acquisition there would be a profit to EIC to the tune of Rs12 million or £1.65 million. In 21st century terms, this amounted to an annual surplus of over £150 million, with a profit margin of 49%. It was a phenomenal ‘acquisition’ that propelled the shareholders and company executives on a completely new path to prosperity English EIC’s share price went for a boom when the news reached London’s financial markets in April 1766. In reality EIC would collect total over £10 million during the next 4 – 5 years, generating a surplus of £4 million, much less than initially expected – however that was still far lucrative ‘business’ at a time when the company’s total exports from Asia before the diwani amounted to around £1 million each year. The company directors instructed its officials in Bengal to split the surplus from tax collection between purchase of Bengal textiles, sending the remainder to Canton to buy tea, for shipment back to Europe and North America.
3.1.2In January 1769, EIC bought British Parliament’s support for the acquisition of Bengal (presidency) with a commitment of annual payment to Parliament of an amount £400,000. In exchange, the Parliament would not attempt to interfere much in the English EIC’s business or other activities. World’s first corporate-state was born. The company used its dominance to monopolise the internal and foreign trade of Bengal-Bihar-Orissa in the decade that followed – very soon, they pushed out the Indian and other European merchants in the process. The EIC officials were extracting ever greater sums from the Bengal populace to maximise revenue for:
More and more dividend for British shareholders
Extra pay-out to British Parliament
Rampant corruption by EIC Officials who sought to line their pockets, make a fortune, take retirement
EIC officials forced the cloth manufacturers to work for them at an under price, at the same time those officials prohibited all Indian or European merchants from dealing with weavers – according to William Bolts, “the methods of oppressing the poor weavers were … fines, imprisonments, floggings, forcing bonds on them”. Consequently, widespread poverty and indebtedness followed. But profit margins for EIC’s cloth import into Europe from Bengal (and India) touched new high as the cloth cost was pushed down through oppression.
The greed, corruption, negligence, and apathy of EIC officials in the agriculture and textile sectors and lack of monsoon rains resulted in massive Bengal famine of 1770, during which millions of impoverished people in Bengal died from hunger, and disease. It was followed by floods. As Horace Walpole said at the time, “we have murdered, deposed, plundered, usurped – nay, what think you of the famine in Bengal, in which three millions perished, being caused by a monopoly of provisions by servants of the East Indies (EIC – author)”.
Between 1757 and 1780 goods worth estimated £38 million were transferred back to Britain by EIC on an unrequited basis – in 21st century terms, this amounted to over £3.5 billion. Apart from that, during the same period remittances to Britain by company executives averaged £0.5 million every year. Noted Indian scholar R C Dutt wrote, “A change came over India under the rule of the East India Company, who considered India as a vast estate or plantation, the profits of which were to be withdrawn from India and deposited in Europe”.
3.1.3 Due to humongous corruption and inefficiency, EIC faced significant financial strain in the early 1770s – in 1772 the company had to request British Parliament for a bailout of an £1 million to avoid bankruptcy. Parliament’s bailout came along with regulatory actions:
As per Regulating Act of 1773 during the premiership of Lord North, even though the ultimate sovereignty over the Indian subcontinent stayed with the British Crown, EIC would act as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. It could do this while concurrently being subject to oversight and regulation by the British government and parliament., Warren Hastings was appointed as the first Governor-General of Bengal Presidency to govern the British dominion in India (supervising both Madras Presidency and Bombay Presidency)
The India Act of 1784, or Pitt Act, attempted to redress the shortcomings of the 1773 Act. A dual administration was created whereby the EIC would be controlled jointly by the company shareholders and the British Parliament. Board of Control was created to oversee the company affairs which rendered the Board of Directors (Proprietors) less influential. The India Act of 1784 signified the legal transformation of EIC and asserted Parliamentary oversight over EIC
These regulating measures limited EIC’s autonomy (and operational areas were restrained). Also, extending Parliament’s control over appointment of Governor-General (of EIC) business considerations such as profit and dividend could become secondary while state administration could appear as primary objective. These acts by British Parliament, thus legalised the transformation of the EIC from a corporation into a corporate-state. Establishment of similar corporate-state by Dutch East Indies Company in Java (in Indonesia) followed close on the heels of EIC’s ‘achievement’ in Bengal.
Many historians, economists, businessmen consider East India Company as a transition from medieval forms of business entity like the guild and the regulated company, and the modern joint-stock company. However, they forget that, apart from carrying out trading business, EIC also maintained a standing army, vast territory, bureaucracy, a system of taxation, a judiciary with legal code; EIC combined the rights of private persons (like entering into contract, to sue, be sued) along with features of public sovereignty (like prerogative to wage war, sign treaty, govern over people, print/coin money). Niels Steensgaard pertinently pointed out, “The (early modern chartered – author) companies were created in a unique encounter between political power and market oriented entrepreneurship; they were the result of dynamic improvisations and experiments”. Considering Lenin’s view on imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, it was no wonder that arrival of EIC as world’s first corporate-state on the world-stage was the final outcome of mercantile capitalist policy and monopolism promoted by the colonialist state of Britain.
3.1.4 The reforms of the 1770s, and 1780s had penetrated the Company’s autonomy as a business. ‘Industrial Revolution’ started impacting the industrial landscape of Britain – in 1781, mass production of British ‘muslins’ and ‘calicoes’ commenced. By 1793, a Lancashire mill operator had become about 400 times more productive than the average Indian weaver. Mill-made cottons took increasing slices of the EIC’s market share of textiles in both Britain and its key re-export markets in Africa, and America. 1790 onwards, EIC explored alternate business by promoting exports of raw materials (from Indian subcontinent) on a larger scale including sugar, silk, saltpetre, indigo.
Due to sustained campaign by merchants and bankers in Britain, in 1813 EIC lost monopoly of trade with India. Its commercial monopoly was removed for all except the China trade that was extended for another 20 years. 20% increase in import duties on Indian goods was added in 1813 to ensure that competition from Indian subcontinent couldn’t challenge the British mill owners. As a result, after 1813 textile imports from Bengal presidency and Indian subcontinent fell by three-quarters while exports to India of British textile rose more than fifty-fold. British textiles soon inundated the Indian markets – value of the textile imports grew from £5.2 million 1850 to £18.4 million in 1896. In 1818, EIC’s cloth ‘factory’ at Dhaka (now capital of Bangladesh) was wound up – by 1840, population of Dhaka had fallen from 150,000 to just 20,000. Not only the British rulers refused to give any tariff protection to Indian textile sector (until 1920) preferring imports from Britain, but in a ‘grisly repeat of earlier cruelties, when machine-made yarns were first introduced into Dhaka in 1821, the ‘thumb and index finger of some of the renowned artisans began to be chopped off in order to disable them from twisting finer yarns’. The main aim of the British rulers was to transform Indian subcontinent into a consumer of British goods. Textile, metal, and glass industrial sectors in Indian subcontinent lost their traditional position as employer. In the beginning of 19th century, unable to compete with the British industry-made products, the Indian craft goods lost both their domestic as well as foreign market.
3.1.5 In the 19th century, the most lucrative trading for EIC was opium, which could generate up to 2000% profit from each chest of 63 kg opium sourced from Bengal presidency and Malwa region, and transported to Chinese empire through Canton port. As the textile export (mainly from Bengal) to Europe went down, opium export to China went up steadily – 2000 chests in 1800 CE, 12000 chests in 1824, 40000 chests in 1839, and 58000 chests in 1859 CE. Sticking to the original objective of ‘making profit’, EIC officials had no qualms about the ‘drug smuggling’ business. Tea, hides and skins, oil cake (used as animal feed and fertilizer) etc. became export goods 1860 onwards.
3.1.6 By 1832 CE, within Britain there were hue and cry from two sections of elite society:
(a) Merchants and businessmen wanted the trading charter from EIC to be completely revoked
(b) Few politicians, economists and social activists wanted to close down EIC for its blatant mismanagement of internal affairs in Indian subcontinent.
In 1833 CE, British Parliament put an end to EIC’s trading operations in India; EIC however, remained as territorial administrator in India; land revenue, opium, and textile imports into subcontinent became most important sources of revenue. The Governor-General of Bengal presidency was redesignated as the Governor-General of India.
3.2 Setting Up of ‘British India’ Empire by English EIC
Apart from the conflicts the English EIC had with the different political entities of Indian subcontinent, they also fought 3 wars with French East India Company primarily in Carnatic region (the coastal Tamil Nadu and coastal Andhra) which was itself a dependency of Hyderabad Nizam – popularly known as ‘Carnatic War’. Between 1746 (initiation of the First Carnatic War) and 1818 (conclusion of the Third Anglo-Maratha War) English EIC spread their empire across Indian subcontinent.
3.2.1 First Carnatic War (1746–1748), Second Carnatic War (1749–1754), Third Carnatic War (1756–1763) were essentially a series of diplomatic and military struggle between the French EIC and the English EIC for dominance among the European trading companies within Indian subcontinent. The French company was defeated and was confined primarily to Pondicherry, and the British Company eventually established British empire in India generally called as ‘British Raj’. Even before English EIC bagged their first imperial dominion in 1765 as Bengal-Bihar-Orissa, they had 5 trading outposts across India and in order to fight with the French EIC for supremacy in Indian subcontinent they maintained a standing army of 18,200 spread over Calcutta, Madras, Bombay trading outposts. Between 1763 and 1805, EIC’s army had grown almost nine-fold from 18,000 to 154,500, far beyond what was required for self-defence – the continuous build-up of military strength fuelled a powerful dynamic in favour of further aggression. By 1857, EIC commanded an army of 350,538 out of which only 39,500 troops were British. It was briefly described in Section 2 how English EIC colluded, collaborated and controlled most powerful statelets of the-then Indian subcontinent (Maratha Peshwa and warlords, Mysore Sultan, Hyderabad Nizam, Carnatic Nawab, Awadh Nawab, Sikh emperor).
3.2.2 Richard Wellesley’s tenure as governor-general was the most important in EIC’s history of territorial expansion. He expanded beyond Bengal presidency subjugating Mysore, Marathas, Hyderabad, and Awadh. He was a shrewd practitioner of ‘Subsidiary Alliance System’ – it was an alliance system which left the Indian ‘princely state’ a measure of internal autonomy in matters relating to administration, taxation and finance, but were obliged to maintain minimum defence and no foreign affairs. A resident appointed by EIC coordinated affairs between the Indian statelet and EIC. Through such protectorate alliance, more than 550 statelets (about 200 statelets had sizeable land area and population while more than 200 statelets were as small as couple of villages with an area of less than 10 sq. mile) were absorbed in British empire by mid-19th century. In 1947 when British rule in Indian subcontinent ended, princely states covered about 40% of the area of pre-independence Indian subcontinent and constituted about one-fourth of its population.
Five most significant princely states with an individual British resident/envoy permanently stationed, were:
Mysore state (29,326 sq. mile)
Nizam’s Hyderabad state (82,698 sq. mile)
Dogra’s Jammu & Kashmir state (84,516 sq. mile)
Gaikwad’s Baroda state (8,164 sq. mile)
Scindhia’s Gwalior state (26,367 sq. mile)
Almost all of the remaining princely states – large and small – were incorporated within special entities called ‘agency’ where British political agents/officers coordinated the affairs of those states:
Baluchistan Agency (significant states – Makran 21,000 sq. mile)
Northwest Frontier States Agency (significant states – Swat 3,190 sq. mile)
Punjab States Agency (significant states – Bahawalpur 17,726 sq. mile, Mandi 1,140 sq. mile)
Three princely states however remained out of such ‘agency’ but were British protectorate:
Kalat (73,278 sq. mile in Baluchistan region)
Manipur (8,456 sq. mile in Bengal-Assam region)
Sikkim (2,818 sq. mile in Bengal-Assam region)
The territorial expansion of English EIC from 1757 to 1857 happened through outright annexation in:
a) Calcutta – 24 Parganas – Bengal (part of present east India & Bangladesh) – Bihar – Orissa combined as Bengal Presidency;
b) Madras – Carnatic region (coastal Andhra & coastal Tamil Nadu) – rest of Andhra – Tanjore region – Mysore regions (part of Karnatake & part of Tamil Nadu) combined as Madras Presidency;
c) Bombay – Surat – Maratha Gaikwad territory (part of Gujarat) – Maratha Peshwa territory (part of Maharashtra and part of Karnataka) – Thar region – Sindh region (present Pakistan) combined as Bombay Presidency;
d) Benaras – Awadh territory (east and central Uttar Pradesh) – Maratha Scindia territory (west Uttar Pradesh) – Dehradun region – Jhansi territory combined as United Provinces (North-Western Provinces plus Awadh);
e) Maratha Bhonsle territory (Madhya Pradesh and part of Maharashtra) – Sambalpur region combined as Central Provinces ;
f) Assam – Kachhar region (part of present India) – Sylhet region (present Bangladesh) – Hills of Khasi-Jaintya-Naga combined as Assam province
g) Delhi – Sikh territory (Punjab in present India and Pakistan, Peshawar region in present Pakistan) – Kangra region – Shimla region combined as Punjab province
Supportive Map
3.2.3 In 1829 the British ruled territories were reorganised through establishing districts which were small enough to be controlled by an administrative Head (acting as revenue collector, police officer, and judge). The high-ranking civil service officers were mostly British until the 1920s when Indian Civil Service examinations began to be simultaneously held in UK and Indian subcontinent. Apart from district/provincial administration, education, healthcare, public works, postal, and railway services employed a large number of British citizens.
3.2.4 Indian social reformers and modernisers like Ram Mohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar were leading social movements for modernisation of social life in Bengal presidency and Indian subcontinent. They instigated the EIC officials to initiate some far-reaching programmes to introduce modern education system which emphasized English language compared to vernacular languages and European justice system that blended customary Indian law (on the basis of religious community) with European concepts. But these changes didn’t bring major transformation in village society which was based on caste and religious identity, the position of downtrodden and untouchables, neither agricultural system changed.
The British officials demonstrated much less religious or cultural fanaticism in introducing Christianity and European culture into Indian subcontinent compared to what Spanish and Portuguese colonialists did in South America. Macaulay devised the education policy and its objective as: “It is impossible for us, with our limited means to attempt to educate the body of the people. 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. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population” Thus, the ‘westernisation’ introduced by EIC in Indian subcontinent primarily served their main purposes of
a) creating a class of local professionals who would assist EIC in managing their business (administration of the vast empire itself was part of the business operation) for commercial profit and wealth accumulation in lieu of fat salary that placed them in a separate class
b) switching the loyalty of existing aristocracy (landlords-bankers-merchants-logistics owners etc.) from Mughal governors and Maratha warlords to British Crown by offering them a slice of land revenue as well as business opportunity
A new category of elites were formed who would embrace Western life-style and English medium education. The lifestyle and habits of EIC officials were copied by the new local professional elites (doctors, lawyers, business managers, higher education teachers, and businessmen). This new group of professionals, however, would still bear their caste identity sneakily – most of the new elites would come from Hindu upper castes: Brahman-Vaishya-Kshatriya.
3.2.5 In 1837 postal services was established in the British territory in Indian subcontinent. Network of post offices were established in the principal towns across the provinces. District collectors (of land-tax) coordinated the district post offices. By February 1855 telegraph lines (for paid messages) joined main cities of British India territory – Calcutta, Agra, Bombay, Peshawar, Madras – extending over 3,050 miles and touching 41offices. By 1857, the telegraph network expanded to 4,555 miles of lines and 62 offices.
Contracts were awarded in 1849 to three joint-stock companies to construct a 120-mile railway in Bengal presidency, a 30-mile railway in Bombay presidency, and 39 mile railway in Madras presidency. In 1854, the-then Governor-General Lord Dalhousie prepared a plan to construct a network of railway lines connecting significant regions of India. ‘By the turn of the 20th century, India (Indian subcontinent – author) would have over 28,000 miles of railways connecting most interior regions to the ports of Karachi, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Chittagong, and Rangoon, and together they would constitute the fourth-largest railway network in the world.’ (Quoted from Wikipedia).
Such infrastructure programme opened avenue for British bankers and investors to invest surplus money in the construction of railways (with a guaranteed minimum profit of 5% by the government). Railways made trading in commodities much easier by providing faster and safer mode of goods transport between ports and internal markets, and also capital inputs like rail-lines, engines, coaches, wagons etc. would create demand for rolling stock industry. Thus it benefited the British businessmen and capitalists tremendously.
Rural infrastructure was not a priority for British rulers – out of about 565,000 villages less than 10,000 were electrified. While network of railways and highways connected the big and medium sized urban centres, most of the villages remained completely isolated.
3.2.6 In 1857, a partially organised rebellion broke out against the British rule, significant participants of which were native soldiers of EIC Army posted in Bengal Presidency and United Provinces, and the common people in United Provinces and Central Provinces. Third most important participants were few of the erstwhile princely states of northern and central regions like Awadh and Jhansi, that were annexed by EIC (ostensibly because rulers had left no heirs for the throne). Not only most of the princely states under ‘Subsidiary Alliance System’ remained in favour of EIC during the battles, but bulk of the native soldiers of EIC Army posted in Bombay Presidency, Madras Presidency, Punjab province also remained aloof from the rebellion. The overwhelming superiority of military machinery-logistics-communication, loyal native troops, and coordinated military strategy of EIC Army against the spontaneous and localised Indian rebellion proved decisive for defeat of the first nationalist struggle by Indians.
3.2.7 In 1858, British Parliament replaced EIC with direct British rule in India. The British crown forged an alliance with the remaining native princes and stopped taking over new territory. As described in previous section 3.1, the corporate state of EIC became a principle pillar of the British economy. From the beginning of 19th century, EIC became a resource base for Britain providing troops and supplies to the state. Also, EIC acted as the agent of British empire throughout west, south and east Asia.
The Company’s demise in 1874 ended the era of the chartered corporation. EIC already played its role as the leading torch-bearer of British colonialism-capitalism-imperialism.
3.3 Agriculture and Land Revenue in British Era
3.3.1 There were three systems of revenue collection in the Indian subcontinent that was directly under EIC rule:
a) In place of complex systems of Mughal (and Maratha) era ownership with intersecting rights and responsibilities of peasant, zamindar/taluqdar/jagirdar, and officials, the Governor-General Cornwallis introduced the English model of land-lordship termed as ‘Permanent Settlement’ inBengal presidencyin March 1793 that targeted fixed revenue £3 million (at 1789 prices) in perpetuity. The new zamindars (often upper caste Hindu employees of EIC, many of whom didn’t have rural background) were given exclusive rights over their lands – ’20 million small landholders were dispossessed of their rights, and handed over, bound hand and foot to the tender mercies of a set of exacting rack-renters’. Forced labour of the peasants by the zamindars became widespread to meet the Company revenue demands. The zamindars were often unable to meet the increased demands that EIC had placed on them – within 3 decades, almost one-third of Bengal-Bihar-Orissa was put up for sale in search of ‘new’ zamindar.
b) Thomas Munro, who was appointed Governor of Madras presidency in May 1820 introduced ‘Ryotwari Settlement’, which was extended to the Bombay presidency also. Political economist John Stuart Mill who was working for EIC in 1857 wrote in a report, “Under the Ryotwari System every registered holder of land is recognised as its proprietor, and pays direct to Government. He is at liberty to sublet his property, or to transfer it by gift, sale, or mortgage. He cannot be ejected by Government so long as he pays the fixed assessment, and has the option annually of increasing or diminishing his holding, or of entirely abandoning it. In unfavourable seasons remissions of assessment are granted for entire or partial loss of produce. The assessment is fixed in money, and does not vary from year to year“. The levy was not based on actual revenues from the produce of the land, but instead on estimate of the production potential of the soil. Traditionally dominant castes mostly acquired land titles, while lower-caste cultivators became their tenants.
c) The ‘Mahalwari Settlement’ system was introduced by Holt Mackenzie and Robert Martins Bird in the states of Punjab, United Provinces, Central Provinces in 1822, and modified in 1833. The settlement was directly made with the village/estate/Mahal by the instruction of the settlement officers (patwari/qanungo), who would fix the annual rent after consulting the ‘lambardar’ (the chief or head of the household or family, usually the eldest male) and the rent payment would be shared by the cultivating peasants. Here, the settlements had neither been with hereditary ‘revenue farmer’ like the zamindars in Bengal presidency nor with the plot-owners like humble cultivators in Madras presidency.
In all areas other than the Bengal Presidency, land settlement work involved a continually repetitive process of surveying and measuring plots, assessing their quality, and recording landed rights, and constituted a large proportion of the work of Indian Civil Service officers working for the government. According to a survey initiated by British government in 1927-28, the distribution of land revenue settlement method was:
Rayatwari settlement system – 51%
Mahalwari settlement system – 30%
Permanent settlement (zamindari) system – 19%
None of the settlement system ever achieved targeted revenue. Often there were several layers of tenancy between the actual cultivator and the ‘land-lord’. The tenant cultivators as well small plot-owners were grinded into distress and poverty by extremely corrupt local and EIC officials as well as excessive state demands. The landless agricultural labourers grew in size to about 15% of rural population at the end of 18th century. British control of India started with a famine in Bengal in 1770 and ended in a famine in 1943 again in Bengal. Working in the midst of the 1877 famine, Cornelius Walford estimated that in the previous 120 years of British rule there had been 34 famines in Indian subcontinent – there could be no better yardstick to measure the adversity brought by the British rule.
After British Crown took over the administration from EIC in 1858, land tax burden was reduced progressively. By the end of the colonial period, in Indian subcontinent the land tax was only 1 per cent of national income – however, most of the benefits of the lower tax burden were appropriated by the landlords and .
3.3.2 Because of the emergence of ‘clear titles’ for cultivation lands, it was now possible to mortgage land. As moneylenders’ importance grew with time, a considerable amount of land changed hands through foreclosures. While the Economists point out that, moneylenders helped to root out imprudent and inefficient landowners, it was equally true that, almost nothing was done by the colonial government to promote agricultural technology, like use of fertilizers. The government however made some arrangements for irrigation.
Increase in population was not matched by increase in cultivated area. United Province was one of the examples. By 1880 the cultivated area of the United Province was calculated at 34 million acres (including double-cropping in about 2.5 million acres). By 1947 with the land carrying a population of 63 million instead of 45 million, the cultivated area had increased only to under 37 million acres (of which over 9 million acres were double-cropped). Scarcity of food almost became a ‘normal’ in British India.
3.4 Industry, Commerce & Economy in British Era
3.4.1 Edmund Burke coined phrase ‘the great drain of India’ which he calculated in 1783 as annual £1.2 million between 1757 and 1780. In India, the drain depressed consumption and savings, while ‘enabling Britain to live beyond its means, to consume, trade and invest at a greater rate than its own internal economy would allow’.
During the rule of EIC, official transfers of funds to Britain rose gradually until they reached about £3.5 million in 1856. During the period of direct British rule after 1858, official transfers were called the ‘Home Charges’ – by the 1930s home charges were in the range of £40 to £50 million each year.
There were substantial private remittances by British officials working in Indian subcontinent – during inter-war period these amounted to about £10 million each year. Apart from those, there were dividend and interest remittances by shipping and banking companies, traders and other investors – most of these commercial transactions were resultant of privileged position of British business in Indian subcontinent.
British India contributed over one million troops for WW I cost of which were financed from Indian budget.
The comparison of real GDP per capita of Britain and Indian subcontinent would be an eye-opener.While GDP per capita of Britain was a direct beneficiary of the imperial colonies and industrial revolution, Indians languished. As per the Maddison Project Database, version 2018, (by Bolt, Jutta, Robert Inklaar, Herman de Jong and Jan Luiten van Zanden), the estimated GDP figures are:
Year
Real GDP per capita (in 2011 US $
Britain
Indian subcontinent
1700
1591
1200
1741
1712
—
1781
2046
—
1821
2182
968
1861
3314
925
1901
5572
1152
1941
10116
1532
3.4.2 Mughal empire (and Maratha domination) not only had a larger industrial output than any other country which became a European colony, but Indian subcontinent was also an industrial exporter in pre-colonial times. The early modern industrial landscape of Indian subcontinent was completely destroyed in course of British rule.
Noted Historian R.C. Dutt argued, “East India Company and the British Parliament, following the selfish commercial policy of a hundred years ago, discouraged Indian manufacturers in the early years of British rule in order to encourage the rising manufactures of England. Their fixed policy, pursued during the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth, was to make India subservient to the industries of Great Britain, and to make the Indian people grow raw produce only, in order to supply material for the looms and manufactories of Great Britain.”
The main powerhouse of Indian industry was textile. During the period 1896-1913, massive import of cheap textile goods supplied about 60% of cloth consumption in Indian subcontinent, and the proportion was still higher during most of the 19th century. While British goods imported into Indian subcontinent as duty free, excise duty on Indian manufactured products prevented them gaining a market share in Britain. Thus textile sector was pushed to death.
The crafts manufacturing sector had another story to tell. Since the British rule dawned over the subcontinent, consumption of British and European luxury goods became a symbol of social status for the native aristocracy and newly created professionals. Angus Maddison wrote about the demise of crafts industry, “about three-quarters of the domestic demand for luxury handicrafts was destroyed. This was a shattering blow to manufacturers of fine muslins, jewellery, luxury clothing and footwear, decorative swords and weapons.”
3.4.3 Reindustrialisation started with installation of first textile mills in Bombay were in 1851 by Indian capitalists (preceding Japan by 20 years and China by 40 years). In 1896 Indian mills supplied 8% of domestic cloth consumption which gradually increased to 76% in 1945.
First jute mill was built in 1854 in the vicinity of Calcutta by Europeans. Between 1879 and 1913 jute spindles multiplied tenfold. Faster expansion of jute industry was possible because most of jute products was for export. In 1911 first Indian steel mill was built in the-then Bihar (succeeding Japan by 13 years and China by 15 years). Coal mining started in Bengal, output of which reached 15.7 million tons by 1914.
Around 1945-46, large-scale manufacturing industry in Indian subcontinent employed less than 3 million people as compared with 12 million in small-scale industry and handicrafts, while total labour force was around 160 million. British policy permitted the emergence of a small but wealthy class of Indian entrepreneurs based in Calcutta, Bombay and Ahmedabad. At independence, exports were less than 5% of national income, probably worst among all Asian countries.
3.4.4 After EIC’s trade monopoly privileges were withdrawn in 1833, the former British employees of EIC set up ‘managing agencies’ to operate most of the industrial enterprises and international trade in Indian subcontinent. Those agencies were closely linked with British and European finance and shipping lines. The agencies got commissions from the enterprise-owners/investors based on sales and/or profits.
3.5 Demography & Occupation in British Era
In 1881, British government conducted first synchronous decennial census. Due to ongoing WW II accuracy of the 1941 census is debated. The 1931 census is considered last accurate British-administered census in Indian subcontinent (including Burma/Myanmar but excluding Portuguese Goa and French Pondicherry).
3.5.1 The population as per 1931 census reached 352,837,778 from 253,896,330 according to census in 1881. The total literate population of Indian subcontinent in 1931 was 28,131,315 (i.e. 8%) – with 12% literacy, the figure improved a bit by 1947. The urban population in 1931 was around 38,985,427 i.e. 11%.
Number of working people (including working dependent) in Indian subcontinent as per 1931 census was 153,916,050 (male 105,086,333 and female 48,829,717) – that signify less than 44% of total population was employed. While most of the males aged under 10 and over 60 form the bulk of non-working dependants, most of the males belonging to the age group 20 – 60 were working people. As per 1931 census, out of every 10,000 persons of Indian subcontinent (including Myanmar but excluding Portuguese Goa and French Pondicherry):
Non-working dependants – 5609
Working people (including working dependent) – 4391…. Out of which, significant occupations:
Cultivation of general crops – 2766
Cultivation of special crops – 47
Stock-raising – 100
Fishing & Hunting – 24
Exploitation of minerals – 10
Textile Industry – 117
Industries of dress and ‘the toilet’ (toiletries?) – 96
Food Industries – 42
All other Industries (including construction) – 183
Transport – 67
Trade in foodstuff materials – 110
All other Trades – 116
Military force & Police – 24
Public Administration – 28
Professions & Liberal Arts – 66
Domestic service – 311
Insufficiently described occupation
(Services in unorganised sectors) – 222
Unproductive (like jail inmate, beggar etc.) – 46
Hence, 64% of working people were engaged in cultivation, and 12% of working people were engaged in unorganised sectors like domestic services and service to miscellaneous establishments. The 1931 census laid bare the reality of relationship among agriculture-industry-occupation in British India better than any scholarly article and book – Indian subcontinent and Burma in the early 20th century were backward pre-modern economies.
A break-up of ‘Cultivation of general crops’ occupation is a pointer on how the agriculture sector accommodated employment among such huge work force in rural Indian subcontinent:
Non-cultivating proprietors taking rent – 3.36%
Cultivating owners – 27.85%
Tenant cultivators – 35.24%
Agricultural (landless) labourers – 32.46%
Cultivators of jhum, and shifting areas – 0.85%
The big landlords/zamindars were largely parasitic and would spend their time and money for extravaganza. The smaller landowner’s ambition was to stop working and enhance social status based on return from agricultural labourers toil. At the bottom of social structure in villages, condition of tenant cultivators and landless labourers (mostly lower caste Hindu, except in Bengal where majority were Muslim and Punjab-Sind where majority were Muslim and Sikh) remained wretched. Extreme level of poverty was quite common for those tenant cultivators and agricultural labours i.e. about 68% of all families who were involved in cultivation.
In urban areas, occupation in industry, transport, trade, public administration etc., though limited, helped creating new westernized ‘middle class’ Indians (educated in western education institutions). Here also, the upper caste Hindus seized the opportunity though the Parsis and Sikhs also did well.
3.5.2 The census since 1881 opened another Pandora’s Box. The fault lines between aristocratic upper caste wealthy Hindu families and aristocratic Turkic-Afghani wealthy Muslim families (which existed since 1192 CE when Turkic-Afghani rulers established empire in north-west, north, and east regions of Indian subcontinent by defeating local Hindu rulers of dozens of kingdoms) developed into deep chasm. For large section of aristocratic Hindu elites, their ancestral land was steadily being ‘usurped’ by Muslim foreigners, which was ‘substantiated’ by census data:
In 1931, Hindu population was 239,195,000 (proportion of population in 1931 became 68.24% from 74.32% in 1881)
In 1931, Muslim population was 77,678,000 (proportion of population in 1931 became 22.16% from 19.74% in 1881)
The reality was/is that, the majority of Muslims in Indian subcontinent were not foreigners, they were/are local converts (with much higher birth rate in the community).
3.6 Political Movement for Independence from British Rule
Three acts passed by British Parliament paved way for Indian natives to take part in the process of governance at province and central level: Indian Councils Act 1909 (known as Morley-Minto Reforms), Government of India Act 1919 (called as Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms), and Government of India Act1935.
The last one authorised establishment of the ‘Federal Legislature’ at the centre and the ‘Provincial Legislature’ at the provinces. Legislative assemblies in all provinces of British India had seat distribution based on religion-race-caste-occupation of the electorate – a voter could cast a vote only for candidates in his/her own category.
Central parliament combining British India and princely states was blocked by the rulers of the princely states
3.6.1 Starting from 1870s, political movements started taking shape in Indian subcontinent. Contrary to popular belief of M K Gandhi and his team vs. British rule that was promoted by Anglo historians as well as a large section of Indian historians, there were wide range of socio-political movements based on different beliefs and ideologies. Significant ones were:
Indian National Congress – moderate (wing) members were primarily the founders of founder of the party that believed in gradual reformation of British rule in Indian subcontinent without pushing for political independence; most of the leaders were from upper caste Hindu and some members from Muslim and Parsi communities, with background of western education and professionals by occupation; they were non-communal in outlook and believed in European style of secular society
Indian National Congress – ultra-nationalist (wing) members were relatively younger generation leaders who believed in continuous agitation for self-rule replacing British rule in Indian subcontinent; most of the leaders were from upper caste Hindu, with background of western education and professionals by occupation; they believed Hindu society should be the future in Indian subcontinent
Indian National Congress – democratic unionist (wing) members finally wrested control of the party under leadership of M K Gandhi who believed in opportunity-based mass movements for self-rule replacing British rule in Indian subcontinent; most of the leaders were from upper caste Hindu, and some members from Muslim community, with western education and by occupation professionals, businessmen and landlords; mostly they believed each community in subcontinent should be free to live in their own way within European model of governance; a small but vocal group led by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose was influenced by Socialist thoughts
All India Muslim League – unionist (wing) members were relatively conservative elites who believed in collaboration with British rule in Indian subcontinent; they believed Muslim society should coexist along with Hindu society in future subcontinent with Muslim-dominated provinces separated from Hindu-dominated ones
All India Muslim League – separatist (wing) members were mostly from aristocratic society and were more vocal about the necessity of separate country for Muslim and Hindu population as they believed Muslim religion is a way of life completely incompatible with Hindu way of life and society; they believed in collaboration with British rule in Indian subcontinent
Hindu Mahasabha members were almost Hindu version of Muslim League – separatist (wing) who wished either separate country for Hindu and Muslim population due to completely different philosophy of life and society, or single country with Hindu majority in governance and no special treatment like ‘community-wise reservation’ for Muslims; they also believed in collaboration with British rule in Indian subcontinent
Communist Party of India members were mostly from upper caste Hindu, and some members from Muslim community, with background of western education; they believed each community in Indian subcontinent should be free to live in their own way within a communist society in Indian subcontinent; Communists’ emphasis on economic status that completely ignored or bypassed the religious perspective and caste system, made limited appeal in Indian subcontinent
Armed revolution was another type of movement to which educated middle class youths were drawn into; primarily a phenomenon in Bengal presidency, Punjab province, and Bombay presidency the revolutionaries depended on terrorist attacks on British officials; couple of large-scale uprising across Indian subcontinent was thwarted by British government
Backward caste movement was primarily led by Dr. B R Ambedkar to emphasize social equality of the lower caste Hindu population; they became ally of Indian National Congress – democratic unionist after agreement on reservation for depressed/backward castes in legislature assembly (proposed under Government of India Act 1935); primarily it was restricted in Bombay presidency, Central province, and Madras presidency among the educated lower caste Hindu
3.6.2 The largest among the political streams, Indian National Congress (INC) was not organized as a Hindu party, but due to the large difference in level of western education between Muslims and Hindus, elite Hindus made up the majority of the INC leadership since its inception. INC demands for competitive examinations for entry in the civil service and academic institution riled the Muslim elites/leaders, as they felt that would favour the Hindus since Muslims were lagging behind in western education. Also, Hindu leaders of the INC would not give sincere assurance to Muslim leaders about community-wise representation in future governance system. In the absence of mutual trust between educated elites of two communities, elite Muslim leaders from United Province and Bengal floated All India Muslim League (AIML) to represent interests of the Muslim community.
3.6.3The political atmosphere between 1935 and 1947 was a triumph of personalities and their political ambitions over ideology – it was the most tragic period in the history of Indian subcontinent. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, one of the most secular AIML politician who always sought communal harmony, became ardent supporter of two-nation theory (separate independent countries for Muslim and Hindu communities) because partition would guarantee fulfilment of his political ambitions. Jawaharlal Nehru, a socialist and an impeccable believer in Hindu-Muslim unity, became supporter of partition because that would create the opportunity for him to preside over the Hindu part without political competition from Jinnah. Subhas Chandra Bose, a socialist who first initiated deliberations on Indian economy considering Soviet model of economic planning, with his ambition to preside over an undivided subcontinent, went out of India, and opened a battle front with the help from Japanese fascists in the north-east of Indian subcontinent to fight the British power during WW II.
While Nehru and Jinnah along with their close circle of elites and aristocrats of Hindu and Muslim communities lorded over the newly independent entities of India and Pakistan, the common people of the subcontinent bore the brunt of the unplanned and illogical partition happily assisted by the British power (who worked overtime to create a permanently feuding subcontinent). M K Gandhi failed to rise to the occasion and was relegated to the side-lines, he would be assassinated in India after independence by a terrorist who was a Hindutwa fundamentalist.
3.7 Significant observations on British Rule
3.7.1 Between 1755 and 1765, the giants of trade and finance of the-then Bengal conspired with the English EIC top officials to remove the-then ruler of Bengal-Bihar-Orissa (the region that earned maximum revenue in Mughal empire). It was modern world’s most spectacular corporate conspiracy. French historian Fernand Braudel concluded that the EIC’s rise to prominence only came about with the “help, collaboration, collusion, coexistence, symbiosis” of the local merchant elite.
Once the EIC corporate juggernaut was set rolling, it first crushed the Indian traders and financers to establish monopoly over export from and import into Indian subcontinent, then it transformed into corporate-state to plunder the subcontinent, finally it destroyed the local crafts and industry by duty-free imports into the subcontinent. The EIC’s demise in 1874 ended the era of the chartered corporation. The leviathan of mercantile capitalism was no longer suited to the new empire of colonies that Britain was establishing across the globe for sourcing of raw material and selling of finished goods produced in its factories as an outcome of industrial capitalism.
3.7.2 It won’t be truthful to put entire blame on the British rulers for the abysmal poverty of the common people. Two categories of elites were equally responsible for such poor state of affairs: (a) the rulers and bureaucrats of princely states ruling over 40% of subcontinent, who were, by and large oblivious to unemployment and poverty, (b) the local politicians and bureaucrats of British ruled 60% of subcontinent, who were more mindful to seek prestige and wealth than to influence the British decision-makers for benefit of common people.
Karl Marx summed up British rule as the tool of Britain’s elites-aristocrats-oligarchs, “the aristocracy wanted to conquer it, the moneyocracy to plunder it and the millocracy to undersell it”. Marx, however, didn’t notice that most of the elites and aristocrats of Indian subcontinent (Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Jain alike) were complicit in the crime – only few patriotic aristocrats put up resistance to British rule.
3.7.3 The partition of Indian subcontinent was most irrational decision agreed by INC under pressure from AIML under continuous ‘guidance’ from British imperialists, fostering the following irregularities during the partition:
(a) AIML got 425 seats in the election to Provincial Legislative Assemblies in 1946 for which AIML chose its main election plank as separate country for Muslims; apart from the provinces in north-west and east regions which were to be affected by partition, AIML got substantial number of seats from other provinces: Madras presidency (29), Bombay presidency (30), United Province (54), Bihar (34), Central Province (13) – why neither British rulers nor INC-AIML parties arranged for mass migration of Muslim community to Pakistan as wished by those constituencies?
(b) For the princely states, there was no process of considering the choice of common people for inclusion in either of the newly independent political entities – the ruler of the princely state was authorised to sign documents of accession; Hyderabad Nizam ruling over 82,698 sq. mile land with majority of population as Hindu wanted to join Pakistan, but army of independent India forced him to join India, while Jammu & Kashmir king ruling over 84,516 sq. mile territory (though China never accepted boundary drawn by British officers) with predominantly Muslim population signed to join India, but militia of independent Pakistan occupied major portion of the princely state – why neither British rulers nor INC-AIML parties settled such well-known problem areas across the subcontinent and did an orderly transition?
4. India From 1947 To 2014 – Socio-Political Landscape
Newly independent India faced enormous humanitarian crisis due to chaotic partition of the subcontinent that resulted in inter-religious violence as well as displacement of millions of people. Post-partitioned Indian part of the subcontinent witnessed two variants of political economy followed by the mainstream political parties – social democracy during the period August’1947 to May’1991, and neoliberal oligarchy from June’1991 onwards. A brief recapitulation of the social democratic era is noted below:
4.1 Politics during Social Democracy: 1947 to 1991
Immediately after the independence, between 1947 and 1949 India was bogged down with exchange of population with Pakistan on massive scale, integration of princely states, and war with Pakistan over Jammu & Kashmir. On 26 January 1950 India became a democratic republic with adoption of the Constitution of India (with strong provisions for Fundamental Rights of the citizens) which guaranteed a federal structure of governance in the country.
4.1.1 Most of the pundits on India miss the most important political reorganisation that happened in independent India since 1950. About 10 British era provinces and more than 500 princely statelets had been reorganised into Indian provinces (called as ‘state’) on the basis of language and cultural identity – the process continued till couple of years back resulting in 29 self-ruled states and 9 centre-ruled territories. By this process, the immense diversity of India has been acknowledged by the political leadership of the country.
4.1.2 INC remained the most important mainstream party that professed socialism, but in reality the policies were that of a social democratic party. Soon after the independence, the existing support base in rural and urban areas expanded – however, party didn’t notice or simple didn’t care that, instead of more people from poor and backward families filling up the grass-root leadership, the wealthy and well-established families filled the leadership layers from grass-root up to province. Slowly but steadily INC became a training centre for grooming leaders – whenever any non-Marxist party would offer to disgruntled INC leaders a position in their political hierarchy that is more lucrative than existing position, the leaders from INC would join them. Hailing from mainly aristocrat/ elite families, they had no qualms for changing party as long as that improve their prestige and power.
Communist Party of India was a well-known force in the-then Indian politics with its limited but committed mass base in rural areas and industrial belts – the turmoil in global communist movement resulting from the clash of CPSU and CPC took its toll in India (as it did in every country of Asia-Africa-South America continents). A splinter group of Indian communists came to power in couple of Indian states during this period – in fact the government formed by Communists in Kerala province was world’s first elected communist government.
Bharatiya Jan Sangh (latter became Bharatiya Janata Party) was established as rightist political wing of Hindu revivalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Hindu Mahasabha leaders became the backbone of Bharatiya Jan Sangh. The socio-cultural propaganda by RSS and Hindu Mahasabha has been to relentlessly spread the message of perceived ‘superiority’ of Hindutwa (similar to any right conservative outfit) through its dozens of social wings. The essence of the campaign not only by RSS during its existence for about 100 years, but also by its progenies like Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political wing, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the trade union wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing, can be summed up as below:
Aryan Hindu community has been living in Indian subcontinent perpetually since dawn of humanity,
Veda scriptures directly originated from Almighty God,
Veda is the storage of all significant knowledge in and about the universe,
Sanskrit has been the script of Hindu community since dawn of civilization in Indian subcontinent,
Caste system with Brahmans as ‘prime mover’ is way for socio-economic progress of Hindu society
Indian subcontinent is de facto Indian nation which is the ‘ancient Hindu nation’.
Swatantra Party was established by the right ideologues of INC and few of the royal family members from erstwhile princely states, who were peeved with Nehru’s leftist ideals and promotion of public sector economy. After a decade or so the party’s influence declined dramatically.
Indian Union Muslim League was established by Muslim elites after partition of India. The party represents religious conservatism in Muslim society of India. However, as a matter of fact, Muslim community in different provinces generally voted en bloc in favour of either INC or some strong regional party.
Apart from above mentioned political parties at the national level, there were a dozen of regional political outfits (based on language and caste based politics) which were more or less social democrats in policies. A significant point that should be mentioned here pertains to the conduct of the political parties vis-à-vis their professed ideology – during this period, all significant leaders and their parties not only would chalk out their policies and programs in line with their avowed ideology, but they would also try to implement those programmes if voted to power. It would be another issue that most of the time, such implementations would go haywire.
4.1.3 INC ruled at the centre for most of this period with Jawaharlal Nehru as Prime Minister from August 1947 to May 1964, Indira Gandhi from January 1966 to March 1977 as well as from January 1980 to October 1984, and Rajiv Gandhi from October 1984 to December 1989. Apart from these 3 leaders, few other leaders associated with INC at different point of time came to power at centre for very short duration, mainly through coalition politics at centre.
In 1975, Indira Gandhi advised the President to declare a country-wide emergency that allowed the central government to assume sweeping powers and suspend civil liberties in states. Due to the unpopularity of emergency, Indira Gandhi lost 1977 general elections where ex-INC senior leaders played crucial role in creating Janata Party piecing together many opposition parties.
Two of the Prime Ministers were assassinated in this period – Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Though Indians hardly engage in conspiracy theories about these assassinations, a thorough analysis of cui bono might point out towards involvement of anti-Soviet Union world order and Deep State in removing both leaders, so that in absence of pro-Soviet leaders from Nehru-Gandhi family, India can be easily drawn into USA-oriented world order.
4.1.4 Nehru’s foreign policy was centred on Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of which India was a co-founder. But, Nehru secretly worked with CIA for keeping religious disturbances alive in Tibet, and provided logistics and moral support to Dalai Lama who was resisting the attempt of government of China to establish the rule of law in Tibet province of China. Indira Gandhi continued the NAM policy of her father, but practically steered India towards USSR camp (during Bangladesh liberation war Soviet support was instrumental) in order to safeguard country’s interests in international arena, to deter USA Navy approaching India and Bangladesh coast.
India fought 2 wars with Pakistan over Jammu & Kashmir, and a third war with Pakistan to help East Pakistan (Bangladesh) get separated from West Pakistan. A brief border war with China was fought. Sikkim was annexed as a state within Indian republic. India deployed troops for peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict during Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership – next government withdrew the troops when they became entangled in fighting the Tamil rebels itself.
During Indira Gandhi’s tenure in 1975 Sikkim was integrated with India as a province. Sikkim used to be protectorate of India after 1947. Though there had been criticism internationally as ‘annexation’ by India, the anti-monarchy movement within Sikkim was a key factor behind the willingness of Sikkim’s politicians for getting integrated with India.
4.2 Politics during Neoliberal Oligarchy: 1991 to 2014
Even during the neoliberal era, there was/is still an important differentiation among mainstream non-Marxist parties which related to the party’s close identification with some communities demarcated on the basis of religion/ caste/language/region etc. (as against Marxist parties who try to identify with livelihood/income class) – it was/is also called ‘vote bank’ politics. While mainstream national party like INC profess secular policies, it had no qualms to promote medieval culture of divorce within Muslim communities (where husbands summarily divorce wife without alimony, particularly in low-income households) to keep their Muslim vote bank undisturbed. Overall, INC maintained lip service to the concepts of constitution of India (where 4 different ethno-genetic groups, 15+ major languages and close to 100 minor languages, 5 major religions have been cohabiting for millennium). On the other hand, mainstream national party like BJP professes extreme religious intolerance to polarise majority Hindu voters and create a vote bank. This party was proud to demolish a medieval historical mosque which would have been treated as a serious offence against archaeological heritage in any modern country! BJP’s parent RSS popularised their slogan of Hindu-Hindi-Hindustan which delegitimise equal treatment of other religions other than Hindutwa and other languages except Hindi.
4.2.1 Indian National Congress (INC), the most important mainstream party, transformed itself into a neoliberal democratic party after killing of Rajiv Gandhi. The entire party machinery and leadership positions were grabbed by the so-called ‘realist-cum-pragmatist’ camp through a ‘seize from within’ campaign by the elites-businessmen-landlords-technocrats. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh led the transformation of INC into neoliberal fantasy-land after INC won elections at centre in 1991. The media and academia (which till 1991 used to paint a social democratic façade of INC) went full steam ahead to preach on benefits of the so-called LPG (liberalisation-privatisation-globalisation) regime introduced by Rao-Singh duo. I will come back to the so-called economic benefits in the next section, section 5. The semblance of social democratic ideology got eroded so much within a span of 23 years that, during the general election in 2014 INC couldn’t escape from being branded as party of ‘crony capitalists’.
The neoliberal oligarchy period has been the golden period for RSS and BJP-BMS-ABVP – RSS spread its wings unchallenged during this period. With INC openly promoting economy and governance away from the political philosophy of ‘welfare state’, a right conservative institution like BJP promoted by Hindu upper caste landlords and businessmen had no problem in catching wind in their sails. Standing on the ‘solid’ bedrock of Hindutwa socio-cultural propaganda by RSS across India, BJP planned a political movement based on Hindutwa and implemented the plan – (a) Babri Masjid (in UP province) demolition by RSS-BJP workers was carried out in December 1992, and (b) Godhra (in Gujarat province) train-burning (BJP alleged that Muslim community burnt the train, but officially reason couldn’t be ascertained) in February 2002. Both the ‘main incidents’ were followed by religious riots across India (during which most of the attacks were by Hindu fundamentalists). Such gruesome carnage took place when the neoliberal politicians from both INC and BJP were ruling at centre and/or state. BJP’s message for political manipulation was simple, which at one hand, created a sense of deep insecurity among common Hindu (majority) population, and at the other hand, the same population was offered relief from such ‘insecurity’ if they chose BJP.
Communist Party of India and its splinter groups squandered its limited mass base but wide appeal among the middle class sympathisers, due to both internal and external reasons – (a) dissolution of CPSU and Soviet Union, and adoption of capitalist market economy by CPC were portrayed in Indian media and academia as ‘proof of failure of communism’; Communist parties in India couldn’t effectively counter such nonsense, (b) dozens of splinter groups of Communist parties were mired in politicking which lacked consolidated plan and programme across the country, Communist parties in India couldn’t effectively unite and make a single plan of action during past six decades, (c) attitude of ‘intellectualism’ among the senior leadership simultaneously with ‘careerism’ of the junior apparatchiks deflected the Communists from their main strength – strength of Marxist humanitarianism. The different splinter groups of Indian communists have been drifting aimlessly (generally their aim has been to get voted into power in a province through election).
During this period, the regional parties regrouped with social democracy as their declared ideology – in fact, such parties filled in the vacuum created by withdrawal of INC from its old ideological base. There has been three kinds of such regional parties all of which revolve around cult of personality:
Backward caste and/or minority language based political parties in few provinces
Breakaway splinter groups of INC in few provinces, where province-level INC leaders were charismatic
Erstwhile junior leaders of now-defunct non-Marxist Socialist Party created new entity through mergers/demergers
4.2.2 INC ruled at the centre for most of this period with Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister from June 1991 to May 1996, Manmohan Singh from May 2004 to May 2014. BJP ruled for significant period with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as Prime Minister from March 1998 to May 2004. Apart from these 3 leaders, few other leaders associated with different regional parties came to power at centre for very short duration through coalition politics at centre.
During this period of neoliberal oligarchy, the national bourgeoisie allied with the comprador bourgeoisie and influenced political programmes and economic liberalisation carried out by both INC and BJP. Substantial amount of foreign investment had been registered during this period, and Indian industrialists-traders-bankers happily collaborated with MNCs and vied for such FDI. In fact, an in-depth survey shows that, economic policy-wise there was no distinction between INC and BJP – both work tirelessly so that the top 1% of Indian population can amass wealth and power, and the fruits of economic growth gets shared by the next 9% population (as managers and implementers of all policies). The deep divide between INC’s secular socio-cultural platform and BJP’s Hindutwa socio-cultural base vanished when it came to economic liberalisation and westernisation assisted by capital from Zionist-Capitalist global oligarchy. It was only the style of election campaign that still demarcated them. Thus it is no wonder that, during past 7 years when Narendra Modi became crowd-puller for BJP’s campaign, hundreds of seasoned politicians of INC across India joined BJP for contesting elections at province and at centre.
4.2.3 The objectives of foreign policy was/is a peaceful global and regional environment in which Indian economy can grow as well as food security, water security and energy security are maintained. Along with the changing landscape of economic policies, Indian foreign policy also went for a makeover.
4.2.3.1 Background of Jammu & Kashmir Problem – All along, the main focus of Indian foreign policy has been the northern province/state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) which was/is the intersection of border disputes with both Pakistan and China. Fact remains that, it was the imperialist British power which created border problems in 1947 through a messy partition. British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe demarcated the so-called border in 1947 between India and Pakistan from the provinces/regions that were directly administered by the-then British government. British government neither issued notification on integration of the individual 550+ princely states with India or Pakistan (except those regions that would basically create the entity of Pakistan) nor arranged uniform procedures for general people of the princely states to choose between India and Pakistan. Even though in 1947 Dogra king signed accession document on behalf of J&K princely state with India government, Pakistan and China didn’t accept the legality, hence J&K became a permanent source of conflict between India and Pakistan as well as India and China:
India government controls more than half of the erstwhile J&K Dogra kingdom – part of Kashmir region, entire Jammu region, larger part of Ladakh region. India demands that Pakistan and China cede their control from all regions that were part of erstwhile Dogra kingdom of J&K
Pakistan government controls part of Kashmir region, entire Gilgit region, entire Baltistan region. Pakistan ceded a small part of Baltistan to China in mid-1960s. Pakistan further demands entire Kashmir region from India
China controls entire Aksai Chin region. China further demands part of Ladakh region from India
It wouldn’t be out of context to mention that, on behalf of princely state J&K, British government maintained foreign relations with Tibet kingdom (a protectorate of China) and Chinese empire, between 1857 and 1947. During this period, British government proposed boundary line between princely state of J&K and Tibet twice, namely Ardagh–Johnson Line in 1860s and Macartney–MacDonald Line in 1899. Chinese government didn’t sent formal acceptance to British government in either of the cases, but 1912 onwards with removal of Qing dynasty, Chinese government always denied the boundary demarcation proposed by British government. Upon independence in 1947, Indian government fixed official boundary that resembled Ardagh–Johnson Line (hence included Aksai Chin region), which was denied by China earlier.
4.2.3.2 Background of Arunachal Pradesh Problem – Border dispute with China has a second dimension in India’s north-east province/state of Arunachal Pradesh (earlier called as North-East Frontier Agency). British administrator Henry McMahon proposed the McMahon Line as the demarcation line between Tibet kingdom and the-then north-east region of British India at the 1914 Simla Convention signed between British and Tibetan representatives. Chinese government didn’t accept the legal status of McMahon Line because Tibet was a tributary state of China while Arunachal Pradesh was southern territory of Tibet.
India controls the Arunachal Pradesh region as per the McMahon Line border. During 1962 war, though China crossed the McMahon Line border and came southwards, soon Chinese troops were withdrawn to positions north of the disputed McMahon border line.
4.2.3.3 Possible Options of Solution to Border Problems – Till 2014, there could be only two options of solution to border problem vis-à-vis Pakistan and China. Best option entailed thatall three countries meet in a conference in presence of UNO, discuss heart-to-heart and make adjustments with each other’s standpoint, and legalise the current line of actual control (LAC) with minor adjustment/accommodation as the de facto and de jure border demarcation. The other alternate option was that India or any country which felt aggrieved, would mobilise massive military forces to capture as much land as it wish and unilaterally try to redefine the border, in case the country wins the war against the adversary – but there would have been a gigantic cost to achieve such ‘success’ and sustain it, because all three countries developed strong conventional military power as well as semi-advanced capabilities of nuclear war.
4.2.3.4 After dissolution of Soviet Union, in order to adjust foreign policy to the unipolar world order dominated by USA, in 1992 the-then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao upgraded India’s diplomatic relations with Israel to ambassador level. Trade and investment were given a higher priority while building relations with USA, EU, ASEAN and China. Though relation with USA government temporarily went south after Vajpayee government conducted a series of underground nuclear tests in 1998, soon Vajpayee visited the USA and proclaimed that India and USA are ‘natural allies’. Manmohan Singh government pushed through the India-USA Civil Nuclear Agreement in 2006. In a major policy shift, India started rapidly moving away from Russian armaments and military technology and bring in USA and Israel as key suppliers for military hardware.
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (also known as the Quad) forum was initiated in 2007 by Shinzo Abe of Japan, Dick Cheney of USA, John Howard of Australia and Manmohan Singh of India. Quad maintains summits, and military drills among member countries. India government also signed defence cooperation agreement with USA.
4.3 People and Society: 1947 to 2014
4.3.1 Indian society is highly diverse with hundreds (or thousands) of ethnic, linguistic, and caste groups as well as dozens of religious, and regional groups. On top of that, the differences on the basis of urban-rural and gender play crucial role. However, amid such differences and complexities of Indian society, there exist few socio-cultural themes that unify the social order even if that fail to bring social harmony. Across different ethnicities-religions-languages in India, a ‘male-dominated family’ is common basic building block of the society. In rural areas and semi-urban areas resources like land, building, or business are generally controlled by male members (even if legislation allows all Indian women to inherit real estate property). Traditionally women have control over precious stone and jewellery. However, as modern education has been making inroads into the society, male-dominated society is fading away slowly.
The other socio-cultural theme that ‘unite’ Indian society was/is ‘hierarchy of Caste’ – the people were/are grouped by birth, named and brought-up within caste based ‘entitlements’, forced into endogamous (in-marrying) groups, and employed within caste based ‘occupations’. As per old Hindu caste system, there were/are thousands of castes and sub-castes in India, where hierarchy-wise Brahmans are top ranking, Kshatriya-Vaishya-Kayastha groups are second tier, Shudra groups are third tier, while tribes (forest dwellers) are social outcasts. Indian Constitution identified 1,108 scheduled castes (SC, the Shudra) and 744 scheduled tribes (ST, the Forest dweller), and provided special reservation for higher education and government services which brought new hope for those marginal people (however, those benefits were/are more often than not cornered by a tiny section of SC and ST communities; in many crucial areas like medicine and scientific research such reservations had/has detrimental effects as well). With modern (western) education and government policies, in urban areas, the caste system is less divisive than 50 years ago. Rural India still has not only hierarchical caste system among Hindu population, but Muslim and Christian societies are also infected by the disease of caste system.
4.3.2 The key statistics related to total population, rural-urban divide, backward castes (scheduled castes and scheduled tribes), literacy, linguistic groups, religious groups as per census are given below (figures in million):
Data Element
1971 census
1991 census
2011 census
Total Population (million)
548.159
838.584
1210.854
Rural (as percentage of total)
80.09%
74.27%
68.86%
Urban (as percentage of total)
19.91%
25.73%
31.14%
Literate population (million)
161.415
359.324
763.638
Average Life Expectancy at Birth (Years)
45.6
58.7
67.0
Scheduled Castes population (million)[as percentage of total population]
79.092[14.43%]
138.223[16.50%]
201.378[16.63%]
Scheduled Tribes population (million)[as percentage of total population]
36.408[6.64%]
67.758[8.08%]
104.545[8.63%]
Literate – informal and below primary
9.63%
10.80%
15.03%
Literate – primary and middle schooling
15.84%
21.27%
26.26%
Literate – matriculate
3.23%
5.65%
8.75%
Literate – intermediate and diploma
Less than 0.1%
2.40%
6.53%
Literate – technical diploma
Less than 0.1%
0.26%
0.60%
Literate – graduate and above
0.60%
2.46%
5.64%
Illiterate
70.55%
57.15%
36.93%
Population by religion – Hindu
82.72%
82.00%
79.80%
Population by religion – Muslim
11.20%
12.11%
14.23%
Population by religion – Christian
2.59%
2.34%
2.30%
Population by religion – Sikh
1.89%
1.94%
1.72%
Population by religion – Others
1.60%
1.61%
1.73%
Population by language – Hindi
36.99%
39.29%
43.63%
Population by language – Bengali
8.17%
8.30%
8.03%
Population by language – Marathi
7.62%
7.45%
6.86%
Population by language – Telugu
8.16%
7.87%
6.70%
Population by language – Tamil
6.88%
6.32%
5.70%
Population by language – Others
32.18%
30.77%
29.08%
The significant inferences that can be drawn from the above statistics are:
Population of India (361.088 million in 1951) grew unrestrained over the decades to reach 1210.854 million in 2011. In 2011, Total Households 249.454 million and Average Population per Household was 4.85. Yearly growth rate of population peaked during 1973 to 1983 period when it hovered around 2.31% to 2.36%. Since then the rate has been slowly declining to 1.04% in 2018 (when population reached 1350 million). However, unevenness exist – on the basis of language, ‘Hindi’-speaking population in north, central, and east India show rise in share of total population, on the basis of religion, ‘Muslim’ community across India show rise in share of total population, on the basis of caste, SC and ST communities demonstrate marginal rise in share of total population.
Vast population was/is one of the key factors behind a multitude of socio-economic problems that has been afflicting the country since independence (because India has limited arable land and face scarcity of resources). However, massive population is not the only problem in India – institutionalised exploitation is even bigger problem.
Urbanisation has been increasing, but not as rapidly as government expected after policy changes in 1991. Also, in most of the tier-2 and tier-3 urban areas, management of basic civil amenities remain poor.
Life expectancy at birth has steadily increased over the decades, but standard of healthcare facilities vary widely across regions – while south and west regions are better than average north and east regions have below average healthcare facilities.
Indian government registered appalling performance in promoting literacy. Not only 37% of the population remained illiterate in 2011, but also less than 22% of the population were ‘employable’ who have academic qualification of matriculate and above. That signifies a whopping 41% of the population were ‘converted’ into literates by the over-zealous government officials of Education ministry (through luring the children into primary schools by arranging mid-day meals, who would drop out as soon as they become teenager to search any unskilled employment opportunity as a ‘child labour’).
Unless the children complete at least 10 years of formal education and clear matriculate, meaningful employment was/is not possible in a 21st century economy – overall productivity of labour as a crucial component of national economy remains a pipe dream.
5. India From 1947 To 2014 – Economic Landscape
At the time of independence, Indian economy was mainly dependent on agricultural. Prime Minister Nehru’s development model envisaged a dominant role of the state, Industrial Policy Resolution of 1948 proposed a mixed economy of private-owned and state-owned enterprises. Narasimha Rao initiated the process of economic liberalisation and reform in 1991 which opened the Indian economy to global capitalist world order.
5.1 Economic Planning during Social Democracy: 1947 to 1991
Prime Minister Nehru and Professor Mahalanobis were the chief architects of planned economy in post-independence India. INC set the objective of Indian development strategy as to establish a society with self-reliance and socio-economic justice for all citizens as given in the constitution. Government set up the Planning Commission in 1950 to coordinate the entire economic planning, resource allocation, implementation and appraisal of five-year plans (basically modelled after Soviet planning system). The industrial policy reserved 17 industrial sub-sectors like Atomic Energy, Defence, Iron and Steel, Heavy Machinery, Coal, Petroleum, Electricity, Railways, Airlines, and Telecommunication etc. for the state-owned enterprises.
India’s first five-year plan (1951 – 1956) was focused on development of primary sector of the economy – agriculture and allied areas, power. The total planned budget of Rupees 23.78 billion was allocated as: irrigation and power generation (27.2%), agriculture and community development (17.4%), transport (24%), industry (8.4%), social services (16.6%), rehabilitation of landless farmers (4.1%), and for other sectors and services (2.5%). The target growth rate was 2.1% annual GDP growth; achieved growth rate was 3.6%.
India’s second five-year plan (1956 – 1961) was focused on development of industrial sector of the economy – primarily through state-owned industries especially in heavy industries and capital goods. The total budget was Rupees 48 billion was allocated to two broad sectors: industry and agriculture. Applying statistical models of Professor P C Mahalanobis the plan attempted to allocate investment between productive sectors in order to maximise long-run economic growth. The target growth rate was 4.5% and 4.27% was achieved.
The third five-year plan (1961 – 1966) put focus back on agriculture. But the conflicts with China in 1962 and with Pakistan in 1965 shifted the focus towards defence industry and military. On top of that there was severe drought in 1965. State electricity boards, State road transportation corporations, and State education boards were formed in provinces. The target growth rate was 5.6%, but overall failure resulted in 2.4% growth rate.
The fourth five-year plan (1969 – 1974) emphasised growth rate of agriculture as enabler of other sectors to grow. Family Planning programmes were amongst major targets of the Plan. Major Indian banks in private sector were nationalised. But a chunk of fourth plan resources were diverted towards war with Pakistan in 1971 along with refugee problem related to Bangladesh. The plan achieved 3.3% growth against target rate of 5.6%.
The fifth five-year plan (1974 – 1979) proposed to remove poverty (Garibi Hatao) and attain self-reliance particularly in agricultural production and defence. The plan promoted high rate of GDP growth, growth in the domestic rate of savings, and more equitable distribution of income. The central government entered into electricity generation and transmission. When Emergency was declared, Prime Ministers 20 Point Programme became the focal point. Even though in 1978 a new government rejected the plan, it was successful in achieving 4.8% growth rate against 4.4% target.
The sixth five-year plan (1980 – 1985) focussed on increase in national income, development of skill to reduce unemployment and poverty, modernization of technology, and providing slack season employment. Price controls were eliminated to a large extent resulting in increased cost of living. This plan onwards, the Military five-year plans became coterminous with national five-year plans by Planning Commission. Largely successful plan witnessed actual growth rate of 5.7% against 5.2% target.
The seventh five-year plan (1985 – 1990) strived towards social justice through anti-poverty programmes, agricultural development through increasing productivity of small and big farmers, ‘food, work & productivity’, and achieving independent economy through increased energy production. The plan targeted labour force to grow by 39 million people while employment was expected to grow 4% per year. The plan was quite successful with 6% growth rate of the economy against targeted 5%.
Industrial production index registered annual compound growth of 5.7% during 1951 – 1955, 7.2% during 1955 – 1960, 9.0% during 1960 – 1965 riding on quite high growth of basic goods and capital goods. The scale of investment in heavy industries were beyond the capital-raising capacity of the private-owned enterprises. A sort of complementary relationship grew between state-owned and private-owned business that resulted in good industrial growth during the period when overall prices remained stable in the country. Deceleration in industrial growth experienced during the period 1966 to 1980. The annual compound growth rate during 1965 – 1974 period was only 4.1% while 6.1% during 1974 – 1979 period. Finally, 1979-80 even recorded a negative rate of growth of Industrial production (-) 1.6%. Total factor productivity also registered negative growth of (-) 0.2 to (-) 0.3% per year during 1966-67 to 1979-80. The government put the blame on factors like wars in 1965 and 1971, Oil crisis of 1973, etc. However, a crucial factor was also present – low growth in agriculture sector created less demand of industrial goods. Industrial recovery during the period 1981 to 1991 witnessed much improved environment. Rate of industrial growth during 1981 – 1985 period was 6.4% per year and 8.5% during 1985 – 1990 period. The high growth rates were possible because of very robust growth in capital goods as well as consumer goods-durables. This growth was not associated with acceleration in growth of the factor inputs, but on higher factor productivity, which registered 3.4% per year growth during 1981 to 1985. Many commentators opine that liberal fiscal policies, and increased demand from agriculture and infrastructure sectors were key reasons for such recovery.
A close look at the planned economy and the overall parameters of performance reveal three key problems:
(a) Continuously rising population in India that negated the economic gains substantially, had never been tackled with due seriousness and resolve by INC leadership
(b) Even though five-year plans strived to achieve a lot on economic and social front, endemic corruption, faulty implementation, and lack of political resolve didn’t allow the period of planned economy to achieve greater efficiency
(c) Instead of long-term vision of a country free from all types of exploitation and poverty, INC leadership mostly used the planning process for scoring points for mid-term electoral success.
5.2 ‘Open’ Economy during Neoliberal Oligarchy: 1991 to 2014
The main objective of ‘new economic policy’ were liberalisation-privatisation-globalisation, as it used to be fondly called as LPG by the professionals in the 1990’s. The new policy wanted to convert the Indian economy into a full-fledged capitalist market economy by removing all kinds of government regulations and restrictions. It aimed at permitting unfettered international flow of goods and services as well as capital and technology. Another primary objective was to increase participation of private businessmen in all sectors of economy by withdrawing reserved government sector status from all sectors barring atomic energy and railways. Also, another compelling issue was stabilization of macro-economy through reduction of fiscal deficits (that was 5.4% of nominal GDP during 1991-92).
Some of the key economic reforms were:
(i) Removal of industrial licensing and restrictions
(ii) Abolition of restrictive trade practices through replacement of Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices act by other benign act
(iii) Freedom for expansion of Industrial production facility
(iv) Import of capital goods without restriction
(v) Increase in the investment limit for small scale industries
(vi) Free determination of interest rate by commercial Banks (within overall framework of central bank)
(vii) Transfer of ownership of state owned enterprises (in India it is called as ‘public sector unit’) to private businessmen at heavily discounted price
(viii) Reduction in import duty and tariffs
(ix) 100% FDI for high priority industries, increase in Equity limit of foreign investment in other sectors
(x) Partial Convertibility of Indian currency.
During this period, the existing process of five-year plan went on unhindered – eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth five-year plans were drawn up, budgets approved, and implemented. But with capitalist market economy progressing full swing under watchful eyes of successive governments, the five-year plans made little sense for the socio-economic parameters – common Indians soon learnt what is jobless growth, and uneducated literacy.
The new economic policy had a positive impact on foreign investments which rose to more than 5 billion USD in 1995-96 from a paltry 130 million USD in 1991-92. Nominal GDP increased from 14405 billion Indian Rupees in 1992-93 to 54821 billion Indian Rupees in 2012-13.
There was marked increase in inter-regional imbalance and inter-class imbalance in economic growth, upward movement of unemployment, poverty, and wealth gap in rural and urban areas. Crime rates increased across India. No mainstream politician would think about a balanced society any more.
5.3 Discussion on Economic Parameters: 1947 to 2014
5.3.1 Information of key parameters of Indian economic performance have been noted below (Data Source: Economic Survey 2019-20, Ministry of Finance – Government of India; Data-book for Planning Commission – Government of India; Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy – Reserve Bank of India):
(a) Data on GDP at factor cost at constant 2004-05 prices and share of sectors within GDP reveals that the share of the primary sector in GDP declined from 54% in 1950-51 to 33% in 1990-91 and further to 14.5% in 2010-11, while share of the secondary sector increased from 16% in 1950-51 to 27% in 1990-91 and further to 28% in 2010-11. Statistics for GDP at factor cost has been officially withdrawn from 2012 onwards, instead of which Gross Value Added (GVA) at basic price has been brought in, that too with constant 2011-12 prices.
Year
GDP at factor cost at constant 2004-05 prices(Billion Indian Rupee)
Percentage share of sector in GDP at factor cost at constant 2004-05 price
FIRE, social & personalservices, other misc. services
1950-51
2796.18
51.88
1.84
16.19
11.01
18.51
1960-61
4102.79
47.65
2.16
20.09
12.64
17.55
1970-71
5897.87
41.66
2.20
23.62
14.28
18.98
1980-81
7985.06
35.69
2.62
25.65
16.77
20.88
1990-91
13478.89
29.52
3.48
26.70
17.63
24.90
2000-01
23484.81
22.26
2.96
27.25
21.64
28.84
2010-11
49185.33
14.59
2.25
27.92
27.32
30.16
FIRE stands for Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate.
Data on GDP at market price at constant 2004-05 prices, and share of expenditures within GDP shows that economic growth was primarily fuelled by private consumption expenditure share of which came down from 83% in 1950-51 to 67% in 1990-91 and further to 56% in 2017-18 while contribution of gross fixed capital formation went up from a paltry 14% in 1950-51 to 23% in 1990-91 and further to 31% in 2017-18.
(b) Data on Per Capita Net National Income (Per Capita NNI) at market price and Per Capita Private Final Consumption Expenditure (Per Capita PFCE) at market price both at constant 2004-05 prices reveal overall dismal picture of Indian economy if average income and average expenses are estimated for a citizen:
Year
Population(Million)
NNI at market price at constant 2004-05 price (Billion Indian Rupee)
Per Capita NNI at market price at constant 2004-05 price (Indian Rupee)
Per Capita PFCE at market price at constant 2004-05 prices (Indian Rupee)
Average Life Expectancy at Birth (in Years)
1950-51
361.1
2697.24
7513
6782
32.1
1960-61
439.2
4115.19
9482
8147
41.3
1970-71
548.2
5964.70
11025
8714
45.6
1980-81
683.3
7951.93
11711
9682
50.4
1990-91
846.4
13420.31
15996
11825
58.7
2000-01
1028.7
22917.95
22491
15351
62.5
2010-11
1186.0
46574.38
39270
26074
67.0
2017-18
1316.0
73050.96
55510
35566
—
5.3.2 Information on industrial productions of few significant goods and electricity have been noted below (Data Source: Economic Survey 2019-20, Ministry of Finance – Government of India; Ministry of Textiles – Government of India; Data-book for Planning Commission – Government of India; Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy – Reserve Bank of India):
(a) Data on basic industrial products and electricity reveals that even with increased production, pace of industrialisation was certainly inadequate for a country like India with vast population. Considering 1350 million population in 2018, per capita consumption of industrial products like finished steel, cement, and cloth was only 76 kg, 220 kg, and 49 sq. metre respectively, in case of finished steel and cement not even half of world average. Consumer price index shows unceasing inflation of food items.
Year
Index of industrial production(Base:2004-05 as 100)
Consumer price index for industrial worker – food(Base: 1982as 100)
(b) Data (computed by S V R Murthy from National Accounts Statistics, 2019, Government of India on the basis of GVA) on organised and unorganised sectors of shows that, Indian unorganised sector still contribute more than 52% of GVA and activities like agriculture and allied, construction, trade-repair-accommodation-food services are highly dependent on unorganised sector:
Economic Activity
Percent Share of GVA in 2011-12 by
Percent Share of GVA in 2016-17 by
Organised sector
Unorganised sector
Organised sector
Unorganised sector
Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing
3.2
96.8
2.8
97.2
Mining and quarrying
77.4
22.6
77.4
22.6
Manufacturing
74.5
25.5
76.4
23.6
Electricity, gas, water & other utility services
95.7
4.3
95.0
5.0
Construction
23.6
76.4
26.6
73.4
Trade, repair, accommodation & food services
13.4
86.6
13.4
86.6
Transport, storage, communication & services related to broadcasting
53.0
47.0
53.7
46.3
Financial services
90.7
9.3
88.1
11.9
Real estate, ownership of dwelling & professional service
36.9
63.1
46.8
53.2
Public administration and defence
100.0
0.0
100.0
0.0
Other services
58.8
41.2
52.7
47.3
Total GVA at basic prices
46.1
53.9
47.3
52.7
5.4 Agriculture in Independent India
At the time of Independence, agriculture was the main source of national income and occupation. Even though agriculture sector’s contribution in GDP steadily declined from about 52% in 1950-51 to 14.5% in 2010-11, agriculture sector employed disproportionately high 54.5% of country’s workforce in 2011.
5.4.1 From 1948 to 1965 agrarian reforms were undertaken through which, substantial land titles were transferred to the actual cultivators, major dams and irrigation projects were constructed, and cooperative credit institutions were strengthened. Still, India remained dependent upon imports and food aid to feed the rising population.
During 1966 to 1990 period, New Agricultural Strategy or Green Revolution was formulated by government to apply science and technology for increasing yield. The strategy included (a) increased use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, (b) increased use of high yielding varieties of grains, (c) crop rotation and multiple cropping programme, (d) increased area under cultivation, and irrigation. Thus application of agriculture technology was the main driver. Along with that, diversification into related areas like vegetables, fruits, fishery, poultry, dairy etc. helped increasing amount of produce (hence, GDP) as well as employment and income.
The third phase of agricultural policy was a fallout of economic reforms initiated in 1991. Opening up of domestic market due to international trade and WTO affected agriculture. To address new scenario formally a new agricultural policy was launched in July 2000. It set an objective of 4% growth in output per year. Sustainable and efficient utilisation of resources was stressed. With inherent constraints, Indian agriculture, indeed, continue to perform much better as a sector of economy compared to industrial sector.
It is worthwhile to note that the modern applications in agriculture gave rise to unsustainable agricultural practices which deteriorated soil nutrients, reduced ground water table, and reduced biodiversity.
5.4.2 Information of key parameters of Indian agriculture sector performance have been noted below (Data source: Agricultural Census Division, Ministry of Agriculture; Agricultural Statistics at a Glance 2018, Registrar General of India; Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation – Government of India)
(a) There were 48900 million operational holding in 1960-61 with covered area of 131400 million hectares. The number of holdings increased to 115580 million in 2000-01 with covered area of 163357 million hectares which imply that average plot size reduced. Number of marginal (avg. size – 0.39 hectare) and small (avg. size – 1.43 hectare) holdings and area under such holdings have increased while number of semi-medium (avg. size – 2.76 hectare), medium (avg. size – 5.90 hectare), and large (avg. size – 17.33 hectare) holdings and area under such holding have reduced. Thus, number of uneconomical holdings are increasing regularly with increase in marginal and small plot holdings which means that (a) more and more cultivators are joining the ranks of agricultural labourers average income, (b) growth rate in average real income is poor, may be negative.
Plot size
Percent share in
1960-61
1970-71
1980-81
1990-91
2000-01
Marginal
number of holding
40.69
50.60
56.40
59.40
63.00
operated area
6.60
9.00
12.00
15.10
18.82
Small
number of holding
22.29
19.10
18.10
18.80
18.80
operated area
12.17
11.90
14.10
17.40
20.18
Semi-medium
number of holding
18.80
15.20
14.00
13.10
11.70
operated area
19.93
18.40
21.20
23.20
23.96
Medium
number of holding
13.40
11.30
9.10
7.10
5.40
operated area
30.51
29.80
29.60
27.00
23.84
Large
number of holding
4.90
3.90
2.40
1.60
1.02
operated area
30.74
30.90
23.00
17.30
13.21
(b) As the rural population increased along with rising population of India, the ratio of Cultivators and Agricultural Labourer became skewed in favour of Agricultural Labourer – it signified that number of landless labourers steadily increased with rising population in rural areas along with rising level of poverty. Till 2011, only 45% of net area under cultivation has been brought under irrigation.
Year
Rural population(Million)
Net Area Sown (million hectares)
Net IrrigatedArea (million hectares)
Rural Agriculture workers
Food-grains produced(million tonne)
Cultivators
Agricultural Labourers
Total (Million)
1950-51
298.6
118.75
20.85
69.9
27.3
97.2
50.8
1960-61
360.3
133.20
24.66
99.6
31.5
131.1
82.0
1970-71
439.0
140.86
31.10
78.2
47.5
125.7
108.4
1980-81
525.6
140.29
38.72
92.5
55.5
148.0
129.6
1990-91
630.6
142.87
48.02
110.7
74.6
185.3
176.4
2000-01
742.6
141.34
55.20
127.3
106.8
234.1
196.8
2010-11
833.7
141.56
63.67
118.8
144.3
263.1
244.5
2017-18
890.6
—
—
—
—
—
285.0
(c) Rice and Wheat productivity and production increased steadily while per capita availability of coarse cereals and pulses steadily declined over the decades. 429.8 gram (Rice 178.1, Wheat 65.9, Other Cereals 119.4, and Total Pulses 66.4 gram) average availability of total food-grains per capita per day during the decade of 1951-60 increased to only 464.2 gram (Rice 198.1, Wheat 143.3, Other Cereals 83.2, and Total Pulses 39.6 gram) during decade of 1981-90. Main reason for such marginal level of food security was lack of robust improvement in productivity of coarse cereal and pulses, and ever-increasing population.
Year
Rice Cultivation
Wheat Cultivation
Total Pulses Cultivation
Area (million Hectare)
Yield (Kg/Hectare
Area (million Hectare)
Yield (Kg/Hectare
Area (million Hectare)
Yield (Kg/Hectare
1950-51
30.81
668
9.75
663
19.09
441
1960-61
34.13
1013
12.93
851
23.56
539
1970-71
37.59
1123
18.24
1307
22.54
524
1980-81
40.15
1336
22.28
1630
22.46
473
1990-91
42.69
1740
24.17
2281
24.66
578
2000-01
44.71
1901
25.73
2708
20.35
544
2010-11
42.86
2239
29.07
2988
26.40
691
2016-17
43.99
2494
30.79
3200
29.45
786
5.5 Occupation, Income & Poverty in Independent India
5.5.1 The key statistics related to population, rural-urban divide, and employment status in 1951, 1971, and 1991 census are given below (Data Source: Census, Government of India). The term ‘main worker’ is defined as those who work for 183 days or more in a year, ‘marginal workers’ are those who work for less than 183 days in a year.
Data Element
1971 census
1991 census
2011 census
Total Population (million)
548.159
838.568
1210.854
Population of 0-19 age (million)
277.803
391.400
492.970
Population of 20-64 age (million)
251.916
408.540
647.209
Population of 65 & above age (million)
18.324
33.932
66.185
Population of unknown age (million)
0.116
4.695
4.489
Total Workers (million)
180.583
314.131
481.888
Main Workers (million)[of which workers of 20-64 age]
180.583
285.932[238.672]
362.565[318.642]
Cultivators
78.176
110.656
95.84
Agricultural labourers
47.489
74.628
86.16
Household industry workers
6.353
6.862
12.33
Other workers
48.355
93.785
168.10
Marginal Workers (million)[of which workers of 20-64 age]
No concept
28.199[21.572]
119.323[93.831]
Cultivators
—
13.987
22.85
Agricultural labourers
—
11.392
58.16
Household industry workers
—
0.761
6.00
Other workers
—
2.058
32.27
Non-Workers (million)
367.576
524.436
728.966
A close look at the above mentioned data shows the unemployment and underemployment in India has been rising over the decades (obviously because of the known problem of employment opportunity lagging behind the rise in population):
(a) the proportion of total workers to total population increased from 33% in 1971 to 39.8% in 2011; but the lack of employment among working people of age-group 20–64 years was very high at about 36% in 1991 and 2011 census (official definition-jargon-statistics split off a smaller component as ‘unemployment’, but larger part remained a ‘disguised unemployment’).
(b) the proportion of marginal workers to total workers increased, which mean underemployment increased frighteningly from 9% in 1991 to 25% in 2011 census; within marginal workers, not only agricultural labourers, but workers in industrial and service sectors have also increased substantially.
(c) More than 13% of the (self) cultivators left the occupation between 1991 and 2011, a pointer to the fact that cultivation has become uneconomical for most of the small plot-holders; between 1991 and 2011 number of agricultural labourers increased by 5 times showing that landless labours and small plot holders increased leaps and bounds.
(d) As per report 568 of NSS round 68 carried out by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) of Government of India, in 2012 the worker population ratio for age 15 years and above is 54.7% which was uneven for males with 78.1% and females with 30.5%. So, the lack of employment among working people of age-group 15 years and above was astonishingly high at more than 45% in 2012 NSSO survey.
5.5.2 There exist another segregation so far as employment is concerned in India, apart from being organised or unorganised – the formal and informal category of employment. Informal workers don’t have any written contract with their employers, they have neither paid leave nor health benefits, and they don’t have any social security. The key statistics (Data Source: NSS 68th unit level data on employment unemployment, 2011-12 and Periodic Labour Force Survey, 2017-18) reveal that even in organised sector there exist substantial number of informal workers, besides the fact that unorganised sector is almost entirely comprised of informal workers. Even very recently in 2017-18 unorganised sector provided close to 87% of employment in India.
Worker Category
Percent Share of Employment in 2011-12
Percent Share of Employment in 2017-18
Organised sector
Unorganised sector
Organised sector
Unorganised sector
Informal
9.8
82.6
5.2
85.5
Formal
7.2
0.4
7.9
1.3
Total
17.0
83.0
13.2
86.8
5.5.3 Income distribution:
In India, there was/is no government initiative to document income of individual earning citizens except income tax filing procedure carried out by central government every year. However, out of 481.9 million working citizens in 2011, a paltry 37.9 million (i.e. roughly 7.8% of all working citizens) filed income tax return papers during 2013-14, which later went up to 68.4 million in 2017-18.
Indian Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation conducts all-India Household Consumer Expenditure Survey through National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). The data gathered during this exercise reveals the average expenditure on goods (food and non-food) and services which gets collated to estimate the household Monthly Per Capita Consumer Expenditure as well as the distribution of households over the MPCE. While expenditure and poverty can be estimated with high accuracy through NSSO reports, income distribution remained a grey area in India.
The Inter University Consortium for Applied Political and Social Sciences Research (ICPSR), based at University of Michigan, provides easy access to India Human Development Survey, which was conducted in 2004-05 and 2011-12 among more than 40 000 households from rural and urban areas. The survey attempted to provide detail information on both household income and consumption. ‘Consumption’ related questionnaire matched NSSO questionnaire (expenditure item categories and referencing periods) while ‘Income’ related queries included all sources of income: labour income (wage, salary, pension), capital income (rent, interest, dividend) as well as business incomes. Government benefits were excluded from the analysis for consistency with tax tabulations. Thomas Picketty and Lucas Chancel in their paper “Indian income inequality, 1922-2015: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?” estimated a detail pre-tax income distribution combining ICPSR survey data with Indian national accounts data and NSSO survey data. Key data is given below:
The above data can be used logically to categorise Indian population into income groups as given below:
(a) The POOR class in India covers largest part of the working and nonworking adults – 50%.
(b) The LOWER MIDDLE class in India covers 20% of the adult population – rural lower middle may own less than 1.5 hectare cultivation land, urban lower middle may own a dilapidated small flat, but all of them are devoid of access to credit and meaningful deployment of capital to increase their income.
(c) The MIDDLE class in India covers 20% of the adult population who has some amount of money for spending in semi-luxurious items – rural middle class may own more than 3 hectare cultivation land, urban middle class may own a small shop, with access to limited credit from banks.
(d) The UPPER MIDDLE class in India covers 9% of the adult population who has high level of regular income from either job or business and splurge large sums of money on luxury goods – rural affluent class may own more than 10 hectare cultivation land, while urban upper middle class may be senior ranking officers in private and state-owned enterprises, owners of small industry, trading, and service providing companies, with access to very substantial credit from banks.
(e) The OPULENT class in India really owns capital in all forms – 1% of the adult population.
5.5.4 Consumer Expenditure and Poverty:
(a) The key statistics related to percentage of population below poverty line calculated as per Tendulkar method on Mixed Reference Period (Data Source: Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy – Reserve Bank of India):
Poverty Data
1993-94
2004-05
2011-12
Rural MPCE at current prices (Indian Rupee)
281.40
579.2
1,287.17
Rural Poverty Line (Indian Rupees)
—
446.68
816.00
Rural population below poverty line
50.1%
41.8%
25.7%
Urban MPCE at current prices (Indian Rupee)
458.04
1104.60
2,477.02
Urban Poverty Line (Indian Rupees)
—
578.80
1000.00
Urban population below poverty line
31.8%
25.7%
13.7%
Total Poverty Ratio
45.3%
37.2%
21.9%
The above data substantiates that the criticism against the basis of “poverty live” calculated by officials of government of India was/is too mild compared to the devilish act of intellectual skulduggery they engage in. The officials since 1950s had/have been artificially constructing “poverty line” which was/is at least 40% – 50% underestimated. If it is accepted by the current neoliberal politicians-bureaucrats-intellectuals-businessmen that an urban family of 4 belonging to the ‘poor’ class has a natural right to eat a breakfast and two square meals every day, then in 2012 the family would have spent at least 5000 Indian Rupees for purchasing food items and for cooking. Assuming a ‘poor’ would have very little money to spend for non-food items apart from electricity/cooking fuel and transport, the total expenditure per month would be 6000 Rupees for the 4-member family. Hence in 2012 the ‘poverty line’ of monthly per capita expenditure should have been 1500 Rupees instead of 1000 Rupees published by government.
(b) NSSO gather data during sampling rounds on two categories: food and non-food expenditures by Indian households. Food is further sub-categorised into cereals, milk and milk products, egg-fish-meat, vegetables, other food items, while non-food is further sub-categorised as betel-tobacco-intoxicants, fuel and light, clothing and bedding, education, medical, conveyance, other consumer services, other non-food items. The key statistics related to social group/caste wise percentage break-up of Average Monthly Per Capita Consumer Expenditure (MPCE) in 2011-12 (Data Source: NSS round 68, report 562, Government of India):
Expenditure Item & MPCE in 2011-12
Social Groups
Scheduled Caste (SC)
Scheduled Tribe (ST)
Other Backward Caste (OBC)
Other Community
All
Rural
MPCE (Indian Rupee)
1252
1122
1439
1719
1430
Food: Total
55%
56%
53%
51%
53%
Non-Food: Total
45%
44%
47%
49%
47%
Urban
MPCE (Indian Rupee)
2028
2193
2275
3242
2630
Food: Total
47%
44%
45%
40%
43%
Non-Food: Total
53%
56%
55%
60%
57%
The above data indicates the following:
(i) In terms of the regular monthly expenditures, all backward castes (SC, ST, and OBC) were found to be lagging behind the other castes and communities – the gap is more in urban areas compared to rural areas. This is obviously because of lower income in backward caste households. It would be fair to state that more than 90% of the population from three categories of backward castes are in the ‘poor’ and ‘lower middle’ class, while less than 10% of backward caste people are in the ‘middle’ and ‘upper middle’ class.
It is obvious that ‘poor’ and ‘lower middle’ classes who made up 70% of the population, also contain huge army of school drop-out and educated but unemployed people from upper castes.
(ii) Even after two decades (1991 to 2011) of ‘LPG’ economic reforms, household consumption has not increased substantially – average MPCE of Indian Rupees 1430 in rural area and Rupees 2630 in urban area. The fact which non-Marxist politicians, wealthy businessmen, bureaucrats, and professionals continue to hide is that the revenue share of growth during 1991 to 2011 never ‘trickled down’ to the ‘poor’ and ‘lower middle’ classes who jointly made up 70% of the population
(iii) Top 10% of population consisting of ‘upper middle’ and ‘opulent’ classes extracted most of the revenue and asset generated during the period of economic reforms – interestingly more than 90% of top 10% are from the upper caste Hindu community.
5.6 Significant observations on Independent India
5.6.1INC has been transformed from being a party of elites representing all nook and corner of India (during British period there were indomitable INC leaders even in Pashtun-dominated regions of the present Pakistan-Afghanistan border) into a fiefdom of Nehru-Gandhi family after independence. As long as astute politicians like Jawaharlal Nehru or Indira Gandhi came from the family, there was no major impact of this despicable transition on the party. But after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, the weakness of INC as a political outfit became too apparent to be ignored. The wife and son of Rajiv Gandhi kept the control with the family, but lack of political acumen resulted in slow demise of INC, which in turn helped immensely opening up of the political opportunity for RSS-BJP to come to limelight and fill the political vacuum.
5.6.2 INC leaders from Nehru-Gandhi family were mainly populists with leaning towards non-Marxist socialist and social democrat ideas. To broaden mass appeal during general election during prime ministership of Indira Gandhi, during 1970s INC took a decisive turn against the wealthy class of people that resulted in negative rate of growth in income of ‘upper middle’ and ‘opulent’ classes. Notwithstanding such ‘peronist’ policies, after death of Rajiv Gandhi, the party was hijacked by the neoliberal politicians-intellectuals-businessmen who formed coterie around remaining members of Gandhi family, and worked tirelessly to create an oligarchy where national capitalists was supreme in setting policy. Thus INC became unabashedly pro-businessmen and pro-capitalists during the Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh premiership.
5.6.3 India till 1991 failed to attain many parameters, but heavily concentrated wealth was surely not one of those parameters. Since INC ruled for most of the time, it was the INC’s monumental failure that even in 2012 exactly 64 years after independence, 37% of population failed to read and write, or 36% of 20–64 years age-group didn’t have employment – no amount of argument can justify this hopeless scenario! Well known economists Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze made so pertinent observations in their book ‘India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity’ as “ While the case for economic reforms may take good note of the diagnosis that India has too much government interference in some fields, it ignores the fact that India also has insufficient and ineffective government activity in many other fields, including basic education, health care, social security, land reforms and the promotion of social change. This inertia too contributes to the persistence of wide spread deprivation, economic stagnation and social inequality.”
5.6.4 Massive military conflict at northern and north-eastern borders was/is the recipe for socio-economic doom for India and Pakistan, hence none of the leaders in Pakistan or India since 1947 had/has been interested in conflicts beyond limited manoeuvre. Even if Bangladesh got partitioned from Pakistan in 1971, for Pakistani leaders, the solace was India didn’t grab its land (practically correct). China with its vast economy can afford massive military mobilisation in a tad more effectively than India. But experience shows that, China wasn’t interested to increase its landmass by getting back few thousand square kilometres into Tibet autonomous region from Indian control – otherwise, Chinese troops wouldn’t withdraw to north of McMahon line in 1962 in north-east.
The above mentioned status and obvious facts were/are known by all senior politicians and bureaucrats in India-Pakistan-China all through these decades. Chinese government can take any decision to legally accept/modify their boundary vis-à-vis other countries – China demonstrated it through signing of a series of border pacts with most of their neighbours. India and Pakistan governments can’t take such decision to make agreement to accept LAC as legal border (and ignore the ‘ideal’ border line soaked in ‘nationalism’ and claimed by government and public from both sides, existence of which has been taught since the school days of every generation) because the political opponents will misuse such wise action by the governing party, through cheap politicking of ‘surrender and sale out to a foreign power’. On the contrary, with a tough stand on border dispute, the politicians in India and Pakistan earn extra mileage for campaigning during periodic elections. As a result, the border problems have been lingering on for decades with no end at sight.
6. India Since 2014: Reappearance of Corporate-State
Since 1950, while formulating policies, the political and bureaucratic institutions of independent India tried to uphold the directive principles of ‘welfare state’ policy enshrined in the Indian constitution. However, while implementing the policies within unavoidable limitations, all mainstream political parties and their leaders surreptitiously represented businessmen-landlords-elites -– end result of such duplicity has been noted previously in section 5.
6.1 The Protagonists
Let’s briefly discuss how the protagonists stack up in the political economy of India during 2010s:
a) The main difference among the dozens of non-Marxist political parties (two of them national, rest regional) which have been controlling the government at centre and the provinces for past 73 years relates to form rather than substance. Fundamentally, almost every senior and junior leader of all non-Marxist political parties across wide spectrum of professed ideologies, treat their association with the party as profession to ‘make money’ if and when the party comes to power at centre or province. Such ‘professional‘ type of politicians join the mainstream national and regional political parties as a professional engagement to create accounted/unaccounted wealth using political and administrative power (a) by entering into business dealings in informal/unorganised sector as well as formal/organised sectors of economy, and (b) by swaying government/bureaucratic decision-making process in favour of their favourite oligarchs/businessmen.
All other activities like spending time and efforts for the sake of the political party (in the role of a party official) and/or for the sake of governance (in the role of managing public administration, when voted to power) become instrument of achieving the primordial target of making wealth. Hence shifting from one political party to another became a sort of professional move for all non-Marxist politicians. While shifting from one party to another, the leader is expected to carry his/her team of unemployed goons who would make required arrangements for winning the election (through booth capturing, false voting, electronic voting machine hacking etc.) – the team of muscleman would be provided protection from police force. These musclemen generate another type of regular revenue for their leaders if and when the party comes to power in any province – (a) ‘protection money’ from unorganised/informal sector of economy involving small manufacturers, small real estate companies, small traders, retail shopkeepers, roadside hawkers, and (b) ‘extortion money’ from organised/formal sector of economy consisting of real estate companies, construction companies, medium sized manufacturers, entertainment sector, etc. Such team, popularly known as ‘social worker’ may comprise of a couple of hundred local rowdies plus couple of petty criminals in case of leaders at provincial Assembly level, while leaders at national Parliament level commands up to thousand rowdies plus up to a dozen of hard-core criminals.
Some of the key information of 543 elected representatives at India’s Loksabha called as Member of Parliament (MP) who are the law-makers of the country:
Data related to MP
In 2009 general election
In 2014 general election
In 2019 general election
Elected on INC ticket (no.)
222
44
52
Elected on BJP ticket (no.)
112
282
303
Elected from other Non-Marxist parties (no.)
185
206
182
Elected from Marxist parties (no.)
24
11
06
Elected with Declared Criminal cases (no.)
162
185
233
– Out of which…Serious Criminal cases (no.)
76
112
159
MP with education qualification intermediate and below (no.)
—
127
130
MP with asset valuation more than 10 million Indian Rupee (no.)
‘Serious Criminal cases’ as per Indian penal code include rape, crimes against women, murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping etc. It is obvious from the above data that, not onlyIndian Parliament have been steadily turning into a den of criminals (in 2019, as many as 43% of MPs have criminal cases against them), but law-makers’ declared assets increased leaps and bounds (between 2009 and 2019, average asset of MPs increased by 4 times). The situation of assembly members in the provinces follow similar logic. In his book “Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule” M K Gandhi wrote in 1933 about British Parliament, “That which you consider to be the Mother of Parliaments is like a sterile woman and a prostitute. Both these are harsh terms, but exactly fit the case. That Parliament has not yet, of its own accord, done a single good thing. Hence I have compared it to a sterile woman. The natural condition of that Parliament is such that, without outside pressure, it can do nothing. It is like a prostitute because it is under the control of ministers who change from time to time.”Isn’t it right time to slightly modify M K Gandhi’s legendary statement to describe Indian Parliament as “…a prostitute who is at the centre of brawl among wealthy gangsters…”?
b) There was/is a limited group of educated people across the country who would join some Marxist party (since 1960’s it has become difficult to track the exact number of fragments of the old Communist Party of India, but at least 5 Marxist political parties significantly have small but committed activists and followers) believing they will fight the unjust system to further socialist cause. These ‘amateur’ type of politicians would be dedicated intellectuals throughout their life, instead of being dedicated revolutionaries. Hence, most of the leaders assigned more importance to debating over the theory than to mobilizing millions of hungry unemployed people in their own region. They lack unity and cohesion among themselves, lack robust socio-political action plan, lack resources, and most importantly they lack enthusiasm to change the social-political-economic realities in India. Very few leaders who assigned supreme importance to mass mobilisation, were actually voted into power in some significant provinces like Kerala and West Bengal through existing electoral democratic process.
The conduct of Marxist party functionaries during the period when they run the provincial governments were sometimes became controversial and the governance was not always efficient due to resource crunch. They couldn’t fight concerted campaigns against them conducted by the top 10% who owned all mainstream parties and media. A significant distortion in operational aspects of few Marxist parties can be noted during past two decades – they started believing that election campaign is the supreme task. Another development can be noted – economic reforms did create ‘reformist’ leaders many of whom are imitating professional politicians to leave their Marxist party to join other mainstream political party for, may be, gaining stature.
c) The third, arguably the most significant protagonist is wealthy oligarch families, the 1% OPULENT class, more than 95% of whom belong to the upper caste Hindu namely Brahman-Vaishya-Kshatriya Aryan and Vaishya-Kshatriya Dravidian ethno-genetic people (just like USA, another ‘great’ democracy, where oligarchy mostly comprises of Jewish, Anglo-Saxon ethno-genetic people). Similarly, the 9% UPPER MIDDLE class has more than 90% of the people belonging to upper caste Hindu community. Control of the space of banking-financial service-industry-trading-service business-large cultivation farm-politics-bureaucracy-judiciary-technology-medicine-professional services etc. by these two classes would put the 20th century British colonialists to shame! Regularly and almost religiously, the media and academia who are part of the top 10% have been shedding tears for progress or lack of progress (depending on which mainstream non-Marxist party they prefer) of the Indian society and economy, and pontificate about how the country should be or should not be governed – as a matter of fact, these are essentially an attempt to create a semblance of existence of difference of opinion in a ‘vibrant democracy’ of India while maintaining deafening silence over increasing exploitation of 90% population and atrocities against women, and minority communities (exactly similar to the hue and cry in mainstream media in USA over mistakes of Democrats party and Republican party, but never touching the real issue of endless exploitation by the zionist-capitalist oligarchy that controls both banks, businesses, political parties, media, academia, entertainment, and what not!).
Related data shows how effective the small oligarchic coterie (1%) has been for past 10 years in India to amass wealth while a larger group of elites (9%) applauded about ‘democracy’ and ‘rule of law’ in India:
Data related to Indian Oligarchy
2010
2014
2019
Total Adult population (million)
719.062
775.767
865.783
Median wealth in US Dollar (current)
1300
1006
3042
Adults with wealth < median wealth
50%
50.0%
50.0%
Adults with wealth [median – 10,000] US Dollar
42.9%
44.5%
28.2%
Adults with wealth [10,000 – 100,000] US Dollar
6.6%
5.1%
20.0%
Adults with wealth [100,000 – 1000,000] US Dollar
0.4%
0.3%
1.7%
Adults with wealth above 1 million US Dollarnumber of Adult with 1 – 5 million US Dollarnumber of Adult with 5 – 10 million US Dollarnumber of Adult with 10 – 50 million US Dollarnumber of Adult with more than 50 million US Dollar
In the report ‘Time to Care’ published in January’2020, Oxfam India mentions “India’s top 10% of the population holds 74.3% of the total national wealth. The contrast is even sharper for the top 1%. India’s top 1% of population holds 42.5% of national wealth while the bottom 50%, the majority of the population, owns a mere 2.8% of the national wealth.In other words, the top 1% hold more than 4 times the amount of wealth held by the bottom 70% of the population.The bottom 90percent holds 25.7 percent of national wealth.”
d) Finally, coming to the much maligned and slandered among all protagonists – the poor and lower middle class, the working and unemployed proletariat who are generally termed as ‘lazy-bones’ by intelligent elite managers/professionals in the corporate world. Truth be told. During past 30 years, whether central government or provincial governments which have been run by the mainstream national/regional ‘professional’ political parties (except few cases when Marxist parties formed government in province) campaigned invariably projecting the ‘interest of poor and downtrodden’ as the topmost agenda if they come to power. But barring few rare instances, across India the mainstream political parties ONLY GREASED THE OLIGARCHY – hypocrisy, thy name is politician! In 2015, World Bank estimated that a whopping 50.4% of Indians live below WB poverty line of $3.2 (2011 PPP) per day which was equivalent to 50 Indian Rupees per day. Previously while discussing consumer expenditure and poverty in sub-section 5.5.3, I have mentioned my opinion as “Hence in 2012 the ‘poverty line’ of monthly per capita expenditure should have been 1500 Rupees instead of 1000 Rupees published by government”. I will add that, World Bank officials at least were more ingenuous compared to India government officials.
The 70% population (poor and lower middle class) at bottom of income and expenditure pyramid earn so insignificantly small amount to live a hand-to-mouth daily life that they can never build bare minimum asset like a 600 square feet house/flat. They just slog on day-after-day to buy daily daal-roti or daal-rice while directly and indirectly supporting the top 10% amass wealth and power. The inflation has been rising so stubbornly that, during 2019 and 2020 it would be a cruel joke to discuss about $3.2 (even in terms of nominal current exchange rate i.e. 224 Indian Rupees) per day expenditure as poverty line. Whether it is a village or town in India, apart from two meals a day what would be left for the poor fellow to meet other daily requirements like breakfast, snacks, medicine, and toiletries? How a poor man would arrange for local conveyance and mobile communication? How monthly requirements like cooking gas, electricity, house rent, clothing, education of kids would be met? In the words of a commentator, “the worker is becoming impoverished absolutely, i.e. he is actually becoming poorer than before; he is compelled to live worse, to eat worse, to suffer hunger more, and to live in basements and attics.” Has the world witnessed similar travesty of natural justice anywhere in the world in 21st century?
6.2 Reincarnation of Corporate-State under Modi’s BJP
Even before the year 2000, most of the successful billionaire capitalists of India belonged to Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, and Tamil Nadu provinces who collectively steered industrial economy of India– during two decades of 1980s and 1990s, based on industrial sector, Gujarat’s economy registered a remarkable growth rate of over 14% against the country’s around 5.5%.
6.2.1Between 2002 and 2014, Gujarat province became the experimental laboratory of BJP for developing the concept of pseudo-religious authoritarian corporatist system of governance under Narendra Modi which was termed as ‘Gujarat Model’ – mainstream media owned by businessmen did the tomtoming of the model across India. Briefly the three characteristics of that experiment can be described as:
a) Pseudo-religious – section 4.1.2 lists down the essence of RSS-BJP campaign on how and why Hinduism has been the supreme ‘religious philosophy’ and Hindus were/are the ultimate ‘religious community’. However, as it happened with any other pseudo-religious groups, none of the propaganda has anything to do with God and spiritualism which remained the central theme of all religions in humankind. Every propaganda point relates to political objectives of (a) bringing the diverse sects of Hindus under BJP’s political umbrella, (b) implanting a belief among all disparate sects of Hindus that south Asian subcontinent belongs to ONLY them, (c) regimenting the Hindus to follow a hierarchical caste system with Brahmans as de facto leader of Indian society as written in book Manusmriti in Sanskrit, (d) inculcating supremacist ethos among Hindu children and youth about past history and civilization (some truth mixed with mostly fabricated narratives). Thus, the pseudo-religious characteristic turned the entire academic discourses of Indian archaeology-history-anthropology-sociology upside-down, and the academic arena had been converted into a ‘battle’ to uphold ‘India’s/Hindu’s glorious past stretching back to 15000 BCE’.
b) Authoritarian – section 4.2.1 lists down the political messages propagated by RSS-BJP that slowly but surely vitiated the social bonding between communities and the stage was set for further manipulation of the entire political environment. Within few months of Narendra Modi’s swearing in as Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002, Godhra train-burning incident took place, Modi and BJP used that incident to create terror and carnage of mainly Muslim people. Though Pakistan’s involvement in Islamic terrorism in India was decades old history, there was no robust proof within few days of Godhra train-burning. But Modi’s BJP utilised that event to build a fabricated narrative: (a) demographic growth of Muslim community is far more than Hindu community, unless Hindus ‘resist’ socially and politically, Muslims would once again initiate partition of the country, (b) Hindu community should continue to teach Muslim community unforgettable lessons, and, on behalf of Hindu community BJP will do the needful, (c) BJP is the only political party in India that fights for the larger interest of majority Hindu community, (d) Declaring India as ‘Hindu nation’ discarding the secular constitution, and cornering the minorities are the only solution for ‘bringing back the old glory’ of Hindu civilization, and only BJP can transform India into a Hindu nation. It goes without saying that such propaganda based on false narratives using lies and half-truths helped building an aura of authoritarian Modi that transformed BJP into authoritarian entity.
Voice of opposition parties, trade union leaders, farmers, social activists, and academicians, especially those who represent religious and caste minorities was suppressed by using police and revenue department officials – slapping of criminal cases against dissenting voice was the standard procedure. The mainstream media became an instrument of public campaign in Gujarat province under Modi’s BJP. The sessions of the legislative Assembly were squeezed so that elected representatives from opposition parties don’t get enough time to raise questions/clarifications on various bills and reports.
c) Corporatist – While Oligarchy has been controlling all levers of power at the centre and at the provinces, by and large the corporate honchos preferred to stay at the backstage of governance. Since 2003 the corporate honchos in Gujarat were sucked into part of governance through a fusion of government and corporate interest. The roles and responsibilities that Gujarat government should have played were curtailed and corporates were offered to fill in the vacuum. Among the beneficiary class were/are the Gujarati-Marwari corporate honchos like the Ambanis, Adanis, Ruias, Sanghvis, Mehtas and other big industrialists, and dozens of contractors who got their share of the pudding of various projects of infrastructure development. The new industrial policy of 2003 permitted dilution of laws of labour relations to the extent permissible at the province level. Industries were exempted from getting ‘no objection certificate’ from the pollution control board. Quick possession of farm land by industrialists and businessmen were facilitated. The cronies of Modi’s BJP were rewarded with lower than market price of land in most of the cases. The politicians belonging to BJP and government bureaucracy worked extra time and walked extra mile for the benefit of private capitalists – the whole programme was packaged as ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ and non-stop campaign was undertaken in media for public consumption.
The 2009 industrial policy was designed for transforming Gujarat province as world’s most attractive investment destination – megaprojects with investments more than Indian Rupees 10 billion were mainly targeted. Gujarat government’s industrial nodal agency acquired 21,308 hectares of land between 2001 and 2011 (starting with 4,620 hectares in 2001). Modi had become the favourite chief ministers of Indian capitalists especially Gujarati and Marwari businessmen who would attend the Vibrant Gujarat investors’ meetings and would shower praise on him and fill the coffers of BJP party fund. During these investors’ summits held between 2003 and 2011, Memorandums of Understanding were signed for investment totalling more than 4 trillion Indian Rupees – only 8% of promised investment, amounting to just over 300 billion actually came through. Another analysis showed from 2000 to 2012 Modi’s Gujarat could not attract many foreign investors (4.5% of FDI went to Gujarat, as against 32.8% in Maharashtra, 19% in Delhi, 5.6% in Karnataka, 5.2% in Tamil Nadu). By focusing on capital-intensive megaprojects, ‘Gujarat model’ benefited the big companies balance sheets and industrial growth rate, but job creation remained chimera – after all, the corporatist policies were indeed aimed at (jobless) growth of corporates!
6.2.2 The 16th national general election, held in early 2014, resulted in a huge victory of the BJP, the party gained an absolute majority and formed a government under the premiership of Narendra Modi, till then BJP Chief Minister of Gujarat province. Indian bankers-industrialists-merchants-big landowners who formed 1% opulent class wanted a stable government which would safeguard their long-term interest of endless accumulation of capital. For that, they needed a commercialised political party which has authoritarian background. BJP was best fit – hence, this class spent billions of Indian Rupees in donation to BJP election fund and provided 100% support in all types of media owned by them for 2014 election campaign. As the Modi government settled down at centre, the ‘Gujarat Model’ was quickly being redesigned keeping entire India in view.
67 years after the partitioned independence, in 2014, the hen has come home to roost! To fulfil political ambitions of few south Asian leaders, the Indian subcontinent was bifurcated. But (truncated) India never publicly or constitutionally accepted that fact that Muslim elites separated in 1947 to safeguard and multiply their wealth and power (not to keep the Muslim population in the newly created country hale and hearty), hence Indian constitution declared secular multi-religious multi-ethnic country. As we look into the break-up of capital-holding 1% opulent class) we note that, 95% belong to upper caste Hindu community. People with personal experience of staying and knowing different regions and provinces of India opine that, this opulent class wanted a sort of ‘official declaration’ that would perpetuate their hold on political POWER and WEALTH. Since 1947 INC or any non-Marxist political party at centre or at provinces could never think anything near to this ‘wish’ of the brute majority of Indian opulent class EXCEPT NARENDRA MODI’S BJP IN GUJARAT. Not even BJP government at centre led by Vajpayee could read the pulse of most of the Indian capitalists. The Indian corporates and the opulent class elites got their messiah in Narendra Modi. Thus, Corporate-state returned to India. Henceforth, the government of India would live for the corporates, work for the corporates and, more importantly, die for the corporates.
And what happened to the 9% upper middle class when their role-model, the 1% opulent class has been busy for manipulating the Indian democratic architecture for perpetuation of their not-so-indirect rule? They merrily chugged along with the 1% – with western education, high-paying salary, decent homes, and motor vehicles the prosperous upper middle class seized the opportunity to increasingly dictate the country’s political economy. Large number of this upwardly mobile and consumerist class of people have close ties with their relatives living abroad, mainly in 5-Eyes countries – this resulted in a notion that English language and western capitalism combination is the way for salvation to achieve prosperity. No wonder that the upper middle class also understood the underlying foundation of the western zionist-capitalist economic system that exploited world-wide colonies for sourcing materials and labour at (almost) no cost for five centuries – Indian opulent class and upper middle class applied same logic in India whereby the 90% population would be sucked dry in order to build the wealth of 10%. Only complete seizure of ‘state institutions’ can provide the power required to achieve such ‘economic miracle’. So the upper middle class was on board for the new journey towards ‘prosperity’.
What has been different in the second coming of corporate-state? So far as the ‘substance’ is concerned, there is no difference at all between English EIC corporate-state and BJP Hindu corporate-state. The dynamics of corporate-state clearly works in a fashion so that all government wings – legislature, executive, and judiciary – work in tandem towards maximisation of benefits of corporate interest and limitless accumulation of profit, and in turn the corporates extend illegitimate benefits to the decision-making persons/entities of government wings. Among many differences of ‘form’ most important ones are:
a) In case of the first appearance of corporate-state in 1769, governance of newly acquired Indian ‘state’ got added as an outer layer of function to the existing core function of corporate business; during the second appearance in 2014, governance of existing Indian ‘state’ acted as the body onto which the corporate business was injected as new blood
b) In case of the first appearance of corporate-state in 1769, foreign capitalists (specifically Anglo-Saxon and Jewish ethnic businessmen) were the most significant gainers while Indian capitalists played the role of lackeys; during the second appearance in 2014, Indian capitalists (specifically Gujarati and Marwari ethnic businessmen) are the most significant gainers while foreign capitalists (specifically Anglo-Saxons and Jewish ethnic businessmen in USA-UK) have been playing supportive role till now
6.2.3 Policy Vectors of Current Corporate-State
This sub-section lists few observations about key stated and unstated policies of BJP, as one could notice during past 6 years.
a) Creation of a virtual reality through print media (newspapers), broadcast media (television), digital media (social networking) which would ‘manufacture’ fake news, fake history, fake glory of fake entities, fake socio-economic parameters, in other words, a forged reality gets created on 24×7 basis by a specially created BJP IT Cell (employing thousands of IT professionals) that manufactures the messages to conform to the RSS-BJP’s social-political-economic-cultural propaganda. This virtual reality is transported to the poor, lower middle, and middle class of population i.e. 90% of population through Indian-owned media as well as USA-based Zionist-capitalist media especially social networking behemoths. Majority of Indians have very little education, who easily fell prey to these deceitful propaganda.
b) Creation of a virtual identity through broadcast media (television), digital media (social networking) through which the people who would come forward to raise voice against misrule and corruption, would be identified as anti-national as against the patriots meaning who would remain silent. BJP IT Cell members using thousands of real and fake accounts in social media would abuse and intimidate any dissident until he/she become silent. Thus, even the leaders of the opposition political parties are silenced by the pro-BJP media houses.
c) Exercise direct control over all key government institutions like bureaucracy, judiciary, and defence by installing RSS-BJP sympathiser at all key positions. Thus, for the first time in independent India, the Supreme Court judgements are being questioned among educated people, or Defence Force issues statements that are overtly political. All checks and balances (there were many, including some which were unnecessary) within governance system has been upturned. Many basic tenet of Indian constitution (‘democratic’, ‘secular’, ‘welfare’, ‘socialist’, ‘justice’ etc.) are being challenged and violated by BJP agenda.
d) Redefine citizenship criterion through a series of self-contradictory bills and amendments whereby all Indian citizens would have to prove through official documents that either their parents took birth and lived in India or they migrated to India due to religious persecution. While it is undeniable fact that illegal immigrants exist in India in large numbers, the same should have been dealt through administrative checking and controlling measures. However BJP utilised the problem of illegal immigrants to redefine the citizenship, which would result in a situation where most of the ST and SC population and many Muslim people won’t be able to furnish required official documents (living under abject poverty they spend all efforts and time to earn livelihood). Suffice to say that ST, SC, and Muslim communities fundamentally remain outcast in the RSS ideological frame of Hindutwa supremacy.
e) Modi government has been systematically using the very large Indian diaspora. The high-profile outreach of Modi himself in Anglo-American countries were/are to achieve certain objectives like – (a) proselytising the ‘hindutwa’ ideology in Hindu community who were/are well established in profession and business, (b) making inroads into top level executives of top Information Technology companies to enlist their committed support to BJP IT Cell, (c) entice the Hindu businessmen for FDI in India either by their business entity or by their Anglo-American associates, (d) donations from wealthy Hindus for BJP party fund.
f) Ostensibly to bring in digital economy by promoting use of digital monetary transactions and by suspending counterfeit currency notes, BJP government suddenly delegitimised use of notes 1000 and 500 denominations by 30 December 2016. To double down BJP government implemented Goods and Service Tax (GST) from 1 July 2017 without appropriate preparedness of infrastructure and training. Result of the ‘pincer movement’ on economy was spectacular – slowly but surely the cash-flow dried up in the unorganised sector of economy which used to provide 87% of employment among working population contributing 52% of value addition in the economy. Indian economy moved backstage instead of marching into digital economy.
A section of small-marginal businessmen is inclined to think that through ‘demonetisation’ and ‘GST implementation’ Modi’s government wanted to marginalise the unorganised sector of economy so that the wealthy businessmen can move into the hitherto uncharted territory of such sectors traditionally cornered by unorganised business – they point out to consumer retail stores, trading of agricultural produces, textile and garments etc. as the proof, where unorganised business took a beating even if sectorial turnover was/is huge, and organised big business stepped in with huge investments. Interestingly, big businesses were present in such sectors even earlier, but they were unable to compete with agile small businesses.
g) Gigantic scale of privatisation of state-owned enterprises (SOE) which couldn’t be even imagined during the era of economic reforms 1991 – 2014. While in the earlier days there would be privatisation of the sick and non-profitable SOEs after carrying out due diligence of assets, 2015 onwards the BJP government targeted handover of even the highly profitable SOEs (in sectors like mining, oil and gas, defence machinery, logistics etc.) and Nation-wide service networks of government (like railways, airlines, telecommunication) to private industrialists at a throw-away price. Being a corporate-state the primary objective is to support the crony capitalists in building their business turnover and profits. Slowly the government would retire into a small shell where taxpayers’ money would be used to run the three wings of governance, and government would have no responsibility or commitment towards welfare of common people of India. This conforms to the more subtle agenda of corporate-state – corporates would provide every possible goods and services that are required to live a daily life in India, and people who can’t afford to pay, will perish.
h) In March 2019, large borrowers accounted for 53% of the total loan portfolio in the banking system, they also represented 82% of the share of gross non-performing assets (GNPA) almost 90% of which is in state owned banks. India’s central bank, Reserve Bank of India has been alarmed that if the top three stressed borrowers failed to repay, the impact will be severe for eight banks in the country. State owned banks found their GNPA at 10.7% of total credit as of March 2020.
A close scrutiny shows a very diabolical game is being played by the corporates. While it was/is normal for businesses to make losses and close down (particularly electricity generation and infrastructure construction sectors performed poorly in India), it is abnormal for businesses to declare bankruptcy en masse when a particular political party is governing at centre. Bad loans written-off in state owned banks:
During the period 2004 to 2013 (both inclusive) Indian Rupees 1.238 trillion were written-off
During the period 2014 to 2019 (both inclusive) Indian Rupees 5.487 trillion were written-off
Bad debt which was still in the books of public sector bank before April 2020 (when additionally covid-19 impacted the economy) would surely be written off within next 2 – 3 years, amount of that future write-off is estimated as more than Indian Rupees 8 trillion. Thus the 1% Indian oligarchs (that includes mainly industrialists and businessmen, ruling party politicians, a section of bureaucrats, a section of professionals in banking and finance) have been siphoning off the public money through systematic collusion after formation of the new corporate-state. No business anywhere on earth can convert loan (a liability amount) directly into cash profit, as it has been happening in corporate-state of India. It reminds us of the loot of the fabulous treasury of Bengal provinces in 1757 by English EIC.
i) Modi government significantly invested in the Asian NATO programme of the zionist-capitalist Deep State led by successive governments of USA-UK-Australia-NZ-Canada. Defence cooperation continue to expand with signing of Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), Communications, Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), and Industrial Security Agreement (ISA). The Anglo-American military industrial complex views India as a promising area for their business growth.
The corporate-state of India under Modi’s BJP would utilize the burgeoning relationship with world order Deep State for – (a) short-term objectives like creating a bargaining power vis-à-vis China for border dispute and vis-à-vis Sri Lanka for autonomy of Tamil population, (b) mid-term objectives like becoming a permanent member of Asian NATO which would propel India to become de facto naval power in the Indian ocean, (c) long-term objectives like becoming a part of extended supply chain for MNCs belonging to primarily, Anglo-American ownership. The long-term objective is the most significant wish of the Indian capitalists for decades – they hardly understand that western societies got saturated in terms of consumerism, it is Asia and Africa where consumption will continue to increase for decades. Indian capitalists could have clocked more robust business benefits by joining the 3+ trillion US Dollar BRI programme of China.
j) The seven decade old border problems with Pakistan (related to erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir province of India) and with China (related to erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir province, and Arunachal Pradesh province of India) acquired a new dimension when Modi government bifurcated Jammu & Kashmir province into two parts – Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, and withdrew special autonomy enjoyed by the erstwhile province. Apparently BJP government wanted to integrate the region with other provinces for free movement of people and capital. There exist another view which suggest that, India wants to strengthen its military posture vis-à-vis Pakistan and China, and the new move on Jammu & Kashmir would facilitate the same.
As I have noted earlier in sub-section 4.2.3, all border problems were creation of British imperialist power, and three Asian countries may either resolve through dialogue or try to resolve by force (which would be too costly for any of these countries). Notwithstanding the USA oligarchy’s pompous statements, there won’t be any tangible support to India if it chooses to fight, USA would be happy to sell the dated military machinery at hefty prices though!
None of the policy trajectories mentioned above address the economic downturn that has been troubling the Corporate-State of India in the wake of demonetisation and GST implementation. It seems nobody in RSS-BJP is bothered about the worst nightmare in India in seven decades with immediate burning concerns like (1) slowing quarterly GDP growth rate 2017 onwards, (2) total debt increase by 38 trillion Indian Rupees in past 6 years while total debt was 53 trillion Indian Rupees as on March’2014, (3) no significant growth in finished goods exports, and (4) highest rate of unemployment in last 45 years among job-seekers of age 15 years and above.
Welcome to BJP’s Hindutwa Corporate-State of India!
7. Conclusion
As I have noted in the ‘introduction’ chapter, South Asian landmass has been very diverse in terms of people and society, as well as much decentralised in terms of political processes. And the discerning readers of ‘The Saker’ website who all are reading this article, must have concluded that even the political entity of ‘partitioned India’ would be very similar to its parent, the Indian subcontinent. Over and above that, widespread and tacit acceptance among the educated Indians about proliferation of (a) corrupt (b) criminal (c) uneducated ‘leaders’ across all non-Marxist political parties, resulted in such an impasse, that it is herculean task for any mainstream political party to steer present India away from being a ‘corporate-state’ into a ‘welfare state’. Only a Marxist political party that TRULY represent the downtrodden 90% of population which has been under repression by the class-caste combined institution for at least one millennium, can lead future India where everyone gets full security of food, education, and employment, and neither ‘developmental’ projects of the oligarchy trample human rights of poor citizens nor the citizens block economically beneficial environment-friendly large projects.
I would like to share couple of distinctly personal thoughts about Indian subcontinent:
Apart from the ruling oligarchy and their policy implementation team in all 3 countries – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh – nobody among 90% common people were benefitted in the long run from the partition of Indian subcontinent. Primarily, small group of 1% oligarch families consisting of bankers-merchants-industrialists-big landlords-politicians-bureaucrats that managed the politics plus economy, by and large, reaped all sorts of benefits during past 73 years from old class-caste institutions;
90% common people in all 3 countries are kept busy with all sorts of divisive issues that were/are created by and sustained by the ruling oligarchy. Fissures along the lines of caste-clan-religion-region-language-education etc. were/are continuously created and publicised to maintain the division among common people so that, they never unite across the country on common economic and political agenda. During past 73 years, time and again real possibilities of mass movement got defeated due to the confusion generated among common people (by the ruling elites cutting across political party lines) using such divisive issues;
More often than not it has been found that after winning an election the political party that come to power don’t bother about the pre-election promises on different aspects; could there be amendment in constitution in the way of inclusion of article/clause whereby the performance of the political party that comes to power would be judged vis-à-vis their election manifesto?
As on date, India is firmly moving on the path of Indonesia model – as it happened in post-Sukarno Indonesia, the 90% population disowned by the State but owned by the Clergy, don’t have opportunity for getting ‘education’ (different from concept of ‘literacy’), and hence don’t go through the pain of realisation that they are being thoroughly screwed from-cradle-to-grave by vote-seeking politician, profit-seeking businessmen, and attendance-seeking clergy (more often than not, these three wings of oligarchy are rolled into one within an elite family where different family members establish themselves in a particular wing – family uses all those wings to accumulate ‘wealth’ and ‘power’ for generations). Only difference in BJP’s India is ‘clergy’ belongs to RSS and not to Muslim fundamentalists as in Indonesia.
Socio-economic as well as socio-political future is uncertain in India, possibilities galore. Future is wide open for the oppressed masses in India to even create revolutionary history, may be through a path that blends Russianrevolution and Chinese revolution or may be through an altogether different path that directly leads towards a community-ownership of all means of production. But that would be only possible if a revolutionary Marxist party crystallises with coming together of Communist splinter groups who still have ideological existence, and all of them relinquish their inhibitions about others, publish a single manifesto based on current realities of India, make a long-term strategy and formulate mid-term plan, educate and unite the oppressed masses without sidestepping the class-caste conundrum. The Marxists have a long way to go. And, for the sake of 90% Indians, they need to embark on the journey afresh.
I would welcome any criticism from readers that is backed by facts and appropriate and correct data analysis. Though I have taken utmost care to present statistics directly from publications by government of India and globally acclaimed institutions, there could still be inadvertent mistakes.
Finally, before ending, I must acknowledge that in many aspects of this lengthy article – the basic hypothesis, and analysis of social-political-economic aspects – my father’s inputs were freely used that he imparted to me during 2006 – 2010 when I used to be informally part of his study-circle.
Reference:
The Cambridge Economic History of India Volume 2
The Corporation that Changed the World by Nick Robins
Class Structure and Economic Growth: India & Pakistan since the Mughals by A. Maddison
Short profile:
By profession I’m an Engineer and Consultant, but my first love was and is History and Political Science. In retired life, I’m pursuing higher study in Economics.
I’m one of the few decade-old members of The Saker blog-site. Hope that this website will continue to focus on truth and justice in public life and will support the struggle of common people across the world.
A nature-lover since childhood, I’m an Indian by nationality with firm belief in humanity.
Editorial : Before we start with Godfree’s news, a short commentary on Pompeo’s attempt to create an type of NATO by way of the QUAD. Plot Spoiler – did not work.
The US administration revived the 2007-2008 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and rebranded it as the U.S.-Australia-India-Japan Consultations Quad. The aim was to turn it into an Asian NATO under U.S. command:
The U.S. State Department’s No. 2 diplomat said Monday that Washington was aiming to “formalize” growing strategic ties with India, Japan and Australia in a forum known as “the Quad” — a move experts say is implicitly designed to counter China in the Indo-Pacific region.“It is a reality that the Indo-Pacific region is actually lacking in strong multilateral structures. They don’t have anything of the fortitude of NATO, or the European Union,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun said in an online seminar on the sidelines of the annual U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum.
The end of this meeting was disappointing for Pompeo as he could not even break through to a joint statement. It is not that Mr Pompeo’s diplomacy failed, it is just that nobody is interested any longer.
MK Bhadrakumar, a very well known and now retired Indian career diplomat describes the Indian stance on the Quad meeting and the aftermath as well as the ASEAN positioning.
“The heart of the matter is that India has no reason to be the US’ pillion rider. Whatever remained of the US’ exceptionalism is also gone as the world witnesses its pitiable struggle with Covid-19, repeated displays of racism, gun violence, political venality, xenophobia. No wonder, the transatlantic alliance is withering and Europeans are dissociating from the US’ effort to “contain” China.
The US created the ASEAN but today no Asian security partner wants to choose between America and China. The ASEAN cannot be repurposed to form a coalition to counter China. Thus, no claimant against China in the South China Sea is prepared to join the US in its naval fracas with China.
China has resources, including money, to offer its partners, whereas, the US budget is in chronic deficit and even routine government operations must now be funded with debt. It needs to find resources needed to keep its human and physical infrastructure at levels competitive with those of China and other great economic powers.
Why on earth should India get entangled in this messy affair whose climax is a foregone conclusion? No, things should never be allowed to reach such a pass that India needs to tackle a China-Pakistan collusion.”
from Here Comes China and we start with protest in Thailand
[Ed.] As the lead-up to these protests are very similar to those others that we’ve seen, we have to come to conclusions that these are not grassroots, but the flames are fanned by outside influence. I cannot help but consider and speculate that Quad Attempt failure may have kicked off this new attempt at influence.
US efforts to overthrow the Thai government by funding and backing anti-government groups stems from Thailand’s growing ties with China and Washington’s desire to reverse them. China is currently Thailand’s largest trade partner, largest foreign investor, largest source of tourism, largest arms supplier, and a key partner in several major infrastructure projects including Thailand’s rollout of 5G telecommunication technology and a regional high-speed rail network.
Having clearly failed to attract public support since the 2014 coup ousting Thaksin Shinawatra’s sister from power and since 2019 after vowing to reverse the outcome of general elections the opposition squarely lost – protesters have resorted to increasingly violent and confrontational tactics to attract attention and provoke a government response they and their Western media partners want to portray to the world as “crimes” in order to invite wider Western pressure and possibly even intervention.
There are now fears that – having failed to attract public support – the protests will attempt to trigger violence to have their Western media sponsors spin as government-initiated and used as the Western media has in other nations targeted by similar US-backed “soft power” interventions to pressure the Thai government to step down or at the very least sow chaos and clear the way for sanctions and other punitive measures aimed at targeting Thailand’s economy and international standings. The protest leaders have demonstrated extraordinarily poor judgement and leadership throughout their protest campaign – not unlike other US-funded agitators such as in Hong Kong, China. Since their movement is ultimately directed by foreign interests seeking more to agitate China and those doing business with it than actually deliver “victory” to the protesters themselves – the protesters were always seen as expendable – with chaos always more preferable than building a genuine, constructive, and sustainable opposition. –Tony Cartalucci – ATN. [MORE]
To counter some of the Xinjiang propaganda:
Xinjiang received 15 mln visitors during the holiday, up 11% yoy. Tourism revenue during the holiday reached US$1.24 billion U.S. dollars.[MORE]
José Freitas wrote to say that you may have been unable to open Daniel Dumbrill’s Xinjiang links in last week’s issue, so I added more resources from the Qiao Collective and published everything to the web.
Christine Hong’s ‘A Violent Peace’: Race, U.S. Militarism, and Cultures of Democratization in Cold War Asia and the Pacific, arrives at a time when Washington’s Indo Pacific Strategy is driving U.S. political, economic, and military confrontation in the Asia-Pacific, as the culmination of a long process that began in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. A Violent Peace examines how the United States sought to encompass the Asia-Pacific “within the securitized contours of U.S. military empire,” and the responses to that policy by “a range of people’s struggles – black freedom, Asian liberation, and Pacific Islander decolonization.”
Hong focuses her political analysis through the the literary and artistic lens of relevant works by black authors Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, Japanese writer Kenzaburō Ōe, Japanese-American artist Miné Okubo, and Philippine-American novelist Carlos Bulosan.
Following World War II, the United States swiftly expanded its military presence in the region and established and supported reactionary client states. It aimed to roll back socialism and pursue economic, political, and military domination throughout the region. Those goals remain unchanged to this day. As Hong writes: “Understanding the role of U.S. police and war power within the political economy of postwar U.S. ‘democracy’ entails critically revisiting World War II’s structural legacies. How we explain postwar U.S. militarism—its reliance on superior force to achieve political ends in foreign and domestic arenas—depends on our grappling with the transformation of the United States during World War II, a time of Jim Crow, into a boundary-blurring, total-war state, permanently mobilized not only for war abroad but also for war at its very core.”
The United States imposed regional postwar democratization and development based on how it defined those terms. This was a political project that was “realized at the barrel of a gun,” subsuming Asian and Pacific nations into American military and police power projection that encircled China and the Soviet Union.
The U.S. introduced a democratization model that established postwar Japan as an important client state and anchor for the projection of U.S. war power throughout the region. Rehabilitating capitalism and providing opportunities for Western investors were prioritized as goals over meeting the people’s needs, despite the fact that many Japanese urban areas lay in ruins, and the population faced food shortages and mass unemployment.
For U.S. capitalism, a more pressing task than improving peoples’ quality of life was to solidify a system that would serve U.S. power, and the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps “enlisted the Japanese police in routing out labor organizers with alleged Communist Party ties.” This policy planted “the ideological seeds of anticommunist U.S. police actions to come,” including the wars in Korea and Vietnam. “In the dawning Cold War order, wartime allies thereby morphed into peacetime targets whereas former rightist foes in Japan and the region were rehabilitated as linchpins of anticommunism.”
The Marshall Islands served as a sacrificial offering to U.S. nuclear weapons development. The disregard shown by U.S. officials toward islanders is stunning in its inhumanity. Residents of three islands that were downwind from the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test on March 1, 1954 were not evacuated until three days later, by which time their “hair began falling out in clumps” and “their skin displayed burn patterns.” In the view of American officials, U.S. administrative control over the islands trumped the territorial rights of the inhabitants, giving the United States “the right to close areas for security reasons,” as it “anticipated closing them for atomic tests.”
Returning the Rongelapese to their contaminated homes was regarded by American researchers as an opportunity that would “afford most valuable ecological radiation data on human beings.” What better test subjects could there be? As Merril Eisenbud, director of the Atomic Energy Commission’s Health and Safety Laboratory, observed in an internal 1956 memorandum, “While it is true that these people do not live…the way Westerners do, civilized people, it is nevertheless true that these people are more like us than mice.” One may question just who is civilized and who is uncivilized in designating Marshallese people as “model organisms for biomedical study.”
As Marshallese politician Tony deBrum noted, “Some of our people were injected with or coerced to drink fluids laced with radiation. Other experimentation involved the purposeful and premature resettlement on islands highly contaminated by weapons tests to study how human beings absorb radiation from their foods and environment.” Hong observes that in this context, “no Marshallese could sustain the illusion that near-likeness meant an assurance of their humanity.”
Although the Marshallese were routinely denied medical care, U.S. researchers diligently conducted examinations and blood tests to gather data. Noting islander resentment, researcher Robert Conrad suggested that “next trip we should consider giving them more treatment or even placebos.” In a scathing public letter to Conrad in 1975, Rongelap magistrate Nelson Anjain wrote: “There is no question about your technical competence, but we often wonder about your humanity.”
U.S. policy in the postwar Philippines followed a familiar pattern, prioritizing opportunities for Western investors to exploit the land, labor, and natural resources. The United States “installed, most flagrantly in the office of the president, Filipino collaborators with the Japanese” and “secured military basing rights, transforming the Philippines into a launching pad for its anticommunist insurgencies in the region.” Inevitably, leftist guerrillas who had fought against Imperial Japanese occupation discovered that with the advent of peace, they were transformed into “targets of brutal U.S.-backed counterinsurgency campaigns.”
Postwar decolonization in the Asia-Pacific generally failed to free the region’s nations from domination, transferring that relationship from Imperial Japan to the United States. “Having returned in the garb of antifascist liberator,” Hong observes, “the United States erected a formidable extraterritorial garrison state, unleashing catastrophic violence throughout the region and placing the Asian communist opponents of Japanese fascism in its war machine’s crosshairs.”
In contrast to the punishment meted out to erstwhile wartime allies, the United States installed in power many of those who had collaborated with Japanese occupiers, valuing their experience in fighting against liberation movements. Hong points out, “In rehabilitating the empire it succeeded, the Pax Americana, as a military-imperial regime in its own right, strategically gave new life to subfascist figures who had served under the Japanese, thus thwarting the process of decolonization.”
U.S. power abroad is interrelated to issues of class and race at home. As was often the case when American soldiers encountered the local citizenry in Vietnam, there was and is a mirrored pattern at home. In both environments, “racial profiling presumes guilt not just by association but by location, sweepingly conflating racialized humanity with areas where ‘mere presence in a certain place’ is tantamount to a crime.” In that context, people are erased as individuals and incorporated into the category of “perceived threat.”
In the postwar era, the persistence of black exclusion from U.S. society contrasted with the image of inclusion provided through the U.S. military’s desegregation. This “liberal cover of integration, coalition, multiculturalism, and democratization” masked what was mainly “un-visible” to the U.S. domestic population – the “U.S. national security apparatus, military-industrial complex, empire of bases, and permanent war economy.” The military offered a politically equivocal personal emancipatory model that was essentially “extractive and destructive.” The “harnessing of race to the war machine required that racial labor risk its own obliteration” in performing its role in a “lethal agenda geared toward the devastation of distant lifeworlds.” The image of the military’s inclusivity “belied the U.S. war machine’s brute geopolitics and antihumanism.”
Black radical appeals to the United Nations General Assembly, such as W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1947 petition and William Patterson’s 1951 indictment We Charge Genocide, outlined a structural relationship between U.S. domestic and foreign policy, “construing racism within the United States to be the domestic expression of a global pattern of U.S. imperialism.” These appeals fell victim to intensifying Cold War pressures and the unequal power relationship between imperialism and Third World nations. Patterson approached several UN delegations, only to be informed that while they were in sympathy with the appeal, “championing such a petition, no matter how valid, would not be diplomatically prudent.” The United Nation’s human rights program was, and remains so today, inextricably bound with U.S. power. “Any account of black radical human rights as an oppositional politics,” Hong explains, “thus must theorize U.S. dominance in the Cold War system, the very institutional basis for human rights that emerged out of World War II’s ashes.”
U.S. domestic repression against oppositional voices during the Vietnam War, including COINTELPRO, the CIA’s Operation CHAOS, and other repressive mechanisms, blurred the distinction between the home front and war front, unleashing a “national security juggernaut” against “Americans perceived to be enemies.” The methods deployed against activists and organizers “uneasily mirrored, though by no means on the same scale, U.S. strategies of pacification and neutralization in Vietnam.”
Racial counterintelligence aimed to neutralize enemies both at home and abroad. “Predictably,” Hong notes, “each author of black radical human rights petitions to the UN – Du Bois, Patterson, Newton, and Seale – as well as key affiliates like Robeson, would be subjected to counterintelligence investigation.” Hundreds of thousands of American citizens were the targets of investigation and surveillance, while COINTELPRO engaged in burglaries, disinformation programs, and efforts to create discord and conflict within oppositional groups. “The vast military-industrial complex and intelligence apparatus that emerged from World War II paved the way” for police militarization and human rights violations throughout the “U.S. military empire, including at its imperial core.”
In the space of a short review, it is only possible to touch on a few of the book’s themes. A Violent Peace covers a much broader spectrum of topics, from which even the most knowledgeable reader will find much to learn. Christine Hong has written a profound and multilayered analysis of the U.S. military’s role in the postwar Asia-Pacific, and its relationship to militarized repression at home. Enriched by a deeply sympathetic understanding of black and Asian oppositional voices, Hong’s book exposes the reality behind comforting myths about the American democratization mission.
With great eloquence, she draws insightful connections between race, class, and power, while vividly demonstrating how the expansion of U.S. power into the Asia-Pacific in the postwar era has led to the world we live in today. Deeply considered and thought-provoking, A Violent Peace is essential to understanding our current predicament. [AMAZON]
Cover Art : A 75-minute bidding battle broke out as collectors competed to acquire Ren Renfa’s
Five Drunken Princes Returning on Horseback,
a late 13th / early 14th scroll from the Yuan dynasty. Over 100 bids pushed the final sale price to US$39,555,000, well beyond the pre-high estimate of US$15,484,000. The sum establishes the scroll as the most valuable work sold at auction in Asia in 2020, and the most valuable Chinese ink painting sold by Sotheby’s Hong Kong. Ren’s masterpiece was already highly prized duringf the Ming dynasty, in the words of painter Zhang Ning (1426-1496), “Black, Yellow, Red, White, and Mottled Horses. Every horse is worth a thousand taels of gold.”
Selections and editorial comments by Amarynth. (Go Get that newsletter – it again is packed with detail).
Washington D.C, October 08 (KMS): The principle of ‘right of self-determination’ and its applicability to the 72-year-old Kashmir conflict needs to be considered during the 75th session of the Fourth Committee of the United Nations General Assembly that is taking place between October 08 to November 10, 2020 at its headquarters in New York. The committee will discuss and deliberate the issues related to international conflicts and decolonization. What I do hope to offer is an unstarry-eyed view of the fate of self-determination in Kashmir; and, the indispensability of convincing the United Nations that international peace and security would be strengthened, not weakened, by resolving the Kashmir conflict to the satisfaction of all parties concerned.
The self-determination of peoples is a basic principle of the United Nations Charter, which has been reaffirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and applied countless times to the settlement of international disputes.
The concept seems to be as old as government itself and was the basis of French and American revolutions. In 1916, President Wilson stated that self-determination is not a mere phrase. He said that it is an imperative principle of action and included it in the famous 14-point charter. This gave a prominence to the principle. Self-determination as conceived by Wilson was an imprecise amalgamation of several strands of thought, some long associated in his mind with the notion of “self-determination”, others hatched as a result or wartime developments, but all imbued with a general spirit of democracy.
Self-determination is a principle that has been developed in philosophic thought and practice for the last several hundred years. It is an idea that has caused people throughout the world to rise up and shed the chains of oppressive governments at great risk.
Finally, in 1945 the establishment of the UN gave a new dimension to the principle of self-determination. It was made one of the objectives, which the UN would seek to achieve, along with equal rights of all nations. Article 1.2 of the Charter of the United Nations reads: “To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.”
From 1952 onwards, the General Assembly of the UN adopted a series of resolutions proclaiming the right to self-determination. The two most important of these are resolution 1514 of 14 December 1960 and resolution 2625 of 24 October 1970. Resolution 1514 was seen almost exclusively as part of process of decolonization. 1514 is entitled: Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
International Court of Justice considered the several resolutions on decolonization process and noted: “The subsequent development of International Law in regard to non-self governing territories as enshrined in the Charter of the UN made the principle of self-determination applicable to all of them.” This opinion establishes the self-determination as the basic principle for the process of decolonization.
The principle of self-determination in modern times can be defined as the right of peoples to determine their own political status and pursue their own economic, social and cultural policies. Self-determination in its literal meaning or at a terminological level also implies the right [of a people] to express itself to organize in whatever way it wants. A people must be free to express their will without interference or threat of interference from a controlling authority. This includes alien domination, foreign occupation and colonial rule.
Although, the applicability of the principle of the self-determination to the specific case of Jammu and Kashmir has been explicitly recognized by the United Nations, it was upheld equally by India and Pakistan when the Kashmir dispute was brought before the Security Council. Since, on the establishment of India and Pakistan as sovereign states, Jammu and Kashmir was not part of the territory of either, the two countries entered into an agreement to allow its people to exercise their right to self-determination under impartial auspices and in conditions free from coercion from either side. The agreement is embodied in the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, explicitly accepted by both governments. It is binding on both governments and no allegation of non-performance of any of its provisions by either side can render it inoperative.
It is apparent from the record of the Security Council that India articulated the principle, accepted the practical shape the Security Council gave to it and freely participated in negotiations regarding the modalities involved. However, when developments inside Jammu & Kashmir made it doubt its chances of winning the plebiscite, it changed its stand and pleaded that it was no longer bound by the agreement. Of course, it deployed ample arguments to justify the somersault. But even though the arguments were of a legal or quasi-legal nature, it rejected a reference to the World Court to pronounce on their merits. This is how the dispute became frozen with calamitous consequences for Kashmir most of all, with heavy cost for Pakistan and with none too happy results for India itself.
By all customary moral and legal yardsticks, 23 million Kashmiris from both sides of the Ceasefire Line (CFL) enjoy a right to self-determination. Kashmir’s legal history entitles it to self-determination from Indian domination every bit as much as Eritrea’s historical independence entitled it to self-determination from Ethiopian domination.
India’s gruesome human rights violations in Kashmir also militate in favor of self-determination every bit as much as Yugoslavia’s human rights violations and ethnic cleansing created a right to self-determination in Bosnia and Kosovo. Kashmir’s history of social and religious tranquility further bolsters its claim to self-determination every bit as much as East Timor’s history of domestic peace before Indonesia’s annexation in 1975 entitled it to self-determination in 1999.
If law and morality are overwhelmingly on the side of Kashmiri self-determination, then why has that quest been thwarted for 72 years? The answer is self-evident: the military might of India. India is too militarily powerful, including a nuclear arsenal, and too economically mesmerizing to expect the United States, the United Nations, NATO, or the European Union to intervene. The United States is reluctant to exert moral suasion or pressure to prod India because it covets more India’s alluring economic markets and collaboration in fighting global terrorism. Further, the size and wealth of the Indian lobby in the United States dwarfs the corresponding lobbies supporting Kashmir.
The world powers need to understand that there is no way the dispute can be settled once and for all except in harmony with the people’s will, and there is no way the people’s will can be ascertained except through an impartial vote. Secondly, there are no insuperable obstacles to the setting up of a plebiscite administration in Kashmir under the aegis of the United Nations. The world organization has proved its ability, even in the most forbidding circumstances, to institute an electoral process under its supervision and control and with the help of a neutral peace-keeping force. The striking example of this is Namibia, which was peacefully brought to independence after seven decades of occupation and control by South Africa; East Timor and Southern Sudan, which got independence only through the intervention of the United Nations. Thirdly, as Sir Owen Dixon, the United Nations Representative, envisaged seven decades ago, the plebiscite can be so regionalized that none of the different zones of the state will be forced to accept an outcome contrary to its wishes.
In conclusion, a sincere and serious effort towards a just settlement of the Kashmir dispute must squarely deal with the realities of the situation and fully respond to the people’s rights involved in it. Indeed, any process that ignores the wishes of the people of Kashmir and is designed to sidetrack the United Nations will not only prove to be an exercise in futility but can also cause incalculable human and political damage.
Srinagar, October 11 (KMS): In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the medical experts have said that after struggling through two consecutive sieges since August, 2019, the territory has been pushed to the limit in its mental health crisis.
The health experts said on 5th August 2019, when the Indian government unilaterally repealed the special status of IIOJK and imposed a strict military siege, it instilled distress among most of the residents, especially women and children.
“We are now going through the worst and the darkest phase of the mental health situation,” said a Kashmir-based doctor from at a govt-run hospital, who wished not to be named.
“There is an immense rise in the number of cases of depression, anxiety, stress, and trauma. Any doctor in Kashmir, whether a psychiatrist or not, will tell you the same.”
Dr Junaid Nabi, consultant psychiatrist at the Department of Psychiatry of Government Medical College in Kashmir, said: “For more than 30 years, the state of the mental health situation in Kashmir has been bad, but due to the back-to-back sieges, anxiety and distress increased massively.”
He added that psychiatric patients faced difficulties in accessing healthcare and medicine since last year and women and children were particularly hard hit.
“In our society, females are a part of the interdependent family structure,” he explains. “The closure of schools for so long led to anger issues among children and also parents. Among women, symptoms of depression and somatic symptom disorder are on the rise.”
Health officials say most people are not truthful about their experiences because of taboos. “We see around 300-400 patients with depressive symptoms every day but due to stigma, most people do not seek help,” says Nabi.
Surveys conducted in Kashmir by various international organisations show that the territory had continuous human rights abuses, including killings, torture, blinding of youngsters, imprisonments, and everyday humiliation of citizens, leading to social and economic deterioration.
In 2015, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) concluded that 45 percent of the total population in the occupied territory has significant symptoms of mental distress. “Nearly half of all adults showed symptoms of mental distress. 41 percent…showed signs of depression, 26 percent showed signs of anxiety and 19 percent showed probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),” according to its independent study.
On 28 August 2020, Indian forces in Srinagar opened fire with “pellet guns” on a peaceful religious procession. More than forty people were wounded while several were blinded. As usual, Pakistan protested vehemently. As usual, Indians responded on Twitter with triumphalism and aggression — if you don’t want to get shot, they said, don’t come out on the streets. And as usual, the world watched in silence.
It was not always so. India first started using pellet-firing shotguns against the Kashmiris in 2010 but the matter only hit international prominence in 2016 when protests following the death of Burhan Wani resulted in thousands of injuries, the blinding of hundreds and the deaths of over 70 people. The Guardian, for example, published a story asking if Kashmir represented “the world’s first mass blinding.” Even Indians were rocked by a viral series of pictures showing the distorted faces of celebrities.
The storm of international condemnation resulted in India scaling back the use of pellet-firing shotguns but not abandoning the weapons. In August 2019, when protests erupted against the revocation of Article 370, the Kashmiris were again dispersed with shotguns. Subsequently, shotgun usage subsided but that was simply because there was an unprecedented months-long lockdown in Kashmir in which people were confined to their houses. But as recent events show, India has not given up on shotguns. They remain India’s weapon of choice to deal with the Kashmiris.
One of the many tragedies of Kashmir is that it often gets subsumed into a larger narrative about the “unfinished business of Partition.” This narrative imposes a geostrategic lens on the issue and leads to a reductive analysis about whether Kashmir belongs to either India or Pakistan, a debate which India then further muddies by trying to paint all Kashmiri opposition as Islamic terrorists, a debate which the rest of the world has long since learned to tune out.
Kashmiris are not just symbols of injustice: they are real people living real lives in terrible pain. They also have rights under international law, rights which are being consistently violated. Irrespective of how the territorial issue of Kashmir is eventually resolved, there is a human aspect to Kashmir which needs to be confronted now. This is not just a dry legal dispute to be debated in textbooks and seminars: India’s ongoing use of shotguns is a war crime.
Indian sources and by extension, many international sources — normally do not use the word “shotgun” to describe the weapons used by Indian forces in Kashmir. Instead, they use the term “pellet gun.” This is a misnomer. The term “pellet gun” is associated with the type of airguns used to shoot balloons at village fairs; that is, guns which fire individual pellets and must be reloaded after every shot. However, the guns used by Indian forces bear no resemblance to such weapons. Instead, Indian forces use standard 12 gauge pump-action shotguns, each of which can be loaded with up to four shotgun shells.
Admittedly, each shotgun shell is in turn loaded with up to 600 pellets. But that, by itself, is no excuse to refer to a deadly weapon as if it was a child’s toy. As Orwell advised many years ago, it is generally better to use plain words. To quote a group of English parliamentarians,”[The phrase ‘shotgun’ may better convey the violence which these weapons embody. These shots can mutilate and blind and have had an impact on hundreds of individuals caught in the crossfire.”
So far as international law is concerned, the position is very simple: there is no legal regime which permits a state to routinely disperse crowds of civilians by firing shotguns at them. This is true whether it is assumed that India has illegally occupied and annexed Kashmir (as per Pakistan), that Kashmir is “disputed territory” (as per the UN Security Council, the UNGA and the OIC); or whether one assumes that Kashmir is an integral part of India (as per the Government of India).
If we start with India’s contention that it exercises undisputed sovereignty over Kashmir, it follows that the Kashmiris are entitled to the full range of human rights afforded to them under international law (including the right not to be shot at random with shotguns). Of course, India may argue that (a) international law is only applicable to the extent enacted into domestic law; and (b) India’s independent judiciary has decided that the use of shotguns for crowd control does not violate Indian law. However, there are certain human rights obligations which cannot be ignored by any state, irrespective of domestic laws and domestic judges. Article 6(1) of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is one such norm and states as follows:
“Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”
The key word here is “arbitrary.” And in this context, it is important to examine the weapon itself which is being used.
The shotguns used by the Indian army are manufactured at the Ordnance factory in Ishapore. Till date, Indian authorities have refused to divulge information about them on national security grounds. However, reports suggest that the guns are crude copies of the American Mossberg 500 series which were originally used in World War 1 for close-quarter combat.
In Kashmir, Indian forces have been using No. 6 (300 pellets of 2.79mm each) and No. 9 (600 pellets of 2.30 mm each) cartridges. For such small pellets the key issue is the distance from which they are fired. If they are shot at a closer range, the pellets do not have time to disperse and instead travel in a high-speed clump behaving almost like a handgun bullet. This makes them incredibly harmful and they can penetrate tissue and even bone, causing serious damage. However, if they are fired from a distance, the pellets disperse haphazardly.
According to the Omega Research Foundation (ORF), an independent UK-based organisation that monitors military equipment, “the spread pattern specified by the pellet manufacturer is so inaccurate that even when security forces use the weapon to target protesters’ legs, pellets are still likely to hit areas of the body above the waist.” According to a spokesman for the ORF, “This weapon should not be used at all. No modification could make its use compliant with international human rights law and standards.”
In simple terms, there is no safe or legal way to use a shotgun for crowd control. At close quarters, a shotgun is lethal. When used from a distance, a shotgun is entirely arbitrary and indiscriminate. Either way, the result is unjustifiable cruelty.
International human rights law on policing and the use of lethal weapons is enunciated most clearly in two documents approved by the UN General Assembly, the Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials (1973) and the Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials (1990). Each of these is now regarded as declaratory of the customary law.
The content of these two documents amounts to basic common sense: that the use of force should be limited to the extent necessary, that it should not be disproportionate, that it should be backed by law and that there should be an effective means of accountability if force is used. In relation to the use of deadly force, these principles require additional care and precision: intentional lethal force can thus only be used if there is an imminent danger of death or serious injury that cannot otherwise be averted. Finally, there is the principle of precaution: that all operations be “planned, prepared, and conducted so as to minimize, to the greatest extent possible, the recourse to lethal force’.
India’s use of shotguns for crowd control fails all of these tests. Shotguns are not just inherently indiscriminate weapons, but India’s usage of them is horrendously cruel. Human beings instinctively shudder when confronted with the prospect of being blinded. One reason why the world banned chemical weapons after World War I is because of the collective trauma of watching blinded soldiers shuffle past, each with their hand on the soldier in front. More recently, an international convention banning the use of blinding laser weapons was promulgated in 1998 precisely because there is a unique revulsion attached to the deliberate blinding of humans.
More importantly, India regularly uses shotguns against crowds even when there is no imminent danger of death or serious injury to Indian forces. In the most recent instance, for example, the people who were fired upon were not even protesting: they were simply taking out a religious procession. There is also no realistic possibility of accountability. Back in 2015, Amnesty International noted that over the previous 25 years, “not a single member of the security forces deployed in [Kashmir] has been tried for human rights violations in a civilian court.”
Finally, there has been no serious attempt by India to develop alternate means of crowd control. A committee was set up to examine such options as far back as 2016 but till date, shotguns remain the preferred option for Indian forces in Kashmir. And India’s insistence that it has no other option is absurd. There is no other country in the world besides India which uses shotguns for crowd control. And even within India, there is no other place besides Kashmir where shotguns are regularly and consistently used for crowd control.
When faced with such queries, Indian defenders retreat to different norms. Kashmir is not a normal civilian area, they argue. It is instead a warzone where Indian soldiers are confronted with an externally fomented Islamist insurgency. In short, they argue, India’s actions in Kashmir need to be judged using the laws of war, not the laws of peace.
But the problem for these defenders is that Indian actions in Kashmir fail even the laws of war.
The precise relationship between international human rights law and the laws of armed conflict is heavily debated. However, there is a broad consensus that the laws of war represent a specialized set of rules which take precedence over international human rights law, but only to the extent there is an actual conflict in terms of the applicability of the two sets of laws. Thus, the mere fact that there is an armed conflict does not by itself negate the applicability of international human rights law. In fact, the ICJ has specifically held that “the right not to arbitrarily be deprived of one’s life [under Art. 6 ICCPR] applies also in hostilities.”
In the case of Kashmir, there is no actual conflict between the two sets of laws. This is because India is not using shotguns to fight militants. Instead, it is using shotguns as a crowd control measure against civilians. The laws of war do not regulate the conduct of normal policing measures or the manner in which local administrations can control otherwise peaceful protests. In fact, to the extent a state is called upon during times of war to perform normal policing functions with respect to a civilian population, it must act in accordance with normal policing procedures. And as already noted, the established norms of policing do not permit states to disperse crowds by firing shotguns at them.
One of the most fundamental principles of the laws of war is the principle of distinction, i.e., that fighting states must always distinguish between combatants and civilians. Even if it is assumed that Kashmir is the site of an armed conflict, that only authorizes the Indian military to use deadly force against combatants, not civilians. Furthermore, the law of armed conflict recognizes a very bright and clear line between the two categories: civilians cannot be attacked in the same manner as combatants “unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.”
Participating in a protest against Indian occupation does not constitute taking “a direct part in hostilities.” That standard is only met when a specific act directly targets military operations or military capacity of a party to an armed conflict and is specifically designed to cause a certain, non-minimal level of harm to that party. Shouting slogans at a march does not qualify as taking a “direct part in hostilities.” Even throwing stones at soldiers does not qualify as taking a “direct part in hostilities.”
Another, equally fundamental principle of the law of armed conflict is the principle of proportionality. In simple words, this principle prohibits attacks against a military objective if the incidental loss of civilian life would be “excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” Even if some people participating in demonstrations are also actively helping Kashmiri freedom fighters, the use of shotguns is still illegal. Indian forces have no way of knowing which protestors — if any — are also active in the Kashmiri resistance. It cannot therefore use weapons which kill, blind, and maim at random.
It is this arbitrary aspect of shotgun usage which is the biggest issue. When an Indian soldier fires a shotgun at a crowd of Kashmiris, the current SOPs stipulate that he should fire from a distance of at least 40-50 metres. At that distance, it is impossible to aim a shotgun with any degree of accuracy: one is only aiming at a mass of people, knowing full well that a certain number of them are likely to die, that a slightly greater number are likely to be blinded, and that an even greater number are likely to be injured. The usage of shotguns for crowd control is thus no different from rounding up protestors and blinding (or killing) an arbitrary number of them.
Collective punishment has a long and inglorious history. The word “decimate” comes from the Roman Army’s tradition of killing every tenth member of a mutinous cohort. Conquering armies in Europe were traditionally allowed three days of pillage after subduing a city while the Mongols preferred to build towers from the skulls of those foolish enough to resist. In more recent times, the Nazis during World War II regularly massacred entire villages in response to the killing of a single German (see, for example, the 1942 killing of 340 Czechs in response to the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich). It is precisely for this reason that collective punishment is clearly prohibited by both the Third and the Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949 as well as the Hague Regulations of 1899 (all of which have been signed and accepted by India).
In theory, India could argue that Kashmir is not an “armed conflict” of the type to which the laws of war apply. However, that debate misses the point: what India has deliberately and consciously adopted as a state policy in Kashmir is so cruel and so inhumane that it would constitute a war crime even if that type of armed conflict existed. Furthermore, international human rights law and the laws of armed conflict do not exist in separate silos. As noted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in the Tadic matter, “elementary considerations of humanity and common sense” mandated that “[w]hat is inhumane, and consequently proscribed, in international wars, cannot but be inhumane and inadmissible in civil strife.”
The Security Council has chosen to remain quiet for many years on Kashmir. But the fact that Kashmir is disputed has nothing to do with the human rights of the Kashmiris. Their human rights are undisputed. And it is time that the international community stopped turning a blind eye to India’s violation of those rights.
United Nations, September 26 (KMS): Pakistan has asserted that the territory of Jammu and Kashmir is not a part of the India – it has never been, nor will it ever be – and that the Indian government is resorting to the worst state terrorism against the oppressed people of Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
Pakistan Mission’s First Secretary, Muhammad Zulqarnain Chheena, said this while delivering the first Right of Reply during the 75th session of the UN General Assembly. He was responding to the false claims of Indian representative that Jammu and Kashmir is India’s “integral part”.
The Pakistani diplomat said, Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir will be free one day. “Jammu & Kashmir is not a part of India: it never was and it never will be. The state of Jammu and Kashmir is an internationally recognised disputed territory as decreed by the Security Council,” he said.
The Kashmir dispute, he said, will be settled as per the will of the people as expressed through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite under the auspices of the United Nations. He said the Kashmiri people have a legitimate right to resist the Indian occupation by all means at their disposal.
The Pakistani diplomat said the Kashmiris’ just freedom struggle cannot be described as terrorism. It is the occupying state which is guilty of terrorism against the occupied people, he pointed out.
Zulqarnain Chheena said, “The Indian right of reply was another shameful attempt to deflect the attention from the real issues. India, however, will not be able to escape accountability for its crimes.”
Indian UN Mission’s First Secretary, Mijito Vinito, in his right to reply following the speech of Pakistan Prime Minister, Imran Khan, had claimed that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral and inalienable part of India and the rules and legislation brought in the territory are strictly internal affairs of India. Vinito had earlier walked out of the hall when PM Imran Khan’s pre-recorded statement was played.
The Pakistani diplomat highlighting the oppression of India in IIOJK said the Kashmiri people have been resolutely facing Indian state terrorism, noting that over 70,000 Kashmiri people have been martyred by Indian troops during past three decades. Moreover, he said, India knows a lot about terrorism, as it has used terrorism against each of its neighbours, its own people and against the innocent people of IIOJK.
Zulqarnain Chheena underlined that India is actively involved in orchestrating, financing and providing logistical support to terrorist organisations like the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan and the Jamaat-ul-Ahraar to target Pakistan from across the border. “India has hired and organised criminal groups located at our western borders to conduct terrorist attacks in Pakistan, especially to disrupt the development of the western and southern regions of my country,” he pointed out.
Making a mention of the Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav, captured by Pakistan, the First Secretary said the Indian intelligence agent had confessed that he was organising and supporting these criminal groups to perpetrate terrorism in Pakistan. He added that Pakistan and entire region face Hindutva terrorism as well.
He said the BJP and RSS extremists continue to espouse the fiction of Akhand Baharat [or Greater India] which represents their desire for a unified sub-continent dominated by the Hindu religion where minorities are either converted to Hinduism or become second-class citizens.
Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission announced on in Constitution Hall on September 17 has ruffled more than a few feathers across the radical left who have been clearly exposed as nothing more than ideological post-truth mobs who are driven by impulses that threaten to tear America down into Civil War. While I am not saying that everything about America’s past is as peachy clean as many Americans, including the President, wish to believe, the fact is that this commission represents an extremely important defense of history and the Constitution itself at a time when it is most needed.
In honor of this effort to fight off the cultural Marxists that have infused twisted narratives into the psyches of citizens for too many decades that profess a view that nothing but hypocrisy and slavery gave rise to America, I would like to do something a bit different. In this short essay, I will shed light on some of the positive traditions of the too-often forgotten America whose Father of Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin, shaped not merely a revolution of 13 independent-minded colonies against the British Empire, but rather a global movement stretching from France, Russia, Poland, Ireland, Prussia, India and Africa!
Without this global perspective and an appreciation for the international array of global patriots who risked their lives for the American cause, then the true heritage of America as a kindred spirit with Russia and China would remain forgotten when it is needed most sitting as we are on the cusp of a new world war.
America’s Revolution as an International Affair
As I laid out in a recent paper “Why Canada Failed the Ben Franklin Challenge of 1776”, Franklin’s sad return to the Continental Congress in New York from Quebec in May, 1776 was one of the few defeats suffered by the statesman. Franklin’s decades of work to bring the French Colony of Quebec into the independence movement was sabotaged by 1) the slavish illiteracy rampant among the peasants of the feudal system inherited from France, and 2) the rampant corruption of the Catholic clergy elite which signed a devil’s pact with the British Empire to keep the peasants locked into the empire. These factors would play into the collapse of the French Revolution in 1789 as we will see shortly.
One month after this failed effort, a four-man committee led by Franklin drafted the Declaration of Independence on July 2nd and made public on July 4th proclaiming:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Although a slave owning degenerate named Thomas Jefferson is sadly given sole credit for this document (fueling the argument of those proclaiming America to be a nation built on hypocrisy), the fact is that the great abolitionist Ben Franklin guided the writing of this document from start to finish. Over 40 corrections to Jefferson’s drafts were made by the old statesman including the erasure of Jefferson’s desired wording of “property” derived from his love of John Locke for the higher Leibnizian idea of “happiness” preferred by Franklin.
Franklin had already fought to unite the colonies for over twenty years beginning with his 1754 Plan of Union at the outset of the French-Indian War adopted by the Albany Congress, but rejected by the individual colonies who were always kept divided amongst themselves. Franklin’s “Join or Die” cartoon had its origins not in 1776, but actually during the battle of 1754 and it was an open secret that the British Elite of the 18th century collaborated closely with French oligarchical families to keep the troublesome colonialists subjugated, and underdeveloped as part of the “balance of power” game of empire.
After Franklin’s July 4, 1776 success, he knew that America’s fate hinged upon his ability to engage the international network of statesmen, and scientists whom he had organized over the course of 40 years and especially since his 1752 discovery of electricity made him an international sensation earning him the title “Prometheus of America”.
This post-1776 phase of his plan took him to France where he was made America’s ambassador in Paris. It was here, that Franklin arranged the French-American Treaty of Alliance of 1778 that turned the tide of the revolution towards the American cause which had zero chance of success before this moment.
Franklin had already organized his allies in Prussia where Friedrich the Great voiced open support for the cause and the great military strategist Wilhelm von Steuben became the Inspector General of the Continental Army providing military drills and modern military techniques to the undisciplined “citizen soldiers” of the USA. The republican Polish military engineer and colonel Tadeusz Kosciuszko served as Brigadier-General in the Continental Army and the young Marquis Lafayette who arrived illegally in America along with other French troops before the 1778 alliance treaty, made invaluable contributions to the cause. Over twenty generals of the Continental Congress were Irishmen, and many led the later efforts to create an Irish revolution in 1798-99.
In his ambassadorial station in France, Franklin met many members of the European intelligentsia- including key Russian figures. Among them included a young woman named Ekaterina Dashkova– the younger sister of Catherine the Great and president of the Russian Academy of Sciences who became friends with the elder scientist and was soon inducted into Franklin’s Philosophical Society (becoming the society’s first woman and first Russian). In turn, Dashkova made Franklin the first American member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1781. It was through these connections that Franklin played a leading role in organizing the League of Armed Neutrality under the helm of Catherine the Great which ensured that vital supplies and arms would make their way from Europe to America without being blocked by British ships. Within the first 12 months, this League grew to include the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, and Prussia. To this day, Russia’s league created the foundations of Maritime law.
Franklin’s French networks had deep connections into India as well, which made themselves felt in the French-Indian alliance of 1780 that saw pro-American Muslim leader Hydar Ali lead thousands of Indian soldiers on a march across Western Ghats where they attacked the strategic British Base of Fort St. George near the Port town of Madras. Ali was supported by French troops on land and sea under the command of Admiral Suffren. Hydar Ali had already defeated the British in 1760 and represented a powerful independence force in India that kept British oligarchs up at night (It would still be many years before Britain would gain control of this “Crown Jewel” of the empire).
During this conflict, Hydar Ali’s forces innovated rockets which decimated British troops, and forced Britain to re-direct over 20% of their naval fleet from fighting in the Americas- this was a vital boon to the French and American forces a world away. Hydar Ali’s son Tipu Sultan even wrote a message to the Continental Congress in 1781 saying: “every blow that is struck in the cause of American liberty throughout the world, in France, India, and elsewhere and so long as a single insolent savage tyrant remains the struggle shall continue.”
America’s flagship of the Continental fleet was named the Hydar Ali in his honor.
In Morocco, the French were able to arrange an important dialogue between Emperor Sidi Mohammed and American officials which saved American shipping from the ravages of Barbary pirates who ruled the coasts of Africa and the Straits of Gibraltar. During the opening of the war, the British made sure to inform these Barbary pirates of American shipping and used these forces against American ships bound for Europe. Sidi Mohammed agreed to supply protection for America’s ships and guaranteed them safe harbor from the Tunisian and Algerian pirates. Soon the Continental Congress had passed an act which called for Franklin to lead a team of negotiators to work out a deal with Morocco and other North African countries.
Although international political chaos and the constant treachery and intrigue within America during its early years resulted in very little progress on this front, it is noteworthy that Morocco was the first nation in the world to recognize America’s independence on December 20, 1777.
Even though Franklin didn’t appear to have any direct contact with the Chinese during this period (who were busy fending off the British Empire’s lusting dogs of the East India Company who were preparing a new phase of Asiatic expansion), Chinese thought did figure prominently in the thinking of Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine. Franklin had published many writings on Confucius from 1737-1757, which shaped many points of wisdom in the Poor Richards Almanac. Writing to a friend in 1747, Franklin stated “Confucius was my example. I followed Confucius”. As Professor David Wang points out, many of his insights into civil administration and law derived from his studies of China. On Franklin’s over arching Confucian world view, Dr. Wang stated:
“Benjamin Franklin’s interest in Chinese civilization was so wide that it included all substances from Confucius philosophy to industrial technologies. Then the question is why Franklin spent so much time and energy on studying Chinese civilization. Franklin believed that “what assurance of the Future can be better founded than that which is built on Experience of the Past?”. Franklin’s strive to draw wisdom from Chinese civilization was based on his belief that China was “the most ancient, and from long Experience the wisest of Nations”. For Franklin, obtaining positive elements from Chinese civilization was important for developing the American way of life.”
While there are many more chapters to this international story, the lesson I wanted readers to come away with is that America was both more than you thought it was and also less than it was meant to be.
According to the intentions of such renaissance men as Franklin, the American cause was never meant to be a “local issue” defined by 13 rebelling colonies, but rather a new age of reason for all mankind.
Kindred spirits across Europe watched in horror as the first European nation to attempt revolution led by Lafayette and other leaders of Franklin’s network (who made the American cause a success) was overthrown by a Jacobin “color revolution”. The noble origins of the June 20, 1789 Tennis Court Oath which kick started the French Revolution were soon lost as a bloodbath (directed by British assets from the Foreign Office) channelled the rage of France’s peasant population against ALL of the elite, corrupt and noble alike, proclaiming “the revolution has no need of scientists”. The sound of the guillotine lopping off the heads of the great revolutionary astronomer/mayor of Paris Jean-Sylvain Bailey and chemist Antoine Lavoisier still resonates as a shame of France. Lafayette only saved his head long enough to end up in an Austrian dungeon for 5 years as punishment for fighting to overthrow hereditary systems and was immortalized in Beethoven’s only opera Fidelio in 1805.
The pro-humanist forces of Europe slowly came undone during the Napoleonic wars which culminated in the 1815 Congress of Vienna and Holy Alliance which re-established “peace” by banning dangerous books, teaching, and art that might awaken revolutionary feelings in the minds and hearts of Europeans. These Orwellian laws were outlined in the Carlsbad decrees of 1819 and ruined more than a few lives of great statesmen and teachers. This story was told in my paper “Kissinger’s Adoration of the 1815 Congress of Vienna”.
During this time, the British Empire came out again as a force of evil preparing a new phase of its global conquest with a crushing of the Hydar Ali spirit in India and a new age of opium wars against China.
In spite of this growing darkness, great poets who dreamed of that better age of reason produced some of the greatest and under-appreciated poetry with Percy Shelley and John Keats leading that movement in Britain, Robbie Burns in Scotland and such figures as Schubert, Heine, Schumann and Beethoven representing this spark in Vienna and Germany. Palmerston-Mazzini’s “Young Europe” anarchist mobs were periodically deployed to disrupt constructive nationalist tendencies throughout this period- laying the groundwork for “color revolutions” of the 20-21st centuries.
Beethoven’s 1824 Ninth Symphony setting Schiller’s great poem an “Ode to Joy” to music was a celebration of that dreamed-of age of brotherhood and creative reason which Franklin devoted his life to accomplishing and which today’s multipolar alliance has again awoken as a potential alternative to an age of darkness, war and collapse facing humanity in the 21st century.
The author delivered a lecture on July 1, 2020 on this topic viewable here:
Srinagar, September 19 (KMS): In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference has said that the admission of killing of three Rajouri labourers by Indian Army in a fake encounter in Shopian vindicates the fact that Indian forces are committing genocide of Kashmiris.
Indian Army had killed three youth during a cordon and search operation in Amshipora area of Shopian on July 18 and passed them on as “unidentified militants”. Days later, the victims were identified by their families through the pictures released by the Indian Army as Imtiyaz Ahmed, Abrar Ahmed and Muhammad Ibrar from Rajouri who had gone to Kashmir Valley in search of work. The army, yesterday, admitted that the youth hailed from Rajouri.
The APHC spokesman in a statement in Srinagar said that Indian forces’ personnel were killing innocent youth in staged encounters in IIOJK to suppress the Kashmiris’ ongoing struggle for securing their right to self-determination. He demanded an impartial investigation into all incidents of killings by the troops in IIOJK through an impartial international agency to bring the perpetrators to book.
The family members of the martyred labourers have demanded capital punishment for the killer soldiers. The uncle of the slain youth, Lal Hussain, in a media interview said that they had three demands; return of the dead bodies, capital punishment for those involved in this fake encounter and rebuttal of remarks that the youth were militants. The Chairman of International Forum for Justice and Human Rights, Muhammed Ahsan Untoo, in his statement said Shopian fake encounter is not the first of its kind but there were thousands of such heinous acts perpetrated by Indian forces in the territory.
Political analysts, Kashmir watchers and observers talking to the KMS over phone from Srinagar while seeking anonymity due to reprisal from the Indian authorities said that the ongoing use of pellet firing shotguns by Indian troops in IIOJK constituted a war crime. They noted that there is no other country in the world except India which uses shotguns for crowd control. And even within India, they added, there is no place where shotguns are regularly and consistently used for crowd control.
The Chairman of Tehreek-e-Muzahamat, Bilal Siddiqi, in a statement in Srinagar termed the implicating of Dr Bilquis Shah, the wife of illegally detained senior APHC leader Shabbir Ahmed Shah, in a false case as a fresh example of political vendetta by the Indian authorities. Jammu and Kashmir Tehreek-e-Wahdat-e-Islami in a statement in Srinagar while reacting to the economic package announced by the Indian authorities for IIOJK maintained that the Kashmiris were not making sacrifices for perks and privileges but for freedom from India’s illegal occupation of their homeland.
Indian police and troops arrested five youth from Pulwama and Rajouri areas.
Speakers of a webinar organised by Islamabad-based Kashmir Institute of International Relations strongly condemned the Modi-led fascist Indian regime for carrying out systematic human rights abuses in IIOJK. The speakers including British and European parliamentarians, human rights defenders, former diplomats and experts highlighted the plight and unending miseries of the half widows who despite the passage of several years were still wandering from pillar to post to trace the whereabouts of their missing husbands.
Srinagar, September 09 (KMS): Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal, the executive editor of Kashmir Times, in her fresh article has said that journalism in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir has begun to succumb to pressures from the Indian government.
According to Kashmir Media Service, Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal in the article titled “Kashmiri Editors Can’t Use Fear as an Excuse for Their Continued Silence” writes, “When August 5, 2019, descended, with the gagging and muzzling of dissent, newspapers completely lost their voice, even as some continued to be printed in their truncated forms and with content that was out of sync with the existing situation of the time.”
The article further goes as: “Setting aside the arrests, torture and human rights violations, the absence of reporting on the impact of a stringent lockdown on the day-to-day lives of ordinary humans and the devastating blow to the health and education sector was so pervasive, it ended up legitimising the myth of ‘normalcy’ that the [Indian] government was labouring to showcase.”
Referring to the military siege imposed after August 5, last year, she says, “The Valley’s leading newspapers have chosen to keep their publications alive by killing news stories and burying all morals of journalism.”
“When a bevy of newspapers agree to fall in line, without a whimper, the going becomes even tougher for the rest, including weekly and monthly publications as well as freelancers, many of who are courageously struggling to speak out and facing risks;” she added
“It has been a tight-rope walk for media personnel in Jammu and Kashmir, particularly in the Valley, since last year. But despite the logistical impediments of operating without a communication system and in an intimidating climate of partial bans where journalists are criminalised or summoned repeatedly, many brave journalists have resisted all kinds of pressures to ensure that news about Kashmir does not absolutely spiral down the black-hole,” the article said.
Although, the article is lengthy, yet the main chunk is being given as under:
Kashmiri Editors Can’t Use Fear as an Excuse for Their Continued Silence
Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal
Tazia processions during Muharram in Kashmir have rarely been event-free in the last three decades. This year however marked a departure for another reason. As clashes erupted between mourners and the police in Srinagar on the ninth and tenth day of the Ashura on August 29 and 30, teargas shells and pellets were fired, slogans of Azadi were raised and stone-pelting broke the calm of the procession, the local newspapers responded with a conspicuous silence even as the scale of brutality surpassed those of previous incidents.
In the past, claims and counterclaims have been common after processions have gone awry. The recurrent cycle where the police and the locals blame the other for the provocation – effectively reducing the debate of whether police brutality preceded the sloganeering and stone-pelting or vice versa to a chicken and egg story – has come to occupy the columns of local newspapers in recent decades.
This year, the story all but disappeared – interestingly on the day that the world observes as the Day of Enforced Disappearances – instead papered by bold headlines of ‘Religious fervour’ of the Muharram processions. Evidently, many believed that the story didn’t merit any further coverage or was reduced to a footnote.
What was glossed over by the local newspapers, however, was splashed across social media on the evening of August 29 with appalling images of pellet riddled bodies and faces. The story figured prominently in some sections of the national and the international media the next day and was pursued by many others the day after that.
Since last year, particularly after the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill was passed, Article 370 of the constitution was scrapped and a stringent lockdown accompanied the developments, local journalism has been in a state of stupor. While many professionals have struggled to keep the news alive and ward off any attempts to suppress the flow of information despite a communications blockade in place, multiple forms of intimidation and the launching of an Orwellian Media Policy 2020, the Valley’s leading newspapers have chosen to keep their publications alive by killing news stories and burying all morals of journalism.
For over a year, I have grappled with the question of ethics – whether as an editor of the newspaper Kashmir Times, I might be crossing the principled stand of commenting on the content and conduct of ‘rival’ newspapers, and thus held my peace.
But a race driven by purely material considerations is not my line of work. More importantly, when the actions of some affect a trend impacting journalism as a whole – and perilously so – it is important to speak out. In Jammu and Kashmir, the powerful dailies dictate the kind of journalism that the rest are obliged to follow, unless they choose to be out of sync with the rest and face consequences.
When a bevy of newspapers agree to fall in line, without a whimper, the going becomes even tougher for the rest, including weekly and monthly publications as well as freelancers, many of who are courageously struggling to speak out and facing risks.
Notable is the case of the editor of The Kashmir Walla, Fahad Shah, who was summoned by the Cyber Police and twice faced an interrogation for one particular report. I do not intend to take any high moral ground. As journalists, we go about the daily rigours of negotiating multiple challenges, including occupational hazards and deadlines for work, imperfectly. The excessive risks media professionals, particularly Kashmir based editors, are exposed also deserves acknowledgement. But when the very foundational principles of journalism stand compromised, there is a need for introspection. The idea behind writing this article is to initiate this much-needed debate.
Needless to say, it has been a tight-rope walk for media personnel in Jammu and Kashmir, particularly in the Valley, since last year. But despite the logistical impediments of operating without a communication system and in an intimidating climate of partial bans where journalists are criminalised or summoned repeatedly, many brave journalists have resisted all kinds of pressures to ensure that news about Kashmir does not absolutely spiral down the black-hole. The counter to the state’s narrative has made headlines in the national and international media due to their admirable efforts.
Are the pressures more exacting on local media organisations which have largely preferred to remain silent and submit to the powers that be over pursuing ethical journalism? The consideration of advertisements and finances apart, in July 2019, editors of two Kashmir based newspapers were grilled for several days by National Investigating Agency (NIA) as part of an investigation into a case of “terror funding”.
When August 5, 2019, descended, with the gagging and muzzling of dissent, newspapers completely lost their voice, even as some continued to be printed in their truncated forms and with content that was out of sync with the existing situation of the time. Setting aside the arrests, torture and human rights violations, the absence of reporting on the impact of a stringent lockdown on the day-to-day lives of ordinary humans and the devastating blow to the health and education sector was so pervasive, it ended up legitimising the myth of ‘normalcy’ that the government was labouring to showcase.
Even as editors were caught in a situation with a lack of choices, with two essentials vital for the existence of newspapers – local news and political comment – gone, the publications were reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. A year on, while some of this has been salvaged, the readers are judging the newspapers, not on the basis of what was reported but what was not.
The absence of the news on pellet gun injuries becomes an important case study in assessing the state of media in Kashmir and the interplay between journalism and its readers. What disappeared or appeared in a muted form on August 30, after the first day of the brutal crackdown on the Muharram processions, resurfaced, mostly apologetically on August 31, after the newspapers faced a severe backlash from Kashmiris on the social media.
One of the leading dailies, Greater Kashmir, in a report on August 30 titled ‘Ashura Today’, detailed the significance of Muharram procession in the opening paragraphs, and dismissed in two small paragraphs – which figured at the fag end of the report – that “the police used tearsmoke shells at Hamdania Colony Bemina” to disperse the procession leading to “injuries to mourners”. It also added that “The mourners alleged that metallic pellets were also fired on them. A couple of youth sustained pellet injuries.”
The Rising Kashmir blacked out the Muharram procession completely, neither carrying the ‘religious fervour’ associated with it, nor the disruptions to it. The Kashmir Reader published on August 30 dismissed in six small sentences a news item titled, ‘Restrictions in parts of Srinagar to prevent Muharram procession’, barely mentioning some barricades manned by police and CRPF. What was missing on August 30 found a cautious and guarded presence in print the next day. The criticism on social media surrounding the lack of coverage of pellet injuries by local newspapers brought the news into focus the next day, even though the report about the ‘religious fervour marking the 10th day Ashura procession’ dwarfed the violent scenes on the road.
The Greater Kashmir published, on August 31, the news titled, ‘Two dozen mourners injured as police use force to stop Muharram processions in Kashmir‘ and a strap that read, ‘Our men too received injuries: SSP Srinagar’. It said that two dozen mourners sustained injuries from police action and two youth sustained pellet injuries. It went on to mention:
The clashes started after police deployed in huge numbers in Zadibal tried to stop a large procession. The mourners in turn clashed with the police who restored to tear gas shelling and fired pellets. The police also lathi-charged the mourners.”
The rest of the news article (about nine paragraphs) was dedicated to the police version of the events.
The Rising Kashmir, in its edition of August 31, carried the Muharram story titled ‘Amid COVID-19 restrictions, curbs, Ashura observed in Kashmir‘ and straps that read, ‘Clashes reported in Zadibal areas, Police officer among several injured; Rich tributes paid to Hazrat Hussain (RA) and other Karbala martyrs’. The news, an overall round-up of various Muharram processions in Jammu and Kashmir and Kargil, also made a cursory reference to the violent happenings of the day by saying:
“Later in the day, mourners gathered at Kathimaidan and tried to come on the main road in shape of the procession. Police used tear smoke shells and disperse them.
A Police official said that the mourners resorted to stone pelting at Kathimaidan. A Selection Grade Constable Showkat Ahmed (1007/s) from Police Station Soura sustained head injuries.”
The Kashmir Reader on August 31 published a report ‘ Restrictions mark Ashura’ as its second lead story and a smaller box item under it, with a detailed news item titled ‘Mourners hit by pellets in eyes writhing in pain’. The report was based on the version of some eye-witnesses, a doctor, and pellet injured victims including a man who said, “I have forty pellets inside my eyes”.
Last year, the news about a protest in Soura, a locality in Srinagar, where hundreds of demonstrators had occupied a park with banners opposing the ‘abrogation of Article 370’ and an incident of violent clashes between protestors and security forces, was first broken by the BBC within days of the imposition of restrictions.
The Indian government responded to the report with an abject denial. Some Indian and foreign media organisations reported the same, one reported on how young men were using the mosque to mobilise the public in the area. Few others reported about young men being wounded by shotgun pellets and another reported that a young man had jumped into the Jhelum river that flows through the city to rescue himself. Some outlets also reported about cases of those who had been injured by pellet and were refusing to visit hospitals and were being treated by self-trained locality experts working with basic antiseptics and crude blades. The Indian state called these reports fake.
The handful of newspapers being printed from Srinagar maintained silent – they were cautious enough to even avoid reporting on the contested claims of both sides and instead cherry-picked ‘safer’ things to talk about. A contested incident about Kashmir and the controversy surrounding it, that garnered headlines in the foreign and national media, was not considered newsworthy enough in Kashmir.
They got away. Locked up in their homes with no internet connections or phones – probably also without any knowledge of the controversy or the incident – the readers made no public display of their disappointment.
What local newspaper organisations took for granted last year may no longer be possible. The overall shock and sense of fear that germinated last year has begun to wear off. The two days of coverage on the latest spree of pellet gunshots demonstrates that even a slight rebuff from readers and the general public is enough to compel media-houses to stop ignoring local voices and incidents.
This moral policing, however, has limitations. As long as involved readers expect the media to function and seek accountability with positive results, it may be fine. But at what point can this readership activism morph into mob-rage? In the last one decade, Kashmir’s media has dealt with its share of mobs setting newspapers on fire or disallowing selective journalists from entering certain areas on allegations of deliberate blacking out of the news of public protests and campaigns or human rights abuse.
When democratic spaces vanish, the dangers of a venomous and unstoppable mob are enhanced with a probable future of the thin line between reason driven criticism and irrational, vitriolic vengeance blurring. The only thing that can avert such a danger is a responsive media, guided purely by the principle of informing and enriching informed opinion. The realm of fear, real as it is, cannot be used as a perpetual excuse by editors of newspapers to defend their silence.
An unidentified editor of a Kashmir based newspaper was quoted in a report in The Telegraph on August 31, as having said, “the Kashmir dailies were ‘gradually reclaiming the space’ they had conceded last year after the clampdown.”
What can be reclaimed after they chose to turn a blind eye to the horrifying spectacle of over 200 injured men, many being sprayed with pellets on their bodies, faces and eyes?
According to the same report, another editor claimed the newspapers had been discreetly told to give the most extensive coverage to “developmental activities” by the government.
About two months ago, senior Indian journalist Ajaz Rashid, while researching about J&K’s new media policy, asked me whether journalists and editors would be willing to speak freely. I told him I had doubts about the latter. The editors who are part of the Editors Guild of Kashmir haven’t made a murmur as yet, and newspapers are carefully dropping anything that the government would be uncomfortable with. A day later, after trying to speak to some editors, he messaged back, “you were right. Either they don’t speak or speak little but do not want to be identified.”
Resisting what senior journalist Yusuf Jameel calls as the present moment of “Undeclared Censorship” requires not just overcoming fear but also searching for alternate models of revenue, without which the choice is either of ‘silence’ or of struggling to continue in keeping with the true spirit and ethics of journalism, at the risk of sagging circulation, downsized staff, poor quality of production and even the threat of closing down.
When the dictum comes ‘Fall in line or Perish’, the choice is not between survival and persecution, the choice is between saving a business enterprise or journalism which certainly cannot be reduced to a pamphlet fed on advertising.
Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal is the executive editor of Kashmir Times.
Recently, I wrote a short comment in the piece India’s border policies line with Thalassa noting that “India is on the wrong side of history.” It was too “conclusory” a comment deserves to be better explained. So I’d like to take a brief time why I think India is on the wrong side of history in siding with America against China today.
I’d first like to take a larger view of history.
Historical Context
Human history has for the most part gotten better over the last few tens of thousands of years. Our technology has advanced. Our life expectancies have increased. The last 200 or so years have seen the most explosive advances. The pace of scientific and technological advances has created a world beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors.
And if we believe that the human spirit of ingenuity will continue, as there is no reason not to, then the best is still yet to come. 90% of all scientists that have ever lived are alive today. If we can have peace and the world allowed to be free from hegemonic oppression, I’d say the future is bright for the human species.
Unfortunately, ominous dark clouds have hung over the world despite all the positive momentum of history. We live in a time of great paradoxes. Though the world is currently in a “time of peace,” with technologies and economies fast advancing, in relative overall prosperity, sponsored Color Revolutions and civil wars have been unleashed upon many nations, devastating regions from Iraq to Afghanistan to Ukraine to Egypt to Syria to Hong Kong. Economic sanctions have ravaged whole generations of peoples in regions from N. Korea to Turkey to Iran to Venezuela.
WWII by most accounts represents a righteous high point in history. It represents the defeat of the axes of fascism and colonialism. Yet, fascism and colonialism never left us. It got transformed and embedded into our new world.
The more things changed, the more we realize that many things haven’t changed. The poor and disposed of the colonial era are for the most part still poor and dispossessed. Russia is still the target of Western aggression after hundreds of years of antagonism. Even China – the presumed challenger to the West – has not escaped the trajectory of this history. Western powers – with their allies – are now actively scheming and working hard to suffocate China economically and technologically in an attempt to shove it back to a place of perpetual subservience to Western interests.
Some may argue say that Russia and China’s problems are that both had overplayed their hands. Russia had overextended itself in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and crossed the West’s “red line” in Ukraine. China has crossed the “red line” in the S. China Sea, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, etc.
The truth is that it is the West that has crossed the line in Europe, the Middle East and in Ukraine … and in S. China Sea, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang.
India’s Strategic Blunder
It is at this critical juncture that India has decided to pivot toward the West. India is making a gigantic strategic mistake. Here are some reasons why.
It does not make sense to make an enemy of 1.4 billion people. It’s is one thing to fight a border war, but it is quite another to actually join a group of others to contain the development and growth of 1.4 billion people. The wrath and actions coming out of the U.S. against China has been truly surprising and depressing. It is against the basic rights and dignity expressed in the UN charter. Why should India join that chorus? Chinese have no animosity toward the Indian people. However, the Indian populace – fanned by an irresponsible media with much rumors and fake news – has allowed itself to be whipped into a giant anti-China frenzy.
America – and the broader West – will not help India to develop. Many Indians fancy that India – after America decouples from China – will take the place of China and that the West is going to help pull India out of poverty the way it has helped to pull China out of poverty. That is just not going to happen. There are a few reasons for this.
First, America has squandered much of its capital since becoming the sole superpower with its endless wars since the fall of the Soviet Union. America today thinks the world as set up after WWII is set against it, with much of the world leaching off America’s largess. America will have no more of it. Enough has been enough! Never again will America work for another country!!! America now wants the world to serve it, not the other way around. If Indians think America had pulled China out of poverty (Chinese mince at that notion since they believe it is they themselves who pulled themselves out of poverty), they can rest assured America will not be able to do the same for India.
Second, the West has come to see the world not in win-win terms, but in zero sum terms. For a brief while, the West did experiment with some version of win-win globalism. While it infused globalism with its own suffocating ideologies and rules to benefit itself, it did for a while work on a flatter world. In this “flat world,” people the world over get to exchange ideas and goods and services with each other, for each other’s own benefits, all in a win-win fashion. But that period soon ended. It’s not just Trump. It’s the whole establishment and populace. The jealousy by which the West has come to guard their knowhow, markets, and manufacturing resources for Covid-19 vaccines represents just the tip of the ice berg. The West used to think of itself as a shining beacon for the world. It had first rate technology and science that attract the world over to learn and disseminate back to the world. Now, it considers people coming to learn and bring back knowledge as “stealing.” It considers manufacturing abroad as stealing. It considers R&D abroad as “stealing.” Whatever India hopes to get from America and the West, it is not going to be good jobs or know-how. America wants its manufacturing back. It has drawn from China’s rise the (incorrect) lesson that it should never help or allow another power rise. It doesn’t want to depend on China – or anyone else – to make anything but the lowest value items. It becomes suspicious when others make its masks, medical equipment, pharmaceutical products, software, cars, computers, etc. It will think twice, thrice, about ever helping to create a new peer competitor again.
America – and the broader West – is in decline. The West is in decline. There is no doubt about it. The writing is on America’s economic wall – or more accurately, in its Fed balance sheet. An economy cannot go on printing money. An economy cannot stay productive with prolonged low interest rates and paper printing, where the most productive and valuable thing it produces are military weapons. Many people talk about America’s “soft power.” I say B.S. If you take away America’s military, do you think America’s “soft power” will stand on its own? No. America’s “software power” will vaporize. American soft power stands on its military power. And America’s military power stands on the might of its economic power. Recently, that economic power is buttressed in part by China (through trade). But now America no longer wants to rely on faraway lands for anything. Once it starts decoupling from China, it will soon realize how weak it economically is. An economic reckoning will come. Such a inflection point would not necessarily bad for the American people. Stripped of its imperial duties and obligations, Americans can focus on the important things that had made America “America” again. But it means the days of the American Empire are ending. The days of America helping to lift another nation from poverty has long gone.
America – and the broader West – is not capable of negotiation. The West cannot keep any agreement that goes against their interests. When even the slightest of circumstances change, they find a reason to tear up the agreements, with the Iran nuclear deal but one example. Whatever deal India think it is going to get, it is not going to get what it thinks it will get. The relationship will only work song as so India gives up much more than it receives. This is the Western way. Forget about getting a fair deal. Forget about even getting a good deal. India is thinking about forging a long-term deal … I say be realistic. There is nothing special about India that will make the West change. Beggars can’t demand change. The West is not going to change its fundamental ways for you.
India will miss the boat in the rising Asian Century. The engine of the new global growth for the foreseeable future will be China and its surrounding neighbors. No one doubts that. Many ASEAN nations – despite having intractable territorial disputes with China in the S. China Sea – have decided to join China in building a shared future. India too has been invited but it has decided time and time against joining China because of its territorial disputes with China. This is short-sighted. China and India are old sister civilizations that have long interacted with each other. The notion of a straight line fixed territory is a Western concept. When we fixate on boundaries to the exclusion of everything else, we get led down a zero-sum intractable dispute.
China’s “community with shared future for mankind”
China is pushing forward a framework of “community with shared future for mankind” for foreign relations. This is a rejection of both traditional ideological based framework of international relations as well as the cold “realist” approach.
It is a rejection of traditional ideology in the sense it is truly agnostic about what forms of government or other ideologies other nations follow. As Deng Xiao Ping has been quoted to say, “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” It doesn’t matter if you have a left leaning or right leaning, or capitalistic or socialist, or “democratic” or “authoritarian” government, what matters is if you deliver good governance for the people.
It is a rejection of traditional realistic approach because it doesn’t really view might as the end and be all. While China acknowledges cold realism, it also aspires for a new world order that promotes global justice – which can be summarized as true sovereignty of each nation to develop as it chooses for its people.
The way to a stable world then – according to China – is to create an environment where we can raise the water for each other, shelving all conflicts as much as possible. Once everyone is better off enough – hopefully much better off than today – many issues – including territorial disputes – will become much easier to resolve.
Why Shelf Territorial Dispute?
So if we go back to the India and China territorial dispute: sure, the two neighbors can always fight to the death over a piece of territory, but that is missing the forest for the trees. What they need – above all else – is to develop each other’s society, to pull its peoples from poverty, to provide a better future for its people. What they need then is to meet each other somewhere in the middle and to enable each other to cooperate with each other. China’s faith – which should be India’s as well – is that the benefits of cooperation will in the future outweigh – far outweigh – any territorial concession each can make. It will outweigh territorial concessions because the sky is the limit to where each nation can develop.
If you think lifting 800 million out of poverty over 4 decades is amazing, think lifting 1 .4 billion between India and China over the next 4 decades! That’s the kind of vision and possibility we are looking at!!!
The way out of today’s intractable territorial dispute is to shelf it and to focus on things both sides can cooperate on, leaving the problem for a much more prosperous generation to settle on. The important thing is to build a bigger pie for our future generations instead of bickering over today’s limited pie.
Unfortunately India has decided to not only reject that vision, but to ally with U.S. to suppress China’s win-win shared common future from arising.
From China’s view, the world has been held hostage by the West for too long. Too many nations either cannot or do not want to stand up for their right to develop. The cost of standing up to the hegemon just seems too high. Many actually want to work with the hegemony, hoping to for fleeting crumbs of good will and vague rewards, even if it means enabling the hegemon to continue its pillaging and oppression over them.
The human psyche is a strange thing. While human beings have been known to rise to the highest of braveries in defense of justice, righteousness, honor, and faith, they can also be exceedingly weak and feeble. There are too many stories of a man or woman being beaten to death by a criminal, with passive crowds and strangers watching and passing by, doing nothing.
“Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man To Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime.” The world must go beyond taking short-term benefits from the West and learn to fish by themselves. It cannot always beg for a fish scrap here and there. It cannot keep fighting against or sabotaging each other for favors from the rich.
Too many of the areas of the world with territorial conflicts have arisen from their colonial legacy. The China-Indian territorial disputes arose from British colonial legacy (others that come to mind include the Palestinian issue, Cyprus, Kashmir, Pakistan-India animosity, etc.). The world must be able to through this trap to free themselves collectively from their colonial legacy.
The West – despite all its follies – continue to be strong. It has the most wealth, technologies, and strongest military. It can buy allies anywhere around the world. It can bribe and corrupt most governments around the world. But in the long term, it cannot last. The rest of the world must learn to stand up by itself.
Freedom and Development with Strings Attached
As the world currently stand, if nothing major is done, much of the fruits of science and technology will continue to accrue only to a few nations. The U.S. and the “West” has been the undisputed leader across a wide swath of science and technology in the 20th and 21th century. By their actions throughout history and today, we know Western dominance rests exclusively on their scientific and technological prowess. If their ideological prowess, not their technological prowess, is the source of their power, why are they so quick to demand others adopt their ideologies while remaining so protective of their technologies?
I mean … have you wondered why the West would want to shove down the rest of the world’s throat their version of “democracy” and “rule of law” … but get so worked up when others learn from them knowledge about science and technology?
Today, China is the only power capable of challenging all dimensions of the Western grip on of scientific and technological dominance – at least in the foreseeable future. But just as China begins to appear to be a credible competitor or alternative, the West is mounting an all spectrum attack on China to suppress its ability to access technology and markets around the world.
Thus we see that the West’s preaching of “free markets” and “rule-based economy” has always been a mirage. The British demanded “freedom” because they wanted the “freedom” to pillage on their own terms. They know that since they had the best technology and companies, the world is there for their picking if the barriers are broken down. Hence they worked to knock those barriers down!
The U.S. took on their mantle … and demanded “freedom” … too, also for the U.S. to pillage the world on their own terms. But when their dominance is threatened, the veil of “free markets” and “rule-based” trade systems has come down too.
From the Chinese view, the U.S.’s lack of confidence about China’s rise shows how insincere and hypocritical the West has always been about the world. Many Chinese have long seen through the façade of “ideologies,” and “norms” and “rules” masquerading hegemony real politik.
China’s dreams for win-win shared future are not false ideals. After all, it is not completely devoid of precedence. After U.S. helped to rebuild Europe and/or Japan, has the U.S. not received benefits from those regions? Of course! Not only have they contributed to advances in science and technology, they also provided a market for the U.S.
But there is a critical limit about American good will. Europe and Japan were allowed to succeed – but only up to a certain level. The main value of allowing Europe and Japan some prosperity is not in making those regions better off per se. The main value was in using those regions to contain Soviet Union / Russia and China. Europe and Japan understand their roles as subservient powers – and their roles as first lines of containment against Russia and China.
A Disgruntled West
Today, with U.S.’s political system and social fabric deteriorating, the U.S. is going through a fundamental rethink. The U.S. now openly thinks allies like Japan and Europe have been “taking advantage” of the U.S. The U.S. now wants payback. From its allies, it seeks better trade deals and more “protection money.”
And against China, it is on a crusade to stop its development. In China’s view, this is a red line and truly tragic. China believes the fundamental right of every people is the right to develop. It is the right of the U.S. to want to decouple from China. But to try to form an alliance to constrain the growth of 1.4 billion, as it had already with lesser powers such as N. Korea, Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela is to cross China’s fundamental red line.
India is on the wrong side of history because it is siding with a West that is going to such levels to extend its grip on dominating the world. Some time ago, I remember seeing Trump tweet out an edited version of Time’s cover of Trumpism outlasting Trump … lasting “4EVER”! There is an important kernel of truth to that video!
The West has changed. It is now open about wanting to dominate the world through suppression instead of being the light that draws the world.
Painting Itself into a Corner
In wanting to join the Western crusade against China, India too has crossed to the wrong side of history. In the coming multipolar world, India is positioning itself in a place where it will be difficult for it to develop. The capital and knowhow that can flow from a renewed China will no longer flow to India. By rejecting the Belts and Road Initiates and the RCEP, India is decoupling from Asia’s coming century.
Losing all that, but what does India have to gain? India will not be able to tease more territory out of China by playing tough. If India believes it can hang on the disputed territories against China, so too can China hang on to its disputed territories against India. Whatever India thinks it can do against China, China can do the same to India. This should be beyond any doubts!
So no new territories will be gained (or lost) through India’s current posture. What is lost however is the space for cooperation and mutual growth. India’s rejection of strategic cooperation perceived tactical gain is India’s tragic mistake today.
China is strong enough to go along without India if necessary. It is moving full steam ahead with its Belts and Road Initiative, RCEP, CJK, etc. It has formed a formidable relationship with Russia not based on ideology, alliance, political preferences, etc. – but based on building up and emphasizing common interests between two previous competitors. China and Russia will be friends not necessarily because the people “like” each other – although Chinese generally do have overwhelming positive feels toward the Russian people – but because their leaders have worked hard to ensure that they have develop and enhance many overlapping common interests.
A Relationship of Mutual Respect and Shared Common Future
Russia and China represents the sort of respectful, cooperative give and take relationship that China believes will represent the future of man-kind. They will succeed because such thinking not because you either join China or get kicked out on the high way. No, it will succeed because it will create far more than the West’s zero sum approach.
Now, don’t think everything is jolly good between Russia and China. I am sure the leaders have had many “frank” discussions about their differences … often. Historically China and Russia has had many issues. But rather than just hyping up (or burying, which is just as bad) their past, they have chosen to work on cooperating with each – to each other’s mutual benefits.
There is still time for India to join China. For eons China and India have coexisted with each other without a clearly demarcated border. Yes, in our modern world, we all long for clearly defined boundaries. But if that’s not possible, it should not be the end all and be all! Through cooperation, India and China can build a bright, shared future together, notwithstanding the territorial disputes. Now is the time for India’s leaders to decide if petty adventures on the border and allying with a dying hegemon are truly in India’s interest. Will India go down defiant, proud, and loud – but weak, petty, and trapped in the history of time?
Allen Yu is an IP attorney in Silicon Valley, a founding blogger at blog.hiddenharmonies.org, as well as an adjunct fellow at the Chunqiu Institute for Development and Strategic Studies. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a D. Engr., M.S., and B.S. from UCLA Samueli School of Engineering.
Srinagar, September 06 (KMS): In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the Tehreek-e-Wahdat-e-Islami (TWI), a constituent of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), has paid glowing tributes to the government, the people and the Armed Forces of Pakistan on Defense Day and prayed for the prosperity and stability of the country.
The Tehreek-e-Wahdat-e-Islami spokesman in a statement issued in Srinagar said that Pakistan’s brave forces had proved in the 1965 war that the enemy’s numerical superiority did not matter before the spirit of jihad and faith.
He said that Pakistan was the center of hope for the oppressed Kashmiris, fighting against the illegal Indian occupation. He said that Pakistan wanted Kashmiris to get their birthright to self-determination and as a party to the Kashmir dispute, it was providing full moral, political and diplomatic support to the Kashmiris.
The spokesman said that the subjugated Kashmiri people were grateful to Pakistan for its full support to their right to self-determination and for continuing the efforts for settlement of the lingering dispute at the international level.
He said that only a strong, stable and prosperous Pakistan was the guarantor to the freedom of the subjugated Kashmiris from the clutches of India. He said that India at present had done so much for Yazidism in IIOJK but it would only achieve defeat and disgrace.
There was a time when New Delhi was proudly selling the notion of establishing its own New Silk Road – from the Gulf of Oman to the intersection of Central and South Asia – to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Now it looks like the Indians have stabbed themselves in the back.
In 2016, Tehran and New Delhi signed a deal to build a 628-km rail line from strategic Chabahar port to Zahedan, very close to the Afghan border, with a crucial extension to Zaranj, in Afghanistan, and beyond.
The negotiations involved Iranian Railways and Indian Railway Constructions Ltd. But in the end nothing happened – because of Indian foot-dragging. So Tehran has decided to build the railway anyway, with its own funds – $400 million – and completion scheduled for March 2022.
The railway was supposed to be the key transportation corridor linked to substantial Indian investments in Chabahar, its port of entry from the Gulf of Oman for an alternative New Silk Road to Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Upgrading rail/road infrastructure from Afghanistan to its neighbors Tajikistan and Uzbekistan would be the next step. The whole operation was inscribed in a trilateral India-Iran-Afghanistan deal – signed in 2016 in Tehran by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and then Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
The unofficial New Delhi excuse revolves around fears that the project would be slammed with US sanctions. New Delhi actually did get a Trump administration sanctions waiver for Chabahar and the rail line to Zahedan. The problem was to convince an array of investment partners, all of them terrified of being sanctioned.
In fact, the whole saga has more to do with Modi’s wishful thinking of expecting to get preferential treatment under the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, which relies on a de facto Quad (US, India, Australia, Japan) containment of China. That was the rationale behind New Delhi deciding to cut off all its oil imports from Iran.
So far all practical purposes, India threw Iran under the bus. No wonder Tehran decided to move on its own, especially now with the $400 billion, 25-year “Comprehensive Plan for Cooperation between Iran and China”, a deal that seals a strategic partnership between China and Iran.
In this case, China may end up exercising control over two strategic “pearls” in the Arabian Sea/Gulf of Oman only 80 km away from each other: Gwadar, in Pakistan, a key node of the $61 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and Chabahar.
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Tehran, so far, has denied that Chabahar port will be offered on a lease to Beijing. But what is a real possibility, apart from Chinese investments in an oil refinery near Chabahar, and even, in the long run, in the port itself, is an operational link between Gwadar and Chabahar. That will be complemented by the Chinese operating the port of Bandar-e-Jask in the Gulf of Oman, 350 km to the west of Chabahar and very close to the hyper-strategic Strait of Hormuz.
How corridors attract
Not even a Hindu deity on hangover could possibly imagine a more counter-productive “strategy” for Indian interests in case New Delhi backs off from its cooperation with Tehran.
Let’s look at the essentials.
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What Tehran and Beijing will be working on is a de facto massive expansion of CPEC, with Gwadar linked to Chabahar and further onwards to Central Asia and the Caspian via Iranian railways, as well as connected to Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean (via Iraq and Syria), all the way to the EU.
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This game-changing progress will be at the heart of the whole Eurasian integration process – uniting China, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and of course Russia, which is linked to Iran via the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC).
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For the moment, for all its hefty reverberations in multiple areas – upgrade of energy infrastructure, refurbishing of ports and refineries, construction of a connectivity corridor, investments in manufacturing, and a steady supply of Iranian oil and gas, a matter of national security for China – there’s no question that the Iran-China deal is being effectively downplayed by both sides.
The reasons are self-evident: not to raise the Trump administration’s ire to even more incandescent levels, considering both actors are considered “existential threats”. Still, Mahmoud Vezi, chief of staff for President Rouhani, guarantees the final Iran-China deal with be signed by March 2021.
CPEC, meanwhile, is on a roll. What Chabahar was supposed to do for India is already in effect at Gwadar – as transit trade to Afghanistan started only a few days ago, with bulk cargo arriving from the UAE. Gwadar is already establishing itself as a key transit hub to Afghanistan – way ahead of Chabahar.
For Kabul, the strategic factor is essential. Afghanistan essentially depends on overland routes from Pakistan – some can be extremely unreliable – as well as Karachi and Port Qasim. Especially for southern Afghanistan, the overland link from Gwadar, through Balochistan, is much shorter and safer.
For Beijing, the strategic factor is even more essential. For China, Chabahar would not be a priority, because access to Afghanistan is easier, for instance, via Tajikistan.
But Gwadar is a completely different story. It’s being configured, slowly but surely, as the key Maritime Silk Road hub connecting China with the Arabian Sea, the Middle East and Africa, with Islamabad collecting hefty transit funds. Win-win in a nutshell – but always taking into consideration that protests and challenges from Balochistan simply won’t disappear, and require very careful management by Beijing-Islamabad.
Chabahar-Zahedan was not the only recent setback for India. India’s External Affairs Ministry has recently admitted that Iran will develop the massive Farzad-B gas field in the Persian Gulf “on its own” and India might join “appropriately at a later stage”. The same “at a later stage” spin was applied by New Delhi for Chabahar-Zahedan.
The exploration and production rights for Farzad B were already granted years ago for India’s state company ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL). But then, again, nothing happened – due to the proverbial specter of sanctions.
Sanctions, by the way, had been in effect already under Obama. Yet at the time, India and Iran at least traded goods for oil. Farzad B was scheduled to be back on track after the signing of the JCPOA in 2015. But then Trump’s sanctions iced it again.
It doesn’t take a PhD in political science to ascertain who may eventually take over Farzad B: China, especially after the signing of the 25-year partnership next year.
India, against its own energy and geostrategic interests, has in fact been reduced to the status of hostage of the Trump administration. The real target of applying Divide and Rule to India-Iran is to prevent them from trading in their own currencies, bypassing the US dollar, especially when it comes to energy.
The Big Picture though is always about New Silk Road progress across Eurasia. With increasing evidence of closer and closer integration between China, Iran and Pakistan, what’s clear is that India remains integrated only with its own inconsistencies.
Enforced disappearances are a serious problem in almost all regions of the world; however, in the conflict-affected regions like Kashmir the forced disappearance is being used as a political weapon to subjugate and silence the dissenting voices and instill a sense of fear in the society. The region that has undergone intermittent periods of sporadic violence since 1989 continues to be in the whirlwind of state oppression that has led to killings and forced disappearances of innocent Kashmiris by the Indian forces on an enormous scale. Decades’ long conflict had left tens of thousands of Kashmiris dead; more than 7000 bodies of missing persons still lay buried in unmarked and unknown mass graves unearthed in and around the Kashmir valley.
It was almost a decade back, that the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir released an eye-opening report on mass graves in the IoK. The report titled ‘Buried Evidence: Unknown, Unmarked, and Mass Graves made a shocking revelation about the existence of 2,700, unnamed mass graves, containing 2,943 bodies, across 55 villages in Bandipora, Baramulla, and Kupwara districts of Kashmir. “Of these, 87.9 percent were unnamed, 154 contained two bodies each and 23 contained between three to 17 bodies”, the report said adding that the government of India should allow an independent inquiry to ascertain the facts.
Years have passed but family members of enforced disappeared persons still continue to wander from pillar to post trying to exercise their rights to know the whereabouts of their loved ones. Social, psychological, legal, and financial effects of this tragedy of immense proportions have made their lives a living hell. The painful saga of half-widows is yet another off-shoot of this illegal and ignominious practice of enforced disappearance in Kashmir. As per reports the number of ‘half-widows’ in Kashmir are around 2,500. It is feared that the bodies buried in these unmarked graves are of the missing husbands of the half-widows who have been picked up from their homes and disappeared after getting killed in the custody of the Indian army. On July 10, 2008, the EU Parliament passed a resolution lending support for the investigations into the discovery of mass graves and enforced disappearances.
Unfortunately, the Indian authorities are reluctant to acknowledge the very existence of mass graves and to hold an inquiry despite the fact that the State Human Rights Commission in 2009 took a suo moto notice of the report. A special investigation team that was tasked to conduct an inquiry confirmed the presence of 2,730 unidentified bodies buried across 37 sites in the three districts of north Kashmir. Citing lack of technology, expertise, and human resources the Indian government refused to conduct the investigations, even though the European Parliament had offered financial assistance to take it forward. In November 2017, SHRC unearthed 2080 unmarked and unknown mass graves in Poonch and Rajouri district in IoK. Till now there has neither been a probe nor an Action Taken Report from the government.
In Kashmir, more than 8000 – 10, 000 cases of enforced and involuntary disappearances have been reported since 1989. The government of India (GoI), however, had grossly underreported the number of forcibly disappeared persons – something that many victims and rights groups have contested publicly. The GoI puts the number of enforced disappearances at 4,000. This discrepancy in the number has been highlighted by the OHCHR in it’s first-ever report released in June 2018.
Since the early 1990s, rights groups have time and again regretted the rising trend of enforced disappearances in the region urging New Delhi to stop the vicious cycle of violence. But Indian state has miserably failed in bringing to justice the military, paramilitary and police personnel who have been found guilty of abducting civilians, murdering them in fake encounters just to get promotion or cash reward.
Kashmir happens to be the only place in the world where men in uniform are being awarded cash money and gallantry awards for killing innocent civilians. Using civilians as human shields and terrorize and torture people have become a norm; rape has been leveraged as a ‘weapon of war’ by the so-called Indian security forces. During the years of turmoil, many Indian soldiers and even the top-rank officers have been found involved in these heinous crimes but no soldier was ever punished or held accountable.
As per the international law Enforced disappearance is considered a crime against humanity. The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (2010) compels States to fight enforced disappearance in their respective territories. In particular, it affirms the right of individuals to know the fate of their disappeared relatives, and to obtain justice and reparation.
The Indian authorities’ perpetual denial to respect the international law and the fundamental rights of the Kashmiri people is gravely threatening peace and stability in the restive region. It is time that the world should come forward in a big way and compel the Indian state to halt gross and systematic human rights violations in the region.
Tale piece: The world’s inaction would only further embolden the occupying power (India) to escalate its actions with impunity in Kashmir.
Islamabad, August 22 (KMS): As the world observes International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief, today, reports of atrocities in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir and India continue to surface.
A report released by the research section of Kashmir Media Service in connection with the Day, today, maintained that Indian troops are even denying the Kashmiri people their right to observe their religious practices. “India has snatched every right including religious freedom of Kashmiri Muslims. Demographic change in IIOJK is a proof that India targets people because of their faith. Religious minorities are being persistently hounded in India under rogue Modi’s regime. Killing and torture of Indian Muslims in the garb of cow slaughter is a scar on the concept of civilized world. Gujarat massacre in 2002 indicates victimization of Muslims in India,” it said.
The report pointed out that RSS and BJP are using hate campaign as a weapon against Muslims and other religious minorities in India. “There is an alarming rise of Islamophobia across India. Recent anti-Muslim riots in Delhi and Indian Supreme Court’s Babri Masjid verdict are ample proofs that India is becoming increasingly intolerable for Muslims. Religious sites of Muslims, Christians and other minorities in India are being vandalized by Hindutva forces with impunity,” it said.
The report stated that hatred towards religious minorities is at its peak in India and the RSS-backed racist Modi government is using terror as a policy to intimidate religious minorities across the country. RSS-inspired BJP government is planning ethnic cleansing of Muslims through discriminatory laws like Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the National Population Register (NPR), and National Register of Citizens (NRC) it said, adding that Modi’s fascist regime is trampling upon fundamental freedoms of religious minorities in India.
The report maintained that the global community must make sure that voices of victims of violence in IIOJK and across India are heard. World must take practical steps to protect rights of IIOJK people and of India’s religious minorities. Fascist Modi govt must be brought to book for its crimes against IIOJK people and religious minorities in India,” it added.
The report pointed out that the international community has already been warned of the genocide of Muslims in India and IIOJK. Muslims, Dalits and Christians are completely unsafe in India because of their faith, it added.
It is to mention here that the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief is a day designated by the UN for states to step up their efforts to combat intolerance, discrimination and violence against persons based on religion or belief.
Srinagar, August 15 (KMS): Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control and the world over observed the Indian Independence Day, today, as Black Day to convey the message to the international community that they reject India’s illegal occupation of their motherland.
The day was marked by a complete shutdown in the Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Call for the strike was given by the veteran Hurriyat leader, Syed Ali Gilani, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, the Mirwaiz Umar Farooq-led Hurriyat forum and supported by almost all Hurriyat leaders and organizations.
Syed Ali Gilani in a message referring to India’s illegal occupation over Jammu and Kashmir said, a nation that resorts to usurpation and deprives others of their freedoms, loses every right to celebrate its freedom. The APHC spokesman in a statement in Srinagar said that India had no moral right to observe its Independence Day as it had held the people and land of Jammu and Kashmir illegally for the last 73 years through military might.
Meanwhile, the occupation authorities converted the valley, particularly Srinagar, into a military garrison by deploying Indian troops and police personnel in every nook and corner. A cricket stadium at Sonawar in Srinagar where the main function was held was turned into a fortress. Sharp-shooters were deployed on high-rise buildings around the venue. The public movement was constantly monitored through the close circuit cameras and drones. Besides, sniffer dogs and bomb disposal squad were pressed into service. The so-called security was also heightened in other parts of the territory. The authorities also snapped the internet service.
A report released by the Research Section of Kashmir Media Service, today, maintained that the Kashmiris are justified in observing India’s Independence Day as a Black Day as New Delhi is illegally holding Jammu and Kashmir against their will. The report said that Indian troops in their continued acts of state terrorism had martyred 95,649 Kashmiris since January 1989 till date to suppress Kashmir freedom movement. The report said that the troops arrested over 160,630 people during the period. It added that New Delhi is hell bent upon changing the Muslim identity of Kashmir by providing domicile certificates of IIOJK to the Indian Hindus and settling them in the territory.
On the other hand, despite strict restrictions and heavy deployment of Indian troops across IIOJK, people took to the streets and fired firecrackers in Srinagar and many other places across the territory to celebrate Pakistan’s Independence Day, last night. Besides bursting firecrackers, the people on the occasion shouted slogans like “We are Pakistanis, Pakistan is ours”, “Long live Pakistan” and “We want freedom”.
APHC leader, Advocate Devinder Singh Behl, Tehreek-e-Wahdat-e-Islami and various Sikh organisations including Sikh Intellectuals Circle J&K, International Sikh Federation, Sikh Students Federation, J&K Sikh Council and the Sikh Youth of J&K in their statements welcomed the decision of Pakistan government of conferring Nishan-i-Pakistan on veteran Kashmiri Hurriyat leader, Syed Ali Gilani.
In Islamabad, the APHC-AJK chapter organized an anti-India demonstration outside the Indian High Commission while Jammu and Kashmir Right to Self-determination Movement and Ittehad-e-Islami organized a protest outside the National Press Club to mark India’s Independence Day as a Black Day, today. The participants of the events said India has no right to celebrate its Independence Day till it gives the Kashmiris their right to self-determination. Anti-India rallies were also held by the activists of Tehreek-e-Istiqlal Jammu and Kashmir, Refugee Action Committee and Young Mens League in Muzaffarabad.
Angry crowds went on a rampage in the Kaval Byrasandra area of Bengaluru over a Facebook post, shared by P. Naveen, nephew of Akhanda Srinivasa Murthy, a Congress legislator from the Pulakeshinagar area. Violence engulfed parts of India’s “Silicon Valley” last night as protesters and police locked horns.
At least three people died and dozens of people were left injured in the Indian city of Bengaluru on Tuesday night after police opened fire at a mob protesting a “derogatory post” that insulted the Prophet Mohammad [PBUH].
The post is said to have been shared on social media by P. Naveen, nephew of Karnataka Congress state legislator Akhanda Srinivasa Murthy from Pulakeshinagar.
A total of 110 people have been arrested in connection with the violence. The wounded also included 60 policemen, local media reported.
According to media reports, protesters reached police stations to file their complaints against the now-deleted Facebook post.
Naveen claimed that his Facebook account had been hacked and he had no idea about the post that was causing the upheaval.
Demonstrators later gathered in front of the house of Naveen’s uncle and state legislator Akhanda Srinivasa Murthy, located in the city’s Kaval Byrsandra area, and began hurling stones.
Hundreds of cars parked outside were also set on fire, police said.
Photos and videos of the violence have gone viral on social media. Senior Karnataka Congress leader Dinesh Gundu Rao also tweeted about the “horrible situation” last night.
In the midst of the violence, a group of Muslim protesters formed a human chain to protect any attack on Hindu temples in the area in a bid to prevent a further deterioration of the situation.
Sandeep Patil, the Joint Commissioner of Police [Crime], Bengaluru, has revealed to the media that P. Naveen, the nephew of the Congress legislator, has also been arrested.
Karnataka state chief B.S Yediyurappa said strict action would be taken against the guilty people who caused the attacks.
He wrote on Twitter: “The attack on journalists, the police, and the public in the riot last night is unpredictable. The government will not tolerate such provocations and rumors. Strict action against perpetrators is certain”.
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Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control and across the world observe 13th July as Kashmir Martyrs’ Day, every year. The day is commemorated to pay rich tributes to the 22 Kashmiris who were shot dead, one after the other, outside the Srinagar Central Jail by the troops of Dogra Maharaja. The victims had gathered in the jail premises to attend the court proceedings against one, Abdul Qadeer, who had asked the Kashmiri people to defy Dogra rule.
The tension was brewing in the territory since 19th April 1931 when Imam Munshi Muhammad Ishaq was stopped by Dogra police chief, Chowdry Ram Chand, from delivering Eid Khutba (sermon) in the Municipal Park of Jammu. The incident triggered massive demonstrations in Jammu city that continued for many days. Ban on Eid Khutba was followed by the desecration of the Holy Quran at the hands of Dogra troops in Jammu. This outrageous act led to widespread resentment throughout the State.
In Srinagar, people held massive gatherings at historic Jamia Masjid and other mosques, shrines and Imamabargahs to denounce this blasphemy and demanded punishment to the culprits. A youth, Abdul Qadeer, was also part of a crowd, which was listening to the speeches delivered by prominent Kashmiri leaders at one such gathering held in Khanqah-e-Mualla. When the meeting concluded, Abdul Qadeer pointing his finger to the Maharaja’s palace raised full-throated slogans “destroy its every brick”. He was accused of sedition and arrested instantly. Abdul Qadeer was to be tried in the court but due to a large public resentment the court was shifted to the Srinagar Central Jail.
On 12th July, intense public demonstrations were held throughout the city against the shifting of the court to the Central Jail. On 13th July, thousands of people thronged the Central Jail to witness the trial of Abdul Qadeer. As the time for obligatory Zuhar prayers approached, one of the youth stood up and started reciting “Azan”. He was shot dead by the Dogra soldiers and next youth started the ‘Azan’ where it was left by the martyred youth. He was also killed and in the process of completing the ‘Azan’ a total of 22 Kashmiris were martyred, one after the other. This massacre is the blackest chapter in the history of Dogra regime.
Before this wholesale slaughter, the Kashmiris had been facing the worst brutalities of their rulers since the selling of Jammu and Kashmir – with predominantly Muslim population – by the Britain to Dogra dynasty for Rs 75 lac under the Treaty of Amritsar in 1846. The Dogra period is considered to be the worst phase of the Kashmir history on account of cruelties meted out to the Muslims.
13th July 1931 is a significant day due to the fact that it was the first occasion when the Kashmiris rose en masse against the oppression of the Dogra Maharaja.
Indian occupation
The new saga of Kashmiris’ sufferings started after the announcement of the understanding behind the Partition Plan of the Indian subcontinent by the British Government in 1947. Under the Plan, the British India Colony was to be divided into two sovereign states – Pakistan and India. The understanding behind the Partition Plan had given the right to the then Princely States to accede to either of the two countries on the basis of their geography and demography. The Kashmiris had a great feeling to join Pakistan due to their strong geographical, religious and cultural bonds with the country. However, their dream of becoming part of Pakistan was shattered by the landing of Indian Army in Srinagar on October 27, 1947 in total disregard to the Partition Plan that sowed the seeds of the Kashmir dispute. This shows that Kashmir is the unfinished part of the partition of South Asian subcontinent.
The Indian invasion faced stiff resistance from the people of Jammu and Kashmir. They launched a freedom struggle and succeeded in liberating a large part of the State, which is now known as Azad Jammu and Kashmir. The resilience and determination of the Kashmiris pushed India on the verge of defeat, forcing it to approach the UN Security Council on January 01, 1948 and seeking its help to settle the issue. The UNSC through its several successive resolutions called for settlement of the Kashmir dispute through holding of a free and impartial plebiscite to be conducted by the UN. It is a historical fact that India itself had taken Kashmir to the UN accepting it as a disputed territory and promising before the world community to give the Kashmiris their right to self-determination, but these commitments are yet to be honoured.
Mass uprisings
The continued denial of their rights by India compelled the people of the occupied territory to start a massive uprising in 1989. It picked up pace with the passage of time and gave sleepless nights to the Indian rulers. The people rose against the illegal occupation and vowed to continue their struggle till Kashmir’s liberation from Indian bondage.
The Kashmiris’ liberation movement took a new turn in 2008. For the next three consecutive years, thousands of people hit the streets of Srinagar and other major towns on a daily basis. At times, one million protesters were seen on the streets of Srinagar demanding their right to self-determination. The extrajudicial killing of a popular youth leader, Burhan Wani, on July 08, 2016, triggered another mass uprising in the territory. Unfortunately, instead of taking these mammoth anti-India demonstrations in all these years as Kashmiris’ referendum against its illegal occupation of their soil, India responded with brute force, resulting in the killing of hundreds of protesters and injuring of thousands. Since the killing of Burhan Wani, 1,231 Kashmiris had been martyred and 28,066 injured by Indian forces’ personnel till June 30, 2020. As many as 11,050 persons had received pellet injuries and 385 of them had lost their eyesight in one or both eyes.
Modi regime’s assaults
On 5th August 2019, the Narendra Modi-led fascist government repealed the special status of occupied Kashmir and placed the territory under military siege and communications lockdown. After this illegal move, Indian troops have stepped up the killing spree across occupied Kashmir to suppress the uprising and intimidate the Kashmiris into submission. The killing of a 65-year-old civilian, Bashir Ahmed Khan, by Indian troops in front of his 3-year-old grandson in Sopore town in early July 2020 is the glaring example of Indian state terrorism in the occupied territory. Since 5th August, last year, Indian troops had martyred 192 Kashmiris and injured at least 1,326 others by using brute force on peaceful demonstrators till July 05, 2020. The troops had damaged over 935 houses and structures and molested 77 women. Thousands of Hurriyat leaders, political and human rights activists, religious heads, journalists, businessmen, lawyers and civil society members, who were arrested after or before the 5th August 2019, continue to remain in different jails of India and occupied Kashmir.
The Modi regime has also introduced new domicile rules in occupied Kashmir, paving way for the Indian Hindus to get permanently settled in the territory. The basic aim of the move is to convert the Muslim majority into a minority. It has so far issued domicile certificates to over 300,000 Indian Hindus including an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, Navin Kumar Choudhary.
However, the fact remains that the worst kind of Indian brutalities have failed to force the Kashmiris to surrender their just cause and they are determined to carrying forward their freedom movement.
Conclusion
The unparalleled sacrifices rendered by the people of occupied Kashmir in their just struggle during the past several decades have shaken the conscience of the world community, which has started to raise its voice in favour of their rights. The holding of discussion in the UN Security Council on the situation in occupied Kashmir twice within few months in the last over 50 years, the debates in the UK Parliament, the issuance of documents on Kashmir by the European Parliament and two reports by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights highlighting the grave human rights abuses by Indian troops in Kashmir are some glaring examples of this fact. These developments show that the day is not far when India will have no option but to respect the Kashmiris’ aspirations and give them their right to self-determination it had promised several decades ago.
Indian atrocities failed to erase Kashmiris’ love for Pakistan
Srinagar, July 18 (KMS): Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control and across the world will observe the Accession to Pakistan Day, tomorrow (19th July), with a renewed pledge to continue the struggle for freedom from Indian occupation and complete merger of Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan.
On 19th July in 1947, genuine representatives of the Kashmiris unanimously passed the resolution of Kashmir’s Accession to Pakistan during a meeting of the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference at the residence of Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan in Aabi Guzar area of Srinagar. The historic resolution called for the Accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan in view of its existing religious, geographical, cultural and economic proximity to Pakistan and aspirations of millions of Kashmiri Muslims.
The development had come almost a month before the creation of two sovereign states of Pakistan and India under the Partition Plan of the British Indian colony on August 14 and 15 respectively, the same year. As per the understanding behind the Partition Plan, the Princely States were free to accede to either of the two newly established countries. The decision of 19th July 1947 was a testimony to the fact that the people of Kashmir had linked their future with Pakistan. They took the decision of joining Pakistan to protect their political religious, social, cultural and economic rights, as they were well aware of their fate under Hindus who had deep seated animosity for Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir.
Meanwhile, an analytical report released by the Research Section of Kashmir Media Service, today, revealed that over 450,000 Kashmiris have laid down their lives for Jammu and Kashmir’s freedom from Indian occupation and its Accession to Pakistan during the last over seven decades. It said the worst kind of Indian brutalities have failed to wipe out the Kashmiris’ love for Pakistan.
The report said Indian troops in their continued acts of state terrorism have martyred over 95,630 Kashmiris including 7141 in custody since January 1989. It said the troops have subjected over 8,000 Kashmiri youth to custodial disappearance, molested over 11,200 women and destroyed as many as 110,334 houses during the period while thousands of Kashmiris still remain lodged in different jails of occupied Kashmir and India. However, the report added, these atrocities have not been able to force the Kashmiri people to give up their just cause and they are determined to continue their struggle to achieve their cherished goal.
Srinagar, August 15 (KMS): Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control and the world over observed the Indian Independence Day, today, as Black Day to convey the message to the international community that they reject India’s illegal occupation of their motherland.
Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control and across the world observe 13th July as Kashmir Martyrs’ Day, every year. The day is commemorated to pay rich tributes to the 22 Kashmiris who were shot dead, one after the other, outside the Srinagar Central Jail by the troops of Dogra Maharaja. The victims had gathered in the jail premises to attend the court proceedings against one, Abdul Qadeer, who had asked the Kashmiri people to defy Dogra rule.
Indian atrocities failed to erase Kashmiris’ love for Pakistan
