Tryst with Destiny — Its Kismet on August 15, 2010

Max Muller said of India, the following eologatary felicitations:

If we were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can bestow—in some parts a very paradise on earth—I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant—I should point to India. And If I were to ask myself from what literature we here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life—again I should point to India.

Thus Great India is now said to be the 78th in international economic-cultural ranking. How pathetic and bathetic is this downhill casualty caused during a span of over 60 years of post- independence governance! This after the great Nehru, powerful Indira, Gandhian Morarji, democratic V.P. Singh plus plus little PMs and finally dubious Dr Manmohan Singh! So a few sceptical posers for developmental researchers.

1. Is it true that an e-mail was sent to pro-US Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, and by Michael Froman, US Deputy NSA? What are its secret pressures?

2. Is it true that Nehru told President Eisenhower we are not international mendicants to make for arms from the US Big Business?

3. Is it true that bhai-bhai China, without scruples, is covertly supporting Pakistan to make it our nuclear rival?

4. Is it true that a secular USA is giving substantial financial support to Islamic Pakistan knowing full well that this foreign resource is likely to be used for buying the latest weapons from the American Big Business in the weapons industry and to be used against India in the J&K belligerency? Brown or White, a US President in the While House, alas, is under MNC pressure and pleasure.

5. Is it true that India to defend itself will divert its hard-earned resources for buying obsolete weaponry from the US Big Business? Victims: poor Indian people and terrorist Taliban. The US Big Business wins!

6. Is it true that we import at high cost agricultural products from the US at the expense of inhibiting our swadeshi agricultural development?

7. Is it true that President Bush who, because of his global terrorist policy and militant Afghan war policy, was a threat to world peace, was embraced by our Prime Minister Singh assuring him that the heart of India is with him? Is it true that India’s Prime Minister had his career as a good economist in India’s RBI, far from socialism and had a career in the World Bank in the US supportive of the World Bank’s privatisation and from there became the highest executive in the democratic socialist republic of India without popular election nominated by Sonia Gandhi? Why is India with its mighty Indian National Congress losing its membership in numbers?

8. Is India a soft State, with its soft colonial politics, jettisoning its constitutional preambular pledge of socialism and secularism?

9. Is India living up to its secular policy when Nehru declared the Muslim League a dead horse but his current successor government has made it a partner in the Central Government? Alas, who will research objectively into these interro-gations before the next nuclear disaster takes place from the Commander-in-Chief of the weak, democratic Islamabad?

10. Is Obama, with a great and glorious global image, somewhat ambiguous in the Indo-Pakistan imbroglio? Be frank Obama: are democratic India and Islamic dictatorship Pakistan of the same value to the US even after
9/11 terrorism?

11. Is India trying to be self-sufficient in agriculture or borrowing to feed its people giving up gram swaraj in favour of the dollar dependencia syndrome with nuclear imports, a catastrophe in the offing?

Our tryst with destiny to wipe every tear from every eye proclaimed stentorian fashion by the then exalted Prime Minister Nehru on August 15, 1947 and the country’s present plight of more tears and more mafias and private riches and social philosophy of capitalism and colonial status with educational and public health fundamental rights under eclipse, at cross purposes with our Preambular pledge of a socialist secular democratic Republic should be promising to every citizen—paraya or prince or wealthy or illthy guaranteed through a class judiciary and pampered legislators. Humanism, compassion and egalitarian mission to the masses in misery escalating daily. A paradox is our current regime, House and judiciary. There are a few Indians in official positions like Sri Sankara Iyer, IMF more loyal to the US Big Business than poor Bharat.

The author, a distinguished champion of human rights and civil liberties, is a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India.