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I have found western understanding lacking about India, and that extends from mainstream normies to academic intellectuals to even the denizens of the motte. The broad strokes surrounding a current or historical events are observed, and yet they end up with such a lopsided interpretation that makes my jaw drop. That includes both supporters and detractors. Part of it is because India is difficult to understand. It's diverse, it's complex, has a ton of history and just came out of a millennium where the populace's civilizational psyche was shattered. I just cannot stress enough how paradoxical this place is, where you would find extremes of everything. Though complexity in and of itself cannot block understanding, another equally important obstacle is how everything and anything the west learns about India is heavily through its elites.
I do not want to delve much in history, so I will keep it as brief as possible. The way the British operated in the Indian subcontinent was through vassal states(a few were under direct British rule), who were able to keep their titles though lost control of the state. To integrate India into the empire, they went around creating an education system centered around English as the second language to produce anglicized Indians who would serve as intermediary between Britain and India. In Thomas Macaulay, the implementor of this policy in its own words-
Limited educational opportunities meant that the ones who could enroll and receive an education were people with significant wealth or who could save such an amount. The children of the vassal states and elites of the elites would receive their education in the boarding schools modeled after the ones in Britain like Eton College. Eventually they would go on to study in Cambridge and Oxford, and those are the people who end up running India. Numerous leaders of the Indian Independence movement, the civil service, established industrialist all were London educated and by god were they English in tastes, opinions and morals. Especially the English left. No one exemplified this more than our first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. It came no surprise that India after Independence took such a large leftwards turn. One of the more major consequence of this is that holding views closer to the western left became a status symbol among the intelligentsia and the elites.
This group of elites were so cut off from the general populace that their lack of understanding of the Indian society and reckless policies kept backfiring at them. A lot of them well-meaning, the sheer arrogance of their confidence in their intellectual powers resulted in something reminiscent of the Soviet Union's excesses in the 30s. The License Raj which inhibited free enterprise was finally dismantled in the 1990s in face of economic reality and frankly speaking is the best thing that has happened to India since the Independence. But the leftward intelligentsia was able to maintain their control over the elites. Already a status symbol, being Westernized also became an economic necessity when a lot of capital flowing in from the west wanted to capitalize on the country's large English speaking educated labor market.
Why am I telling you all this? Because the most important thing you need to know about India is the huge inferiority complex the Indian identity has. We have baggage, lots of baggage. The last millennia wasn't kind to us, the brutality of Muslim and British rule was horrific and ironically that hangs as an albatross over our heads. I know a lot of people instinctively roll their eyes when they see the word "genocide" but for a lot of Hindus especially and Indians at large that's the feeling the previous millennia evokes. This in addition to the Westernization being a status symbol has resulted in a lot of Indians carrying a huge inferiority complex, especially towards the west. This is the reason for a lot of people in India prizing west as a migration destination in addition to the opportunity. Studying and settling in the west is still an enduring status symbol ever since the British Raj. You guys get most of your information about India from people who have internalized this world view. From this lens, any accomplishment in India must be gauged in comparison to current Western standards and zeitgeist. These are the people who in less flattering terms want to be white and see others without Western tastes, opinion and morals as inferior. Like it or not, these are the people who are primarily providing background information and happenings in the country. And they are just so cut-off from the general populace that there are a lot of things that they just don't understand why.
See I am long on India, and the way this top-level most prompted me to write this wall of the text as he also captured some strokes of reality and building a picture that I know to incomplete. There are loads of problems we face, casteism is still is a major issue, vested interests are blocking reforms and a populace whose ideal is to have job where you have no work and still get paid massive amount of money. But instead of bemoaning of the issues we have, we should consider whether they can be solved or not.
I am long on India because of two things that we have going for us-
A robust democratic system
A fairly competent political leadership
In an unstable world where major powers are dealing with one form of political crises or other, India has been relatively stable. Our inflation has held steady with the debt level under control. Relative to the world, we are in a much better economic position. Diplomacy wise, we are stationed comfortably in neither camp and have maintained our options. Modi, has shown will the will to push reform and is political astute enough to not sacrifice his grip on power for it. I don't see a chance of opposition to defeat him as their policies are just so ridiculously fucking the states that they are ruling (ex HP, Karnataka). I am betting on the fact that the labor and corporate law reforms would be pushed by the current government. If reforms are pushed, I do think that our own standards for not only labor skills and businesses but also behavior would improve.
Nice username, plenty of people from my area serve in the army!
Democracy is what fucked the nation though, Kashmir was stable when jamwals had guns, it is unlivable since then. More than 80 percent of the nation actively hates upper castes. BJP or the RSS are not super competent people either,, miles ahead of everyone else but they are just less evil than other leftists but still super evil. Modi brought back the sc st act and is finance people tax the every loving fuck out of everything
Yes, it is bizarre how wrong most academic here are, Indians genuinely have racial and cultural hangups with regards to the west.
I still stand by my issues with a liberal democracy, the feudal federal structure at least prevents stuff like caste voting blocks from forming, moreover you cannot assign one identity to so many people, I am not calling for the dissoluation of the state or anything, just pointing out that having a democracy is mostly bad because demographics are destiny and they will always vote on the basis of caste, and this zero sum game will have winners and losers.
Also HBD is a big concern, there is a very tiny pool fo smart people here, if you lose them all to singapore then you wont have as smart people in the next generation. Also it is inevitable that one day they will implement hardcore affirmative action in the armed forces, not today but cthullu only swims left.
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