Writing for Scroll, the wholly senile Gurcharan asks-
What is the future of liberalism in India?
The answer is that Liberalism has no future anywhere. The thing is silly.
The country’s rapid progress and liberal economy of the past three decades is being undone by its illiberal tilt, democracy slipping.
The silly man hasn't noticed the rise of AAP which now rules both Punjab and Delhi. How is that associated with 'democracy slipping'?
India is truly a land of ironies.
No. It is an over-populated shithole.
When I was growing up, India was admired for its robust, liberal democracy
Nonsense! It was known to be an over-populated shithole. Then China took down its pants and made fun of its puny genitals. It was only PL480 food from Uncle Sam which prevented mass starvation.
but pitied for its socialist, illiberal economy.
Actually, it wasn't considered too Socialist till after this guy graduated from Harvard. Like its neighbors, India moved in a more Socialist direction in the late Sixties and Seventies.
Today, it is a dynamic, liberal economy
Parts of it are. So what? This had nothing to do with liberalism.
but its democracy is slipping, turning illiberal.
Because Modi didn't get an absolute majority? Or because the Dynasty has got a second wind?
This is happening, paradoxically, when India’s stature has risen in the world and it is considered a democratic bulwark against autocratic China.
Fuck off! Even the US isn't a democratic bulwark against China. It will rise and rise. India will learn to accommodate the dragon so as to concentrate on what really matters to the vast majority of its own people- viz. reservations and who gets to rape whom with impunity.
What does this reversal mean for the country’s future, and, indeed, of liberalism’s future in India?
Meaningless shite means nothing for the future just as it meant nothing in the past.
I became a liberal in my 30s
i.e. the Seventies when the main economic problem was 'cost-pust' stagflation. What was the Liberal solution? Tax based Prices & Incomes Policy? Fuck off. They had none. I suppose you could say Friedman and Hayek were Neo-Liberal. But Pinochet's Chile was welcome to implement their policies.
because I believed in openness, the rule of law and tolerance for others’ views.
Which is why Das's parents took him away from Pakistan. What I still don't understand is why he and his parents didn't settle in America which will always be safer for Hindus than anywhere Muslims or Sikhs predominate? Perhaps America was too racist at that time. Still, it was rich and thus could afford to provide the rule of law- at least for those with money.
What Das does not understand is that without military or economic power, the people of a place will only have openness if this is imposed on them by a conqueror. No country gained military or economic power by being open and tolerant. Eighteenth century Britain was far more intolerant than India. Das's family had to flee their ancestral homes when the Brits left, Suppose they had decided to settle in Sikh dominated Punjab or the Muslim dominated Valley. Then, in the late Eighties or Nineties, they may have had to run for their lives again.
I also learned to be wary of power
because power kept inviting him over for cuppa tea but it would fuck him in the ass instead. After a few years of incessant sodomization Das learned to be wary of such invitations.
– political, religious and economic.
His parents ran the fuck away from Islamic power.
Liberalism offered an ethically responsible order of human progress without excessive dependence on the state.
Only if it could win wars and kill insurrectionists. No political order offers anything save through not just 'excessive' but exclusive dependence on the State for various public goods. It isn't the case that we should only rely on the State for the provision of ICBMs while leaving cruise missile provision to individual households.
It did not surprise me to learn that this philosophy had been the reigning ideology of the world for two centuries as
White peeps took over and ruled brown peeps like my and Gurcharan's ancestors. This meant Hindus like us were safe and could prosper even in Muslim or Sikh or Buddhist dominated areas. Sadly, evil Brits refused to let Japan conquer India and thus it was forced to become independent. Nehru, it is true, presided over a vast ethnic cleansing of Muslims but he made up for it by opening his legs to China. Army and Police are very illiberal. But true fault is that of Hindus who for some reason don't want to take it up the ass from all and sundry.
democracies and free markets had spread around the world and become the only sensible way to organise public life.
Does Das think China is a democracy? Perhaps. He is as stupid as shit. The fact is, the sensible way to organize public life must be different in countries with different traits and previous trajectories.
Today, it is disheartening to find that this idea is under grave threat around the world.
What fucking idea? That China should be democratic? It is obvious that its system of government suits it and has enabled to catch up with the US economically. It is likely to overtake it. India has fallen greatly behind China and there is zero prospect of this ever changing. Why? We are simply a shittier people- or collection of peoples. Perhaps this has to do with the caste system. Or maybe we are simply stupid.
I grew up in the “Age of Hope” when Jawaharlal Nehru was our hero and we were all socialists.
Because your parents ran the fuck away from your ancestral home.
From 1950 to 1990, India offered the most amazing freedom to its people – of life, speech, association, religion and the like – but it refused economic freedom.
Fuck off! People had less freedom than under the Brits. But, to be frank, this was because there was too much freedom under the Brits. What there was too little off was economic development and military preparation.
Das has shit inside his brain. He does not understand that 'economic freedom' is useless. All that matters is productivity. If that goes up- well and good.
Nehru meant well, wanting India to become a more equal society, but the bureaucracy gave him a terrible regulatory system that would crush individual enterprise for two generations.
No. The plain fact is that both Indian entrepreneurs and Indian bureaucrats and Indian politicians were utterly shit. True, some were slightly better than others and free competition may have let the more productive expand at the expanse of the utterly shit. On the other hand, the utterly shit can spend money to fuck up competition. Indeed, that's what happened. Even under the Brits, Parsi entrepreneurs (who tended to be more tech savvy) were lazy. had low productivity & capacity utilization and virtually no innovation. That's why though Japan started to industrialize later, it soon overtook India.
Freedom fighter and veteran politician C Rajagopalchari called it “licence, permit, inspector Raj”.
Which he had contributed to as Premier of Madras even when the Brits were around. Even the Brits could not stop Indians doing rent extraction.
I became a victim of this system.
No you didn't. You were a beneficiary. You had no business sense but your MNC could make an okay profit on its shitty Indian product line. Thus you could be put in charge.
I worked for a company that made Vicks Vaporub. There was an outbreak of flu one year and the sales of Vicks soared. We were happy, having done good for the country
you hadn't. People in rich countries don't use that shit. It is is only darkies in India or Mexico to whom you can sell that shite.
during the epidemic but at the end of the year, a summons arrived from the government, claiming we had broken the law – our production had exceeded the limit authorised in our licence. It was a criminal offence with a potential jail sentence. I appeared for a hearing before a government official who treated me like a criminal. I explained to him that the flu epidemic had resulted in extra demand and we were only doing our duty, keeping store shelves stocked.
You can now see why an MNC might employ a cretin like Das. The fucker genuinely didn't understand he was selling shite to thickos and that this was nothing but a fucking cartel administered by the fucking Government. The man lived in a fantasy land even when he was a corporate stooge.
But the official pronounced us guilty. In the end, the government quietly dropped the case
Cartels should police themselves. Why should the Government have to pay a senior advocate to argue the case?
but I felt sickened by this nightmare. I abandoned socialism to become a “classical” liberal and joined Rajagopalchari’s Swatantra Party.
Which joined up with the Jan Sangh and CPM to form the Janata Morcha which promptly abolished the fundamental right to property
I do not blame Nehru for he did not know any better,
No. He knew that fucking over 'wage good', labor intensive industries would weaken the very industrialists who had financed Congress. Also he wanted to centralize economic power.
reflecting the spirit of his socialist age. But I do blame Indira Gandhi.
Why? She had to break both the Corporates and the Public Sector Trade Unions. Beating and killing people did the trick. Sadly, autocracy is tempered by assassination.
By then, Japan, Korea and Taiwan had risen.
They were in the American camp. India wasn't. Had it been so, there would have been a Communist insurgency which might actually have won.
Instead of emulating their policy of exporting labour intensive manufactures, which turned them into middle-class societies, she did the opposite, tightening controls, and India lost two generations of opportunities for its young.
India could have done what Bangladesh under Ershad did. But, that was the era when Datta Samant was King. What's the point in setting up mills if some Doctor turned Trade Unionist just shuts them down?
Ironically, she justified her policies in the name of the poor but the number of poor doubled between 1950 and 1985.
Because of population growth.
India got its economic freedom in 1991
No. There was some liberalization. Smart Indians moved to where there were no Exchange Controls or availed of round-tripping mechanisms of various sorts.
and went on to become the world’s second-fastest growing economy over the next three decades. It grew at an average rate of almost 6% over the next 30 years, lifting 400 million out of poverty as the middle class expanded from 10% to 30% of the population. India had achieved the liberal dream – a true democracy with a free, dynamic economy.
Productivity went up in some places but not in others. Any version of any 'ism' which isn't raising productivity is bad. Its 'opportunity cost' is too high.
But the past decade has seen the weakening of democracy with the rise of identity politics,
His parents ran away from Muslims eight decades ago. This stupid cunt thinks this is something new those dastardly Hindus have cooked up.
majoritarianism, Hindutva politics and Islamophobia. Critics are being silenced and the discourse on social media has become extremely polarised.
But Muslims aren't running away from India as they did in Nehru's time.
The atmosphere of hate has damaged India’s cherished secular ideal of “sarva dharma samabhav”
But Hindus who want to cherish it may have to run away from more and more of their ancestral land because that will make Das feel better about himself.
– respect for all religions'. There has been no no communal riot on the scale of the Gujarat riots in 2002 or anti-Sikh pogrom in Delhi 1984
there has been no ethnic cleansing on the scale of the Pandits of the Valley. But since they are Hindu, they don't matter.
but there have been many localised incidents of violence, especially against Muslims.
Why did his parents take him and run away from those nice Muslims? Is anybody actually taken in by this virtue signaling cunt?
Still, we can understand why the guy is a Liberal. Bush and Obama killed 1.3 million Muslims. That was very generous of them.
Liberals are partly to blame for this.
They should have insisted Hindus evacuate India and fuck off somewhere else.
Liberalism remains an elite enterprise
This guy confuses idiocy with elite status. There is no liberal 'enterprise' in India.
and the rise of Hindutva is partly a revolt against the English-speaking elite.
This shithead doesn't get that actual English peeps ruled India. Hindutva dates back to their rule.
Moreover, hardly any liberal political leader has had a serious dialogue with tradition,
The Indian Liberal Party was founded by Surendranath Banerjee. Some of its prominent leaders were Tej Bahadur Sapru, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri and M. R. Jayakar. They were as thick as thieves with people like Malviya.
nor sold the ideas of the Constitution.
What is this stupid cunt talking about? The Brits had held plenty of consultations and three fucking Round Table Conferences before passing the 1935 GoI Act from which two thirds of the Constitution was drawn. The Nehru Report, too, was important and it was only accepted after Congress, which included plenty of traditionalists, had thoroughly discussed the matter. The Princes too had a lot of 'Voice'. Das is simply ignorant.
Mohandas Gandhi, alas, died too soon.
Gurcharan Das, alas, is still alive.
He had been able to translate liberal ideas of freedom and equality into the civilisational language of dharma,
Which is why the Muslims voted for Partition.
capturing the hearts and minds of the people.
What about the people from whom this nutter's parents ran away?
But many still believe that the Constitution dropped from the heavens one day and is not theirs.
Literally no one does. Even this shithead isn't that stupid.
My dilemma this Lok Sabha election was that a liberal was neither electable, nor was there hope for a true liberal party – the Swatantra Party had died long ago.
It wasn't Liberal at all. The actual Indian Liberal Party folded before this cunt was born.
Worse, I had no one to vote for. I could not vote for the authoritarian identity politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which was turning our proud democracy into an illiberal one. Nor could I vote for the Congress and the INDIA bloc because I did not trust its populist, statist economics, ever ready to make a false trade-off between growth and equity.
This is silly. A Congress led alliance set the liberalization ball rolling. Manmohan was actually trying to do more off this back in 2012. But it is is easier said than done as the farm protests showed.
In any case, nobody expected INDIA bloc to form a Government. The question in 2024 was whether India would have a coalition government or if the BJP would get a third term on is own.
India may have become a fast-growing economy but it did not create enough jobs.
because productivity is low.
It had failed to create an industrial revolution.
No. Most of its industries have low productivity.
Manufacturing was only 15% of the gross domestic product and manufactured exports less than 2% of world exports. How else would 45% of the country’s workers, stuck in agriculture, rise to do more productive jobs? It would require tough reforms, and I trusted the BJP, not the Opposition alliance, to execute these reforms.
There is a certain amount the Center can do, provided there isn't too great a backlash, but ultimately this is a matter for the States.
The results of the election, however, have given me hope.
Delimitation will go through. Reservations may not be renewed in 2030.
It vindicated the belief of political scientists, Lloyd and Suzanne Rudolph, in the 1980s. They observed that “persistent centrism” is a striking feature of India’s politics.
It persists as a shithole.
India’s social pluralism draws a limit against extreme ideologies.
No. It's being a shithole means there is a limit to the stupid shit it can do.
Moreover, Indians are an argumentative and disobedient lot, economist and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen pointed out,
which is why they obeyed the Brits for a couple of centuries
and this results in an open, liberal temper.
Fuck off! Sycophantic clerks who learn a bit of English may have a temper, but it isn't liberal.
In a land of 330 million gods, no god can afford to feel jealous.
Except Allah. Das's people are highly skilled at running away from that God.
The seed of scepticism was sowed in the famous Nasadiya verse of the Rig Veda, around 1500 Before Common Era, which concluded that human beings may never know the origins of the universe.
Das's daddy said to his wife, 'Let's Nasadiya get our asses outta here before the Muslims turn us into kebabs'. This showed he was a true Liberal
This temper was nourished in the “neti-neti” style of questioning in the Upanishads.
Das's mummy said to his daddy, 'Move your fat arse, neti-neti, or Muslims will turn us into kebabs!
In the epistemological debates on pramana, or knowledge,
sources of knowledge e.g. how to run the fuck away from Muslims.
among competing schools in the Gupta Age, philosophers of all sects concluded that the only true source of knowledge is non-transcendental – perception and inference.
Nope. The orthodox Hindu sects consider Veda the only true, unsublatable, source of knowledge. Christianity and Islam hold exactly the same position with respect to their scripture. It is fucking obvious that both perception and inference don't yield true knowledge. You may see mist on a hill and mistake it for smoke and wrongly infer the trees on that hill are on fire. Gurcharan is as stupid as shit.
These are and other reasons make me optimistic about liberalism’s future in India. History too tends to be cyclical:
Das will run back to Pakistan? I hope so.
if we give up on liberalism, our children will return to it.
Just as, if we give up on sex our non-existent kids will fuck like crazy.
Besides, liberalism is too decent an idea.
The only decent idea this cretin has had concerned not trying to return to the place his parents had fled. He is stupid, but he is Punjabi- i.e. has a survival instinct.
It is still the most sensible way to organise public life
the sensible way to organize public life is to do mechanism design so as to raise productivity. Genuine Liberalism has no problem with this. Das is not a genuine liberal. He is a senile cretin.
and it won't be kept down for too long.
Unless it has to run away from Muslims.
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