In his Autobiography, Nehru- giving vent to his frustration that the businessmen who had financed Congress had done very well for themselves while leaving people like him to rot in jail- sets out his own, caste based, claim to the leadership of Hindu India. This is still the ideology of the Dynasty which owns the INC.
Consider the following-
To-day (the old culture of India) is fighting silently and desperately against a new and all-powerful opponent— the bania civilisation of the capitalist West.
But Western Capitalism was genealogically related to the Calvinist reformation which was priestly, not mercantile, in origin. The new commercial creed had its roots in a purely religious movement which had come to the conclusion that worldly prosperity was an ' outward and visible sign' of Grace and Election. This was embraced by some Aristocrats as well as working class, Puritanical, dissenters of various types some of whom rose, generation by generation, into the plutocracy.
In Edwardian England- more particularly at places like Harrow & Cambridge- blue blooded noblemen mingled with gilded youth who represented the 'Purple of Commerce'. Small religious groups, like the Jews or Zoroastrians, also contributed to this 'power elite'. The Parsi Baronet and the Jewish Baron might have a belted Earl on their Board of Directors. A clever Jewish barrister rose to become Lord Chief Justice and then Viceroy of India. He was made a Marquis.
This did not mean that Edwardian England was a brash commercial civilization. On the contrary, it was a place where the grandson of a Baghdadi Jew had become a typical fox-hunting country gentleman. This was also true of the Raj. The descendants of Punjabi Lalas or Bengali compradors were posher than the Queen's tits. Like Nehru, they deplored the vulgarity of commerce.
It will succumb to this newcomer, for the West brings science, and science brings food for the hungry millions. But the West also brings an antidote to the evils of this cutthroat civilisation— the principles of socialism, of co-operation, and service to the community for the common good.
An American millionaire who was a pal of Lord Curzon gave the money which funded an Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa. A.O Hume, who helped found the INC, had wanted this to be done twenty years previously. Sadly, the Indians in the INC shared no similar concern with the vulgar business of raising agricultural productivity so that India's malnourished millions might be healthier and stronger.
Socialism, according to Marxian theory, was a more evolved form of Capitalism in which science and technology would be better funded and better applied. It had nothing to do with virtue signaling or sulking in jail or complaining about vulgarity or the supposedly coarsening effect of the erosion of caste distinctions.
This is not so unlike the old Brahman ideal of service,
Religious service. Brahmins were only respected if they were genuinely motivated by the desire to praise and serve God. Hypocritical shebaits and mahants were despised. There were local agitations to displace such hereditary parasites as controlled sacred places so as to gain wealth and power- not to mention illicit sexual gratification. Gandhi's own father had been a follower of a Pushti Marg Mahant whose activities had become notorious because of the 'Maharaj Libel Case' circa 1860.
but it means the brahmanisation (not in the religious sense, of course) of all classes and groups and the abolition of class distinctions.
Vivekananda (who was Kayastha) spoke of the 'Kshatriyaization' of all classes. The industrial proletariat had this martial quality. He, along with Jamshed Tata, wanted an Indian Institute of Science so that the country could rise economically by gaining better industrial technology.
It may be that when India puts on her new garment, as she must, for the old is tom and tattered,
and made out of khadi. Congress still insists its member be 'habitual weavers of khadi'.
she will have it cut in this fashion, so as to make it conform both to present conditions and her old thought. The ideas she adopts must become racy to her soil.
Nehru's ideas involved turning the country into a shithole unable to feed or defend itself. Still, he was for 'brahmanisation'- though this turned out to mean that a guy whose grandfather was Zoroastrian and whose mother was Italian, claims India's throne by reason of being heir, by primogeniture, of Nehru's utterly irreligious and unmeaning Brahmindom.
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