Posted on 11/26/2006 6:37:06 PM PST by nwrep
Empty vessels make the most noise. The adage sums up India's current obsession with showcasing any bit of good news as proof of its march towards super-power status.
Sorry to play party-pooper but this is but a figment of fertile imagination. Sure, India must celebrate a Kiran Desai winning the Booker or Lakshmi Mittal and the Tatas taking on the world of steel.
But they are instances of individual excellence. They have succeeded despite the system, not because of it.
More often than not what are held up as examples of India's arrival are trivial; an Indian becoming Miss Britain becomes a chapter in its 'global success story'.
Never mind if it is of no consequence to the billion people in India. India has even found a nice-sounding phrase to massage its collective, mostly insecure, ego — 'soft power'.
There is no such thing as 'soft' or 'hard' power. You are either empowered or you are not. And the indices that make one a power to reckon with include the economic, social and political.
Whether one likes it or not, the fact is that India is still very much a Third World country. Tuck it away on the inside pages or at the back of the mind, but Indian farmers continue to commit suicide every day, driven to it by an agrarian crisis the government has failed to address.
India has not only made peace with corruption at all levels of public life but also takes perverse pride in it. In what is passed off as a metropolis, basic civic amenities are absent.
It takes candlelight vigils by citizens, not a competent criminal justice system, to force a relook at murder cases. And that only because it happened to involve people in an urban pocket.
Save for the privileged few, most still await India's tryst with destiny. The great Indian project is just about waking up from a slothful slumber.
More power to it. Only let us not get caught up with images of our own making. There are miles to go before we can pop the bubbly.
isn't India's Hinduism, with the caste system that virtually enslaves "untouchables", the country's Achilles heel?
Well, the marketing hype is just that- the hype. Always discount it 98%, if not 120% [be it about india or any other place. It is not place-specific]. Indeed, the more they hype it, the worse it is [civilizational inferiority complex at play]. Rer-phrasing the proverb in the beginning of the post, the empty vessels make more noise, but ones filled with crap make the most.
I think you nailed it. Indians have shown tendencies that you describe above. Also, they sometimes to take excessive collective pride in the achievements of individual Indians who have excelled in other countries, notably the US. While there is nothing wrong with this in general, some Indians do it to such a ridiculous extent that one wonders whether this vicarious living through other fellow Indians is a national malady.
well, is there a market for telemedicine in civilizational psychiatry? I would be sitting at home and issuing the scientifically sounding putdowns, like Dogbert in the cartoon... nice job, if one could get it.
This article is much more interesting if you sound it out in your mind using the voice of Apu from "The Simpsons".
ANYTHING sounds more interesting when heard in Apu's voice. Strangely, Apu is the one successful Indian most Indians don't brag about!!
Only the media hype it up. With lots of competition, the media seizes on any oppurtunity and makes banner headlines of the most trivial news. Ordinary Indians , while proud of the achievements of Indians living overseas, tend to see through the media hype
Well, when ignoramuses equate all Indians to gas station attendants and beggars, merely pointing out the ridiculousness of their arguments doesnt in any manner imply civilizational inferiority complex of any sort. It merely indicates a firm negation of that mode of thought.
Not to mention the fact that this has been fished out of a widely-read INDIAN newspaper, a letter writen to the INDIAN editor of the newspaper, by an INDIAN citizen.
If anything, it only proves India's openness.
We won't hear much of Chinese versions of the same coming out in their national dailies...if one has slipped through the Communist authorities, the criticisers are probably dead, with missing organs.
That's probably because the People's Daily or Xinhua doesn't spend half it's time talking about how Anil from Cleveland winning the spelling bee is a sign of of Indian national greatness.
Or perhaps they had their brains removed after protesting for more freedom, that they no longer think or debate, wot say?
Good article. This is what I have been thinking for years now. So much hype, so little reality. I want India to be a strong, mature power, but it will never be unless it faces the reality of its problems today (namely widespread corruption and severe education lapses in rural India).
Why do you talk about China when nothing in the article and no one else has mentioned it? Doesn't that reflect an inferiority complex? Who gives a damn about China? Why must India's corruption be justified by China's having corruption? Everyone knows that the Chinese government hypes a lot, but it's also common knowledge that most Chinese take what their government says with a grain of salt. On the other hand, a lot of Indians are buying into our media's relentless hype in the last 2-3 years. "India's GDP is growing 10% blah blah blah," but the same media forgets to tell you that in the same year inflation went up 5%. So much for the much ballyhooed 10% growth.
For India to prevail, we must purge the evil elements of our society (corruption, vestiges of caste, illiteracy, poor infrastructure) and embrace whatever positive aspects that other societies may have. Even the positive aspects from Communist China, such as infrastructure and literacy.
What else would create national excellence?
Yes of course, the Chinese are immune to such a mindset.. they merely take pride in the likes of YAO Ming and Michelle Kwan and even Keanu Reaves (lol).. not to mention the constant comparison with Indians about how great their race and people are due to their superior Olympic medal tally.
I never said that the Chinese were immune, but since you brought up the comparison in the first hand, I must say that Indians suffer from this phenomenon to a far greater extent. It's comparing mountains to mole hills.
Obviouslly Yao Ming is highly regarded in China, but thats probably because he nearly single handedly put Chinese basketball on the map and its popularity today in China is in no small part to him. I would wager most Chinese have no idea who Michelle Kwan is (I thought she was Korean for the longest time). I don't think Keanu Reeves is even Chinese.
Speaking of the constant comparisons, it seems to be quite the other way around in that it is the Indians who are always doing the constant comparisons and boasting of their perceived superiority.
From what I seen, Indians dont have any negative views on people of any race. Some ignoramuses make jokes on Africans, but no one has racial supremacistic notions on any one.
India is more like a continent of 56 countries, rather than ONE culture.
China, being an ethnically insular country, with HAN forming an overwhelming majority of 990 million or more, have a more definite notion of racial and ethnic pride.
So, its always you guys who have this tendency to compare yourself with us.. we cant even do so, because we have nothing to do defend nationalistically.
Lets just say I think your views are singularly unique among Indians that I have come to interact with and I'll leave it at that.
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