This morning a very dear friend and ex-colleague of mine and I happened to exchange some views on India and China and their relative achievements as a people in contemporary times. This is what my friend wrote to me:
QUOTE: “I strongly believe in (this line of reasoning):
No Kingdom without Army.
No Army without Wealth.
No Wealth without Material Prosperity.
No Material Prosperity without Justice.
(Therefore) My personal opinion is that;
China is practicing all (of the above) except Justice.
India is (practicing) all of the above but none either completely or perfectly. (As a nation, don’t we hence) Need to overcome the weakness ASAP???” UNQUOTE
My friend’s message provoked in me very deep and troubling thoughts about the comparison between China and India … I tried to recall to mind — in a nutshell, of course — everything that I had read about in the history of both India and China and tried to glean from what I little I knew from it, the reasons why India compares rather unfavorably with China in my friend’s estimate. Finally, I could come up with no other response more genuinely felt by me —I tell that to myself — than the one below which I decided I would send him for whatever it was worth … and which, now, I share below with you all, too, my dear readers … again, for whatever it is worth:
“Sir, you are right in the broad point you make — that in the case of India, it seems to be a case of “operation successful, but patient is dying”, and in the case of China, it is a case of “surgery was pretty bloody but the patient, miraculously, has been restored to pink of health”. However, I only wish you had also offered a suggested explanation for why India compares so unfavorably with China in the specific terms that have been framed by you. Let me therefore offer you my own suggestive answer to that important question missed by you.
India in ancient times used to be a knowledge society based on meritocracy alone where members were rewarded purely on basis of true, original achievements, not contrived or imitative ones.
There used to be clarity in our peoples’ minds about what their duty and mission in life were and what level or standards of excellence had to be equaled or exceeded while going about doing their respective duties and obligations, connected with aspiring to earning or deserving outstanding recognition in life.
Historically, we can say that Recognition for Exceptional Achievement did not come to anyone in India on the basis of only birth, caste privilege, community “quota reservations”, political affiliation or family background… or other such kinds of criteria or considerations that we see in play today in our society almost everywhere. Whether it was the Aristocracy or the Proletariat, in historical India, people knew and understood that their place or status in society was founded, clearly and firmly, upon a certain established order of meritocracy … nothing else. One therefore could earn only what one deserved through sheer dint of work and achievement … not through operation of a “socially engineered” scheme of aspirations and entitlement … i.e. not by what one desired. That was the fundamental Dharma that our society used to abide in for many centuries in the past.
All that changed. After Independence our Constitutional values, ideals and priorities changed fundamentally.
In the name of so-called “social levelling” and championing the “remedying of past discriminations and injustices”, and in seeking the utopian goal of “creating equal opportunity for all” in society, our traditional Indian ways of life that depended solely on the value called Meritocracy to create and craft social structures, edifices and matrices— viz.: of individual duties and rights, effort and reward, justice and equity — all of that vanished or got substantially eroded. Today, no direct link seems to exist that people are able to perceive clearly and with which to connect merit with recognition in Indian society.
In China , there is sheer brutality, no doubt, in imposing the Communist social order on the people by the government. But as far as I can see there is no confusion at all in anyone’s mind about how and where meritocracy is placed as a societal value or ethic: It is always being positioned front and centre and high above democracy and even above autocracy. That is why the Chinese nation has succeeded in whatever it has endeavored to do in the last 75 years. Let me hasten to add that I’m not for a moment holding up the Chinese Communist model of governance. I’m only underscoring the element of faith in Meritocracy that is evident in it . I am also drawing attention to the crucial fact that Meritocracy is, plainly and simply, a Value that will brook no ideology or “-ism”. It is an overarching Value that a society can embrace irrespective of its predilection for either this or that political or religious belief-system… At the same time, Meritocracy is a Value that a society can choose to sacrifice , and quite easily too, at the altar of any ideology… just as the history of India tells us she has indeed done.
Take a look at American society at the other end of the comparative spectrum. As we all know, in terms of ideology, American society is the antithesis of the Chinese one. America once used to be a truly democratic meritocracy. That is why it became a great nation of many proud achievements in 200 years. But in the last 50 years, and again in the name of neo-liberal left-wing politics, and in the name of “creating equal opportunity for all”, American society too has been riven by societal divisions of late (with income and wealth-inequalities, in spite of so-called “affirmative action”, being the greatest source of such divisions) and gradually, even there, true meritocracy has suffered a steep fall… And that’s why we all see how the decline of America in many spheres of human activity is beginning to show up.
India once used to be a country ruled by great monarchies through several centuries. But the kings and dynasts, even though they might have been foreigners, understood clearly that no matter what style of governance they adopted, or whatever ideology they preferred (and no matter how many wars they fought amongst themselves), the common cultural trait and basic structure of traditional Indian peoples would always reserve a very high place and a very high value upon Meritocracy. Thus, the rulers ensured that they, or their administrations and governing policies, did nothing to upset or disrupt in any way the delicate social stratification and social ethic or order that had been already in-built into the very fabric of society… that same fabric, in fact, out of which the peoples themselves, for centuries, had stitched and had woven the rich and vast tapestry of Indian achievements — in arts, sciences, crafts, skills and even pre-modern technology — for which India was renowned throughout a millennia and a half after and before the Christian Era.
Sir, given all that I have said above, I have no hesitation to add further, that in my humble (or not so humble) opinion, the very first casualty of the Indian Constitution— the fountainhead of our country’s Justice system — that was first imposed upon the people of India in 1950, and as amended extensively since then in many respects, is what, once upon a time long ago, used to be the Indian people’s Dhaarmic attitude towards Meritocratic values.
To conclude, Sir, in your question posed above, you hold Justice to be the first link in the long chain of nation-building that leads from material prosperity to wealth to army to kingdom or State. So, if we the People of India want change, we should know we have to start right at the beginning — the Constitution of India.
🙏 Sudarshan Madabushi
Bhaarath Maatha ki Jai!! Jai Hind!