LOOKING AT KAUTILYA BEYOND THE REALM OF REALISM

The blurring of lines between the nationalist and Comprador Bourgeois 

Money is more powerful than the military. It is perhaps for this reason that Kautilya, one of India’s foremost philosophers on statecraft had said, “From the strength of the treasury the army is born.” Many scholars belonging to the ‘liberal realist’ school casually equate the strength of Kautilya’s treasury (as it existed in the 4th century BC) with the “comprehensive national power” of the 21st century Chinese state.[1] 

The assumption that the key to the treasury is always in the king’s (the one who exercises the monopoly over violence) pocket, leads one to see the state as an omnipotent power that acts in the geo-economic sphere, independent of the non-state actors or the class that controls the purse strings. In fact, what appear to be assumptions are, in “Gramscian terms, the ideological apparatuses”[2]  that are invoked by the ruling elite to hide the power that global finance capital exercises over domestic rule. 

The powerful thought leaders of the bourgeois brigade use various techniques to control dominant discourse and limit their analysis by merely quoting Kautilya’s “strength of treasury” logic, without actually going into the detail as to who controls the capital and therefore, war. For example, realist foreign policy often omits the impact of HNWIs who own assets equivalent to one-fourth of the Indian GDP and deliberately camouflage the parochial class concerns of the big bourgeois as national interests. This is done to obviate any probe into the comprador character of the national bourgeois. As Karl Marx says in The German Ideology (1845), “The ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas: i.e. the class which is the dominant material force in society is at the same time the dominant intellectual force." 

Post Cold War, the elite consciousness has been shaped by a sense of triumphalism that has emboldened them to institutionalize the bourgeois relations to obliterate all possibilities of a revolution that may result from growing income gaps. We are currently living in a geo-economic environment, where, as Stephen Gill says, “the identification of a nation-state with the material interests of its own 'national capital' is more problematic. In economic terms, this system is increasingly instituted by a deepening interpenetration of capital, both functionally and geographically. At the political level, there is policy interdependence which is the counterpart to the economic internationalization processes, as well as more integral, and more organic alliance structures binding the major capitalist nations together under American leadership”[3]

Using Lenin’s phrase, the “treachery of (bourgeois intellectual) leadership” lies in manipulating discussion and halting analysis at a point beyond which the sources of their power would lie exposed. It is for this reason that the geo-economic narrative refuses “to look more closely at the global capitalist system and the transnational capitalist class, both locally and globally.”[4]

To understand the “treachery” of the comprador class, let us see what happened in 1757, at the Battle of Plassey, where Siraj-ud-Daulah, the independent governor of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa was defeated by the East India Company army, thus paving the way for colonization of the Indian sub continent. The popular primary reason for defeat was the betrayal by Siraj’s trusted force commanders, Mir Jaffar, Rai Durlabh and Yar Lutuf Khan, who were bought over by the British. 

Popular history ends with Mir Jaffar attaining the status of an iconic conspirator, thus diverting attention from the role of Siraj-ud-Daulah’s bankers, the chief conspirators, who invited the East India Company to establish their roots in East India. The conspiracy hatched by the money-lenders has largely remained hidden because the class to which they belonged controlled the “material force in society” that had the capacity to monopolize intellectual discourse. 

Aakar Patel writes a fairly detailed account of the role that Jain and Hindu baniyas played along with the British to cause a regime change in east and west India. Patel highlights Jagat Seth’s (Siraj-ud-Daulah’s banker) involvement in the Battle of Plassey. Seth lent money to the Nawab, who in turn provided security for business and also collected tax. Out of every four rupees of tax collected by Siraj-ud-Daulah, three rupees went as loan repayment to Jagat Seth. As usual, Siraj-ud-Daulah was facing a cash crunch and Jagat Seth the banker thought it was time for a regime change. History records that Seth paid Robert Clive to defeat Siraj-ud-Daulah and install Mir Jaffar. This marked the first coming together of the Indian capitalist class with transnational capital.

The class to which the likes of Jagat Seth belong continues to be as powerful as it was in the 18th century. Even in the 21st century, their descendants continue to guide the economic and strategic destinies of India. Of the top 60 Indian dollar billionaires, roughly half belong to the Jain and Hindu baniya community, which constitutes just about 1% of the Indian population.[5] Recently Forbes magazine carried a pictorial story on how Indian business elite are interconnected through marriages and business deals.[6]

A more extensive and similar case study is done by Zeitlin and Ratcliff on the dominant class of landlord capitalists in Chile that not only controls politics but also represents foreign capital and this class “has not been a threat to imperialism, but its bulwark”. The study brought out that “within a ‘central core’ of just 137 individuals linked by kinship and intermarriage were found 51 percent of corporate executives belonging to major capitalist families while 82 percent of executives with no capital in their families were outside of this central core.”[7]

This central core in the developing and the under developed world is linked and protected by the chief guardians of capital who occupy the center of gravity in the developed capitalist world. The core of the capitalist world that is as old as capitalism wonderfully combines the power of money and the military. Towards the fag end of the 19th century, the invention of the Maxim machine gun changed the course of African history and British imperial fortunes. Rothschild, the banker, was intelligent enough to understand the power of ‘Maxim’ and the need to monopolize its production capacities. In 1888, Lord Rothschild, the board member of Maximum Gun Company, funded €1.9 million for the merger of the Maxim with Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company. The merger agreement precluded Nordenfelt from producing guns for next 25 years. The result was that in WWI, barring the US, all militaries fought each other with Maxim guns. [8]

Incidentally, when India was reeling under a backbreaking foreign exchange crisis, the Indian government approved the acquisition of one light aircraft carrier in 1955. The first carrier Hercules built by Vickers Armstrong, a Rothschild company for the Royal Navy during the Second World War was dumped on India by the comprador as well as national bourgeois elements both within and outside the government. And the same class sold to gullible Indians the idea of being a great Asian power; the desire to become a great power riding piggy back on American shoulders continues to resonate loud in Indian strategic circles.

Nehru was one of the advocates of India becoming the leader of the under developed world. He probably thought that the communist victory in China had opened the floodgates for India to play the leadership role in Asia that American had envisaged for Chiang-kai-shiek. Nehru was also aware that closeness to Soviet Union could also be used to further his appeal among the anti-colonial movements. Nehru believed that by adopting a non-aligned policy he could possibly be the “proverbial clever calf that could indulge in simultaneous suckling of two udders”[9] as popularized by Polish economist Kalecki. 

Nehru’s confidence flowed from the strength of his treasury, which at the time of independence was as strong as £1,134 million (Rs 1,512 crores). Even after payments to British and Pakistan, by 1949, India had £621 million (Rs 828 crores).[10] The nationalist bourgeois that was as aware of the brimming coffers as Nehru was, proposed through the ‘Bombay Plan’ that India rely on extensive imports for rapid industrialization.[11]

The Bombay Plan was compiled by the key members of the Indian industry (JRD Tata, GD Birla, Kasturbhai Lalbhai, Purshottamdas Thakurdas and Shri Ram) and their key directors like John Matthai, Ardeshir Dalal and AD Shroff. The plan inspired India’s first Industrial Policy Resolution of 1948 and subsequently continued to influence India’s five year economic plans till early 1960s. 

One of the key members of the Bombay Plan drafting committee was John Matthai, he went on to become India’s first railways minster (incidentally, World Bank’s first loan of $34 million was meant for Indian railways) - and the second finance minister of independent India. Such was the influence of big bourgeois on India’s political economy that Mathai was chosen to head India’s first State Bank of India when it came up in 1955. When Nehru chose his first finance minister, it certainly was not from the socialist ranks, instead he chose, Shanmukham Chetty, an economist who had been awarded the Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire in 1933 and who had served as the Diwan of Cochin Kingdom till about 1941. 

Incidentally, in 1944, the Indian delegation that participated in the formation of the World Bank consisted of luminaries who were to play a crucial role in independent India’s economic and trade policy - Sir Jeremy Raisman, Finance Member of the Government of India led the team that had - “Sir C. D. Deshmukh (Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, later to become India's Finance Minister), Sir Theodore Gregory (the first Economic Advisor to the Government of India), Sir R.K. Shanmukhan Chetty (later independent India's first Finance Minister), Mr. A.D. Shroff (one of the architects of the Bombay Plan) and Mr B.K. Madan (later India's Executive Director in IMF).”[12]

These cross connections led EMS Namboodiripad to conclude that Kalecki’s categorization of intermediate regimes did not apply to India because here the classes were aligned differently at the time of dismantling of British empire - “the big business (was not) predominantly foreign controlled (and had) a rather small participation of native capitalists". EMS further goes on to say that power never passed on from the British into the hands of progressive forces. Instead, 

“It was the bourgeoisie, headed by big business and in alliance with the feudals, that got into the seats of power…The evolution of the economic and political thought of Indian nationalism from the early pioneers (Ranade, Naoro-ji, Dutt and so on), through the 'moderates' and 'extremists' to Gandhi and Nehru shows that a national (as opposed to comprador) bourgeoisie was emerging and rapidly growing. This bourgeoisie class was systematically forging a two-sided relation - there were conflicts and contradictions, but within the broad framework of friendship and co-operation - with imperialism and foreign capital externally, and princely rulers and feudal landlords internally.” [13]

If the dismantling of the British Empire had opened up opportunities for the big bourgeois in India, it had also exposed them to challenges. Having lived under imperial patronage for over a century, the Indian capitalists were apprehensive of the Congress Party’s ability to keep communism away from Indian shores. During the making of the Bombay Plan, Lala Shri Ram wrote to P. Thakurdas: 

“I am afraid that this sabotage may any day start of private property also. Once the Goondas know this trick, any Government … will find it difficult to control it. Today Mahatma Gandhi may be able to stop it, but later on it may go out of their hands too.” [14]

In the early years of independence, Indian business had skillfully cloaked its capitalist concerns and alignments with foreign capital by accepting the state to be in the driver’s seat of the economy. This was done to placate and prevent the looming specter of communism from descending on the subcontinent. Taking lessons from the bourgeois approach to tackling communism, Nehru, too befriended Soviet Union. This unnerved the Indian communists who abandoned B T Randive’s revolutionary approach and adopted a more accommodating tone towards Nehru. This was Nehru’s finest political stroke - he kept the US state secretary Dulles happy by causing confusion within the communist ranks - and also Khrushchev smiling by talking socialism and anti-imperialism. 

Contrary to the popular belief, immediately after independence, India followed a free market economy - import licenses were distributed freely- that led to foreign exchange crisis in 1957 - and then we liberalized more because we were forced to seek IMF and US Aid.[15] Since there are no free lunches, India had to pay a price – and the price probably was a war with China. In a December 7,1956 telegram from the US embassy in India to the State department, JS Cooper the then US ambassador to India explicitly stated, “Externally, India almost certainly faces readjustments of policies in which factors within its economy are compelling influences…Nehru, therefore, comes to Washington in a sensitive position of weakness. He and his advisers know that they have fumbled internationally, that UK no longer represents acceptable alternative leadership to US, and that they are in grave economic difficulties. (Latter point driven home during Nehru’s holding finance portfolio this year plus recent indoctrination by planning commission.)” To complete the co-relation between money and geo-strategy, Cooper concluded in his telegrams, “We feel strongly that “moment of history” has arrived which if seized and exploited, can give US much firmer anti-Communist and anti-Red China counterpoise in India.” That moment did arrive for the US when Nehru changed his stance on China and allowed Dalai Lama to reside in India – opening up the avenues of direct confrontation with China. 

In just a decade after independence, India had been reduced to a financial state where it was standing with a begging bowl in front of foreign capital. In the first decade after independence India had only got a total amount of $611 loan from World Bank. However from 1960-69, overall the Bank lent India $1.8 billion.[16] It may not be coincidental that India fought three wars with its neighbours during the decade of 1962-1972. 

That India followed a socialist track after independence is a myth that has been propagated by the media and intelligentsia. It was only for a brief period in the 1970s that Indira Gandhi tried to rein in capitalist tendencies, else India had always welcomed foreign capital since 1950s in accordance with World Bank’ President Eugene Black’s prescription: “India’s interests lies in giving private enterprise, both Indian and foreign, every encouragement to make maximum contribution to the development of the economy particularly in industrial field.” 

Such has been the impact of the myth that even the mainstream communist parties of India have refrained from identifying the comprador tendencies of the Indian national bourgeois and at best called them "dependent" or "collaborationist”. However, the ongoing transatlantic economic meltdown and its impact on the world have exposed the inherent frailties and contradictions of the capitalist world order - bringing to fore the relationships between the global capitalist class. 

Take the example of Greece, where the common person is being told to tighten his belt for the country and on the other had you have 2000 odd tax evaders who have been abandoning their sinking nation with impunity-stashing away their wealth in Swiss banks. As Kostas Vaxevanis says, “The crisis in Greece wasn't caused by everyone. And not everyone is paying for the crisis. The exclusive, corrupt club of power tries to save itself by pretending to make efforts to save Greece. In reality, it is exacerbating Greece's contradictions, while Greece is teetering on the edge of a cliff.”[17] According to New York Times, “about 120 billion euros in Greek assets lie outside the country, representing an extraordinary 65 percent of the country’s overall economic output.”[18]

The so-called nationalist bourgeois turning comprador is not limited to Greece alone. This chameleon like behavior of the propertied classes is a worldwide phenomenon; even the Indian elite who top the global “tax dodgers’ corps” and have hidden their money in tax havens like Mauritius, Lichtenstein, Switzerland and British Virgin island could go to any extent, even plunging their nation into war to save their money. Paradoxically, the conservative analysts who denounce the Marxist term comprador bourgeois in relation to American imperialism, use it freely against growing Chinese capitalism; which has yet to turn imperialist by adding a military element to make its money trample over nations across the globe. 

Highlighting the new comprador class in Australia, Ashok Malik a, right wing analysts gives the example of Clive Palmers, an Australian businessman who got a $6-billion loan from a Chinese bank and then signed a US$ 60 billion, 20-year coal deal with China. In return Clive gave the Chinese, “US$8 billion EMC (engineering management and construction) contract for the project” and openly blamed the CIA for putting spokes in the contract with the Chinese.[19] The same people who see business transactions with China to be anti-national, justify the increased US military presence in Darwin, Northern Australia as a normal realist option against the Chinese threat. 

Economics and politics are about human welfare. “Just as war is too important an activity to be left to generals, the material welfare of peoples is also too important to be left to economists alone.[20] Military’s nexus with mercantilism and markets must be broken. The strategic analyses must not allow the “comprador-cum-financial oligarchy” concerns to be conflated with collective national concerns. It should become unnatural and inconsistent for every government to “allude to the importance of protecting commerce of the country, by means of a powerful navy.”[21] For wars to stop being a continuation of political economy by other means, the multitude would have to stop giving up their lives to establish trading monopolies and financial oligarchies. 

[1] Sanjay Baru, “India and the World: A Geo-economics Perspective”, National Maritime Foundation Lecture, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, October 26, 2012, http://maritimeindia.org/sites/all/files/pdf/NMF%20Lecture%20-%20Baru.pdf 

[2] Stephen Gill, “Intellectuals and Transnational Capital”, The Socialist Register, 1990, pp 290-310

[3] Stephen Gill, p.295

[4] Leslie Sklair & Peter T Robbins, Global capitalism and major corporations from the Third World, Third World Quarterly, Vol 23, No 1, 2002, p 83

[5] Aakar Patel, “The peculiar pedigree of the business class: The peculiar pedigree of the business class”, Mint, 14 April, 2011, http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/tDRJXCAEsoYMxdtSnZDoGJ/The-peculiar-pedigree-of-the-business-class.html

[6] Prince Mathews Thomas, How India's wealthiest are connected socially, Forbes India, 6 Nov, 2012, http://forbesindia.com//article/richest-indians-in-2012/how-indias-wealthiest-are-connected-socially/34077/1
[7] Jeffery M. Paige, “Coffee, Copper, and Class Conflict in Central America and Chile: A Critique of Zeitlin's Civil Wars in Chile and Zeitlin and Ratcliff’ s Landlords and Capitalists, The University of Michigan paper, presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago, Illinois, August 20, 1987, http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51115/1/347.pdf 
[8] Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World 
[9] Sanjay Baru, “India and the World: A Geo-economics Perspective”, National Maritime Foundation Lecture, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, October 26, 2012, http://maritimeindia.org/sites/all/files/pdf/NMF%20Lecture%20-%20Baru.pdf 
[10] The Problems of Plenty, 1947-56,RBI History, Vol II, p.593, http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/PDFs/90037.pdf 

[11] Amal Sanyal, “The Bombay Plan: A Forgotten Document”, Contemporary Issues and ideas in Social Sciences, Vol 6, No 1, June 2010, pp1-31
[12] The World Bank In India, published by PRIG, (Public Interest Group) Delhi, http://www.ieo.org/world-c2-p1.html 
[13] E. M. S. Namboodiripad, On "Intermediate Regimes" Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 8, No. 48 (Dec. 1, 1973), p. 2134 

[14] As quoted by Amal Sanyal, from Shri Ram to Thakurdas, P. T. Papers,
[15] Dealing with Scarcity, 1957-63,RBI History, Vol II, pp.625-656 http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/PDFs/ 
[16] The World Bank In India, published by PRIG, (Public Interest Group) Delhi, http://www.ieo.org/world-c2-p1.html 

[17] Kostas Vaxevanis, “Greece gave birth to democracy. Now it has been cast out by a powerful elite”, The Guardian, 30, October 2012 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/30/greece-democracy-hot-doc-lagarde-list

[18] Landon Thomas Jr., “In Greece, Taking aim at wealthy tax dodgers”, The New York Times, 11 November 2012.

[19] Ashok Malik, “The New Compradors” The Hindustan Times, 03 September, 2012
[20] Mahmood Mamdani, “State, Private Sector And Market Failures”, Pambazuka News, 29 July, 2012, http://www.countercurrents.org/mamdani290712.htm
[21] Edward P. Stringham, Commerce, Markets, and Peace: Richard Cobden’s Enduring Lessons, The Independent Review, Volume IX, Number 1, Summer 2004, pp. 105-116 

The political revival of India

Arvind Kejriwal is attacking the center of gravity of the ruling elite. He is shaking up the system from the state of dormancy that it has been subjected to for the past two decades. He is making politics reassert itself. By taking on Robert Vadra and DLF, both Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan have shown that the root cause of corruption in India is nothing but the politician-corporate nexus that regularly indulges in dubious land and money transactions. 

While Kejriwal is raising the levels of political consciousness in the country, the Congress and other political parties are dipping into a state of cognitive freeze. The economist Prime Minster is clueless about what is happening - for him governance begins and ends with “Reforms”. For the political class born and brought in Davos environs, politics is a pejorative that stands for populism. With the sudden arrival of Arvind Kejriwal on the political landscape, the so-called politicians are palpably flummoxed, clinging to the pillars of parliament as the deluge of people’s wrath begins to pick up momentum. 

The World Bank and other global financial institutions have designed Mammohan differently; therefore, he may be pardoned for being ignorant of the value inherent in political capital. But how does one absolve seasoned politicians for turning a blind eye to the continuous devaluation political capital since the 1990s?

While Manmohan believes that Indian growth can be tackled by rekindling the “animal spirit”, Arvind strongly feels that Indian political animal needs to shun its indifference to change history of poverty in India. The economic man has usurped the political space for too long and rendered the value of political capital to almost zilch. Arvind is only exposing the paucity of political capital in parliamentarian’s coffers and how this bankruptcy is making our democracy look pale. 

Sadly, many politicians are blissfully unaware of the fact that by making the global finance capital sit on the driver’s seat (hobnobbing with corporate leaders), they have distanced themselves from the people, thereby gnawing at their own roots. 

Almost the entire Indian political class including the media and many sections of the intelligentsia had come to believe that politics had died with the demise of Soviet Union. They diligently imbibed the lessons imparted to them by ‘Washington consensus’ and joined the herd and loudly communicated to their political constituency that markets would create global individuals whose innovative faculties and self-interests will thrive in the atmosphere of competition. Long queues for state subsidized rations, a relic of bygone socialism would be replaced by "queues for Mcdonald’s and Coke." 

The politicians thought that elections could be won by weaving dreams based on market solutions – chaperoning people into a global market - where trade flows unhindered and solutions to all human problems can be bought and sold - where slums will automatically get replaced by technology hubs. The inefficient and corrupt governments will bow before the diktats of the markets or else face ouster. 

Friedman confidently stated in his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree Understanding Globalization (2000), “It is increasingly difficult these days to find any real difference between the ruling and the opposition parties in these countries that have put on the golden straightjacket. Once your country puts it on, its political choices get reduced to Pepsi or Coke”. Such trivialization of politics and its reduction to acts of buffoonery was supported by the same political class that is now oversensitive about its depiction in cartoons and books. Arvind Kejriwal is making us understand the role of opposition in a democracy. 

Markets consider organized political animal inimical to profit making. Markets and business continuity is best served by atomized individuals/consumer, who according to noted author Samir Amin, “are urged to ‘believe in the market’ which alone reveals (encapsulates) the ‘true values of hamburgers and the automobiles.” Such individuals seek salvation in malls and markets and are politically lethargic, incapable of raising the banner of protests. 

This breed is commonly referred to as middle class. A class that till very recently had been living a dream of making it to the top through liberalization. Liberalization did help this class to climb a few steps up the ladder. But on reaching a certain level, the aspiring class discovered that they had hardly ‘arrived’ - their Maruti car and 2BHK flat was just not enough to buy them the dignity in the society. One reason for this sense of betrayal resulted from the fact the so-called middle class still had to beg before the government officials to get even their small work done. The upper classes on the other hand and India's 69 dollar billionaires graduated from Maruti to Mercedes in the same time-frame and continued to garner major share of the fruit of neo-liberal economic policies. 

Political lethargy and political laterality (when it becomes difficult to distinguish between the political left and right) are the by-products of consumerist culture that has promoted desires over needs. The continuous bombardment of images democratizes the aspirations among the people, but TV has no magic wand to bring purchasing power parity among the vast sections of the society. Therefore, those who do not possess the capacity to buy and are too simple to steal and kill, resort to making illegal money by using their office. Officials who deal with the big business have ample opportunity to make money through a couple of corrupt deals. The lower level government servants try to fleece the common man almost on a regular basis. 

Since, the government is always under the media scanner the general perception is that almost all government servants are thieves. And the common man is the most corrupt element in the entire graft chain. However, nobody is ready to look at the process that makes a government servant corrupt. Look at it from a pure economic perspective and not any moralistic angle. A middle class government servant whose salary is inadequate to buy his children a good public school education, mobile phones and LCD TV is expected to clear the files that fetch billions to the business houses. All the moral pressures are exerted on the government servant to be honest, while nobody talks about the limits on the profits that a businessman can earn. 

In an environment where individual profits making taking precedence over collective good, the government servant considers it his right to demand money. Therefore, before blaming the government servants for being the biggest link in the national graft chain, it is imperative that we talk about the culture of greed and individualism. 

After disengaging from Anna Hazare, both Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan have introduced greater clarity in their approach to fighting corruption. They are no longer blaming the small and medium government servants for all the ills plaguing the nation. By adopting a top down approach and hitting directly at the corporate-politics nexus, Kejriwal and party are enunciating their political line that speaks the language of the people. He is talking class war minus the Marxist maxims. 

All that Arvind is telling us that the role of politics extends beyond the realm of politicking. Politics is not about conniving, contriving and conspiring, it has role to guide the destinies of human civilization by making sure that religion and economics are kept within limits.

Asia must not fight to defend America’s aims

The Asian region, including India, has an American problem. From Okinawa to Aceh and Assam to Abbottabad, Uncle Sam’s boot marks are discernable, reminding us of the wasteful wars that Asians have waged against each other at the behest of America - to be more precise, 1% of the American population. For the past six decades and more, the continent has been suffering from unsolicited advice and unnecessary interference by America.

Today, we stand at the cusp of change in international politics. The coming decade promises to offer Asia a window of opportunity to finally come out of the imperial yoke and chart its own destiny. The relative decline of America’s power and the concomitant increase in the Indian and Chinese potential gives an opportunity to shape the region based on Asian values and sensitivities - a willingness to pierce through the labyrinths of distrust and horror weaved by America to keep the neighbors fearful of each other’s growth.

The Korean brothers are baying for each other’s blood; Afghanistan dislikes Pakistan; Pakistan hates India, China maligns Japan and Japan continues to remain in a state of stupor, unable to distinguish friends from foe. Japan’s case militates against all reasoning and logic. Japan is Buddhist enough to forgive its colonizer, America for the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. However, it refuses to give up its Samurai instincts against China, its erstwhile Colony.

All the Asian hatred is now pouring into the South China Sea. And nobody is more delighted than America to fish in troubled waters through political, financial, and ideological interventions. Asia continues to suffer because regional relations remain mired in the ‘territorial trap’. To understand this trap let us see how America exploited the Indian elite’s fear of communism to create an India-China border dispute leading up to the 1962 war.

Just to have a convenient military base America played along with their British friends to divide the Indian sub-continent. In 1947, when millions were getting uprooted and killed in the partition of India, Uncle Sam was busy comprehending George Kennan’s telegram from Moscow on how to contain USSR by planting their former soldier in India, MO Mathai as a CIA agent in Jawaharlal Nehru’s office. That Mathai continued in the PM’s office till 1959, dutifully fulfilling his role as a mole tells us about the extent to which India can rely on America. If talking about Mathai is making a mountain out of a molehill, then imagine what America was extracting from others including Morarji Desai -our Finance minister in 1957 and the Prime Minister in the late 1970s - allegedly working for his masters in Washington.

The late forties was also the time when America was hobnobbing with Mao and Chiang Kai- Shek to form a national government in Beijing. When this plan did not succeed, Chiang Kai-Shek was pushed to a corner in Taiwan and Mao’s brand of Marxism was accorded a prime place in the US scheme of things to divide the communist world. Since Mao could not be left loose, therefore, Taiwan and Tibet wounds were allowed to fester.

 Nehru understood this game and refused to play ball with the Americans on Tibet, though his colleagues like Patel was too eager to tow the American agenda in the 1950s. Nehru used the threat of Indian communism to make his deals with America. Both Churchill and Truman encouraged Nehru to play the role of an Asian leader to obviate communist China from assuming command. Referring to her meeting with Churchill on 22 March 1955, Vijay Lakshmi Pandit had written:

“He was very conscious of past mistakes but he said that since the commonwealth conference he was convinced that ‘Asia is with us’. He said, ‘it is Nehru who is bringing this about. He can and will interpret the best we have given him to the Asian people. Nehru is the light of Asia…yes, and a greater light than Buddha.”(Nayantara Sahgal, Jawaharlal Nehru: Civilizing the Savage World, Penguin, 2010)   

 However, the imperial benevolence, as Nehru knew it better, could be enjoyed only for a limited period. Two years after the Bandung Conference of 1955, the Americans were there to clip Nehru’s wings.  In 1957, when the financial crisis hit India, America through the comprador bourgeois heading the financial and monetary policy institutions in India was able to ensure that enfeebled Nehru had to stop chanting Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai and go with a begging bowl to Fund - Bank managers.  Nehru sent a team  consisting of  Finance Minister Krishnamachari, and RBI governor H.V.R. Iyengar to World Bank in September 1957, to ask for $600 million aid package and to reassure the  Bank President Eugene Black that

"The 'socialism' contemplated in India does not, by any stretch of the imagination mean communism; it does not mean state capitalism......It is a system under which private competitive enterprise has and will continue to have a vital role to play; it is a system which respects private property and provides for the payment of compensation if such property is acquired by the State. I submit there is nothing in the system which should be repugnant to the social conscience of the USA".

Within ten days the US Aid started flowing in, thanks also to US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. Since there are no free lunches, Nehru had no option but to change his stance on the Tibet issue in conformity with American wishes. Dalai Lama whom Nehru had sent back to China in 1956 was now welcomed with open arms, leaving the Panchsheel agreement in tatters. CIA was given much greater access to Indian territory to install nuclear devises and agents to keep constant pressure on China to break up with the Soviet Union and cause deep fissures in communist parties across the globe. This was best achieved through the events leading up to the 1962 war, where the Soviet Union was forced to choose between India and China. M.Y. Prozumenschikov, writing in the Cold War International History Project Bulletin, 251, says:

The fact that the USSR did not take a clear “class” position in a conflict between a socialist state and a bourgeois state provoked indignation in China. In a 13 September 1959 letter to the CC CPSU, the CC CCP accused the Soviet government (although in a veiled form) of “accommodation and compromise on important matters of principle” and noted that “the TASS statement showed to the whole world the different positions of China and the Soviet Union in regard to the incident on the Indian–Chinese border, which causes a virtual glee and jubilation among the Indian bourgeoisie and the American and English imperialists, who are in every way possible driving a wedge between China and the Soviet Union.”

Nehru came under the US thumb and changed tack in 1957 to become more aggressive towards China. Nehru and Chou En-Lai had fully appreciated the futility of war, yet the war happened. Who initiated the war is irrelevant, but why the two great nations got sucked into it is more important.

For Americans, India-China war was a part of their Soviet containment policy. America was hardly bothered or moved by Tibet. As Dalai Lama writing in his autobiography says,

America felt it was worthwhile to provide limited assistance to Tibetan freedom fighters, not because they cared about Tibetan independence but as a part of world-wide efforts to destabilize all communist governments.”

For Washington, Tibet was just a strategic tool to keep the Communist Party of China reminded of the reach of American power.  In the American game plan Congress party, Swatantra party and the right-wing political outfit of the RSS, Jan Sangh saw an opportunity to decimate once and for all, both Krishna Menon a potential heir to Nehru and communism from India. They all achieved their purpose.

In the end to fulfill America’s ideological imperatives - the Indian army sacrificed 3000 soldiers and also its pride - Nehru lay crestfallen, seeing the failure of his non-alignment policy writ large on those two letters that he wrote to Kennedy on 19 November 1962 asking for F-104 fighters and B-57 bombers. They kept him waiting for the help and also fed him wrong intelligence inputs and military advice through their ambassador in India, John Kenneth Galbraith.

Nehru was betrayed by none other than his friends in America who led him into a dark alley and left him stranded. Once China had been distanced from Soviets, America too turned its back on India, knowing it fully well that Pakistan was enough to meet its strategic needs.

In 1971, India once again lost 10,000 of its brave men to help Bangladesh win independence. But the net result was that the Bangladesh government and its army under US tutelage banned India’s entry into their country. The strategists need to ask, after all, who did the war eventually benefit? And the clear answer is America. Pakistan too was used by America to fight frivolous battles with India only to keep the entire region in rotation.

If in the 1950s, communist China’s expansionist designs were used to scare India, now it is the threat posed by Capitalist China that is being projected to woo India into falling into another trap. But this time India should be wise and tell the Americans that we will not let any of our soldiers shed its blood for Tibet, heavens will not fall if "Tibetan government-in-exile into further exile outside India..” India needs to be attached to a cause but only with a sense of detachment, just as the Chinese were when in the 1960s they reiterated their independence to the Soviets by informing them, 

“If the international Communist movement collapsed, this will not cause the sky to fall down.”

 For too long America has been playing like a systems administrator, making others dance to its tune. India must resolve not to lose even a single life to defend the American empire. Empires have come and gone. India is better prepared to deal with the new empire. If India could enjoy Halloweens and Valentine, it will hardly be an effort to absorb a bit of Confucius for the sake of peace and development in Asia.

ANIMALS IN SERVICE OF IMPERIUM

London has numerous interesting war memorials. However, the one that specifically caught my attention is neither dedicated to any General nor any soldier. It is a mark of respect to those numerous horses, pigeons, mules, dogs, and myriad other animals, who laid their life in service of the British nation during the Wars in the 20th century. 

The war memorial is driven by British love for animals rather than animals’ desire for recognition. Sculpted by David Backhouse, the memorial is situated near Hyde Park. The monument shows a horse in the lead majestically gazing at the future. Following the leader’s tail is a dog. A wall divides these two warriors from two loaded mules bringing up the rear. 

The nameless animals depicted in the memorial were neither citizen-soldiers nor mercenaries. They neither understood Clausewitzian ‘absolute war’ nor were they capable of comprehending Kant’s ‘perpetual peace’. The mammals merely followed the idiosyncratic and autocratic commands of their masters engaged in the pursuit of power, because terms like glory, honor, and sacrifice were alien to them. 

Unlike the human soldiers, they never bothered their commanding officers with issues like morale, mother or matrimony. Barring the canine, the other animals could hardly distinguish between friend or foe. They neither required special wartime rations nor the morale booster booze to plunge themselves into war zones. They became witnesses to the most brutal periods in human history not for any entertainment value but because their DNA strands were networked to serve the humans. 

Viewed purely in military terms the horse represents the strike- core, the dog symbolizes the importance of intelligence to military operations, the pigeons form the signal corps and the beast of burden carrying the supplies reveals the crucial role played by military logistics in any war.  

However, when I look at the monument as a student of international politics, I tend to superimpose my ideas on the hapless animal figures and see them as nations. If horse represents the power of British imperialism and the wall symbolizes the divide between the core and the periphery, then where does India (the jewel in the British crown) fit into the scheme of things? Is India represented by the dog or the mule? India was a faithful servant of the empire, but was it considered good enough to be an intelligence agent? 

India could not be a dog, because the British never considered Indians intelligent enough to be an officer in the army. But the Indian colonial rulers recruited a large number of Sepoys (foot soldiers) to consolidate their empire. 

One could argue that India was a mule in the British war efforts; it bore the burden of war without questioning the supremacy of its masters. If India was one of the mules, then who is the other mule in the memorial? The other mule represents the African soldiers, who much like the Indians added to the British strength, without ever asking questions about the validity or legality of the war. 

We have identified the horse and the mules but the question still remains-who was the dog? Whom did the British consider to be the most trusted ally during WW I. Who did they consider intelligent enough to provide them with battlefield information? It could not have been France, because it obviously was another big horse in the war? America was on the British side of the fence; moreover, it was a neutral observer at that time merely sniffing around to gauge the international situation. Possibly, America was a British dog during the First World War. 

Unlike the sculpture, history continues to dynamic.; it has undergone a massive shift over the past century. Britain is still at the forefront, but it is no longer the horse in international power equations. America is the new horse and Britain is its sniffer dog. Is India still a coolie in the present scheme of things? How can India be a mule? It has become an important American strategic ally. Moreover, the war against terrorism and growing Chinese might require better intelligence and therefore more dogs around the world. 

So when India expresses it wishes to be a world power, it actually is hinting that it has crossed the Rubicon dividing the underdeveloped and the developed world. It is no longer a dud mule on the other side of the wall, it is in fact fit enough to be a dog of the American empire. 

Years later, if an American sculptor decides to pay his tribute to animals in war, he probably will have many more dogs following the American horse and the private military contractors or robots will have the privilege of being depicted as mules.

PENTAGON PSALMISTS RETURN TO ASIA PACIFIC

Last week, Leon Panetta, Pentagon’s chief hit-man was in Asia, signaling 'Broken Arrow, Broken Arrow!’. This bogey was meant to gather gullible Asian leaders, persuading them to come to the aid of the American empire in grave danger of being overrun by China. 'Broken Arrow’ was a code reserved by the American forces in the Vietnam War to signal extreme danger to their positions. 

Panetta's appeal for help has had such an impact that great strategy pundits from India, Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia Australia, Japan, South Korea and others have joined Pentagon psalmists' chorus - chanting imprecatory prayers - predicting disgrace and shame to the Chinese. 

Post 9/11, the world was introduced to a similar imprecatory number against Islam. A little over a decade ago, Bush had stood up to tell the world about the ensuing ‘clash of civilizations’. Now all that war on terror lies buried under the cacophony of Osama’s death pronouncement and the din of ‘Arab Spring’. 

The latest American mantra pivots around the Oceans in Asia Pacific region. Dr John Chipman, Director General and Chief Executive, IISS says, “one of the most important subjects in the Asia‑Pacific is the idea of protecting maritime freedoms and the acceptance that this is an international and global role, not only a regional and particular role.” 

Fresh words are being woven and new alliances are being sewn together; only to pull wool over Asian eyes. Dangerous needles are being pricked into Asian minds to prove that their salvation lies in preventing China from uprooting the treasure tower embedded the South China Sea. Scarborough Shoal - a disputed territory between China and Philippines – is now the chief reason for Asia to be “in a state of strategic flux.” As Sanjay Baru tells us, America is “seeking to provide an element of stability to this flux, and inject a measure of certainty to an uncertain world.” 

Today, Panetta talks about shifting an additional 10% of American forces to Indo-Pacific than what it has committed in the Atlantic. Towards the fag end of their empire in Asia, British too had tried to use huge forces at their disposal to protect “the crescent of land that stretched from Bengal, through Burma, the Southern island. It was hinterland of the Straits of Malacca, one of the greatest arteries of oceanic trade that separates the Indian Ocean from South China Sea.” (Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Wars: The end of Britain’s Asian Empire, 2008). Bayly and Harper also tell us that during these years the Americans used to make fun of the British South East Asian Command (SEAC) under Lord Mountbatten as nothing but an acronym that stood for “Save England Asian Colonies”. 

Today, America finds itself in British shoes. It is paranoid about the longevity of its empire. It’s declining money power and reduced ability to spend on military is making it seek military hardware and manpower from within Asia-pacific. It is playing the same old game and making sure that Asians are once again buffoon(ed) into fighting against each other. 

It is a paradox that in the era of advancing life expectancy the collective memory of the human being is on the decline. It is only sixty years ago, Panetta’s predecessors had entered Asia pacific with an atomic bang, making the Japanese experience the horrors of weapons of mass destruction and colonization. 

Just prior to dropping of the atomic bomb, the communist cadres in South East Asia and British Indian army soldiers were used as cannon fodder to defeat the Japanese colonial designs. And all they got in return for fighting the Japanese was a fresh tranche of brutal British imperialism. 

By 1946 Japan had been mollified and the threat of communism was the new clarion call on which Asia was to rotate. How does one forget the US role in ensuring the division of Korea and the use of ‘Agent Orange’ in Vietnam? They used Soviet Union in WW II only to make it an enemy. Islam was used against godless communism and then made into a dreaded monster after 9/11. They used China in the Cold War and now China is the enemy. This is an endless game that can no longer be brushed aside in terms of, “there are no permanent friends or enemies, but permanent interests in international relations.” 

The people of Asia must expose this farce and say that there is only one permanent interest - not to expose global poor to wars initiated at the behest of the leech like descendants of Rockefeller and Rothschild. The people must come together to prevent their younger generations from being used once again in frivolous wars. Wars indulged in by these banking monsters representing 1% of the global population. For this tiny minority, war is a necessity. They will create reasons to display their masculinity and keep the global 99% in a perpetual state of shock and awe. Thus, there is no use blaming Americans, now we know the real culprits behind the wars. 

For these global elite, the multitudes are expendable earthworms and cockroaches. Nations and Gods are all strategic commodities to be used and thrown away like disposable crockery. Protection and perpetuation of property rights is all they live for and make us die for. They will not change; let us at least, not allow ourselves to be used.

A Deadly Strategic Triangle - Hillary, Hasina and Mamata

Bless me please! Shah Rukh Khan and his team with Mamata Banerjee  

Mamata Banerjee is blessed. Shah Rukh, the King of Bollywood has added a purple patch to the otherwise tattered Trinamool rule in West Bengal.
Hillary Clinton, (technically the second) lady of the empire, too has showered praise on Mamata for being looked after well during her brief stay at Kolkata.

While Shah Rukh is bowing before Didi to seek state patronage after being mistreated at the cricket ground in his home town at Mumbai, Hillary intentions are directed more towards making Mamata genuflect in front of imperial desires.

The two ladies in an animated discussion 

Needless to mention, Ms Clinton patted Mamata ’s back for bringing out a regime change in West Bengal - without US and Nato special forces - and without making the US state department run around United nations to seek legitimacy to bomb Bengali Marxists to stone age - for causing discomfort to Manmohan on civil-nuclear deal.

After exchanging the pleasantries, Clinton must also have given Mamata her piece of mind on the strategic importance of Bangladesh in the US scheme of things. While giving assurances about stepping up US investments in the state, Clinton must have told Mamata to be nice to Sheikh Hasina on Teesta River issue.

After all, Clinton did not travel thousands of miles to discuss FDI in retail sector and collect some Bengali goodies. This is being reinforced by the recent news reports regarding the US plans to open a military base in Bangladesh.

Keeping in mind, the city of joy’s intellectual capacity to understand imperialism and its sinister designs, Washington must have nudged Mamata to prevent the comrades from establishing any links with the growing anti-Americanism in Dhaka.

To top it all, Clinton must have reassured Mamata not to worry to much about strategic aspects as the US has made sure that India’s former national security adviser and an expert on internal security matters is always there to tango.

Give Military Man the Entry, or he will Kick it Open...

There are only two contenders for political power in any nation. The first is the political man backed by money and second is the military man aided by the gun. Since money is more powerful, the military normally accepts to play second fiddle to it. This acceptance of a subordinate role results more from expediency than magnanimity. While money has the strength to stand on its own feet, military often needs the crutches of the state to stand tall. However, the two normally stay together in a symbiotic relationship. 

For example, in China,  men-in-uniform are seen rubbing shoulders with other party members in the Politburo. Similarly, in America, money power vesting with the military industrial complex has ensured that the US armed forces elite are active members of the club that rules the world and garners  global wealth. It is this dubious connection of the top military leadership with the top 1% of the wealthy population that is agitating the US veterans who have fought in distant lands. As one US war veteran says, “Don't stand with the global 1 percent. Don't stand with these generals that continuously abuse their own service members and then talk about building democracy and promoting freedom." 

However, in the unique Indian civil-military set up (that has refused to change even after 60 years of independence), the military leadership continues to be debarred from entering the elite club that gives exclusive entry rights to politicians’, bureaucrats and businessmen. Having seen the enormity of dubious money transactions that happen in this shady club, the military man is feeling shortchanged for being kept out of its premises.  

There is growing perception among many veterans and serving officers that the sanctity and security of the country that Chetwode had described as the utmost duty of a soldier has been destroyed by the tainted Politico-bureaucratic nexus aided and abetted by unscrupulous businessmen. 

In the neo-liberal age, national causes look too profane and weak to be the raison d’être for the armed forces. Their association with business interests  is too obvious to be ignored. Over the past two decades, there has been considerable weakening of the state -military umbilical cord. 

I recently read an interesting blog by an army officer that once again asked the age old question – “What do I die for”? The article begins with Anatole France’s quote that the ‘soldier dies for the industrialists’. The author of the article, Col VP Singh further says, “Soldiers, today, must learn that they no more fight nation's wars but the conflicts started by inept, inefficient and incompetent bureaucracy in league with self-centered, greedy and corrupt politicians.” 

Unlike the pre-independence officer, the post-independence lot do not suffer from any guilt conscience of having served a colonial master. They have won victories for India in various wars and are not ready to buy the argument that confines the military to the periphery of power structures in the capital for the sake of democratic health of the nation. 

The trends hint at the armed forces trying to swim hard to locate an anchor. This search can either lead them to become more ambitious for political power or ferociously hanker for a trans-national alliance as an independent entity – similar to what Pakistan and many other third world armies have done by getting into a cozy relationship with the Pentagon or letting their elite mortgage them to the empire. 

We are almost back to 1950s, when the military leadership, like many good servants of the Queen, was skeptical about the ability of the home-grown leadership to govern India. The Indian military officers trained under British tutelage - had tasted - if not fully savoured - the glamour of power while working for the British flag. Post independence, the military elite thought that they would continue to be as important to democratic India as they were to the empire. However, the roles and missions of the newly independent India were completely at variance to the imperial aims. 

Leaders like Field Marshal Carriappa and General Thimmaya did try to disturb the civil-military apple cart by asserting the military supremacy. However, the progressive elements within the political class ensured that independent India’s military unlearnt their imperial lineages and were confined to the fringes of the corridors of power. The military leadership reeling under the guilt of their erstwhile mercenary connections accepted to remain a passive spectator and concentrate on their professional development. 

The generation of officers currently at the helm is witness to deterioration of political standards in the country. They have also seen the frontal assault on Indian democracy in 1975, when ‘emergency’ was declared. The question that comes to mind is, why is the post independence officer speaking up now - why did he remain a mute spectator to the growing criminalization, and communalization of Indian polity in the late 1980s and early 1990s? 

The only plausible answer to these questions is – in 1990, after the demise of Soviet Union, a new hope was sold across the world and the global herd began moving in the direction of generating wealth by hook or crook. The Indian military elite (more at an individual rather than at an institutional level) too got busy keeping up with the Joneses in the “race to the bottom”. 

However, as the gloss of capitalism started peeling off and the blatant loot of state assets started tumbling out from the closets of those who had been singing paeans of inherent virtues of neo-liberalism, the military officer could not believe that he has been fooled. 

Let us not fool ourselves and the nation by thinking that military leadership is short on respect and once they get this rather vague commodity, everything will be smooth. Because one is yet to find a military leader who questions the basics of the neo-liberal set up that is splintering the national security – they have never even once raised their concern about privatization of military that is fast usurping their turf. 

One is convinced that the battle for honour and respect that the military man is waging against the bureaucracy is just a decoy because much like the Englishman, the Indian military man too does not have any “false pretension to be loved; he wishes to be comfortable and to “make money”. The military man does not openly say it, but he also desires to be a part of the loot currently underway in the country. 

The military elite is cocksure, it has a natural life membership of the club that ensures how money is to be made and distributed within the nation, it is for the other club members to realize that they have very little choice but to make room for the military man.