Country Model Of The West

The Myth Of Western Technology

In the last 50 years, after WW2, the rise of Japan, Korea and China in manufacturing and technology and the Indian software success, have taken away the sheen from the myth of Western technological prowess. Post colonial revisions in history are eroding the euro-centric version of biased history.

Failed Westernisations

For some time, the easy way out seemed to be ‘copycat’ westernisation. One of the first ‘copycat’ states was China. China, led by Sun Yat Sen, (original name Sun Wen and started calling himself Yat-sen; Chinese call him Sun Zhongshan), was the first major power which tried going down the western path. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria sounded the death knell of the Chinese Republic and Monarchy.

China – Mao & Sun

Sun Yat Sen decided to westernise and make China into a Republican democracy. Chinese were made to cut their queue – pleated hair braids. This diktat was enforced in 20 days time. Sun Yatsen and later Mao Ze Dong made the Chinese change their dress styles too. The effect of this westernisation – an enduring sense of being followers. The Chinese add a western name to their Chinese one – Michael Tang, Bruce Lee, Jerry Yang, Tommy Tang, Tommy Chi.

In Hong Kong and Macao, white tourists are royalty. Chinese companies routinely parade White, Western investors – and the Chinese investors follow. Western marriage ceremony, Chinese couples think, is very romantic. The Christian Church wedding is common in China.

Not that Indians are too far behind – consider Steve Sanghi, Paul Parmar, or the best of them all, Bobby Jindal.

Ataturk’s Turkey

Turkey – led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was the next ‘copycat’ attempt at westernisation. After WW1, the victorious allied powers dismantled the Ottoman Empire. Turkey was reduced to a rump state.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was ‘installed’ by Western powers. Thereafter, Turkey has lurched from crisis to another. Post WW2, it has mostly been ruled by military dictatorships. From an arbiter in Europe, it has become a supplicant, begging for entry into EU. Instead of the queue in China – it was beards in Turkey. Atatürk enforced a new dress code on the hapless Turks – and the traditional fez was banned. Stop wearing the fez or else …

Russia – Westernising Since Peter The Great

Peter the Great, (of the Naryshkin family) co-ruler of Russia, (along with Ivan of the Miloslavsky family) ruled from 1682-1725. For more than 40 years, his agenda was to create Russia in the Western mould. His travels to Germany, Britain, Sweden (before becoming a Tsar) shaped this agenda.

One of the first things he did after becoming a Tsar was to ask his boyars (Russian nobility) to shave their beards! Catherine The Great continued this during her reign from 1762-1796. For the next 125 years, Russia vacillated between a medieval country and modern western country.

Now, the imprisoned oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky takes pains to show how Russia is a western nation and should be democracy. Khodorkovsky, who at one time nursed political ambition, says, “…I’m convinced that Russia is a European country, it’s a country with democratic traditions …”

The Anglo-Saxon Country Business Model

These Turkish and Chinese failures down the western garden path is to mistake the trees for the forest. There are five major features of the Anglo-Saxon country model which these countries did not copy. Not that I am recommending that they be copied.

The Use Of Corporations

The use of the British East India Company was an eye opener for the rest of the West. After Vasco da Gama’s discovery of trade route to India (for Europeans) round Africa, the British were the first of the block – with the English East India Company formed in the 1600.

The Dutch started soon after with the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Co.) in 1602. The Danish Opperhoved initially started in 1616 and was reborn in 1732, as Asiatisk Kompagni. The Portuguese organised themselves as chartered company in 1628. The French came with the French East India Co. in 1664. The Swedes joined the rat race in 1731 with Svenska Ostindiska Companiet. The Italians came in as the Genoa East India companies. The Hanseatic League had its own operations.

In North America, the Hudson Bay Company (Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson in French) was given a Royal Charter in 1670 by Charles II. It practically owned Canada when the Dominion of Canada was formed – and is the oldest surviving company in North America. It monopoly ended only in 1870 – a few years after the Indian Independence War of 1857.

Anglo-American Oil Company (subsidiary of Standard Oil) of Iran plotted the the assassination of Iran’s Prime Minister Haj Ali Razmara and the overthrow of the Mohammed Mossadegh regime. Thereafter, it was the puppet regime of Shah Of Iran which terrorised Iran for 30 years that paved the way for return of Ayatollah Khomeini – and Iran’s regression to medieval times. And who was leading this campaign – Kermit Roosevelt (Teddy Roosevelt’s grandson).

In South America

In 1997, the CIA de-classified papers which admitted it planned and executed the coup in Guatemala – something that was known all along. This was done to protect the interests of the United Fruit Company – which owned large tracts of agricultural land in South America, used South American labour and shipped out fruit to America. Guatemalan farmers were run out of the market.

When Guatemala proposed land reforms so that Guatemalans could prosper in Guatemala, the Government of Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown. By the way, the term Banana republics came into being from the frequent intervention of the US into South American countries – and then ridiculing these countries for instability. To obtain US Governmental intervention, the United Fruit Company engaged services of Edward Louis Bernays (Sigmund Freud’s nephew) as PR front man.

The last 100 years saw the use of these companies as a means to economic dominance. ITT was used in South America for installing and removing dictators

“… ITT papers published by Jack Anderson in March 1972, and in the hearings on these papers conducted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a year later. This material establishes that offers of financial aid aimed at stopping Allende were made by ITT president Harold S. Geneen to the CIA in July 1970 and to Henry Kissinger’s office in September” (Foreign Affairs; January 1974).

Had Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger not responded to International Telephone & Telegraph and Pepsi-Cola by overthrowing Salvador Allende, Chile “would have found a less violent, more constitutional way out of its conundrum.” writes Stephen Kinzer in his book Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq.

To gain control of the Panama Canal Company, the operator of the Panama Canal, US engineered the secession of Panama from Colombia. With a puppet Government in place, The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty allowed the U.S. to build the Panama Canal. Subsequent interventions to advance Western oil interests in Colombia and the Canal interests in Panama have reduced Governmental authority in these countries. Drug cartels, kidnapping and ransom now control the economy of these countries.

Nearer home, of course, the next ruler of Pakistan (military or otherwise) is decided by US – at least for now.

The Cornering Of Gold Supplies

For the last 150 years, the ABC countries (America, Australia, Britain, Canada) comprising the Anglo-Saxon bloc (countries, colonies and companies) have controlled 90% of the world’s gold production. Till (a large part of) India was a British Colony, they also controlled more than 50% of the above-the-ground gold reserves. This gave them absolute liberty to print depreciating currency and flood the world pieces of paper(called dollars and pounds), manipulate the world financial system and keep other populations poor and backward.

Enslavement & Annihilation Of The Natives

They could capture gold supplies by the annihilation of native populations in America and Canada (‘Red Indians’ are tourist attractions now), killed the aborigines in Australia (and apologise now).

Till the middle of 19th century, raw slavery continued. By mid 19th century new forms of slavery was introduced – indentured labour, share cropping, etc. They re-invented slavery (in the 20th century again) and renamed it as apartheid which made native populations into slaves. They could, of course, truthfully claim that great Anglo-Saxon frontiersmen discovered gold and settled empty continents – in ‘hostile conditions’.

The Creation Of Client Sates

Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, most of South America – have been reduced to the situation of client states. The basic position is Uncle Sam knows best – or else! These states have become production centres for the USA, cheap labour will be given an ‘opportunity’ to serve the ‘master’ states.

All these states also have significant military presence of the Anglo-Saxon Bloc which is a matter of concern for India.

Elephants in the room

Western models, which have evolved through the prism of slavery, colonialism, genocide, concentration of power are an end-of-life model. To use end-of-life products may seem like a low cost solution in the short run. The bigger issue in most cases is the  lock-in effect that these legacy systems impose on the ‘buyers’ – e.g. Singapore.

The western model of (natural and people) exploitation has runs its course – for instance, in India even salt was made into a high-tax commodity. It is a dead-end model. Parts of this model, have been used successfully by other countries – Japan with its keiretsus and Koreans with their chaebol. But obviously, this is a model that the West is an expert in – and what others copy, the West has finished with. Copycat models allow the west to predict the next steps easily and taken competitive actions with certainty. The answer for others is to create another country model. The only country which has tried this is India.

The Alternate Model

Bharat-tantra, the Indic political system that depends on local justice, low-policing, non-state free-coinage /gold-as-currency, absence of religion, property rights for all, low-tax systems, free-labour (as opposed to slave labour), enterprise instead of employment, wealth-and-property distribution instead of concentration, is the model that has a future – and a record of past success.

India, where non-State reform has played a very major role in crime, policing (JP’s dacoit reform), land reform (Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement), political change (JP’s Sampoorna Kranti movement). After the economic buffer from Bombay High oil discovery in 1974, the Indian State has certainly, steadily shed various aspects of its colonial legacy. More importantly, India did not go through the slavery-colonialism-capitalism route at all.

It has instead inching towards a republican, (largely) market-driven, democratic, declining role of State, multi-ethnic-religion-linguistic political model which is unique in modern history. What India needs to do is to one decrease the colonial inheritances further. Deliberate amnesia by historians, has obscured Bharat-tantra. India is today slotted as a socialist country – where as it has been reducing the features of a socialist State.

The underestimated and undermined political leadership in India, has worked at renewing  the Indian model – which is non-exploitative, stable and can bring equity and growth. It is this model that before others, India (and Indians) should believe in – and beat a modern path for the world to follow.

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Behind The Web Of Terror

“…one who knows the higher criminal world … for years …I have …been conscious of some power behind the malefactor, some deep organizing power which … stands in the way of the law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer. Again and again …I have felt the presence of this force, …when I seized my thread and followed it, …it led me, …to ….” Arthur Conan Doyle – The Final Solution

The Root Of All Terror

In today’s world, behind all terror you will similarly see another baleful influence. No, it is not Osama bin Laden. Osama is either a minor reactionary (in Marxist terms) or a diluted repetition of the Hashishi influence.

Hashishis were major source of terrorism in the Dark Ages in Europe and Middle East. Their influence was finally extirpated by Genghis Khan’s army – which systematically went after this band of mercenary killers. The English word assassin is derived from Hashishis.

The source of modern terrorism is the USA.

The formation of Israel

Similar to the Middle East carve-up after WW1, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, USA’s baleful story started immediately after WW2. The creation of the US cat’s paw in the Middle East – Israel. Less than 1,00,000 Jews were considered more important than the 5,00,000 Palestinian’s. This was American solution, aided by odious British legalities, (the Balfaour Declaration) to the Jewish persecution in Europe.

Just why, did Muslim Palestinians in Asia have to pay the price, for Christian persecution of Jews in Europe.

The Jews promptly forgot all about persecution – and started a new chapter in persecution. Palestinians became homeless – no passports. They could not go anywhere. Israel did not want them as Israeli citizens – but as a source of cheap labour, without rights. Jordan accepted a few. Syria was persuaded to accept some. They became stateless citizens – property of the UNHCR. And Palestinians started a new chapter in terrorism!

What Can Palestinians Do

The biggest successes in post WW2 world have been those that followed Gandhiji – Poland, South Africa, Martin Luther King and others. Odds are in favour of following the Gandhian way. The one unique military success in the last 60 years of struggle by emerging nations was Ho Chi Minh.

Like Haitian generals, time and again, Ho Chi Minh, drove back Western colonials – each time they went back on their word. The French had promised freedom and de-colonialisation after WW2. Thereafter, they tried wriggling. Ho Chi Minh wouldn’t let them move.

The French created a mess – before leaving in 1956. Just like Britain did in India (by creating a Pakistan and Kashmir). US decided that they could ‘clean up’ – and make Vietnam into another client state like other SEATO (now ASEAN) members. 20 years later, the US admitted defeat and decided to slink away. The Chinese decided to take swipe. Same story.

Three of the five permanent members of the Security Council, (supposed Super Powers or mini-Super Powers) tried their hand at Vietnam. All failed. And after defeating these ‘Super Powers’, the Viets did not flex their muscles with any of their neighbours.

Ho Chi Minh’s quiet leadership, his frugality, his unblemished personal life inspired the Viets to take on the world – and win. After becoming President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, he lived in a ‘gardener’s cottage and then a peasant house built on stilts beside a pond.’ Just like Gandhiji, he died just before seeing his dream came true. Ho Chi died in 1969 – a few years before the last of the colonialists was thrown out.

His was the kind of war that Gandhiji always believed in – ethical, moral. Without hate, rancour, ill-will or subjugative ambitions. Ho Chi Minh was truly the second coming of Gandhiji – the predicted Kalki. This is the success that Middle East freedom fighters need to learn from. Regressive practices by rag-tag terror outfits corrupt the freedom struggle – and dilute the stability of the outcome.

Next was Iran.

They foisted a corrupt Reza Shah Pahlavi in Iran. A king no one wanted. The Shah of Iran wrote new chapters in state repression.

In 1974, I was introduced to a visitor from Iran in Hyderabad, India – someone my father picked up an acquaintance with. He was afraid of speaking anything in our house in India – 2500 miles away. He was afraid as if the Savak (Shah’s secret police) was in the room next door. He was from an Iranian minority that spoke Aramaic – and the first time I came to know that Aramaic was one of the language in which the Bible was originally written (but that is another story).

The Shah of Iran worked against his own nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq – to protect Western Oil interests. To turn public opinion,

“declassified documents detailing the 1953 U.S. overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq reveal that something actually called the “CIA Art Group” produced cartoons to turn public opinion against the democratically elected leader.“

The CIA, led by Kermit Roosevelt Jr., and the British intelligence, launched Operation Ajax. Finally, in 1979, the Shah was replaced by the regressive regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, which has taken Iran out of the USA orbit – but kept Iran from progress for the last 30 years. Iran has become a source of de-stabilisation various parts of the world (Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc) – in its anti USA crusade.

Pakistan – Old Story.

Pakistan was a part of the USA troika with Iran and Turkey in the CENTO alliance against USSR. Pakistan’s next ruler will be selected by the USA. During the Kargil war, India was talking to the USA. USA called the shots – and decided to replace Nawaz Sharif with Musharraf.

Pakistan was the training ground for New York sub-way bombing, 9/11 terrorists, for the Mujahiddin in Afghanistan and for the rogue trade in nuclear material with AQS Khan. India’s Kashmir and Khalistan problems – direct result of USA foreign policy.

Iraq

Iraq started a war with Iran in 1980 (prodded by USA) against Iran. As a reward. Saddam wanted Kuwait. Before the Kuwaiti invasion, Saddam took USA “permission”. By the time USA realized what was happening, Kuwait was over. USA did a volte-face – and Saddam became a demon. Today, Iraq has become a quagmire of a civil war amongst Iraqis. The cost of an alliance with the USA. The war on terror has become another foray for the America-Australia-Britain-Canada (ABC) Axis – at a cost to the rest of the world.

“By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!” So said President George Bush in a euphoric victory statement at the end of the Gulf War. Did Iraq have to pay the price for exorcising the Vietnam ghost in the American mind?

Osama was operating from Afghanistan.

What did the USA have to do there!! It started with USSR. The King Of Afghanistan – Zahir Shah was replaced by a USSR backed group. A despotic, directionless regime replaced Zahir Shah. The secular voice of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, an avowed Gandhian, in Afghanistan was silenced by Pakistan – an USA ally.

Afghanistan decayed into a regressive nation – which the USSR decided to change! The civil war between the mujahideen (armed by the USA) and the Russians pushed back the character of the Afghans by 1500 years. An USA supply agreement flooded Afghanistan and Peshawar with for arms and armaments. Waziristan in Pakistan, NWFP has practically been conquered by the Mujahideen. The touch that kills.

Who’s next?

Saudi Arabia? One of the Central Asian Republics! Anglo Saxon propaganda overdrive tells us that Islam is to be blamed. Hardly!

Three causes for this US policy.

Oil – Cheap oil. Never mind the cost to others.

Oil – All it can get. And then some more.

Oil – For no one else. Uncle Sam wants it all.

Three Monkeys – Toshogu Temple

Amazingly, one of the US presidential hopefuls, John McCain, even blames a Muslim for killing Gandhiji. This was demonisation of Muslims by the American political establishment at its best.

Post Script

The first step

On February 22nd, 2008, the Deoband Seminary, the most respected Islamic seminary in South and South East Asia, issued a anti-terrorism declaration at a huge public meeting attended by hundreds and thousands of people. This set up a new direction in Islamic social dialogue – where a non-establishment, Islamic theological group came out against terrorism. Subsequently, some other ‘liberals’ jumped onto this bandwagon.

And then …

In October 2008, Pakistan was sent on a cold turkey … by Saudi Arabia, China and the US. Pakistan has been forced to go to IMF which is prescribing a heavy cut back in defence spending.

But most interestingly …

On October 3rd, 2008, the Frontier Gandhi’s grandson was the target of suicide bomber. The terrorists are obviously worried that Khan Abdul Khan Ghaffar Khan’s sensibility may make a comeback. Suddenly the world has been reminded about Khan Abdul Khan Ghaffar Khan.

Coincidentally, in India, a film was made on Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. The LA Times recently ran an column on him. The answer to the Pakistani problems in the North West tribal areas was Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan.

And the tribal chiefs of Pakistan and Afghanistan Pashtuns decided to call for a ‘mini-jirga’ on violence – to decide on the future of the two countries.

Hopefully, this a new beginning for Pakistan …

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