Day: August 16, 2007

Freedom Day or Independence Day?

Ever wonder why we call 15th August “independence” day? My interpretation when I first heard this English term was, “on 15th August 1947 the British became independent from India”, because before that day, they depended on India for cotton, silk, indigo, metalware, jewelry, perfume, paper, grains, spices, labor, and many other commodities and services. I was soon “corrected” and it was explained to me that before 15th August 1947, WE were dependent on the British. I could never figure this out. Clearly “independence” and “swadhinta” are two different words? Shouldn’t we call it “liberty day” or “freedom day”? How did “independence” work in its way into the jargon? Or was that the parting shot of imperialism?

That is from an email from a friend. Hmm.

India Been Liberal Had

Yoda editor must have been of the column Ashok Desai by Telegraph in of Aug 15th.

Sayeth Desai:

If instead of the Hindu rate of growth of 3.5 per cent, India had achieved 6 per cent in 1950-80, we would have been twice as rich as we are today. But we have lost even more in terms of distribution of growth than of growth itself. We would have been even richer in terms of consumer goods. We would have worn better and cheaper clothes, and owned more white goods that take the daily toil out of people’s lives. Our villages would have received cheaper and more widely available electricity; with that electricity and their labour, they would have produced consumer goods at a fraction of the present cost. There would have been far more non-agricultural employment in rural areas. Instead of 5 per cent, we would have generated 25 per cent of world trade; all the nations of the Indian Ocean would have been closely tied to us by trade and investment. All we have to boast about today is our democracy; if we had been liberal for sixty years, we would have been a world model for lifestyle.

Quite a fine piece of analysis. Marred by the idiotic characterization of India’s dismal growth rate of 3.5 percent per year as the “Hindu rate of growth.” It was Nehru, Chacha Nehru and his band of clueless retards, that imposed socialistic state planning that doomed India to its retarded growth rate. Neither Nehru nor his bunch of moronic cabinet drew their inspiration from Hindu scriptures or Hindu ideology. The rate of growth of India during the Congress rule was not enforced by Hindu thought or Hindu philosophy. Hinduism is not an economic school of thought and it does not speak to state planning nor does it advocate socialism. The “Nehru rate of growth” has nothing to do with Hinduism or any other religion for that matter other than the religion of socialism.

Piece I have said my.

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