Continued Western Influence on Indian Social Engineering

By O.P. Sudrania

Caste or Class Systems versus India in Global Perspective – CHAPTER ELEVEN 

All these are open facts of the British society till the end of the Victorian period (1837 – 1901).  It is praiseworthy to quote from a BBC British History Overview: Victorian Britain, 1837 – 1901. By Professor Eric Evans. Last updated 2011-03-29; as under:  “It would be a gross exaggeration to claim, as many contemporaries did, that those living in a British colony felt privileged to be ruled by a people anxious to spread the virtues of an ordered, advanced and politically sophisticated Christian nation to those ‘lesser breeds’ previously ‘without the law’.  That said, there is no gainsaying the fact that both many colonial administrators and Christian missionaries took on their colonial duties with a fierce determination to do good.” It continues further under the caption – Politics,

“What, finally, of the Victorian political structure? It is easy to see that it was far from democratic.

At the beginning of Victoria’s reign, about a fifth of adult males were entitled to vote. That proportion increased, through parliamentary reform acts passed in 1867 and 1884, to one-third and two-thirds respectively.

No women could legally vote in parliamentary elections until almost 18 years after Victoria’s death – and the queen herself was no suffragist. Women did, however, play an increasingly influential role both in locally-elected school and poor law boards and in local government from the 1870s onwards.

If not democratic, the political system was becoming increasingly representative. By 1901, few argued – as had frequently been asserted against the Chartists in the 1830s and 1840s – that to allow working men to vote would be to cede power to an ignorant, insensate and unworthy majority.

Victorian politicians increasingly learned how to ‘trust the people’. They also noted how many among ‘lower orders’ could help themselves economically while improving themselves educationally.

The working-class Victorian autodidact was an increasingly significant figure. His modest successes enabled his ‘betters’ to claim that Britain was a specially advanced, perhaps even a divinely favoured, nation.

Britain managed to modernize its political system without succumbing to the political revolutions that afflicted virtually all of its European competitors.

….

On the home front, the nation was only beginning to get to grips with widespread poverty while considerably more than half the adult population remained without a vote. Victorian supremacy by 1901 was only skin deep.” More at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/overview_victorians_01.shtml

 

British society was a highly colour, status and class sensitive society and this still exists to certain extent reflected in their political system of Monarchy despite the so called democracy and their upper House is still called as House of Lords, Ladies with the vast subjects. Thus it is difficult to call it truly a democracy in strict sense. Still Nehru preferred to call the Indian Democracy based on the Westminster module. The West also inflates it by ‘using’ to call it the “World’s Largest Democracy”. Indian politicians are perhaps too naive to read in between the sophisticated ‘White’ lines.

 

Continued Western Influence on Indian Social Engineering:

In an enlightening column on Indus Script, N. S. Rajaram observes on the influence of Western proximity with the contemporary India as follows: “This is a strange attitude for scholars to adopt. To fathom this bizarre behaviour we need to recognise that the AIT (Aryan Invasion Theory) or its latest incarnation called the AMT (for the Aryan Migration Theory, for there is no evidence for any invasion) has several faces that cater to the socio-political needs of several different groups. First and simplest, it is used to justify the political ideology of Dravidian parties of Tamil Nadu that hold that Tamil culture was ‘pure’ until it was defiled with Sanskrit by invading Aryans, especially by the Brahmins. This divisive myth was created by Robert Caldwell, Bishop of Tirunelveli as part of the missionary strategy of ‘divide and convert’. This was picked up by Dravidian party politicians like Karunanidhi to claim they were victims of Aryan, particularly Brahmin oppression. In this the politicians had and continue to have the strong support of Christian missionaries till date.

Then there are also entrenched (self styled) Indologists in Western academia whose survival is tied to this model of history. As per the AIT (now AMT), Vedas and the Sanskrit language were not created by the Indians themselves but brought by an invading superior race of Aryans, now called Indo-Europeans (to avoid the taint of Nazi horrors). Until recently, and even now to a significant extent, these invaders are portrayed as fair-skinned people related to Europeans. While these academics may be prepared to give up the idea of racial superiority — or at least claim to — they are not prepared give up the idea of being the descendants of a superior people who brought the Vedic civilisation to India. Their whole discipline is built on it; it is just not their identity but also their livelihood that is threatened by the collapse of AIT-AMT version of history.

In India, these Western interests don’t have a direct bearing except for the status of Indian scholars that goes with being associated with Western scholars. In addition, being in their good books by toeing their line can yield perks like fellowships, visiting positions and the like at Western institutions. Until recently this Indian elite prided on being seen as sharing a common ancestry with the British rulers, namely the Aryans or Indo-Europeans; this made them feel superior to fellow natives. (The British nurtured this superstitious vanity to gain Indian collaborators.)”

He goes on, “According to these, even the caste system represents a transformation of classes. On the other hand, the British attributed the caste system to racial differences, supposedly based on something called the ‘nasal index’. Its message — longer the nose, higher the caste!”

In his concluding remarks he states, “Hostility to anything Indian, especially Hindu is hard-wired into them. A real but unstated goal of making Vedas and Sanskrit foreign imports is to be able to claim that like Islam and Christianity, Hinduism is also of non-Indian origin and therefore has no special place in Indian history and culture. In this campaign it is not surprising to see Christian missionaries to be strong supporters of this version of ‘history’. Some Christian ‘scholars’ have gone to the extent of claiming that Sanskrit came to India only after St Thomas brought Christianity to India!” Full article can be perused at:

http://bharatabharati.wordpress.com/2012/05/12/looking-beyond-the-indus-script-story-of-vedic-harappans-n-s-rajaram/

http://folks.co.in/blog/2012/05/05/looking-beyond-the-indus-script-story-of-vedic-harappans/

Conclusion

From the foregoing description, it is amply clear that the Caste in Indian society per se aka Hinduism have a very complicated history like the origin of humanity. In contemporary world, centuries of intermingling of the various peoples have made it even more complicated. Its continued perpetuation is more by the extraneous forces than the Vedic culture known today synonymously as Hinduism. Now it is being used and abused by the myopic politicians for their self serving interests for vote bank issues.  Internationally also this is again used in the same vein. I have a feeling that this issue is going to go on relentlessly in the current perspective due to multitudes of powerful vested interests.

It may also be appropriate to club all the centrifugal divisive forces like caste, class, race, colour, language, gender, nationality, etcetera in the best interest and look upon them uniformly as undesirable purports. All of them are a cause for human scourge in one or the other way. Hence they may be collectively condemned equally as singular divisive monstrous instruments. These should attract equal condemnation from all the global agencies linked to the human welfare and survival. The earth has enough hate to cope with even in their absence. The attempts should be better directed towards the elimination of overly greed, hate, intolerance, anger etcetera. Let us try to make this world a liveable place in peace, love and