India is as failed a state as Pakistan, if not more so. And India's secular democracy is a sham.
Not unlike North Korea, India is engaged in a massive arms buildup while half of its children are near starvation. A nation-state like India that fails to take care of half its children's basic nutrition needs has to be a failed state.
The myth about Pakistan being a failed state is being pushed by people who are either ignorant about Pakistan, or have an ax to grind.
Here's a video clip of William Dalrymple comparing India and Pakistan:
Do any serious analysts challenge the poverty and hunger figures for India, or the strength and scope of the Maoists insyrgency? Absolutely not! Even Indian officials agree with the data on hunger and poverty and malnutrition.
Do any serious analysts challenge Pakistan's place on failed state index? Absolutely! Not just one, many analysts do!
Dalrymple, a self-declared Indophile, is not alone in rejecting the myth of Pak being a failed state. Others who know South Asia and other parts of the world, such as Prof Juan Cole, Peter Bergen, and others, also reject this myth of Pakistan being a failed state.
My reasons for saying that India is a failed state are simple: More than Pakistani state, the Indian state has miserably failed in meeting the very basic needs of its people (particularly children) for food, clothing, shelter and basic sanitation. In addition, India has larger swaths of its territory in central and eastern where state authority does not exist.
India is also a failed democracy and a bad poster child for democratic form of government. It's pervasive hunger, poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, a huge and growing rich-poor gap, and a well-established system of caste-based Apartheid, and its terrible governance make its democracy a joke. And its history of widespread persecution of its minorities makes its secular label ludicrous.
In spite of the fact that India has been living on the old crumbs of outsourcing for the last 10 years the situation has hardly improved in the cities and villages of India. The poverty in India is reaching its new heights with every passing day. Thousands and thousands of people commit suicide every year just because they either don't have enough to eat or they simply can't feed their children/family. The Socialistic economic system in India has suddenly been changed to capitalistic one but trickle down effect has hardly taken effect. The whole nation is facing terrorism from left right and center. 25% of the country (in terms of area) has no writ of the state as MAOISTS (Communists) have demolished the capitalistic structure in many districts of India. They have their own laws and their own courts. There are at least 10 insurgency movements in India starting from Kashmir in the east to the whole of North East which has 6 or 7 states. Indian Govt. seems helpless.
Do you agree that India is a failed state?? - Yahoo! Answers
I agree with India's Dalit leader, constitution architect and first law minister Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar's statement that "Democracy in India is only a top dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic."
Going by Ambedkars expressed fears, the Indian republic is like Henry Wadsworth Longfellows Slaves Dream. It was created by a people that were subjugated by colonialism and its republican ideals were shaped by a human rights pioneer who rose from the lowest layers of the countrys caste heap, a form of slavery in some ways more degrading
than apartheid.
India celebrates its Republic Day each year with an hour-long display of military hardware, which of late has included dummies of nuclear- tipped missiles. The accompanying convoy of floats showcasing the countrys cultural variety (and humour) with everything ranging from
ayurvedic massages to tribal dances, to harvest festivals is a more realistic sample of the countrys anarchy and depth than imported military arsenal, which guzzles depleted resources, annoys neighbours and contributes to keeping millions of Indians in penury and poor health.
Ambedkars fear of an inhospitable soil that deters rather than nurtures democracy if left to itself has been vindicated by the countrys sharp tilt to the right since 1990. His most entrenched detractors belong to the Hindu right, but the exigencies of the countrys caste arithmetic, which shores up the parliamentary system,
compels them to woo his followers, if not his legacy.
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Soc/soc.culture.pakistan/2010 -01/msg00307.html
Regarding secularism, here's how Kapil Komireddy demolishes the myth of Indian secularism in a piece he wrote for the Guardian newspaper:
For decades Indian intellectuals have claimed that religion, particularly Hinduism, is perfectly compatible with secularism. Indian secularism, they said repeatedly, is not a total rejection of religion by the state but rather an equal appreciation of every faith. Even though no faith is in principle privileged by the state, this approach made it possible for religion to find expression in the public sphere, and, since Hindus in India outnumber adherents of every other faith, Hinduism dominated it. Almost every government building in India has a prominently positioned picture of a Hindu deity. Hindu rituals accompany the inauguration of all public works, without exception.
The novelist Shashi Tharoor tried to burnish this certifiably sectarian phenomenon with a facile analogy: Indian Muslims, he wrote, accept Hindu rituals at state ceremonies in the same spirit as teetotallers accept champagne in western celebrations. This self-affirming explanation is characteristic of someone who belongs to the majority community. Muslims I interviewed took a different view, but understandably, they were unwilling to protest for the fear of being labelled as "angry Muslims" in a country famous for its tolerant Hindus.
The failure of secularism in India or, more accurately, the failure of the Indian model of secularism may be just one aspect of the gamut of failures, but it has the potential to bring down the country. Secularism in India rests entirely upon the goodwill of the Hindu majority. Can this kind of secularism really survive a Narendra Modi as prime minister? As Hindus are increasingly infected by the kind of hatred that Varun Gandhi's speech displayed, maybe it is time for Indian secularists to embrace a new, more radical kind of secularism that is not afraid to recognise and reject the principal source of this strife: religion itself.
Kapil Komireddi: India's failing secularism | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Haq's Musings
Haq's Musings: India and Pakistan Contrasted in 2010
Not unlike North Korea, India is engaged in a massive arms buildup while half of its children are near starvation. A nation-state like India that fails to take care of half its children's basic nutrition needs has to be a failed state.
The myth about Pakistan being a failed state is being pushed by people who are either ignorant about Pakistan, or have an ax to grind.
Here's a video clip of William Dalrymple comparing India and Pakistan:
Do any serious analysts challenge the poverty and hunger figures for India, or the strength and scope of the Maoists insyrgency? Absolutely not! Even Indian officials agree with the data on hunger and poverty and malnutrition.
Do any serious analysts challenge Pakistan's place on failed state index? Absolutely! Not just one, many analysts do!
Dalrymple, a self-declared Indophile, is not alone in rejecting the myth of Pak being a failed state. Others who know South Asia and other parts of the world, such as Prof Juan Cole, Peter Bergen, and others, also reject this myth of Pakistan being a failed state.
My reasons for saying that India is a failed state are simple: More than Pakistani state, the Indian state has miserably failed in meeting the very basic needs of its people (particularly children) for food, clothing, shelter and basic sanitation. In addition, India has larger swaths of its territory in central and eastern where state authority does not exist.
India is also a failed democracy and a bad poster child for democratic form of government. It's pervasive hunger, poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, a huge and growing rich-poor gap, and a well-established system of caste-based Apartheid, and its terrible governance make its democracy a joke. And its history of widespread persecution of its minorities makes its secular label ludicrous.
In spite of the fact that India has been living on the old crumbs of outsourcing for the last 10 years the situation has hardly improved in the cities and villages of India. The poverty in India is reaching its new heights with every passing day. Thousands and thousands of people commit suicide every year just because they either don't have enough to eat or they simply can't feed their children/family. The Socialistic economic system in India has suddenly been changed to capitalistic one but trickle down effect has hardly taken effect. The whole nation is facing terrorism from left right and center. 25% of the country (in terms of area) has no writ of the state as MAOISTS (Communists) have demolished the capitalistic structure in many districts of India. They have their own laws and their own courts. There are at least 10 insurgency movements in India starting from Kashmir in the east to the whole of North East which has 6 or 7 states. Indian Govt. seems helpless.
Do you agree that India is a failed state?? - Yahoo! Answers
I agree with India's Dalit leader, constitution architect and first law minister Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar's statement that "Democracy in India is only a top dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic."
Going by Ambedkars expressed fears, the Indian republic is like Henry Wadsworth Longfellows Slaves Dream. It was created by a people that were subjugated by colonialism and its republican ideals were shaped by a human rights pioneer who rose from the lowest layers of the countrys caste heap, a form of slavery in some ways more degrading
than apartheid.
India celebrates its Republic Day each year with an hour-long display of military hardware, which of late has included dummies of nuclear- tipped missiles. The accompanying convoy of floats showcasing the countrys cultural variety (and humour) with everything ranging from
ayurvedic massages to tribal dances, to harvest festivals is a more realistic sample of the countrys anarchy and depth than imported military arsenal, which guzzles depleted resources, annoys neighbours and contributes to keeping millions of Indians in penury and poor health.
Ambedkars fear of an inhospitable soil that deters rather than nurtures democracy if left to itself has been vindicated by the countrys sharp tilt to the right since 1990. His most entrenched detractors belong to the Hindu right, but the exigencies of the countrys caste arithmetic, which shores up the parliamentary system,
compels them to woo his followers, if not his legacy.
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Soc/soc.culture.pakistan/2010 -01/msg00307.html
Regarding secularism, here's how Kapil Komireddy demolishes the myth of Indian secularism in a piece he wrote for the Guardian newspaper:
For decades Indian intellectuals have claimed that religion, particularly Hinduism, is perfectly compatible with secularism. Indian secularism, they said repeatedly, is not a total rejection of religion by the state but rather an equal appreciation of every faith. Even though no faith is in principle privileged by the state, this approach made it possible for religion to find expression in the public sphere, and, since Hindus in India outnumber adherents of every other faith, Hinduism dominated it. Almost every government building in India has a prominently positioned picture of a Hindu deity. Hindu rituals accompany the inauguration of all public works, without exception.
The novelist Shashi Tharoor tried to burnish this certifiably sectarian phenomenon with a facile analogy: Indian Muslims, he wrote, accept Hindu rituals at state ceremonies in the same spirit as teetotallers accept champagne in western celebrations. This self-affirming explanation is characteristic of someone who belongs to the majority community. Muslims I interviewed took a different view, but understandably, they were unwilling to protest for the fear of being labelled as "angry Muslims" in a country famous for its tolerant Hindus.
The failure of secularism in India or, more accurately, the failure of the Indian model of secularism may be just one aspect of the gamut of failures, but it has the potential to bring down the country. Secularism in India rests entirely upon the goodwill of the Hindu majority. Can this kind of secularism really survive a Narendra Modi as prime minister? As Hindus are increasingly infected by the kind of hatred that Varun Gandhi's speech displayed, maybe it is time for Indian secularists to embrace a new, more radical kind of secularism that is not afraid to recognise and reject the principal source of this strife: religion itself.
Kapil Komireddi: India's failing secularism | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Haq's Musings
Haq's Musings: India and Pakistan Contrasted in 2010
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