|
by Archishman Raju  Part 1: My Introduction to James Baldwin I still have vivid memories of the first time I reached the U.S., having arrived, for my PhD, in upstate New York at Cornell University. I remember being a little afraid and a little bit in awe, whether I admitted it or not. Many of the famous intellectuals who I had heard about, or whose books I had read, would be wandering in these corridors. The huge library put to shame anything in my past educational experience. The pace of work was faster than anything I had been used to. The most difficult part of the adjustment, however, was the social atmosphere. I didn’t quite know what to talk to people about, or how to talk to them. The content and tenor of conversations was very different from what I was used to. I was not quite sure how much to extend myself, and what I saw as friendly gestures were politely rebuffed. My experience was typical, so much so that the university kindly gave us a document “explaining” this in our orientation. This document proposed a “wall theory”. As per this document, Americans tend to be more friendly in their initial meetings with a low barrier or wall while “other cultures” (assorted) tend to be more reserved with a higher wall. For Americans (also assorted), these walls tend to become higher and it is more and more difficult to get close to them. For the rest of the world, apparently, the walls become lower and once you have crossed an initial barrier, you quickly become friends. Leaving aside the content of this explanation, I was then in no position to appreciate where such blandness in explanation derived from. Being interested in politics, I searched vainly for some signs of what I recognized as political activity in the University and found very little. I signed up online for a purportedly socialist group whose website I had encountered before coming to the U.S. The local branch of the socialist (Trotskyite) group turned out to be exactly one individual, who took me to a gathering in New York City. I don’t remember much of it except that I somehow remember that it was all white men. When I was introduced to the leader, he looked at me in what I, perhaps unfairly, remember as a leering way. They were interested that I write for their magazine. I didn’t know why they would be interested in me because it seemed to me we had disagreed on practically everything. Truths that I held to be self-evident, like the fact that Fidel Castro was a man to be admired, they held to be a sign of being “pseudo-left”. It was my first introduction to the American left, which was like nothing I had seen before. On the way back home we switched to uncomfortable silence and “small-talk” and they laughed at the way I pronounced “thermometer”. I never met them again. I did not know it then, but these initial experiences were my introduction to “the white world”. In one way or another, most Indian immigrants in the U.S. are first introduced to the U.S. through the white world. This is certainly true of those going as professionals but it is also ultimately true of those who go in search of low paying service jobs. This produces one of two responses: either they tend to stick together and remain in the Indian community or they work hard to successfully “assimilate” into American society. Indians have been one of the most successful examples of assimilation in American society. They are the richest ethnic group in America today. They are CEOs of companies, endowed chairs in Ivy League Universities. They are very visible as scientists, doctors and other professionals. This assimilation has come at a grave cost, both to Indians in the West and to Indians in India who tend to judge the West by what they think is the performance of these successful individuals. It was only when I spent time in Philadelphia that I got to see a very different part of America. Entering the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation held at the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia, the first thing I remember is the laughter. “If you want to feel humor too exquisite and subtle for translation, sit invisibly among a gang of Negro workers. The white world has its gibes and cruel caricatures; it has its loud guffaws; but to the black world alone belongs the delicious chuckle” says W.E.B Du Bois. It was a room primarily of older black people and even before any discussion started, I felt at home for the first time in America. The topic of discussion turned out to be the first chapter of Capital by Karl Marx. The Free School was my first introduction to the Black World and it introduced me to James Baldwin just as the 2016 presidential election neared. Philadelphia held the Democratic National Convention and also a “Socialist Convergence”. I participated in a “Black Lives Matter” march which, in the middle of a black neighbourhood in North Philly, seemed to mysteriously have mostly white people. The organizer called for “Black People at the Front” and “White People at the Back”. A black woman came out of her house and asked a black police officer “Now, what is that”. “Black Lives Matter, Ma’am”, he replied. “Now, I have my problems with that” she said. The reaction at my University to Donald Trump’s election was something to behold as huge marches appeared where there had been silence and “cry-ins” were held to commune in collective grief. It was in stark contrast to North Philly where there were no marches and life went on. I read The Fire Next Time just as I saw these two worlds in seemingly different realities. It was a book that I could not put down. I read it from start to finish in one sitting. I had not read anyone like James Baldwin. He explained more about American society than anything I had read. He helped me make sense of my own experience. “The Negro’s experience of the white world can not possibly create in him any respect for the standards by which the white world claims to live”. What struck me in reading Baldwin was not so much his description of the Black condition, but his description of the condition of white people. White people needed to be liberated, he said and black liberation was the price they would have to pay. Baldwin writes in a way that no writer in the English language does. He may be the greatest essayist in the English language. He analyzes society dialectically and does so through patient negation. His negation is forever optimistic, laying out a vision not just for a new society, but for a new civilization. He analyzes the Western world, and its foremost and most unlikely representative today, the United States of America. In describing my experience in the U.S., I am trying to lay out more than just a subjective viewpoint and a single experience. I am trying to argue that nothing in our experience in India prepares us to understand the complexity of the United States. Most definitely, nothing in our experience prepares us for the momentous changes that are taking place in the West today. Young Indian students who go to the West today have a very different experience than even those who went 10 years ago. More and more of them encounter a society undergoing convulsion in the throes of a crisis with economic, political and spiritual dimensions. They are witnessing the unraveling of a society which can no longer promise safety, comfort or stability. Assimilating into this decadence can not produce anything but spiritual discomfort. In writing that India Needs Baldwin, I want to argue that India needs to understand the West on its own terms. It needs to understand it, not through the pages of the New York Times, and the journals of various respectable American publications, but rather through learning from a tradition of Truth. It needs Baldwin not only for the sake of Indians in the West, but for the sake of Indians in India who deserve the truth about American society which influences so much of our discourse. Why was I so gripped by Baldwin’s writing? Outside of the quality of the writing, it reflected a need to understand the West. Every modern educated Indian has a foot in the western world, both because of our history and our present. What we are yet to realize is that the West needs us more than we need the West. Those who want to reject the West tend to try to retreat in their own culture. This is insufficient, for we can not reject what we do not understand and Baldwin’s writing gives us a framework to understand the ongoing changes in the Western World. Part 2: James Baldwin in Three Essays One must start reading Baldwin with The Fire Next Time. Baldwin’s philosophical style relates deeply with our own. “Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.” His philosophy is fundamentally based on a love for humanity. It is almost like reading the Buddha or Kabir in modern form. His style and philosophy derives from the black Church and the blues. It is not the blues or Baldwin that is introduced to Indians as American culture but rather it is mediocre “pop” music, or video games or TV shows. Baldwin finds little in American popular culture that is worthy of respect. “Something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their own reactions as deeply as they do here, and become as joyless as they have become”. Baldwin ties the joylessness of this private life with American performance at an international level. “the American dream has therefore become something much more closely resembling a nightmare, on the private, domestic, and international levels. Privately, we can not stand our lives and dare not examine them; domestically, we take no responsibility for (and no pride in) what goes on in our country; and internationally, for many millions of people, we are an unmitigated disaster.” We may be familiar with America’s numerous imperial misadventures, particularly since Asia has been the recipient of so many of them (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan..), but it is far more difficult to understand the system that produces these misadventures. It is not, as Indian communists like to argue, simply a matter of profits for the war industry in the U.S. The war industry is certainly important and war is profitable but, as Baldwin argues, America’s role in the world is the result of a system of white (or western) supremacy. The system changes and reproduces itself but retains an essence. In its latest iteration, it sometimes accommodates various colours at the top but it does not depart from the fundamental assumption that the future of the world must be determined by Western Civilization. The American ruling elite reacts hysterically to the idea of a world that does not have them at its center. This explains their reaction to China or the $100 billion they are willing to send to Ukraine. Nothing quite confirmed Baldwin’s writings as the reaction of the liberal elite to the election of Donald Trump. They immediately, without end and continuously for years blamed the election on Russia. Baldwin could have written for our times, “Behind what we think of as the Russian menace lies what we do not wish to face, and what white Americans do not face when they regard a Negro: reality” In denying the reality of their own bankruptcy, the growing anger of the American people as a whole, and the growing rebellion of white workers in particular, it was clear that the members of the American ruling elite were desperately hanging on to a fantasy that Russia was responsible for Donald Trump. Baldwin’s genius is that he turns the question of oppression around, by examining its effect of white people rather than listing the crimes committed on the black population. Baldwin unmasks the surface of American society and reveals what lies beneath it. He examines and rejects the standards of society. But in doing so, he also conducts a search for revolutionary possibilities in the American people—black and white. His is a search for new moral standards and for new human beings. In this sense, his quest is a universal quest. India needs Baldwin because there is something for us to learn from the west. To read Baldwin is liberating, it allows you to think in new ways and frees you from dogmatic understanding. Baldwin extends his analysis of white supremacy as a global system in No Name in the Street, reflecting on his experience in France. He expresses solidarity with the Algerian struggle against France and ties together the racial situation in America with the colonial situation around the world. He sees colonial subjugation not just as a means of material well being but as the key to European identity. The key to the identity is, for Baldwin, in the concept of the moral choice. That choice can not be made as long Europeans are bound by what they think is their history. Baldwin says “...it is not easy to see that, for millions of people, life itself depends on the speediest possible demolition of this history, even if this means the leveling, or the destruction of its heirs. And whatever this history may have given to the subjugated is of absolutely no value, since they have never been free to reject it;…That is why, ultimately, all attempts at dialogue between the subdued and subduer, between those placed within history and those dispersed outside, break down”. In speaking of the dialogue between the colonizer and the colonized, Baldwin is not talking about the polite debates that are held by the civilized representatives of the colonized in western halls. This dialogue will not be settled in the halls of the Oxford Union. Whenever a true dialogue begins, it must fundamentally challenge the state of western economic arrangements and the intellectual and cultural power of the west. The response, then, will not be polite patronizing applause but more akin to the treatment the West gives out to its official enemies: in Venezuela, Libya, North Korea, Iran and now China. It is in his last major essay, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, written in 1985 that Baldwin brings forth the sheer vastness of this thinking. The essay, written 2 years before his death, is written just at the beginning of a counter-revolutionary moment with Reagan in power in the United States and Gorbachev having been elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. “The situation of the Black American “minority” connects with the situation of the so-called “emerging” or “Third World” nations”, he says, “These existed, until only yesterday, merely as a source of capital for the “developed” nations. The “vital” interests of the Western world were the riches extorted from the colonies. Without this worldwide plunder, there could have been no Industrial Revolution.” None of the emerging nations, says Baldwin, have achieved economic autonomy. He compares independence in the third world, with integration in America. Both “merely set in motion a complex legal and political machinery designed to camouflage and maintain the status quo”. Thus, Baldwin analyzes the changing nature of the white supremacy in the form of a world system and continues to argue for the need for a fundamental transformation of this system. Baldwin analyzes white supremacy in the book in deeply historical but also civilizational terms. He speaks of the “European” as a term referring “to the dooms of Capital, Christianity and Color”. Baldwin sees the processes that are transforming the world, and, leading up to our moment will lead to an inevitable confrontation. “The Black man’s first encounter with the West...brought him devastation and death, we are only, now, beginning to recover, are beginning, out of the most momentous diaspora in human memory, to rediscover and recognize each other. This is a global matter, and the denouement of this encounter will be bloody and severe precisely because it demolishes the morality, to say nothing of the definitions, of the Western world.” Baldwin hints on two occasions in the essay that the Western ruling elite may be cowardly enough, may become so incapable of change that it would be willing to destroy all of life rather than cede to a new system. He sees a coming final crisis in this system of white supremacy. He says, “the American Dream can be taken as the final manifestation of the European/Western/Christian dominance. There are no more oceans to cross, no savage territories to be conquered, no more natives to be converted.” At the same time, he sees the possibility of a new civilization, liberated from the shackles which the western world has put on the world for the past few centuries. “The present social and political apparatus cannot serve human need”. He argues that the United States still contains revolutionary possibilities in its depths and has the potential to lead this liberation. “I know this sounds remote, now, and that I will not live to see anything resembling this hope come to pass. Yet, I know that I have seen it---in fire and blood and anguish, true but I have seen it.” Conclusion James Baldwin is a writer who has a message for humanity. He is a witness not just for black people in America but for the darker people of the world, and ultimately, for all of humanity. He speaks with an intimate knowledge that can only be gained by constant contact. He speaks as a creation of the Western World who does not accept Western values. In doing so, he furnishes a new epistemology and gives us a way to understand the meaning of the changes taking place in the world today. The Western world is watching India, and hoping that our “democratic” inheritance will pull us to their side in the reckoning that is to come. It would do well to remind us how many Indians were transported to the Caribbean, or how many lives were wasted in man-made famines which is part of the historical record of western “democracy” in India. We will certainly grow more powerful but we can not become “great” by imitating a people who barely recognize our existence. There is a civilizational connection between India and Black America that is yet to be fully uncovered, reflected in one of the most remarkable connections in 20th century history: between the Indian and the black freedom struggle. Reading Baldwin is like reading an old friend, who speaks in a language that Indians are familiar with from their own philosophy. And yet Baldwin belongs to the modern world, and his subject matter is its most technically complex creation, the United States of America. His examination enlightens a revolutionary path forward for our time. Archishman Raju is a contributor to and an editor of this journal.
1 Comment
by Ram Mohan Rai  This was my fourth visit to America. My first visit was for one month in the year 2014, then for about two months in 2016, for four months in 2019 and now for about four and a half months in 2022. The first three trips were spent primarily with family, but even during that time I made efforts to understand more of American life, to meet the people here so that my understanding of this society could be developed. The last visit provided an opportunity to get acquainted with a Pakistani-origin youth, Jahan Choudhry, who lives in Philadelphia and works with the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation, through Devika Mittal, a young peace activist from India. I began to speak with him and got to know about his organization and its work. During our conversations, I learned that he was working on a commemoration of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary with his organization. They were working on linking the ideas of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Gandhi's thought. I had heard the name of Dr. King but was completely ignorant of his ideology or philosophy. Through Jahan I was also introduced to Archishman Raju and Meghna Chandra. All these young people were either pursuing higher education or working in America. They were not only mature in their thinking but were also committed towards action. While I was in the US, Raju and Meghna visited their native land, India, and met with eminent Gandhians in different institutions for which I provided an introduction. I could not help but be impressed by their commitment to Gandhi's thoughts, devotion to world peace and justice for all oppressed classes. If anyone was doing serious work to commemorate Gandhi’s 150th anniversary, it was the members of this organization. During my stay in Seattle, Dr. S.N. Subbarao, a famous Gandhian who had come to America for his work with youth camps, also came to meet me, as did Saturday Free School member R. Divya Nair. Divya brought me two black t-shirts on which pictures of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. King were printed. Of these two people who came to meet me, one was very senior, 93 years old, while the other was a very bright young woman, but there was a wonderful harmony in their visits. One was an eternally youthful man who had devoted his life to the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave, the other was a young student of the same philosophy. This third visit of mine to the US had opened up my mind to new possibilities. A new path was opened to me that could allow me to understand and interact with American society once I was already there. I had the opportunity at this time to interact with a few other ideological friends who lived in the US. Didi Nirmala Deshpande has been the lamp of a new perspective in my life. It was through her that I was inspired to work towards world peace, national unity, religious harmony, and peace and friendship with our neighboring nations. After her death, it was up to her comrades to continue on with her various activities. She had not only involved me in her work but also in her propaganda medium, Nityanootan Magazine. She had held the responsibility for many organizations. Such work always has an element of political maneuvering but it turned out to be a case of sour grapes for me; I tried but could not be successful. In the end, I decided to work under the aegis of the Gandhi Global Family, and made this the means through which Nirmala Didi’s vision could be made concrete. I was born to parents who believed in communal harmony. They believed in synthesis. My father was from an uneducated, Puranic family of a nearby village while my mother was from an urban educated, progressive Arya Samaj family. Both their political ideologies were, however, the same: they were followers of the Gandhi-Nehru led Congress. My mother went to jail twice in her lifetime. Once in Gandhiji’s Quit India Movement in 1942 and again in 1978 for protesting against the arrest of Mrs. Indira Gandhi. This was a period of unity between the Congress and the Communist Party of India and they worked together under a minimum common program. My teacher Deep Chandra Nirmohi was influenced by the ideology of the Communist Party and it was his guidance that caused me to join the Communist Party through the All India Students Federation, rather than follow the ideological leanings of my family. It was here that I began to develop scientific thinking. I had the opportunity to think and understand for myself. Not only did I get the opportunity to study in the ideological classes for students in the country, but I also got the opportunity to go to the Soviet Union and get to know it in a practical way. Of course there the socialist experiment failed, but I believe that it was the experiment that failed and not socialism itself. This was also the time when the party line in the CPI proposed under the leadership of Comrade S.A. Dange had weakened. Finally, the day came when the founder of the party was expelled and I also fell victim to this changed policy of the Communists. First by forming the Bhagat Singh Sabha and then by working in other organizations, I found my way back to my mother organization Arya Samaj and they also accepted this lost member with an open heart. Thus I joined India's oldest Arya Samaj, Panipat and remained in the post of minister for 6 consecutive years and was an administrator in its associated educational institutions for 12 consecutive years. I was also fortunate to have had the privilege of working with Aruna Asaf Ali, Subhadra Joshi, Shaheed Bhagat Singh's mother, brother and other members, Durga Bhabhi and finally Nirmala Deshpande and Swami Agnivesh. I have always been fond of traveling. By myself and with Didi Nirmala Deshpande, I have had the opportunity to travel all over India and countries of South Asia. I accompanied her to Pakistan five times out of my eight total visits to Pakistan. I was as fascinated and excited to see America as any other Indian. Despite the fact that we spent our youth criticizing and sloganeering against them, we could not stop a certain attraction to the country. Like every Indian, I considered it to be a very prosperous country, which had every comfort that we could imagine in our wishes and dreams of heaven. When an Indian comes back from America, we feel that he has come from a fairyland, while his attitude also changes and is different from any other Indian. His tales and stories are listened to as wonders. He earns in dollars i.e. one dollar to our 80 rupees. If someone earns even 500 dollars in a month, then we think of it as 40 thousand rupees per month. Indians who came to America also behave accordingly. Most of them are Indians who are in high positions in IT companies and earn thousands of dollars a month. Many earn millions. In comparison to Americans and other Europeans, Asians in America tend to be more talented and sharp and therefore dominate the American economy. The whole market is also filled with Asian manufactured goods, particularly Chinese and Korean. These two nations are ahead of Americans in many respects. However, it is not true that only the Asian elite comes to the U.S. Many workers and others involved in physical work also come to the U.S. They come to the U.S. in search of better job opportunities. Others were brought here illegally and have no way to return even if they wish to. I will here speak only of Indians. Their income in America is more than what it would have been in their own country, and therefore their living conditions are also good. Many have gained citizenship, others have gained green cards and the remaining are in line. Every resident here has free education till 12th standard i.e. they are entitled to minimum education but higher education is not only in private hands, but is very expensive and difficult to obtain. Successful Indians here do not consider themselves less than any American but many Americans think differently. “America First” means that foreigners are second to Americans in the country. I will now like to present a different side by talking of the conditions of African American people. You will find boards and banners proclaiming “Black Lives Matter” everywhere in America but it is worth considering whether this society really treats black people with respect and equality. African-Americans have the highest level of unemployment. The condition of untouchability is such that black and white settlements are never together barring a few exceptions. Due to unemployment and poverty, the level of crime is higher among black people and they have a higher number of people in jail. The history of 246 years of American Independence has definitely changed the condition of African American people, but not fundamentally. The election of Barack Obama as President and Kamala Harris as Vice-President made people think that the whole Black community has made progress but this is not true. In such a situation, we Indians are put in a very strange position. We don't stand with Black people because in these matters we consider ourselves closer to white people. On the other hand, white people don’t consider us to be more like black people and we remain neither here nor there. We are in this condition because we are ignorant of our culture, civilization and history. We like Mahatma Gandhi printed on the Indian Rupee Note, and as a symbol of our national identity, but apart from that we do not concern ourselves with him. Black and White Americans might know more about Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Sardar Patel and Subhash Chandra Bose than we do. It is not that Indians don’t love their country. Significant national days like Independence day are celebrated with great enthusiasm. Religious festivals are also greatly celebrated. They not only give adequate donations to temples, they have built many temples, big and small, in this country. Camps are organized to connect Indian children to Indian thought. They are interested in Indian politics and leaders but a strange silence of denial prevails if the subject of going back to India is brought up. They want Indianness but not India. This visit gave me the chance to understand this aspect of Indians in America. Like I said earlier, education up to high school is absolutely free but higher education is reserved for the rich. This is not just expensive but difficult to obtain. Big Universities are under the control of corporate and education mafias who consider education to be a big profit-making endeavour given the shutting down of industries in the U.S. On the other hand, unemployment is at its peak because of the closing down of American Industries and the impact of this is felt most on the working class, particularly on black people. We will have to remember that America only makes its own weapons, aeroplanes and medicines while other essential goods are all imported. Its global economy built on industry and capital is today shaking and this world-power is groaning under its own weight. The value of money is at its lowest point and more currency is being printed to deal with this. The price of everyday necessities for ordinary people have blown up and the biggest victims of this situation are ordinary people, working people and black people. I found in Philadelphia that there are four types of Americas. The first are the very rich people whose homes feel like they are from heaven. Second are those middle class people whose style of living gives a sense of their conditions. Third are low-income groups, the majority of whom are black, whose living conditions are like the Slums of India. The numbers of this third group are very large whereas the second group i.e. the middle class America is reaching the lowest numbers in the world. The fourth group is those youth who have given up on life and are drowned in drugs. There is an entire area that has been captured by this group. There are police in this area but not to stop the drugs, but rather to keep the addicts within certain boundaries. Every kind of drug is easily available here. The irony of the whole situation is that the larger proportion of these drug addicts are white people who are an indicator that the system is breaking down. America is a majority Christian nation, protestant rather than Catholic. There are churches of different christian sects here just like we have our temples and mosques in every street and neighbourhood. Just like our own old system of untouchability, you can see religious places which are segregated. It is common to see a Black Church, and because it is Black, it is reflected in the situation. Its condition is difficult and abject. We also got the opportunity to participate in a program at the Church of the Advocate. The Church was dusty and its upkeep was neglected. We did get a chance to visit other Churches where the situation was completely opposite. We could also see that the neglect in this upkeep was a result of the criminal activity of the real estate and land mafia, who want to capture this land and make huge profit out of it by converting it into a commercial institution or a housing complex for foreign students. Skyscrapers, roads, gardens and natural lakes are certainly indicators of development but the reality of this urban development is made bare by the sights of the homeless at every corner and the beggars on every major square. This is common to see in India, but we do not call ourselves a developed nation. This is a very developed nation so why do we see these conditions? Saturday Free School did two things to open our eyes to this situation. First, they exposed the truths about this society and it is our responsibility to inform India about this darkness, but further they also showed us that ray of hope which the youth of various nations cast by celebrating the 75th anniversary of Indian independence. This is the hope that the father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi gave through his message of truth and nonviolence. These youth believe that the path of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. is the right path for the resolution of the crisis that our world faces. That is the message of “My Trip to the land of Martin Luther King Jr.” Ram Mohan Rai is General Secretary of the Gandhi Global Family, as well as a long time activist based in Panipat. He is also involved in initiatives such as the Agaaz-e-Dosti Yatra, the Association of Peoples of Asia and is the founder of the Nirmala Deshpande Sanstha.
Professor Lin Minwang  This presentation was given at an India China peace event held by the Intercivilizational Dialogue Project, India and the Thinkers' Forum at Fudan University, China on the 12th of December, 2022 on poverty alleviation and Asian cooperation. I will focus this presentation on the question of what is the difference and similarity in the Chinese and Indian path to democracy and economic development since independence. When I first went to India and worked in New Delhi in 2013, I would always compare China and India. In fact, this trip changed the focus of my research which was then on Europe. I always tried to ask myself why China and India took different paths. The reason this question is so significant is that China and India are very similar in all aspects. Both countries are populous countries with large populations and we have long ancient civilizations. Both countries were powerful countries in the past. Both have been colonized by western powers. Both countries after gaining independence were trying to find a new way for developing and for a prosperous future. Naturally, the same conditions make it easy for the two countries to understand each other. However, I often find that this is not the case. The difference between India and China is often politicized. I remember one of the articles written by Vijay Gokhale, the former Indian ambassador to China and Foreign Secretary, written after Covid-19 broke out in Wuhan. He argued that India poses a strong challenge to the ideology of Communist China and the Chinese Government. He said India has a strong democracy and this is what leads to economic development. He thus said democracy is India’s greatest asset and the existence of democratic state challenges the Beijing consensus. He argued that India’s success would make it ideologically difficult for the Communist Party of China (CPC) to justify its models. It seems that Indian elites try to put forth that India has a superior political system to China. Also, in China, many scholars believe that China’s political system is better than India’s. I will not go into detail about these discussions. This is a reflection of the difficulty between China and India’s quest to understand each other. I personally think we have to get rid of this mentality and try to look at each other rationally. If we do this, we will definitely discover that we each have our own strengths. With this in mind, let me speak of the similarity and difference in India and China’s economic path. I think the similarities are very clear and have at least four aspects: First, both China and India tried to establish a socialist economic system. The CPC regards socialist ideology as the dominant ideology. Obviously, our aim is to establish a socialist economic system. In the eyes of many Chinese, Indian leaders also favoured socialism in terms of economic development. When India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited Moscow, he saw socialism had many advantages over capitalism. After his death, his daughter Indira Gandhi actually continued the socialist ideology. So, India’s economic policy after independence was influenced by its experience under colonialism and also has been greatly influenced by the Soviet Union. Second, both countries have learnt and borrowed some of the economic lessons from the Soviet Union, especially from the planned economic system. The importance of economic planning for China and India is very clear. At the beginning of 1950, India had its own 5 year plans as did China. India had policies which dictated that the state should be dominant over markets. They pursued the strategy of import substitution and also restricted the development of the private sector with many policies like industrial licensing, credit controls etc. There was a very similar process in China, which also took from the Soviet Union’s planned economic system. The third aspect is that both countries at the beginning of economic development, gave priority to industrialization and the setting up of factories. Both countries wanted to establish a modern industrial system. This is why these two countries have an independent industrial system today. The fourth aspect is that both countries have reformed the planned economic system after opening up. For China, it was in 1978 and for India, it was in 1991. They have tried to partially transform the socialist economic system to a capitalist economic system. This is the general similarity between the two countries. There is also some difference between the path of economic development between the two countries. I think there are three aspects of the difference: The first aspect is that they have different starting points. When India got independence in 1947, India was the world’s 5th largest economy. It is also currently the 5th largest economy. At that time, China was relatively poorer. We have different starting points. The second aspect has to do with implementation and has some relationship with the political system. Actually, the Chinese planned economic development goals were implemented both during the socialist era and during reform and opening up, but India was relatively poor in the implementation of its economic goals. The third aspect is that the Chinese economy transformed much faster than India. India was slow compared with China. During China’s reform and opening up, the degree of marketization is far higher than in India’s. The main reason is that Chinese elites, especially the CCP, had reached a consensus on economic opening and economic development. India’s opening up was partially a technical choice of the political parties. There was no consensus in India’s whole society about economic opening. This is why India did not try to open its economic system to the same extent as China. These are the similarities and differences in India and China’s paths of economic development. In terms of political development, especially democracy, China and India are quite different. India has learnt from Western style democratic models: the parliamentary democratic model. The major criticism that one hears about India’s political system is that India has elections but no accountability. For Chinese polity, the legitimacy does not depend on elections but actually on its achievement. Before opening up, the political legitimacy depended on the historical role of the CCP which led the Chinese people to independence. After the reform and opening up, political legitimacy depends on economic success. This may be changing now, when the political legitimacy may depend on the fact that the CCP is leading the Chinese people to achieve national rejuvenation. Maybe we can have a re-assessment on China’s political system. But in any case even though China has no general election, Chinese officials have very strong accountability. These are some of the similarities and differences between China and India’s economy and political system. A rational examination of the two can help us examine our strengths and weaknesses, in a way that can lead to a prosperous future for both countries. Professor Lin Minwang is currently the Assistant to Dean and researcher of Institute of International Studies, Fudan University and Deputy Director of the Center for South Asian Studies, Fudan University. He mainly conducts researches on the theory of international relations and international relations in South Asia (including China-India relations).
|
RSS Feed