{"id":2517,"date":"2002-10-02T21:37:07","date_gmt":"2002-10-02T16:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alpha.ravikiran.com\/blog\/2002\/10\/02\/i-have-come-to-bury-gandhiji\/"},"modified":"2002-10-02T21:37:07","modified_gmt":"2002-10-02T16:07:07","slug":"i-have-come-to-bury-gandhiji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/vintage\/200210\/i-have-come-to-bury-gandhiji\/","title":{"rendered":"I have come to bury Gandhiji&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I belong to the third generation after independence, so I bear no part of the responsibility for our country&#8217;s abandoning Gandhiji in practice. But I would like to do my bit to get people to abandon his theories too. All of his economics and most of his politics. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> <b>The earth has enough for everyone&#8217;s needs&#8230;<\/b> <br \/> Actually, the earth doesn&#8217;t have enough for <i>anyone&#8217;s<\/i> needs. Hunting and foraging can support only a fraction of us, that too at subsistence levels. Anything that we need has to be farmed, mined, built or manufactured.  It turns out that a society that p?nders to the greed of its most productive members is also the one that satisfies the need of all its members.<\/li>\n<li><b>India lives in the villages&#8230;<\/b><br \/> India had one of the earliest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harappa.com\/har\/har0.html\">urban civilizations<\/a>. All through history, when farmers produced surplus food, they used to bundle it into their bullock carts, converge at a place and trade what they produced for something else. These places developed into cities.  The extra food that civilization produced left others free to do other things. This has been going on for thousands of years. There is no good reason why we should stop this process now, rather than a thousand years back or a thousand years hence. <\/li>\n<li><b>Self-sufficiency&#8230;<\/b> <br \/> If you are planning to fight a war with everyone else in the world, self-sufficiency is a good policy. Obviously, you wouldn&#8217;t want critical supplies to be disrupted hampering the war effort. In all other cases, trading with others is good for you. It enables you to specialise in what you do best and buy all else from others. Trade helps prevent wars. This is true whether you are an individual, village or a country.  Hindus and Muslims don&#8217;t riot where they trade with each other. India and Pakistan won&#8217;t fight if they start trading. <\/li>\n<li> <b>Charkha&#8230;<\/b><br \/> Gandhiji opposed all machines except the sewing machine. But he travelled by trains inside India and by went by steamer to England. He believed that machines had impoverished India. He was wrong. By the time he arrived on the scene, the re-industrialization of India had started. Textile mills were being set up in Bombay. The Tatas had set up steel mills. Gandhians thought that machines were a problem. Nehruvians thought that India should mechanize, but under Government tutelage. Together they ensured that India&#8217;s industrialization would crawl along for the next 40 years. <\/li>\n<li><b>Non violence&#8230;<\/b><br \/>Non-violence is a good tactic, but bad philosophy. British rule was actually liberal and mild by the standards of those times. Not many people would have participated in an armed rebellion against such a government, risking death. But many people would offer satyagraha, go on protest marches and go to jail. But  it is the most inconsistent and fuzzy of his philosophies. Did he believe that there shouldn&#8217;t be a police force and jails? No he didn&#8217;t. Did he believe that the army should be abolished? No he didn&#8217;t. Did he believe that there shouldn&#8217;t be a government at all &#8211; did he support anarchy? No he didn&#8217;t. He failed to realize that <i>all government action is backed by force.<\/i> He failed to realize that non-violence was incompatible with all his other policies. Prohibition &#8211; the government has to set the police on those who drink. &#8216;Self-sufficiency&#8217; &#8211; The government has to set the police on those who trade with foreign countries.  Small scale sector &#8211; The government has to physically prevent industries from buying machines. Not surprisingly, non-violence was the first of his principles to be abandoned. He did not intend it that way. He believed that people could be made to follow his principles through persuasion. Unfortunately, this idea doesn&#8217;t scale. I find it tough enough to persuade neighbours and friends of my views. What are the chances that I will put my trust on a philosophy where my life depends on persuading the rest of the world of Gandhiji&#8217;s principles?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I belong to the third generation after independence, so I bear no part of the responsibility for our country&#8217;s abandoning Gandhiji in practice. But I would like to do my bit to get people to abandon his theories too. All of his economics and most of his politics. The earth has enough for everyone&#8217;s needs&#8230; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}