Understanding Indian Insurgencies

[Ray]

Possibly so... but who's being funded, and who's doing the funding? The accusations published all seem awfully generic, with few organizations actually mentioned, and funding for, say, environmental, anti-nuclear, or similar groups isn't the same thing as funding Maoist rebels.

Governments always prefer to blame issues of insurgency and popular resistance movements of foreign subversion: that relieves them of responsibility for the consequences of their own governance decision. That's often a bit of an excuse, though. Foreign support may aggravate an insurgency, but it's not going to create one, not without a pretty high level of disaffection already in place.

It is easy for one to comment that the Govt blames others for their ills.


Indeed the Govts are responsible for neglect that leads to such insurgencies, but then you may like to think it over as to what would be the cost of organising an insurgency.


Look at organising an insurgency in terms of patching up the organisation, organising the publicity, weaning over sympathisers, having overt front men and organisation espousing their cause, training and equipping the underground soldiers for their cause, organising and funding the logistics of such Army and also other front organisations and so on and so forth.


It requires big time Money. Without help from ‘friends’, such an endeavour is a non starter.


One does not require a high level of dissatisfaction to start a revolution.


Dissatisfaction is there in all societies. It merely requires good and sustained spin to brainwash people into action and then it becomes self sustaining.

[Ray]

Minute by the Hon'ble T. B. Macaulay, dated the 2nd February 1835.

[5] The argument which I have been considering affects only the form of proceeding. But the admirers of the oriental system of education have used another argument, which, if we admit it to be valid, is decisive against all change. They conceive that the public faith is pledged to the present system, and that to alter the appropriation of any of the funds which have hitherto been spent in encouraging the study of Arabic and Sanscrit would be downright spoliation. It is not easy to understand by what process of reasoning they can have arrived at this conclusion. The grants which are made from the public purse for the encouragement of literature differ in no respect from the grants which are made from the same purse for other objects of real or supposed utility. We found a sanitarium on a spot which we suppose to be healthy. Do we thereby pledge ourselves to keep a sanitarium there if the result should not answer our expectations? We commence the erection of a pier. Is it a violation of the public faith to stop the works, if we afterwards see reason to believe that the building will be useless? The rights of property are undoubtedly sacred. But nothing endangers those rights so much as the practice, now unhappily too common, of attributing them to things to which they do not belong. Those who would impart to abuses the sanctity of property are in truth imparting to the institution of property the unpopularity and the fragility of abuses. If the Government has given to any person a formal assurance-- nay, if the Government has excited in any person's mind a reasonable expectation-- that he shall receive a certain income as a teacher or a learner of Sanscrit or Arabic, I would respect that person's pecuniary interests. I would rather err on the side of liberality to individuals than suffer the public faith to be called in question. But to talk of a Government pledging itself to teach certain languages and certain sciences, though those languages may become useless, though those sciences may be exploded, seems to me quite unmeaning. There is not a single word in any public instrument from which it can be inferred that the Indian Government ever intended to give any pledge on this subject, or ever considered the destination of these funds as unalterably fixed. But, had it been otherwise, I should have denied the competence of our predecessors to bind us by any pledge on such a subject. Suppose that a Government had in the last century enacted in the most solemn manner that all its subjects should, to the end of time, be inoculated for the small-pox, would that Government be bound to persist in the practice after Jenner's discovery? These promises of which nobody claims the performance, and from which nobody can grant a release, these vested rights which vest in nobody, this property without proprietors, this robbery which makes nobody poorer, may be comprehended by persons of higher faculties than mine. I consider this plea merely as a set form of words, regularly used both in England and in India, in defence of every abuse for which no other plea can be set up.

[12] How then stands the case? We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the West. It abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us, --with models of every species of eloquence, --with historical composition, which, considered merely as narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been equaled-- with just and lively representations of human life and human nature, --with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals, government, jurisprudence, trade, --with full and correct information respecting every experimental science which tends to preserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to expand the intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations. It may safely be said that the literature now extant in that language is of greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together. Nor is this all. In India, English is the language spoken by the ruling class. It is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of Government. It is likely to become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East. It is the language of two great European communities which are rising, the one in the south of Africa, the other in Australia, --communities which are every year becoming more important and more closely connected with our Indian empire. Whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of this country, we shall see the strongest reason to think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which would be the most useful to our native subjects.

[34] In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, --a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

[35] I would strictly respect all existing interests. I would deal even generously with all individuals who have had fair reason to expect a pecuniary provision. But I would strike at the root of the bad system which has hitherto been fostered by us. I would at once stop the printing of Arabic and Sanscrit books. I would abolish the Mudrassa and the Sanscrit College at Calcutta. Benares is the great seat of Brahminical learning; Delhi of Arabic learning. If we retain the Sanscrit College at Bonares and the Mahometan College at Delhi we do enough and much more than enough in my opinion, for the Eastern languages. If the Benares and Delhi Colleges should be retained, I would at least recommend that no stipends shall be given to any students who may hereafter repair thither, but that the people shall be left to make their own choice between the rival systems of education without being bribed by us to learn what they have no desire to know. The funds which would thus be placed at our disposal would enable us to give larger encouragement to the Hindoo College at Calcutta, and establish in the principal cities throughout the Presidencies of Fort William and Agra schools in which the English language might be well and thoroughly taught.


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So, changing the mindset to suit powers that be is an old custom - as old as when Time began!

And only the fools will abdicate their pristine position with moralism by not use all instruments available to ensure that they remain supreme!

The West may have become weaker owing to the unique circumstances, but they are no fools!

The West will use all instruments in the book to ensure best to form a class who are alike in thought, --a class of persons foreign in colour but Western in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.

The only problem the West has now is a matching competitor flushed with oil money. They are hard put in spreading their religious edicts and demanding the same with their economic clout in foreign lands. Some nations are succumbing and some are possible valiant as in Custer's Last Stand!

There is also another challenger with economic clout, which has a history of vast imperialistic adventures and gobbling up others and assimilating them and converting them to the imperialist ancestry! They are rising where the Sun rises after Japan. Flexing their muscles but still not there!

In these stands, one hopes Custer wins!