Arun Menon wrote:Shiv, I think you are taking this pacifism and karma fear thing of some so called business communities a little to far. First of all they perpetuate the stereotypes that pakis love to harp on, namely the weak, cowardly and vegetarian Hindu bania. Also, isn't this the very same community that has no qualms about paying bribes and doing all sorts of unsavoury and ruthless things in order to further their aims and beat their rivals, in fact from what I have read, a significant amount of the so called Gujarat riots were these very same people settling scores and weeding out rivals. So, I don't think this is a very significant factor in holding back defence investment in the private sector. Come on, are we all that saintly?
Arun this is the first time anyone has mentioned this on BRF - and if a first mention is "going too far", I disagree. First I am going to leave out the "What Pakis might say" part of it. That is a separate issue which I might address later
To me there are quite a few social indicators in India that suggest a tendency towards pacfism (as well as a historic mention of this pacifism in ancient texts incuding the Greek "Indica"). But I must admit that these ideas might not have have occurred to me out of the blue had I not been prompted by others who have made observations that point to a particular slant in Indian behavior. I mentioned an observation by a friend of mine but Gurcharan Das's observations about community and business come to mind. Mind you Gurcharan Das is a bitter critic of Nehruvian socialism and a staunch backer of private industry, but he makes some pertinent social observations about business and industry in India. So my ideas are not totally drawn out of thin air and probably not totally without foundation.
That does not mean that all Indians are like this but there is a fairly significant proportion of wealthy Indians who are capable of investing in industry who come from social backgrounds of business where investment in weapons and destructive material is not even considered. Many of these business communities have centuries of history of business risk taking and profit making but very very few will delve into anything to do with war materiel.
The British had ships built and workshops for arms in India. The sort of labor that goes into this material always came from communities who dealt with leather, wood and metal. Thy were invariably working class belonging to varna that were never business leaders unlike vysyas. Mind you I am not trying to blame the British or Indian society. The Brits wanted a certain type of help from Indians; they got secretarial and clerical help from Brahmins, they got workshop/building help from the shudra communities. They got only business competition from the Vysyas whom they tried to crush. Indian business communities are heroes because they held out while others slaved, although some did profit by conniving with the Brits. But they could hold out only in non military business enterprises. There was no way on earth these business communities could compete with the Brits in making arms without being crushed and imprisoned as rebels.
So while private enterprise survived the Brits, arms making skill in India missed the entire industrial revolution
The genesis of "weak and cowardly" part was partly a British creation. But that is OT for this thread. Will be happy to post my take somewhere else.
One can design or manufacture everything except anything that matters.