British Grenadier attack, Princeton
India votes 2013
The revolution that has just occurred in India is that of a vibrant democracy which has said a democratic, decisive 'NO' to fraudulent rule by the elite led by an interloper Sonia Gandhi who was recently named and rapidly deleted from the list of world's richest in a media report in USA.
It is surprising that American politicians are not aware of the silent revolution which has occurred in India and ongoing -- an earth-shaking event far different from the Arab spring or color revolutions of North Eurasia or even the Tiananmen massacre after the failure of Maoism.
The revolution in India is all the more remarkable for the fact that the ballot box has achieved what street fights marking overt revolutions could not.
It is necessary for the world outside India to know the reality of a phenomen called DHARMA which rules the large nation of over one billion people. Even Will Durant did not fully comprehend the true import of the story of a millennial-old civilization because he could not find an English equivalent for the phenomenon, dharma.
The stereotyping of Indians in terms of cows or curry have to yield place to an India which had a democratic tradition well before the Bill of Rights was promulgated in Europe or Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in French about Democracy in America (1835).
In the twelfth century, in a remote village of South India of Uttaramerur, the Chola king instituted a secret ballot using a pot as a ballot box and palm leaves to enable the members of the community to choose the civic leaders entrusted with the social responsibility of caring for village roads and tanks.
As Angus Maddison had noted in his historic account of the patterns of world gross domestic product since the turn of the millenium 0 CE, India had almost accounted for over 25% of the world GDP on that date to progressively lose the share thanks to colonial regimes which suffocated the expression of free-will of the people.
Students of history and civilizations have to revisit the two revolutions: the American War of Independence (1775) and Indian Revolution of the Ballot (2013) to compare and contrast the forms of government suited for a nation-state.
Maybe, the experiment of nation-states itself is undergoing a transformation; it is time to replicate the European Community model to create a United Indian Ocean States along the 59 nations of the Indian Ocean Rim.
Will America join the trans-asian railway and highway projects which could be an answer to the financial crisis faced by the imperfect markets led by nerds with their puts, options and derivatives creating a make-believe world of prosperity, a mere collapsible card of paper money?
Will America participate in the revolutionary movement of Indian people to reassert their rights and responsibilities and strive to achieve their due equitable share in the world gross domestic product?
It is for American politicians to ponder, introspect and understand dharma-dhamma which is an inviolate, global ethic of responsibility and social welfare.
Kalyanaraman
Dec. 9, 2013