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My, my, article hit a nerve did it? All that ranting about terrible Indian call center workers whenever there's a thread about outsourcing, and gasp/shock/horror when the mirror is held up and you find out the picture isn't pretty from the other side of the telephone line either...:-)

Yes, more or less. Legal protection for property is pretty strong (a Constitutional right in fact), although there are some restrictions based on eminent domain (like in the US), as well as others (in some circumstances) on amount of land that can be owned, etc, which is a consequence of land reform and breaking the power of the landed aristocrats.

But on the whole, it is a pretty strong system of liberal property rights. Enforcement of the rights suffers to quite a large extent, due to massive backlogs and extreme slowness of the judicial system, among other things. However, especially for a developing country it is a pretty strong system..

Oh, and the "brain drain" phenomenon of educated professionals leaving the country has more to do with education than caste. If you are educated enough and good enough to be able to get a job in the US, then many such people leave. It's a coincidence that they happen to be high caste.

Of course, it is *not* a coincidence that a hugely disproportionate number of high caste people get a much better education than lower caste people - that's the advantage of history.

I'm guessing your friend migrated to the US a long time ago - it's not quite like that anymore.

1. There are indeed affirmative action programs which give preferences to lower caste people in *government jobs*. Private sector can hire whoever they like. (Of course until 15 years ago, the private sector was pretty insignificant, so nobody cared).

2. The Government does run a lot of infrastructure, but that is changing and being privatized (or atleast, private competition is being allowed). The telephone service is, in fact, one of the greatest success stories of this process. No more bribes or waiting for a phone. I remember being a kid in the 80s though, when your friend's description was pretty accurate. Other sectors are following..

C

Why do you bother? His mind is set in stone. You're just wasting your own time replying to every cheap shot..

Even without getting into general attacks on Muslims, it's pretty clear that this measure is a bad idea. Apart from anything else, it won't work.

I'm not opposed to affirmative action in principle. But for sixty years in India, affirmative action for "backward classes" (Yes, it means exactly what it says - backward classes have several categories, but are generally the people formerly called Untouchables - Dalits -, tribals in some areas, and some other disadvantaged lower castes) has simply not worked.

The system has been abused out of sight, with the *rich* backward class people receiving most of the benefits they don't need, and enhancing caste based divisions. The same thing will undoubtedly happen with Muslims.

The most important step required is to throw away affirmative action based on caste (or religion) and implement it based on economic need.

Of course, the chances of that happening...

Update: A quick look at accounts of the Prime Minister's speech earlier this year, promising Overseas Citizenship suggests that ethnic Indians from ALL countries, holding foreign passports will be able to apply for it. If true, that's a good step.

Of course, Overseas Indian Citizenship isn't really dual nationality. There are a number of restrictions:

-Overseas Indians don't get two passports - they basically get a stamp in their US (or whatever) passport that makes them overseas Indians.
-They can't vote
-Can't stand for public office
-Can't enter public service (ie, work for the government).

These are unlikely to matter to most people who will apply for this, because AFAIK, this is still enough to enter India without a visa, live in India indefinitely (not sure about this), and own property and business with the same rights as an Indian citizen. (An interesting question is whether some of the Rights in the Indian Constitution which apply only to citizens will be available to Overseas Citizens..my guess would be no..)

Basically, the scheme doesn't allow foreign citizens to become Indian citizens as such - it creates a new class of "overseas citizens" who have some of the same rights as citizens.

However, unless the current government has modified the Overseas Citizenship proposal (which originated under the previous government), there is a more serious flaw, which is that only (Indian origin) citizens of Western countries were eligible to apply. So, for example, if you were of Indian origin, and you had a South African passport, you couldn't apply for this. (Not sure if this is still true, but it was, when the scheme was originally announced two years ago).

You know, as far as I'm concerned you're an American - I could care less about the fact that you were born in India. I give the same weight to your views about India as I would to the views of any other random American, which is to say, not a whole lot, since you really have no experience upon which to base your views.

You speak of "touching a nerve" - this thread seems to have touched one in you. What I don't understand is why you are more interested in India than any other American - you call attention to the fact that you are a "former citizen", and yet you emphasize at the same time that you don't care anything about "that third world piece of shit country".

Seems a bit contradictory to me. Could it possibly be that you have some identity issues because despite having an American passport and accent, people there still keep calling you an "Indian", because of that *brown skin*?

Oh, and I might add that discussing discrimination *before the British came* is a bit of a pointless discussion. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the world was a rather different place. The entire Western world was involved in slavery, there were no true democracies with universal suffrage, etc, etc.

Things change, people change, and societies change. We had a thrash about the status of lower castes in India a few weeks ago.let's not get back to it.

No, the Harijans (that is, "Untouchables") weren't treated particularly well before the British came. You will note that they weren't treated any better by the British either. Their status only began to (still a long way to go) because of Gandhi's efforts and later, independent India's Constitution making untouchability illegal.

And I'm not sure what you mean by "how India has treated its own Dravidians"? The Dravidians are the indigenous people of south India, and they do very well for themselves. Most of the prosperous, educated states in India are the Dravidian states: Karnataka (where Bangalore is), Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

An excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on Subhas Chandra Bose:

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At the start o World War II, Bose traveled to Germany where he joined the Special Bureau for India under Adam von Trott zu Solz, broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio. He founded the Free India Centre in Berlin and established the Indian Legion, (consisting of some 4500 soldiers) from Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for the British in North Africa. The Azad Hind legion was attached to the Waffen SS, and they swore their allegiance to Hitler and Bose for the independence of India.

Recent research has shown that after the Normandy landings, the French resistance and military openly shot unarmed and surrendered Indian legionaries who had tried to escape to neutral Switzerland, in defiance of the norms of the Geneva Convention in 1944. Though there were a few incidents of the rape which its German liaison officers claimed that they were unable to control, on the whole it was a disciplined unit.

Bose had openly criticised Hitler's treatment of Jews, annulment of democratic institutions in Germany and Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.

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4500 soldiers out 2.5 million in the Indian Army? And that too, prisoners of war, who were told "either fight for India against Britain, or rot in prison"?

The more I read about these guys the more sympathy I have for them. They just wound up on the wrong side.

Yes, the Army was a great career move for many Indians. I didn't mean to suggest that the British pointed guns at people's heads and said "fight for us or else".

My point was that these men (tiny fraction that they were) cannot be called traitors because they were fighting in Britain's wars, and decided to fight against Britain because they believed that was best for their country. A good analogy would be the Free French Resistance in WWII which decided to fight against their country's (Vichy) govt and Germany instead of for them.

The only difference is that the Free French wound up on the winning side, while these suckers wound up on the losing side. Don't get me wrong - I'm no supporter of Subhas Chandra Bose - the man was a fascist nutcase, and if he'd come to power, instead of Nehru, India would have turned out like Saddam Hussein's Iraq or something.

I do agree that the British Indian Army was no longer pro-British by that time, but I'm not so sure that that was a major factor in Britain giving Independence. (The lack of a white settler class was certainly a factor). But I don't think the British ever seriously considered ruling India by force, using the Indian Army, even if it had been reliable. Simply too many people, and too big a country, and too hard to handle.

The British came to power by playing Indian rulers against each other and stayed in power by co-opting the Indian elite. The Independence movement became serious when the Indian educated elite turned against the British when they realized that they might be allowed education at Oxford and Cambridge, but they were never going to be treated as equals like the Australians. It is to be noted that the racism against Indians *increased* in the last 70 years of the Empire - the early British assimilated a lot more.(Nehru once called himself "the last Englishman to rule India"). Gandhi's genius was in taking the movement of an educated elite and making it a mass, all-India movement, but the British lost their trump card when they lost the support of the elite.

Anyway, I've wandered wildly off topic so I'll stop now..

Gandhi was killed by Nathuram Godse, who had a number of affiliations with right wing Hindu fundamentalist groups, but AFAIK, the actual assasination wasn't organized by anyone - it was Godse working alone. His political views are, of course, in line with Subhas Chandra Bose before him and the VHP/RSS of today.

As for the news article, I agree - seems to be presented as an amazing new discovery or something, when it's not. So some Indian soldiers deserted (a few hundred out of many thousands in the British Indian Army) to fight (in their minds) for their country's independence, figuring the British were never going to let India go. I don't agree with what they did, but I have the benefit of hindsight.

Given that their country was occupied by England, and Indians were essentially being forced to fight in a war that had nothing to do with them, I can't condemn them morally. It's not like they were mercenaries fighting for whoever paid them, and they were hardly traitors to their country - only to the British.

The Indian political leaders promised co-operation with the British in WW2 in return for independence and delivered magnificently on their promise (and eventually so did the British). Some of these soldiers obviously felt that wasn't the best way to go about independence. (And it is to be noted that even in that situation, the overwhelming majority of the British Indian Army fought heroically against the Nazis).

China and India do pay full price and cash for oil - it's one of the biggest expenditures of government. India doesn't really make advanced weaponry (just starting to do so now - definitely nothing sold) - it obtains weapons from Israel, France, and Russia. China makes weaponry, but it isn't great.

Actually, Asian countries (China, India, Japan, and the rest) pay *higher* prices for oil - there's a small surcharge (well, small in percentage terms) imposed on oil sales to Asian countries - I'm not sure of the reasoning behind it but it definitely exists.

No, I understood your point the first time. And my point remains.

You are saying that both aparthied and the caste system are a form of racism, and hence to avoid hypocrisy, should be treated the same by the West.

I am saying, that although they have some commonalities (they are both forms of discrimination against an underclass of society), the differences between them are so great, so fundamental, that they should not be treated the same. They cannot be: the reasons behind them, and the strategies to remove them are too different.

So it isn't hypocritical to treat them differently: they *are* different, despite some superficial similarities. And I pointed out those differences in my last post.

Both of you are right in a sense, but I'm not sure that's the real issue:

1) Yes, casteism is still a serious problem in India. It has by no means gone away, and still continues to blight the lives of many millions of people.

2) However, there *have* been significant inroads made into the problem since independence in 1947. A cultural and social system developed over three millenia, and applying to a billion people is not changed so easily. As has been pointed out, democracy has meant that lower castes control the political process in many - if not most - states. The previous President was a Dalit. And so on. There is much yet to do, but much has been achieved in 60 years.

Having said that, the South African comparison isn't appropriate. Sanctions against South Africa put pressure on the Government to change the aparthied regime, which it eventually did. Aparthied was an artificial legal and social structure created purely by government fiat in the 1920s or so. The vast (black) majority of the populace didn't want it. The Government could (and did) change it by changing the legal structure of the country, although the consequences are still being felt. Hence, sanctions, which directly affect the country and government were effective in forcing De Klerk to do what was in his power.

In India, the caste problem is the result of two thousand years of history. It is not in the Government's power to snap its fingers and make it go away - and at any rate, successive governments over the decades have genuinely been trying to solve the problem.

What will sanctions do? They won't help the situation at all, except to make people in Western countries feel as if they've done their bit for the problem when they've made it worse. It's foreign investment and economic development which lift people out of poverty, and help to achieve things beyond what their caste dictates. If you allow the status quo to remain, then that is license for the caste system to continue..

>India has a long way to go before I'd ever want to be an ally >with it. I like watching the Amazing Race when they go >through India. 1) All women teams will

There are certainly still problems to be overcome - greater exposure to foreigners and the international community will cure the problems you describe above.

That doesn't prevent us from taking a balanced view of the situation and looking at the positives India has to offer.

In any case, I'd be skeptical of basing your view of India on a TV show which gets viewers by deliberately showing the participants of the race having a miserable time.

Oh, and as for being allies with India: Yup, don't be allies with people who (gasp!) stare at foreigners. You can go back to being allies with dictators and genocidal maniacs.

I agree that Nepal is in a dangerous position with respect to the Maoist guerillas, but I'm not sure an Indian military response is the best option.

No matter how much people fight internally, the entry of an outside force tends to unite a lot of people internally.

Also, more importantly, it'll be a very hard mission to pull off. The Indian Army is still smarting from the debacle of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka in the 1980s. Not only was it a monumental cock-up as a military operation since it didn't succeed in eliminating the Tamil guerilla threat, it caused the whole country of Sri Lanka to hate it, and the Tamil guerillas rode that wave directly to assasination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. I think it's going to be a while before the Indian Army tries that kind of adventurism again.

I agree with you about the extent of the problem. I'm just not sure what you suggest to fix it is the best solution.

Firstly, population growth isn't unlimited. Most of the projections I've seen suggest that world population will level off at around 9 billion.

Second, Malthus predicted in what, 1860? that the overpopulation would lead to starvation. He's been proven wrong for 150 years and counting - technology and improved methods of agriculture have kept pace with population growth. Even today, places with hunger and starvation have that problem because of inefficient distribution and usually civil/social strife - not because of lack of food production.

Third, developed nations isolating themselves from the problem will make it worse, not improve it. If resources which only developed countries can afford are not applied, and they isolate themselves, the world *will* go to hell in a handbasket, and it will reach a stage where it will overwhelm everyone - in today's world you can't isolate yourself.

Fourth, I'm not sure what you mean by "allowing Darwinian selection to happen", but again, let me emphasize that the best population control methods are education and economic prosperity. Short of large scale genocide, isolating and ignoring poor countries will destroy their economies, reduce living conditions and *increase* birth rates and populations, not the opposite.

I do, however, agree with you that "the closer we are to each other", the greater the likelihood that some natural disaster will wipe out (more) of us..