India and the foreign hand

Domestic airlines will also make him cough up 40 per cent more than the Indian customer, so that a return trip Delhi-Chennai-Delhi will cost him Rs 20,000 in economy and a whooping Rs 34,000 in business class. Did you know that it costs as little as Rs 10,000 to fly from New York to London and back three times the Delhi-Chennai-Delhi distance on scheduled airlines, which offer much better services than the elitist8217; Jet Airways which refuses to upgrade its privilege members, a common practice the world over? But the government has even recently gone one step further. If you are a foreigner, you will have to pay Rs 500 to have a glimpse of the Taj Mahal in Agra 8211; and only Rs 50 for your Indian friend. Can you think of a more flagrant discrimination? No wonder tourism has dropped 40 per cent in India and China gets 10 times more visitors.

By not welcoming foreigners as honoured guests, an old Hindu tradition, the Indian government seems to forget that foreigners have made significant contributions to India. One immediately thinks of Sister Nivedita, Vivekandanda8217;s disciple, who not only gave her life for the upliftment of women in India, but also played an active role in India8217;s early independence movement. Today, scholars like David Frawley of America or Konraad Elst of Belgium keep reminding Indians of the greatness, past and present, of their country and how India still has an important role to play in the world. Of course, there are also the 8220;misguided8221; but good-willing foreigners. Max Mueller was one of them. He was the first westerner, after William Jones, to discover the genius of Sanskrit. Unfortunately, Mueller is also responsible for many of the biases of Indian history, such as the postdating of the Vedas, or the ridiculous theory of an Aryan invasion of India. Mother Teresa could also be labelled in this category. She workedtirelessly for India8217;s poor, but never cared to counterbalance the very negative image of India with a more positive one.

Finally, you have the ignorant and arrogant foreigners. English colonisers must have been the first of them. Not only did they willfully leave behind them a mess, which triggered Partition, but they also bred many generations of Macaulay8217;s children, who today look at their own culture the way the British once looked at India. Sonia Gandhi may be another of these 8220;conceited8221; foreigners. All her life she has been cloistered in Delhi either because she led the life of an upper-class Indian before her husband became prime minister, or because she is supposed to be under security threat. She has thus no idea about the genius of India, which lies in its countryside. Is President Clinton too an arrogant westerner, who seeks to mediate in Kashmir without knowing anything about the complexities of the situation? Or is he going to tread more carefully? Much of Japanese ancient culture 8211; Zen Buddhism, its martial arts, Bonsai 8211; was saved from total extinction by foreigners8217; read the US interest in them. Will thesame thing happen to India?

Today, there is a massive outcry from the Indian intelligentsia every time this government tries to switch from a westernised and Marxist India to a more Indianised one. This is exactly what Murli Manohar Joshi, one of the most selfless ministers of this government, is trying to do, thereby earning the ire and the scorn of the 8220;secular8221; press.

Does it need a David Frawley to tell India that it boasts one of the greatest and oldest books of wisdom, the Vedas? Or the UN to point out that it is high time India adopted a Uniform Civil Code? Or a Konraad Elst to say that Hindus have been the most oppressed minority in the world for the last ten centuries?