CapitalistImperialistPig

A big chunk of Stanley Wolpert's India is devoted to Hindu theology. It's suitably baffling in its complexity. Regular readers may recall that I like to try to find the evolutionary rationale for religions. In some cases, it seems relatively easy, but India is surely a special case. Of course I don't understand much, but in many ways the Hindu gods seem to me to bear a resemblance to the kinds of gods found in the early polytheistic religions of Europe and the Middle East. They are embedded, however, in a higher level religious and cultural philosophy that seems to underlie and unify the whole culture. I probably shouldn't spend to much effort on this complex task, but I suspect my odds of understanding India without it are poor.

One thing reading Stanley Wolpert's India has done for me is convince me just how traumatic and painful cultural transformation is, especially when it's intrinsic to the creation of a state. The most central figure in the creation of the modern Indian state is Gandhi, but he's a strange figure, in many ways highly westernized and influenced by Christ and Tolstoy, who transformed himself into a hybrid of Hindu mystic and sometimes brilliant politician. He made several critical decisions which played a key role in doing exactly what he wanted to avoid: partition of India. His decision to withdraw from politics and spin cotton for ten years alienated him from Jinnah and others who might have avoided that. Choosing against Britain in World War II made him implacable enemies in Britain. In the end, though, he chose to accept a constitution that placated Jinnah and the British: The 1946 Cabinet Mission's three-tiered federal scheme was India's last hope for independen...

I've been reading Stanley Wolpert's India and one disaster Britain inflicted on India was one of those unintentional disaster intrinsic to modernity: midland factories and mills in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, triggered almost as many changes in Indian society and economic life as it did in (treat Britain itself. Manchester manufacturers' faith in laissez-faire and their lobby's power in Parliament put an end to the Company's monopoly privileges after 1813, opening India to rapacious armies of free merchants, seeking new and bigger markets for their prolifically produced goods. Cotton cloth manufactured in Manchester mills was sold up a thousand rivers throughout Bengal for half or one-quarter the price of hand-woven "Dacca," launching a revolution of sorts in British India's economy by putting millions of Indian spinners, weavers, and other handicraftsmen out of work in a matter of decades. Stanley Wolpert. India: Third Edition, Wit...