India celebrated the 77th anniversary of its attainment of Independence from Britain on the 15th of this month. Its independence in 1947 was a remarkable event that reverberated in all of the colonies of the British Empire – on which “the sun never set” – including then British Guiana. Independence for India confirmed that it was only a matter of “when” for us in the colonies to also become free.
Since that time, India continued to play a key leadership role for the other colonies. Initially, it attempted to chart a middle path between the two competing ideologies of capitalism and communism – represented respectively by the US and the USSR. In 1955, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru organised an Asian-African conference at Bandung, Indonesia, which brought together more than half of the world’s population to declare their opposition to colonialism and neo-colonialism. Later, with the leaders of Ghana, Egypt, Yugoslavia and Indonesia, he helped launch the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM); but, unfortunately, it was seen as taking a side by NOT taking a side. We were seen as taking a side, and we paid a price for which the interest is still keeping us in thrall.
India attempted to steer a middle course both politically and economically by combining elements of the two dominant ideologies, but this did not lead to the levels of development needed to pull it out of the morass in which it had been mired by one hundred and fifty years of British colonialism. India became an exemplar of the consequences of what was called “underdevelopment” in the seventies. This process can be illustrated by the history of the cotton industry of India, which not only was destroyed, but India was forced to but cotton textiles from Britain.
This underdevelopment was replicated in every tropical colony, where the countries were directed to produce raw materials to be manufactured – and most pertinently – “value added” in the colonial metropole. For instance, Guyana still produces cheap raw sugar that has to be exported to England to be refined into expensive white sugar, which is sold to consumers. But India still remains a model for the former British colonies – and other underdeveloped countries.
Through all its travails, India remained a democratic country – today the largest in the world — even though many in the First World predicted this was not possible in the face of the magnitude of challenges presented to the leadership. However, India has now become a beacon in another area: not the simplistic promulgation of a “middle path” consisting of a melange of the competing foreign ideologies as in the sixties, but in starting to forge its own path based on its own ancient traditions – modified where appropriate by new, proven advances.
This is what has been signalled by India’s dynamic Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and his party, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) – which replaced the Congress party across India. But in India’s most recent elections, the latter has regained some of its dynamism and, combined with a good showing by some regional allies, now presents a viable alternative to the BJP – a test of the viability of democratic governance. The point the parties are making is that, with the fall of communism and the present ruptures in capitalism, what is needed is a paradigm of development that takes into cognisance the strengths of each polity and nation.
Development cannot ignore the culture of each nation: it must be autochthonous. This is something that Guyana also needs to do. In the first two decades, it tried socialism, which failed; and in the last two decades, it tried neo-liberalism, which also foundered.
India is also playing a major role in the creation of a new multipolar world order with BRICS, that should create a more non-confrontational model in the interstate system. While we may not have the size of India in its economy or population, we are uniquely positioned in the Caribbean with our new petroleum wealth to also chart a course in that order.
