Modern day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are left far behind the world in terms of prosperity. But this was not how we were always. Historically, Indian subcontinent was a prosperous society with people having scientific temperament When most of Europeans and Americans were living in the forests, Indians enjoyed prosperous civilizations like Indus valley, Harappa etc. Our Rishis told us scientific facts far before European scientists who repeated same things sometime between 15th and 16th century. But now the big question arises that why Indians were lagged behind in prosperity. This we will discuss here.
Earlier economy was based on agricultural societies. The place which was fertile produced more food or resources and thus prospered. These fertile planes were present in most parts of India. This became root cause of Indian prosperity.
But a unique scenario emerged in Europe in mid-19th century. The world calls it Industrial Revolution. India, as a British colony was left behind the Industrial world while west became more and more prosperous. Absence of Asian countries in industrial revolution gave a huge advantage to Europe as Asia had capability to make goods more efficiently at a lower cost, because of cheap labour.
When mutiny broke out in 1857, Britishers realized that India will gain independence sooner or later. West could not afford Indian participation in Industrial revolution. Thus, London started reviewing policies which could keep India backward even after independence. This was the time when famous ‘divide and rule’ policy was formulated. Under this policy Britishers created conflicts between people to ensure that no one rise against them. As time passed, British started sowing seeds of communalism in Indian soil. People like Bhartendu Harish Chandra, Mohammad Ali Jinnah etc, became their agents and started dividing people. British historians started writing about suppression of Hindus by Muslim rulers but didn’t talk about grants given to temple in Mughal era. They also funded Gandhi to inject soft communalism. To give it an extra edge, Britishers formulated the bogus 2 nation theory. The plan behind it was to create a Muslim Pakistan and ensure that India and Pakistan keep wasting their precious resources for fighting amongst themselves. Thus, talking about peace with Pakistan is a bogus idea as very basic motive to create Pakistan was to have enmity with India. Several methods were made to improve relations like Vajpayee going to Lahore by bus and Modi eating Biryani with Nawaz Sharif, but relations deteriorated. The only solution to this is a peaceful and voluntary reunification of what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and create a Greater India. Greater India will give no benefit if ruled by same British policy. We need a Greater India which will be ruled by modern minded secular leaders who will focus on Industrialization and crush bigotry with iron fist.
This will not be easy as many vested interests are acting against it. So we need to work even stronger, in a peaceful way, by making people aware about the disadvantages of partition and spread noble idea of Indian Reunification, which will definitely happen someday.
– – By Ibrahim Husaini