On TAMAS - And Our Socialist State

In yesterday's post I used the Sanskrit word tamas - usually translated as "ignorance," but surely meaning something far BLACKER, for this word was chosen as the title of a very famous novel on the Partition of India, and which I remember seeing as a television series. The ugly politics, the senseless violence, the deliberate organisation of RIOTS by arousing religious PASSIONS - it is to these that the author applied the word tamas. 

Such riots never happened in British India - and most certainly not during the glorious centuries of Company Raj.

But these have now become a REGULAR FEATURE - and there are TWO BOOKS by two eminent authors on these:

1.  COMMUNAL RIOTS AFTER INDEPENDENCE: A COMPREHENSIVE ACCOUNT  by Asghar Ali Engineer
 
and

2. RIOT AFTER RIOT by M J AKBAR

Let me now pen some further thoughts on all that was written yesterday - on Envy, Despair, Tamas, and POLITICS.

 

 1. Whereas the Company's Raj had nothing to do with politics, AO Hume, HEICS man trained at Haileybury, was pulled out of retirement in order to POLITICISE the cream of Indian youth!

2. This happened in 1885 surely because by 1883 the miserable effects of establishing an Indian Police in 1861 and enacting an Indian Penal Code in 1863 had led to so many "criminal cases" being instituted against both natives as well as whites, that racist legislation was proposed in order to ensure white accused were only tried by white judges. The resulting PUBLIC UPROAR - in just 21 years of Crown-in-Parliament rule - was the sole reason for AO Hume's patient initiative, entirely "liberal" in the classical sense. Parliament, of course, had done the very "political thing" - they established a NEW BUREAUCRACY.

3. But then, along came Curzon - and in 1905 the seeds of all this "political tamas" were well and truly sown, waiting to reap the whirlwinds of the Partition.



4. On the year 1905, Nirad C Chaudhuri's Autobiography is most noteworthy, for he records:

Overhead there appeared to be, coinciding with the sky, an immutable sphere of justice and order, brooding sleeplessly over what was happening below. But that feeling vanished at one stroke with the coming of the nationalist agitation in 1905.

  

5. AO Hume was one of the last HEICS "Hailebury men" - and the Indian administration at the new centre, New Delhi, all the provinces, and all the districts as well were now being handled by the new ICS-breed, trained as well as RECRUITED differently. Just as no private company recruits its managers today by competitive examinations, nor did the Honourable Company. HEICS recruits were carefully selected - screened, referenced, and interviewed at length by the Directors themselves. Only after Haileybury was it decided who would go to the civil service, who to the Army, and who to the rest - the opium service, and their other trading businesses. And they were recruited extremely young - between the ages of 13 and 15.


6. Everything changed after the recruitment process changed - and some sort of "public participation" in BUREAUCRACY began (for this was no longer a "civil service") - first in India, and then in Britain as well. In both nations, ever since then, the effort has been towards one end only - the continuous EXPANSION of the State. Better known as BUDGET-MAXIMISATION.


7. Simultaneously, with all the "funny money" coming off the printing presses of their respective central banks, everything the State now did received "inflationary finance" - TAMAS! 


8. In 1934-35, when the RBI was established and then the provinces "democratised" for the benefit of the Socialist-Gandhian CONgress, in Europe they were getting ready for World War 2. The inevitable consequence of National Socialism in each of these nations - in different guises. Churchill was not really a "Gladstonian liberal" in any sense. And as for the financing of these wars - it was funny money all the way.


9. After "winning" WW2, the British Labour Party came to power - Clement Attlee sent Mountbatten over, and the ICS chaps from top to bottom must surely have agreed to all that followed, from "religious majoritarianism" being used as a DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE in the Partition to the annexation of all the Princely States. TAMAS! - nothing else. The greed for power, pelf, budgets, and turf. Everything else be damned. The tragedy of the 13-gun Salute State of Manipur today - under "martial law" since 1958 - is just one of the many instances of the EVILS that this TAMAS led to, and this excellent column of today tells it very well indeed. We can also look at Kashmir - "politicised" so hopelessly that politics has become the only solution! This includes, of course, "international politics" - the very modern form of "diplomacy."  
 

 10. The stage was thus set for the EVIL SOCIALIST NEHRU - and it was precisely the same funny money that he used to finance his steel plants. To which BR Shenoy heroically objected. Of course, exactly as the Brits in New Delhi did after 1935, Nehru in New Delhi, with his Planning Commission and his Finance Commission - both employing RBI "inflationary finance" - made CLIENTS of each and every provincial government. This was the DUAL SUBORDINATION that all socialists seek - with both party as well as bureaucracy under their High Command. Remember too that till very recently India has been a ONE-PARTY DOMINANT SYSTEM. The CONgress ruled almost everywhere. And all the provincial chief ministers toed the High Command's line - and pleaded with New Delhi for "funds."


11. And we have the entire HISTORY of this horrible era behind us, from the two books chronicling all the RIOTS, to the decline - and even complete DESTRUCTION of each and every city, town, and hill-station, even. RURAL DEVELOPMENT - very Big Budget, of course; to spend and spend, and with NOTHING to show for it. Politicising all the "panchayats" - by making them into CLIENTS. While almost all the villagers have moved to the cities - to live out of SLUMS (amidst ABUNDANT UNOWNED LAND!).


12. And then, today, we have the "knowledge-proof" IAS - self-confessed TAMAS!
 

13. The word "secular" as used, misused and even abused in Indian politics, administration and constitutional law is a demonstration of precisely this tamas - and that television serial proves it, for such tamasic behaviour continues unabated.


14. The aim of State Socialism is to POLITICISE EVERYTHING. This is how they dehumanise the people, whom they miseducate, of course. It is the ugly vote motive that has divided all Indians - on the basis of religion first, then language, then caste, and finally class. This ugly politics is the ROOT OF DISORDER - and its cause is tamas, nothing else. Of course, with their State at the "commanding heights of THE ECONOMY," they have POLITICISED ALL BUSINESSES - which is why we see all this "corporate tamas."


15. My recent little booklet published online is titled For Civilisation, Against Politics: Arguments for an Intellectual-Moral Revolution - and is meant for "mass readership," including schoolkids. But for those who would prefer a much more advanced philosophical argument I strongly recommend Anthony de Jasay's Before Resorting to Politics, published by the Locke Institute. 



Politics, politicians, bureaucrats - including especially bureaucrat-judges and bureaucrat-professors - these are all various PARTS OF THE PROBLEM.

To look towards them for solutions is IDIOTIC - as I pointed out in a long post a while ago.

The only solutions lie in LAW - that is PRIVATE LAW.

Good Law establishes order - while "competitive democratic politics" destroys order and creates endless conflicts: this is our own recent History, and Anthony de Jasay explains it all with philosophical clarity.

Private Property, Homesteading, and, most importantly, REPUBLICANISM - so that we INVERT THE PYRAMID, and inhabit livable, new cities and towns, many of them on our coasts - where prosperity will follow from free overseas trade. Each of these little republics must use locally-raised resources - and NOT be "dependent" on New Delhi or any such "capital" of something or the other.

In other words, MAYORS: all friendly, honest, local businessmen, and NOT these "heads of state" who create no wealth themselves - indeed, who actually go about destroying wealth thereby causing DECIVILISATION - and who "purport" to be wanting to "help the poor"!

With what?

Remember Frederic Bastiat's immortal words - which occur repeatedly in his The Law - that socialism is nothing but "legal plunder and false philanthropy."

  
And this is a book EVERYONE must read: Bastiat's The Law - written in France of 1850.