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GUEST ARTICLE

        Does anyone remember what happened 250 years ago? It is a year worth remembering because in January 1757, Robert Clive re-captured Calcutta from the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-daulah. The Nawab had captured the East India Company's Fort William a year earlier but the British took it back again. The Battle of Plassey is celebrated as a great British victory. It was nothing of that sort. Clive had bribed the Nawab's General Mir Jaffer and the army led by him just ran away. Plassey was no war. It was plain treachery on the part of Mir Jaffer.

        A 100 years later there was another sort of 'war'. It was the great rebellion of Indian forces against the British. In Indian history, 1857 stands out as a nodal year when things changed for ever. This time the British has to be made to pay a heavy price. But they made it. They captured Bahadur Shah Zafar, had both his sons stripped and shot and packed off to Rangoon to die there, unhonoured and unsung. The next 40 years from 1857 to 1897 were historic years of another kind. In these 40 years any Indian leader of any consequence was born from Mahatma Gandhi to B R Ambedkar. Their parents must have known what freedom was; and their sons stood up for fighting for Indian independence. Name them and they made their mark.

        Incidentally, 1897 was also the year when Swami Vivekananda established the Ramakrishna Mission which today has blossomed into a great institution. From 1897 to 1947 - a period of 50 years was the time when the independence struggle grew in strength, capturing popular not just the land that is India but the culture that is India. Sanskrit was given a quiet death. English flourished. Indians looked up to England as the source of all knowledge.

        Indians were given a tremendous inferiority complex. Indian scholars looked up to Oxford and Cambridge, the London School of Economics and other British institutions for higher learning. India had so little to offer. Apart from the textile mills and the steel mill set up by Tata in Jamshedpur, India had hardly any industry worth talking about. India which once was a major exporter and had captured over 30 per cent of world trade was reduced to a net importer, its trade abroad reduced to an insignificant 2 per cent or thereabouts.

        The white man looked down upon India and Indians, Winston Spencer Churchill called Mahatma Gandhi a rascal among other things. An American writer Katherino Mayo wrote a nasty book concerning India. India may have helped the British fight two major wars, the first and second World War but in international circles India counted for nothing.

        The year 1947 changed many things. For one thing India became free; freedom did not necessarily bring in major changes, but at least Indian regained self-respect. But there was food scarcity and India had to go begging for food. India wanted cash and Delhi had to seek financial help not only from international organisations like the World Bank, but from countries large and small, large like the United States and small like Belgium and Holland.

        The United States could mock at India and get away with it. But the 60 years since 1947 have produced a different India. We are no more beggars. The Green Revolution saved us from famines; we can now even afford to export grain. We can feed even the poorest of the poor. And the Information Technology has made India if not the Number One country in the world. certainly a country to be reckoned with.

        Who would want to send their children to Oxford or Cambridge? Or London? Or, for that matter, even to Harward? Our IITs and IIMs, not to speak even of minor institutions have risen to high standards and they have even captured the attention, if not respect, of the world. We can hold our heads high. When Rabindranath Tagore wrote: 'Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high and knowledge is free... into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.' He could not possibly have dreamt of year 2007. India has come a long way from 2 June, 1757.

        The last 250 years have been in many ways epoch-making. When Macaulay insisted that Indians should be taught English, he could hardly have realised that today in India more people speak English than Americans in the United States or the English themselves in Britain. India is now set to conquer the world. This is where a huge responsibility lies on the shoulders of India's leaders. Leaders? Does India have any? China is aiming at being a truly world power by making inroads into Africa. India should not lag behind. Indians are far more adaptable to other cultures than the Chinese, a point that could not be stressed enough. And Indian leaders must work in union and not keeping fighting each other as their ancestor 250 years ago did.

        The point is, India can take on any European nation in trade and commerce. It can manufacture first class products, be they cars or planes. Indian pharmaceutical industries can produce drugs at a tenth of what they would cost anywhere else. India can fight on in any form and the world is coming to acknowledge it. The saddest part of it all is that Indian leaders do not seem to have realised the inner strength of their country which has survived the contempt of alien rule, the drudgery of slavery both intellectual and spiritual. The time has come to realise that we are one people and one nation, and that it is big unity lies our strength. To rise to greater heights, we need to remember that inter-party bickerings and even worse intra-party fighting has to stop Elections, when held, should be the time to show our strengths, not weaknesses. Parties should not stoop low to run down their opponents. On the contrary stress should be on what has been achieved and what can be achieved still more.

        There has to be an end to pettiness, and mean-mindedness. It is poor leadership when mudslinging become the order of the day, When will our leaders ever learn from history? If one has to fight to get votes, fight on higher grounds that raise India in foreign eyes. Is that too much to ask? If there is one thing that the history of 250 lost years can teach us, it is this: Do not run each other down. We will then only play into the filthy hands of contemporary Robert Clives.