Dear fellow-Malayalis
Please let me take up with Sri Arvind Laad on his challenges. He says, for example:-
"Without following China's path many other countries have also progressed in every field of activity. USA, Germany, UK, Japan, Singapore, Australia, NZ land, Canada France, Taiwan etc have made remarkable progress even with democratic form of governance without sacrificing individual liberty....... The moot question is 'What is more important - Spectacular achievement of a country or the happiness of its people?' "
Shall we start by saying that the other countries cited by Arvind do not have the population mass or complex ethnic, language, religious, regional and locational disaffinities of India and China?
The people in US are happy? During World War II, xenophobic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) Americans rounded up and incarcerated in concentration camps all US citizens of Japanese descent they could lay their hands on, including doctors, scientists university lecturers, priests, social workers, housewives, college students, school-going children, nurses, the aged sick, the nursing babies at their mothers' breasts.
The majority of descendants of the millions of black African slaves not only live in utter poverty, disease, lack of education, lack of adequate housing and health protection, drug addiction, sexual exploitation. They are also easy targets of whites with guns, both uniformed and non-uniformed. Innocent blacks, especially teens, gunned down by white policemen is not news in US; accidental death of or injury to a single white is. There are black ghettos all over the US, no white ghettos.
"Latinos", i.e. descendants of Mexicans, Philippinos, and others of colonial Spanish and Portuguese origin, are branded rapists and criminals, and shunned. They cannot find jobs, satisfying or otherwise. They inter-breed, live in tight communities for mutual support, barely eke out a pitiful existence.
Ever heard about "Red Indians"? About 190 MILLION of them have been exterminated in holocaust after holocaust all over America -- North, Central, and South. Their lands, their wealth, their cattle, their fishing grounds, their grazing grounds have been forcibly seized. The bison and elk populations on which they depended for food, clothing and survival, have been destroyed. Even the once free-roaming millions of fur-bearing animals have been trapped, killed, skinned and exported to Europe to grace the fashion-conscious elites of the countries the exterminators of the "Red Indians" came from. And the surviving "Native Americans" are cooped up in inhospitable mountain or desert "reservations" which are virtually "gulags" with a different name.
The people of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are happy? Is there not simmering dissension between Scots and Englishmen ever since the forced Act of Union in 1707? Have not the Scots threatened to break away, e.g. during the recent referendum in their country, and again after Brexit?
Suspicion and mistrust between Scotland and England had prevented their union throughout the 17th century. The Scots feared that they would simply become another region of England, being swallowed up as had happened to Wales some four hundred years earlier. For England the fear that the Scots may take sides with France and rekindle the 'Auld Alliance' was decisive. England relied heavily on Scottish soldiers and to have them turn and join ranks with the French would have been disastrous. The suspicion and mistrust by the Scots of the English is everywhere apparent if you visited Scotland, even as a tourist. In many Scottish towns and villages, they do not accept English pounds, only Scottish ones.
In Northern Ireland, have not Protestants and Catholics fought street battles killing each other till recently? And does not mutual hatred and enmity still persist, especially in households who have lost lives of their loved members in the past?
In Wales, have the people not shown their unhappiness with London and the centuries of oppressive English domination, by introducing the Welsh language for all official purposes, including street signs, and reverting to their traditional Gaelic culture?
The Australian people are happy? Where are the former 20,000 native inhabitants of Tasmania? All slaughtered by white settlers? Where are the original inhabitants of mainland Australia, labelled "aborigines" and pejoratively dubbed "abos"? Driven to inhospitable desert lands, death by thirst, starvation and exposure, by incoming descendants of English convicts who wanted farming territory? A reflection in the Southern Hemisphere of what was happening in Central, and North America, across the Pacific Ocean?
Were not all "aborigine" children abducted from their parents by the whites in power, and forced to abandon their centuries-old culture for an alien and hostile English-Christian basic education in prison-like school-camps, whereby they all died of despair, misery and loneliness away from their parents?
The people of New Zealand are happy? Do the native Maoris have equal rights as the white invaders and settlers from England and Scotland? How much former Maori land has been taken over forcibly and permanently by the whites? How many Maori Heads of State or Prime Ministers of New Zealand have there been since it became part of the British Empire on which the Sun never sets?
All Singaporeans are happy? Who controls the newspapers, radio, television, and tightly oversees the contents of weeklies, monthlies, and all other outlets, if not the Government? Is there a single independent or private newspaper, radio station, TV station in Singapore? Are even newspapers from Singapore's nearest neighbour, Malaysia, allowed into Singapore? Has not a single ruling party been in power since independence from the British, without prospect of change in the foreseeable future? Has not the former (Jewish) Chief David Saul Marshall been reviled, and so has been the former President Devan Nair? What of the despicable treatment in public of the spirited Opposition Member of Parliament J B Jeyaretnam?
Please let me stop here.
Japan, Taiwan, Canada, France and Germany -- all so deeply admired by Sri Arvind Laad -- will bear similar scrutiny and be found similarly wanting. Distance might well lend enchantment to the star-gazers, but on Earth the nearer you approach these mirages of perfection, the more they are found to be bloody in their own unique way.
S Narayanaswamy
On Thursday, September 1, 2016 7:28 AM, "Arvind Laad laadarvind@yahoo.com [worldmalayaliclub]" wrote:
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Posted by: Narayanaswamy Subramanian <s_narayanaswamy@yahoo.com>
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