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Poverty and Underdevelopment in the Hindi BeltOne of the conundrums facing modern India is
how even though Hindi speakers make up a plurality of the nation's population,
it is predominantly the Hindi-speaking states whose social indicators are
the most depressing. This is especially puzzling considering their relative
proximity to Delhi, the nation's capital, and their often decisive role
in determining who gets to rule the country. For Indians concerned about equitable and broad-based
progress, this is naturally a matter of concern. However, to date, there
has been little consensus on the reasons for this apparent anomaly. While
some intellectuals have attributed this relative social backwardeness and
underdevelopment to heightened casteism and communalism, others have attributed
this state of affairs to the 'cultural backwardness' of India's Hindi-speakers.
Some Indian industrialists have complained of a poor work culture and political
instability driving off potential investors. Yet, during Mughal rule, the UP plains were
home to the highest concentration of specialized pre-industrial manufacturing.
Moradabad specialized in brassware, Saharanpur and Nagina in woodwork and
furniture, Aligarh in locks and bolts, Firozabad in glassware, Mirzapur
in carpet-weaving, Khurja in pottery, Rae Bareilly in textiles, and Agra,
Lucknow and Benaras could boast of artisans and craftsmen with extraordinary
skills in a very wide range of manufactures. Neither were the lesser-known
courtly centers (such as Rampur, Jaunpur, Farrukhabad or Faizabad) wanting
in fine artists or well-trained musicians. Although not as much is known about Mughal Bihar,
Siwan's pottery was comparable to Khurja's, Patna's weavers were as skilled
as any in Agra or Lucknow, and Sasaram's architects were as capable and
creative as those of Allahabad. Bettiah and Darbhanga can still boast of
posessing some of the country's finest Dhrupad gharanas, and Bihar's Madhubani
artists are second to none. Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh's metal-workers continue
to produce items of intriguing beauty, and anyone with even a passing
familiarity with the arts and crafts of Bundelkhand and neighbouring Chhatarpur
(Khajuraho) would know of the region's industriousness, as would those
who have had the good fortune to travel through other parts of Madhya Pradesh.
Shivpuri's marble and inlay workers were as skilled as those of Agra and
Delhi; Dhar's block printers display talents comparable to their Gujarati
or Rajasthani counterparts, and the weavers of Chanderi are no less skilled
than those of Benaras. Besides, Gwalior, Bhopal and Indore were as culturally
developed as any other city in Bengal, Gujarat or South India. And contrary to the view of certain communally-biased
historians, the Hindu courts of the Hindi-belt (whether in Rajasthan, Himachal,
or in Benaras, Datia or Orchha) were no less cultured , or lacking in
highly-skilled and industrious artisans and craftspeople than those of
the imperial Mughals. There is also anecdotal and physical evidence that
suggests that the industrousness of the Hindi-belt was not just a Mughal
phenomenon. Arab commentators have left glowing
accounts of the wealth and the quality of the crafts of the Sultanates of
Northern India, and in his memoir's Babar
reluctantly acknowledges the wide range of specialized skills available
amongst the workers of Northern India that he had subjugated. Surviving pottery and other artifacts would appear to
bolster the conclusion that the fineness of Indian manufactures could not
be simply attributed to Mughal intervention. Neither would it be fair to ascribe the post-Islamic
virtuosity of Indian manufactures just to imitation
of Persian imports or Persian training. At
the very least, the few surviving pre-Islamic monuments of the Gangetic
plains points to a prolific sculptural output. In Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh
and Chhatisgarh, an enormous number of early and late medieval temple sites
have survived more or or less intact - alluding to a widely dispersed tradition of monumental architecture,
thus indirectly attesting to North Indian industriousness. Since the North Indian plains were at the front
lines of the Islamic invasions, there are too few surviving monuments and
artifacts to truly assess the productivity of pre-Islamic India; however,
the virtuosity of North Indian sculptors can be gleaned from the numerous
sculptural finds from the Hindi-speaking states. It may be worth underlining
that several surviving sculptures from Bihar match or excel those found
in Bengal - whether from the Pala period, or the earlier Gupta period, or
the still earlier Mauryan period. Similarly, if one were to compare sculptural
finds from Sarnath, Mahoba, Gwalior, Vidisha or Jabalpur with those from
a comparable period in South India - one would be hard-pressed to argue
that the sculptors of Northern India were any less refined or sophisticated
than their Southern counterparts. And as far as building on a grand and
glorious scale is concerned, the legacy of Khajuraho alone is ample evidence
that the Hindi-belt was not a laggard when compared to other thriving cultural
regions of India (such as Orissa). In terms of intellectual development, it might
be noted that Aryabhatta - one of the world's finest and most important
scientists of his time was from the Hindi-belt, and that some of the ancient
world's most renowned universities were in Bihar (Nalanda and Vikramshila),
UP (Sarnath) and MP (Ujjain). And amongst the most important treatises on
engineering in pre-modern India were those left behind by Madhya Pradesh's
Raja Bhoj. Clearly, there was a time in Indian history
when the Hindi-belt was not especially backward, nor was it trailing far
behind other more dynamic parts of India. Therefore, if the causes for the relative backwardness of the Hindi-belt must be found, they must be related to what occurred in the last millenium, and not earlier. In any case, it would be incorrect to ascribe the relative backwardness of the Hindi-belt to some rigid or static stereo-typing of Hindi-speakers as some pseudo-scientific scholars have been prone to doing in recent years. Analysts need to be looking at a matrix of objective factors - both external and internal before jumping to what may at best be partially correct conclusions. An important aspect concerning the development
of world civilization in the last millenium has been the growth of In the last millenium, there have been four
significant imperial developments: Arab expansionism over land and sea,
followed by Mongol/Turkish expansionism leading to the gradual eclipse of
Arab power, only to be supplanted by Western European oceanic domination
and colonization, and finally by American-led imperial globalization. By and large, inland India was minimally impacted
by the rise of the Arabs, although coastal India lost the bulk of its trade
to the Arabs who came to dominate both the Mediterranean and the Indian
Ocean. For the rest of India, the invasions by the Central Asian Turks (or
Turkic-speaking Mongols) were much more significant - in that they led to
a paradigmatic shift in power equations along with significant economic and cultural ramifications
that, in particular, transformed the Hindi-belt. European expansionism affected coastal India
first, but eventually, all of India was subsumed by British colonial rule
- India which was admired as the "Land of Milk and Honey" or envied as
the "Sone-Ki-Chidiya" became reduced to the "Land of the Naked and the Starving". The nation
with the largest gold reserves was turned into the nation most deprived.
Even as independence wrought signficant changes for the better, India faced
a new challenge in the form of Anglo-American (and OPEC) hegemony over trade
in the world's most precious resources, particularly oil. But unfortunately, too many critics of the Hindi
belt have either failed to take into account the impact of these extrinsic
developments, or else, analysed them in a highly partisan pseudo-scientific
fashion. Although the colonial encounter has been documented and discussed
to some extent, the period of the Islamic invasions has remained mired
in controversy, and the sociological and cultural impact of the invasions
has not been fully fathomed. Instead, a bizarre creed of so-called "secular" historians have conspired to present the Islamic invasions in a highly romanticized vein and, to date, have managed to stave off any truly objective analysis of the period. Even though Marxists in (formerly Soviet) Central Asia have been quite systematic in their exposure of the Central Asian Mongol/Turkic Islamic conquerors as violent slave-traders, Indian Marxists have engaged in all manner of intellectual eel-wriggling and unprincipled subterfuges to conceal the unsavoury history of such conquerors. Islamic "Marxists" such as Irfan Habib have even gone a step further, and using highly dubious intellectual jugglery have undertaken to portray them as harbingers of a more advanced civilization, dismissing the pre-Islamic Indian civilization as entirely stagnant and decrepit - that could only benefit from being invaded by a more technologically savvy Islamic civilization. The intense conservatism of the region has only
served to reinforce such beliefs, and a variety of intellectuals from fairly
diverse idealogical backgrounds have seized upon UP and Bihar's casteism
and "Manuwadi" heritage to account for their relative poverty and lack
of development. While casteism may indeed be an important factor
in the matrix, several related questions come to mind: if casteism is at the very root of UP and Bihar's relative
underdevelopment today, what causes casteism to be more intense in this
part of India, less so in other parts of India? If the Brahmins were solely
responsible for this most egregious situation, why didn't the region's Dalits
or OBCs (or others) organize against caste during the 700 years that preceded
British Rule when political, judicial and military power was concentrated
in the hands of Islamic rulers, or during Colonial Rule, when most Brahmins
were themselves beholden to India's colonial conquerors? If the Islamic
or British rulers were truly against caste, why didn't they abolish the
caste system, or unhesitatingly ally with those who had been the caste-system's
greatest victims? Even more puzzling is how so few caste-disadvantaged Hindus
converted to Islam or Christianity. If Islam or Christianity had been representative of more
egalitarian and dynamic social systems in India, it is hard to imagine why
Hindus would not have converted on a much larger scale, and abandoned a culture
that supposedly signified an entirely "moribund" or repressive way of life. But few "secular" historians have attempted
to make such inquiries. Almost no one who has written critically about caste
has stopped to wonder why the Muslim invaders, or the British colonial
conquerors cut deals with Brahmins, Thakurs and Banias, or gave free rein
to the casteist tendencies of those they employed, even as they scornfully
derided Indian civilization for its "horrible casteism". Could it be that having conquered an alien
land, India's foreign-born conquerors had as much (or even greater stake)
in preserving and perpetuating the caste system than the former beneficiaries
of the caste system because it was such a powerful and convenient tool
of pitting Indian against Indian? In any exploitative imperial project (or hegemonic
political order), hierarchy is an inevitable by-product. All the evidence
suggests that Mughal society was highly elitist and even at the court of
relatively more liberal rulers such as Akbar, Hindus were significantly under-represented
in the top echelons of the fuedal order. At a time when China had an examination
system for its administrative services, and Europe's universities were turning
out scholars who were challenging outdated notions about the laws of nature
and society, the Mughal administration was still thriving almost exclusively
on a foundation of feudal loyalties and opportunistic alliances. Notwithstanding the splendor of the Mughal courts, the Mughal order was not conducive to a more democratic socio-political re-ordering of society - nor was it capable of reinventing itself so as to successfully resist colonization like the Japanese aristocracy. But such historical awareness is sorely lagging amongst those wanting to destroy the old caste order. While it is understandable why a superficial analysis of caste might serve the interests of Western Cultural Imperialists, or Islamists, those who truly wish to transcend caste should have been digging deeper. Indian Marxists ought to have been at the very forefront of demystifying caste, since enlightened Marxism requires that all social phenomenon be subject to careful scientific and objective investigation, as opposed to purely sentimental, emotional or moralistic treatment of frustrating social legacies. But instead, Indian Marxists have generally failed to connect the dots, and have been mostly unable to present the historic dialectic of caste in a truly objective manner.It is, therefore, unsurprising that, narrowly-focused caste-based political leaders such as Ram Vilas Paswan, Lallu Prasad and Mulayam Singh (and their allies) have become subconscious victims of a superificial (and somewhat self-serving) understanding of caste and its historical dialectics. For instance, Mulayam Singh is probably completely unaware that during Mughal role, certain Yadav chieftains waged sustained military campaigns against rulers like Akbar, conducting guerilla warfare so as to undermine the Mughal armies. So frustrating was this resistance that Akbar felt obliged to cut a deal with such Yadavs, who were offered limited autonomy within their small fiefdoms. Once they had been thus appeased, the Yadav chiefs fell in line, and accepted Mughal overlordship. The caste system survived intact, and the Dalits remained at the bottom of the totem pole. The British routinely hired Dalit and OBC mercenaries in their colonial militias as foot soldiers - not only to suppress Hindu upper-castes, but more significantly, to oppress entire native communities (which included other OBCs and Dalits). That Dalits and OBCs may have inadvertently (or even consciouly) participated in the subjugation of their own communities is something rarely acknowledged in the popular discourse. Almost entirely missing in many caste-based leaders' understanding of socio-economic dialectics is how colonization may have led to an exponential increase in the subjugation of India's Dalits and OBCs simply because with the total collapse and ruination of UP's pre-colonial economy, every one in UP suffered immeasurably- more so, those at the bottom of the caste hierarchy. Dalits suffered the most, because other than a small minority of Dalit mercenaries, the few crumbs of British rule available to Indians were garnered by the Islamic nobility and forward-caste Hindus such as Brahmins, Thakurs and Banias, particularly those who had the means to secure a British education - something that was completely out of reach for the overwhelming majority of the Dalits and most OBCs. Of course, a balanced appraisal of history becomes difficult when old forms of oppression linger on. Fifty years after independence it is naturally a source of great frustration for the Dalits to be as deprived and disciminated as they are today. Their long-suppressed rage has given rise to a leadership that is much more aggressive and more demanding than before. Although non-Dalit politicians have had to cut deals with Dalit leaders due to electoral necessities, none have shown the sagacity in leading the charge against surviving caste injustices. Nor has any forward-caste leader emerged who could transcend the past, and articulate a more egalitarian and enlightened vision of the future. Owing to their potentially much larger vote-banks, the responsibility of raising the Hindi-belt out of its relative morass has thus fallen on the shoulders of OBC political leaders (and to a lesser degree on Dalit leaders). But the tragedy of the new OBC leaders is that they see their mission almost exclusively in terms of advancing their specific communities - and not much more. OBCs, for instance, have yet to take any responsibility for their own role in Dalit oppression, even though the overwhelming majority of crimes committed against Dalits today are by more aggressive sections of the OBC communities. Cornered from all sides, Dalit leaders have dug in their heels, and have simply adapted to the politics of opportunism. Although Mayavati's arrival on the UP political scene helped in ameliorating the most egregious forms of caste-exploitation, in most instances, the political posturing by sectarian caste-based politicians (such as Ram Vilas Paswan) has been more useful in jockeying for political power (and gaining wealth and privilege for a handful of cronies) than truly liberating the Dalits or other oppressed communities. It has also been very difficult for Dalit intellectuals to fully comprehend the strengths and weaknesses of Ambedkar. For instance, Dalit leaders from the Hindi-belt have been unable to appreciate Ambedkar's good sense in realizing that Dalits had the most to gain from enlightened state intervention - that undiluted economic liberalism would leave the capital-starved and mostly unschooled and untrained Dalits virtually bereft of any means to participate meaningfully and effectively in a no-holds-barred market economy. But no caste-based politician has displayed any mature understanding of political economy or world affairs that might impinge on the development of Bihar or UP, which may, in turn, have very serious ramifications for the progress of poor Dalits and OBCs residents in these states. Certain aspects of globalization are particularly important to underline. Since globalization tends to liberalize international trade, it tends to favor coastal provinces over inland provinces (all other factors being equal). This is a phenomenon that can be observed worldwide - in Europe (where colonial globalization led to more rapid growth in coastal Western Europe as opposed to inland Eastern Europe); or in Africa today - where again, coastal South Africa and North Africa have done best, and inland landlocked African countries have fared the worst. In China, the differences between coastal cities and inland rural areas can be especially stark. It should therefore not be surprising that in India too, with some exceptions, interior regions have been left behind by coastal regions. Bihar and UP are worse off than Bengal. Madhya Pradesh is worse off than Gujarat. Western Orissa is worse off than Eastern Orissa. And most significantly, the coastal Southern States with their well-developed ports are booming relative to the land-locked Hindi-belt. Although it would be too simplistic to attribute the plight of UP and Bihar exclusively to geographical disadvantages, the global trend is undeniable. It has also been observed that regions of the world that were historically at a disadvantage can become even more disadvantaged after globalization, especially if they can develop no compensatory advantages to make up. Thus globalization has a tendency to compound geographical and historical disadvantages. But not a single politician from the Hindi-belt has bothered to observe that the states of the Hindi-belt are at a crucial geographical and historical disadvantage in the post-liberalization free trade regime. Even though the media has sometimes portrayed politicians such as Lallu, Mulayam or Mayavati as destabilizing radicals - their politics has revealed almost a studied indifference towards crucial economic matters. And just as most other mainstream politicians, they have displayed a marked lack of interest concerning other pressing social and ecological issues of the day. Neither Lallu, nor Mulayam, nor Mayavati have sought to use their political mobilizations to campaign for greater gender equity, or to speak out for oppressed social groups such as child laborers, the disabled, or Muslim women (and men) oppressed by a restrictive clergy, or those (from any caste) who wish to marry outside their religion. They too have come across as unbothered by the concerns of socially marginalized or oppressed communities such as Kinnars, or the millions of Indians (of all castes) who might wish to marry someone of their own gender. Not only have caste-oriented politicans failed to fully comprehend the dialectical complexities of caste oppression, they have singularly failed to recognize that modern society has multi-dimensional features - that political leaders in a democratic polity have a duty to not only rectify past and present wrongs, but to also lead in a manner that raises the social consciousness and civilizational standards of all members of society; that political redistribution of petty privileges cannot be the sole or primary solution for eliminating mass poverty and underdevelopment. Of course, it cannot be emphasized enough that it is not just the caste-based political "upstarts" who are sectarian-minded. The leaders of the Congress and the BJP have been just as amiss. In densely over-populated states such as UP and Bihar, no leading political figure has ever spoken to the rights of those who do not wish to reproduce (or limit the size of their families). None has spoken of the ecological crisis that looms over the Hindi-belt in terms of growing far beyond the sustaining capacity of the land. Political leaders from across the political spectrum have remained oblivious or unworried about the polluted rivers, the degraded forests, the recurring floods and other natural disasters that routinely plague their lands and people. While some have strenuously defended the rights of adults to reproduce at will, they have not been too concerned about the plight of children who might undergo enormous harship when they are sold into bondage, or forced to give up schooling because they must raise their younger siblings or assist their parents in income-generating activities. In or out of power, no UP politician has been able to speak on the role of civilization and culture - of the importance of socially redeeming literature or poetry, of the potentially universal appeal of a great author such as Premchand; none has ever acknowledged the vital role of art and music in society, or the role of scientific and technological knowhow in the development of an advanced civilization. The neglect of the universities and other institutions of higher learning has not caused them much anguish, nor has the lack of scientific temper amongst the masses bothered them. While many have attempted to talk about the "rights" of one section of society or another, none has acknowledged that with rights also come responsibilities, or that no groups can expect to have rights and privileges that negatively infringe on the well-being of others. However, one cannot look at a political class without also looking at the social milieu that creates it. The many failings of the region's current breed of political leaders is in itself a symptom of a deeper problem that has both historical and contemporary roots. By and large, the Hindi-belt's concerned intelligentsia has struggled with both its understanding and its articulation of some of the unique problems afflicting the region. On the one hand, the Hindi-speaking intelligentsia is highly segmented and divided; on the other hand, whenever it appears to act in consort, it leads to fear and resistance from non-Hindi speakers. Unlike some other linguistically unified states such as Gujarat, Andhra or Tamil Nadu, the Hindi-belt is highly fragmented. The Hindi-speaking population is distributed amongst numerous provinces - divided on account of geographic peculiarities (such as in the case of Rajasthan) or on account of political/historical factors. Uttaranchal is separated from Himachal, Bundelkhand from Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar and Haryana from Uttar Pradesh. It must also be acknowledged that more than other Indian states, the Hindi-speaking states have suffered the greatest break in continuity in terms of their linguistic and intellectual tradition. Prior to the imposition of Islamic rule, Sanskrit was the medium of advanced intellectual investigation and communication. All writings in mathematics, logic and epistemology, biological and physical sciences, civil and mechanical engineering, architecture and urban planning, agriculture, jurisprudence and philosophy, aural and visual aesthetics, and other branches of higher learning (such as the psychology of love and human sexuality) were recorded in Sanskrit (and possibly in Pali in the Buddhist seminaries that were destroyed or converted to mosques/madrasahs after the Islamic conquests). But as local rulers were defeated, Arabic, Persian and Urdu gained in prominence. Although spoken Urdu is easily intelligible to Hindi speakers, written Urdu with its alien script and large vocabulary of imported words is not. The imperative for Quranic learning at the Madrasahs (and pan-Islamic Jurisprudence practices) created the demand for Arabic and Persian scholars but led to a precipitious decline in demand for Sanskrit scholars.. Once Hindus had lost political power, there was also little patronage for Sanskrit-trained intellectuals, even those oriented towards science and engineering, or the liberal arts. Nor was there a responsive audience for Sanskrit literature even if some Sanskrit scholars persisted with their intellectual efforts. Although a folk literature emerged in different Hindi dialects, this folk literature could not address the above-mentioned fields of civilizational investigation as they demanded a degree of training, intellectual discipline and historical continuity not available to the folk philosophers. By the time a native Urdu-speaking intelligentsia had begun to develop, the Hindi belt was confronted by another debilitating challenge - i.e. colonial rule. Colonial rule either imposed English-speaking Britishers on the Hindi-speaking states, or in the case of undivided Bihar allowed it to be ruled in part by proxy through British-trained Bengali subordinates who even as they continued to speak in Bengali at home, generally resisted speaking in Hindi to the local populace. In this way, the polity of the plains was not only divided by caste, or politically fragmented, it was also splintered on the basis of language. Whereas the masses spoke different Hindi dialects, the Muslim elites preferred to communicate in Urdu, Persian, or Arabic, while a new pro-colonial intelligentsia tried to imitate their colonial masters by speaking in the "Queen's English". Although sections of the old intelligentsia desperately clung on to Sanskrit, they were unable to communicate the best of the traditional literature to those who couldn't understand Sanskrit. Thus no cohesive intellectual discourse was really possible. After independence, even as Hindi was widely adopted on Doordarshan and in the Railways and other national agencies, an opportunistic coterie of English-speaking intellectuals in Delhi strenuously conspired to impede scholarly investigation in Sanskrit at Delhi's premiere universities such as JNU. Sanskrit was arbitrarily assigned the "communal" tag, whereas Urdu's alien content was glossed over, and was instead glorified as a "secular" language. Since Delhi had emerged as the de-facto intellectual and economic capital of the Hindi-speaking states, the suppression of Sanskrit at Delhi's universities meant that Hindi-speakers (and other Indians) could never really come into contact with an important segment of their intellectual tradition. Not only were India's Hindi speakers denied the ability to accurately reconstruct their history (which can only be possible once all the ancient Sanskrit texts are widely disseminated and dispassionately analysed), there were also no attempts at reconstructing the lost Pali literature from Tibetan, Myanmarese or Thai sources where a second-hand or third-hand version of Indian originals may have been meticulously preserved. This meant that even as India's neighbours could benefit from the historical intellectual output of UP or Bihar, India could not. Although some scholarly Hindutvadis have attempted to allude to these issues, their own inability to rise above narrow, or obscurantist, or biased interpretations of the Indian record have limited their credibility. Their lack of scientific wherewithal has impeded their ability to successfully expose the insidious Islamist biases of supposedly "secular" historians (such as Irfan Habib). And their unabashed support for pseudo-scientific social constructs (such as astrology), has further weakened their ability to carry the nation's progressive intelligentsia with them. Their association with the crude and exaggeration-prone Hindutvadis (including highly casteist Hindutvadis), and their uncritical defence (or tacit acceptance)of the BJP's renegade free-market policies has further eroded their capacity to influence progressive public opinion. This has left the honest and secular Hindi-speaking intellectual in an unenviable state. If he or she embraces Sanskrit, he or she risks being marginalized or isolated, or worse, branded a Hindutvadi. If he or she shuns Sanskrit, he or she risks intellectual orphanhood, and must then seek inspiration from a variety of alien intellectual traditions that may or may not shed adequate light on the particular plight of the Hindi-speaking world. Thus, the Hindi-belt has been compelled to enter the modern world intellectually (and hence, sociologically) crippled. As already noted, globalization tends to favor regions of the world with certain peculiar advantages. They could be geographical location involving strategically-positioned international trading ports or scarce but essential industrial raw materials such as oil or precious metals (as in the case of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Emirates or Malaysia), or centuries of accumulated finance capital (as in the case of Britain), or highly-developed intellectual capital (as in the case of South Korea in recent decades, or Japan and Germany earlier). Hence, UP, Bihar, Rajasthan and MP - with their capital impoverishment, explosive population growth, limited land and energy resources, and unfavorable geographic location can only change their fate with the one variable that is not yet in external control - i.e. the development of their intellectual and social capital. Although a compendium of forces has conspired to hamstring that process., there ought to be no illusions that all-round development or caste (or class) liberation can take place without socio-intellectual development, or without responsive governance that can take the leadership in solving the most important issues of the day. While caste-equity is an important dimension of socio-political fairness, caste-based mobilizations alone cannot transform the situation of the underdeveloped Hindi-speaking states. The Hindi-belt must make up for lost time, and rapidly augment its intellectual and social capital - not only in terms of mass literacy, but also in terms of advanced studies in the pure and applied sciences, and in the humanities - so that they can transcend the sectarian divides that are responsible for the present-day political gridlock - and instead, launch a new paradigm that combines fairness and equity with ecumenical breadth and development.
Related Essays: What Ails Khagaria?Human Development and Infrastructure in the Indian Subcontinent Is India Shining? Where is India headed in terms of Culture and Civilization? Back for other selections from South Asian Voice for other articles on issues confronting India and the region. Also see South Asian History or Topics in Indian History for relevant essays that shed some light on the history of the subcontinent. (If you liked our site, or would like to help with the South Asian Voice project and help us expand our reach, please click here) To send an e-mail, write to india.resource @yahoo.com
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