<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> WorldTribune.com: Mobile Ñ India, the world's most populous democracy, and the dictatorship of China

India, the world's most populous democracy, and the dictatorship of China

Thursday, May 7, 2009   E-Mail this story   Free Headline Alerts

On 4/23/09, I received an e-mail from Ram Narayanan about my column of 4/23/09:

I couldn't agree more! China is the biggest threat to the free world. One country that can stop the Chinese hegemony in South Asia is democratic (although chaotic at times) India.

I want to bring the public attention to the problem. I am not good at organizing supporters of specific causes. Instead, I have created a general nonprofit "Center for the Survival of Democracies, Inc." Some world-renowned intellectuals joined its Advisory Board. But recently the Center has failed to receive any donations, since the collection of them, especially during a recession, requires time, which I do not have. So my way out is to explain in my column the importance of what is proclaimed in its title.

Yes, India (officially, the "Republic of India) is the world's most populous democracy, with her population close to China's 1.3 billion, as against the 300 million of the U.S.A.

The size of the population is important, since the larger it is, the greater may be the number of the country's scientists and technologists, developing, producing, and handling in combat post-nuclear weapons, such as molecular nano weapons.

Territorially, India looks on the map like two triangles, the upper triangle raising its apex into the continent and having a common border with China, and the other (inverted) triangle descending its apex into the Arabian Sea on the west and the Bay of Bengal on the east. In other words, India cannot be surrounded: its lower (inverted) triangle cuts into the Indian Ocean.

"India's Golden Age" began in the 3rd century C.E. Science, engineering, art, astronomy, and philosophy flourished. Used in Europe and Russia was the word "Aryan," meaning "Indo-European." It implied that a profound culture and its creators abided in India (as it did in ancient Greece) and then migrated to Europe. At any rate, this vision shows how the "Indo-European" culture was revered in Europe and Russia.

In 1947, India gained independence from Britain, owing to Mahatma Gandhi's national movement of non-violent civil disobedience, and in 1950 India became a republic with a new constitution, ensuring an elaborate parliamentary democracy.

India became the sixth nuclear power in the world, and in 2008 the Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear agreement was signed.

In the past two decades, India's economy has been the fastest growing in the world. The population of Mumbai (formerly, Bombay) is near 14 million, that of Delhi near 13 million, etc.

Above, I have mentioned some common facts. The task now is India's defense, in cooperation with all democracies, against the dictatorship of China. How to achieve this miracle?

I hope that we will be able to enlighten the democracies. The result may be useful for India and all other democracies.

The task may seem to be simple. In the last two decades China has made a breathtaking leap forward in its military might. Why can't India do the same, given almost the same size of her population?

Tragically, a dictatorship possesses obvious advantages over a democracy in the military mobilization of human and material resources in peacetime. A dictatorship is the harshest war organization even in the most tranquil peacetime. The natural striving of a human being is to live for himself or herself and to refuse to believe in the possibility of what requires his or her sacrifice of any part of his or her life for himself or herself. The dictatorship does not know this difficulty. It does whatever it wants to do with every inhabitant of its country. Though I have never been an inhabitant of China, Ben Yap of benyapcf@yahoo.co.uk sends me his e-mails, in the last of which he demands that I "stop using [the term] 'dictators' and other derogatory and extreme terms on China and the Chinese."

Thus speaks Ben Yap, though the ideological root of the post-1949 China is Marxism-Leninism, which does not consider the word "dictatorship" either derogatory or extreme, but on the contrary, considers it part of the blissful future of all mankind. True, Lenin spoke of the dictatorship of the "proletariat," the word that Marx had created in 1853. But surely Lenin was also a dictator until he was ousted by his illness, death, and the dictator Stalin. It is not clear to me why the notion of dictatorship is less derogatory if applied to all "proletarians" of the world, and not to one individual like Lenin who considered himself their "leader."

As for the "Chinese," I have always stressed that events like the peaceful Tiananmen movement of unarmed Chinese for democracy or the mass withdrawal from the Communist Party of China show that the Chinese love freedom no less than any other nation.

A dictatorship can pay as little to any inhabitant of its country and as much to any geostrategically valuable foreigner as it wants to.

By creating an infinitely worse alternative, a dictatorship can force any inhabitant to die "heroically" if this is regarded by the dictatorship as being useful for the military victory.

For a democracy, it is first necessary to convince itself as to a possible mortal danger to the country. This should not be taken for granted. The more the military danger of the dictatorship of China grew, the less President George W. Bush noticed it and the more persistently he fought Iraq, a small backward country, while President Obama borrowed from China the dollars he needed to fight the recession.

But after the leaders of a democracy have convinced themselves as to the reality of a military danger, they have yet to convince of it the citizens of the democracy, who can, however, argue publicly against all attempts to persuade them that the danger exists. On the other hand, a dictatorship does not have to convince anyone of anything: It orders.

Let us recall that Hitler (the dictator) ordered the invasion of France (a democracy) on 6/10/1940, and within a month and two weeks France capitulated, though troops of Britain (a democracy) were in France to help her to stop Hitler's Blitz. Compare: When Germany was a constitutional parliamentary monarchy (like the United Kingdom) its conquest of France took over four years (1914-1918).

So a defense of a democracy against a dictatorship is not a new problem. It faced France 69 years ago, and France failed to solve it.

The democracies should solve the problem - or perish. The population of France could have been annihilated by Hitler, but fortunately for France, in 1941 he sustained his first defeat in Stalin's Russia (a dictatorship), was finally routed, and committed suicide.

In the past 20-odd years, warfare has become deadlier than it was in WWII. Forbes gave four pages to an article reported on 02/01/2007 and entitled "Nanotech Gets Big in China." Nano weapons are superior to atom bombs. Well, 64 years have passed since the latter appeared.

Democracies! Wake up and unite! To create a reliable defense! Or you will perish one by one! As France would have if Hitler had not been an ignorant fool to have invaded Stalin's Russia instead of spending the money on his atomic project! Today's war is so much more dangerous than it was in 1940 in Hitler's Blitz of France! Democracies! Remember that if you perish, freedom will perish - perhaps forever!

   WorldTribune Home