India under Narendra Modi – Is Sri Lanka ready for its revolutionary transformation ?
Posted on January 28th, 2014

Senaka Weeraratna

The Indian General Elections scheduled for May, 2014 would if the forecasts are proved to be correct result in a sea change in India’s relationship with the rest of the world and revolutionary transformation of her Economy, Industry and Education if the changes in Gujerat introduced by Chief Minister Narendra Modi are an indication.  It will also dramatically affect the ongoing ‘blow hot blow cold’ relations that India currently pursues with Sri Lanka.

India under Narendra Modi as Prime Minister will claim its rightful place in Asia as one of its true leaders, politically, economically and even militarily, and in order to demonstrate these credentials India can be expected to abandon gleefully its current policy of servility and unconditional subservience to the West. It will do so in the full knowledge that continuing subservience to its former colonial masters and their allies i.e. the new sponsors of colonialism, will severely undercut any Indian claim to lead the once colonized but now liberated nations of Asia.

India will discard its junior partner status in any relationship with USA and retaliate in a more effectual manner if the American gaffe we saw in the recent past involving Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade were to be repeated.

India will reclaim its ancient spiritual and cultural heritage and take pride in its civilizational achievements in a way that will put to shame the negative attitudes being adopted currently by the Indian establishment including its mass media and burgeoning film industry, lacking vision, sense of country’s purpose and more importantly pride in its own history and heroes.

 The upsurge of the view that India has nothing much to offer other that material goods and services, and entertainment in this modern age has diminished India’s moral standing in a world long used particularly in the pre-colonial past to be the beneficiary of Indian philosophical thought,  wisdom and outspokenness that had no equal.

India will mend any strains it has in its relationship with China and will not allow interfering outsiders particularly from the West to identify India’s friends and potential enemies and teach India how to conduct itself vis – a – vis imagined foes.

India will take comfort from a historical fact that India and China despite being neighbours on the Asian continent had never gone to war with each other for over 5000 years except on one dismal occasion in contemporary history i.e. 1962, when it clashed with China over a border issue that has its roots in British colonial mischief.

India will set its own foreign policy agenda and goals from a central government perspective rather than from a regional government perspective which today has unfortunately contributed to India’s almost total isolation from its immediate neighbours in South Asia. 

This anticipated posture will contribute immensely to improvement of India’s ties with Sri Lanka.

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, popular freedom fighter and nationalist leader that India never had as its Prime Minister, will come alive in the form of Narendra Modi and it will revolutionise India’s national and international image.

India will no longer be the country that the West particularly USA would take for granted with contempt for both its leaders and people, but a new India conscious of its place in the world and obligations to both humanity and all other living beings.

India’s Constitutional provision that “it shall be the duty of every citizen of India to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wild life and to have compassion for living creatures” (Article 51 – A (g)) will gain a new lease of life.

This is the vision that India’s greatest son the Buddha had for Bharat and its greatest Chakravarti Emperor Asoka faithfully strove to establish in the form of a compassionate society.

India’s moral voice can be expected to be heard again in the far flung corners of the world in a manner that the Buddha, Mahavira, Asoka, Nagarjuna, Swami Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Mahatma Gandhi and the like resounded to the serene joy and delight of humankind.

 Idealism will return to India and in turn help to re-charge the batteries of a largely spiritually weakened Asia, now increasingly despoiled by unbridled crass materialism.  

We must gratefully acknowledge that it was India more than any other country that originally provided the value system for the moral and ethical foundations of Asia, through the spread of the influence of Buddhism and Hinduism.  

Are we in Sri Lanka ready to meet the challenge of foreseeable radical changes in our closest neighbour, India?

5 Responses to “India under Narendra Modi – Is Sri Lanka ready for its revolutionary transformation ?”

  1. Lorenzo Says:

    “India’s moral voice can be expected to be heard again in the far flung corners of the world in a manner that the Buddha, Mahavira, Asoka, Nagarjuna, Swami Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Mahatma Gandhi and the like resounded to the serene joy and delight of humankind.

    Idealism will return to India and in turn help to re-charge the batteries of a largely spiritually weakened Asia, now increasingly despoiled by unbridled crass materialism.”

    I’m afraid this is NOT what will happen when the 2002 GUJARAT RIOT LEADER Modi becomes PM. There will be chaos. Minorities in Endia will face violence and discrimination more.

  2. S de Silva Says:

    India has initiated much culturally to influence Sri Lanka and others, mostly for the better but there is something more which is not generally known. The West refers to the decimal numbering system as ‘Araibic’. True, it is the Arabs as internstional traders of the time who adopted the system for its superior simplicity from India and Europe copied it from the Arabs to replace the cumbersome system using letters I,X,V,L,C & M. Imagine anyone today doing Division using these Roman letters!! Well, my personal view is that the Decimal numbering System is the greatest gift to the World from India without which there will be no science or engineering as we know it today – but then I could be biased towards my profession!! – S de Silva – London

  3. Nanda Says:

    S de Silva,

    The west propagated BURU Begal throughout.

    Pythagoras theorem is not know to Chinese as they are the ones who proved in a better way before Pythagoras. Their children do not know it as Pythagoras theorem.

    But the best gift we have from Endia is 13A system which created many doctors and professors like Mervyn , Duminda and now Bijjeswaran.

  4. Mr. Bernard Wijeyasingha Says:

    A couple of issues if Narendra Modi becomes the next Prime Minister. For any politician seeking office in New Delhi, he or she DOES NOT need the “Dravidian vote” but does need the vote from the “Hindi belt” or that of central and North India. If one totals all the people Dravidian or not, living in the states of Andhra Pradesh (84 million 600 thousand) Tamil Nadu (72 Million), Karnataka (53 million) and Kerala (34 million) that totals 243 million. That is counting every human being, whether they can vote or not. If an Indian politician were to lose ever vote from these Dravidian states but wins the vote from the rest of India he or she will win the election.

    If that same politician was to win all of the Dravidian vote and lose the Northern vote he or she will not win the election. That is how provincial is the Dravidian vote. The civil war was an idea from New Delhi who took advantage of a domestic crisis in Sri Lanka in the same manner New Delhi took the domestic crisis of Pakistan to form Bangladesh.

    If the Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi and the Bharata Janata Party were to win the elections it would be very hard for the new Prime Minister to push human rights violations against the Rajapakse government without facing the same himself. Currently he faces human rights accusations from a host of nations for the Gujarat riots against the Muslims. It will also be a Hindu nationalist political revival where the emphasis of this movement is in the north and does not necessarily include the Tamils. It was under this party that the Babri Masjid was demolished in the city of Ayodhya on the claim that this Mosque was built on the very site where Rama was born and a temple, now proven to have existed, was torn down to build this Muslim structure. The northern nationalist movement was going to take this issue to the next city of Mathura where another Mosque stands on the grounds of what the Shiv Sena claim to be the birth place of Krishna. Due to the fall out in Pakistan where a dozen Hindu temples which were built around the 10th century were demolished and the world response including a protracted court case, further action was stifled.

    This may not be the case this time. The city of Mathura may face a similar action as seen in Ayodhya. Whether the Mosque is moved or destroyed that issue is now on the table. In Ayodhya the “Ramaboomi” temple may get court clearance. Since New Delhi’s interference in the Sri Lankan war was not based on religion but on politics I would assume the Rajapakse Government has more to gain with Narendra Modi in power than the current Congress party that has been the sole property of the Nehru/Gandhi dynasty for over 65 years.

  5. Fran Diaz Says:

    Some thoughts on the probable Modi government in India :

    We have hope that India under Mr Modi will work out better for India as well as for the region. His pragmatic approach to build 100 new cities (Modern cities) shows him to be a visionary leader, quite different to the previous leaders of India. The New cities will bring a Modern outlook, a breath of fresh air, sweeping away most of India’s past inequalities and social disharmony. It is very likely that most of South India will also benefit from such a move, and South Indian leaders who are stuck in a groove, will welcome the proposed changes. May this new approach also benefit Sri Lanka ! Lanka will have to remain strictly Non-aligned to reap full benefits from the new Modi govt. approaches.

    As to why East Pakistan broke away from West Pakistan, here is a write up that explains what happened (see below). Firstly, W&E Pakistans were a product of British Colonisation and the British withdrawal from India after WW II. When Independence was given to India, no effort was made by the British authorities still in India to stop the Hindu/Muslim riots that killed over a million people there. Mr Ali Jinnah, a lawyer in London at that time, was built up by the British as a leader for Pakistan.

    In Sri Lanka, the British imported over a million Tamil people as indentured labor for the tea estates to add to the some half a million Tamil people already imported as indentured labor by the Dutch for the tobacco plantations of the North. Thus the delicate ethnic balance in Lanka was terminated forever. After Independence from Britain, Sri Lanka was left holding the Caste/poverty divide of the Tamil population of Lanka. PM David Cameron said : “most of the trouble in the world today is due to the Britain”. We thank him for his honesty.

    It is time for the SE Asian region to transform the ‘Divide & Rule’ theme of the British to “Co-operation & Joy in Living”.

    Extract on formation of W&E Pakistan :

    “Tensions between East and West Pakistan existed from the creation of Pakistan (1947). Pakistan was an odd creation woth the two parts, East and West Pakistan separated by more than 1,000 miles. The two parts of Pakistan shared few cultural and social traditions other than Islam. The lack of common bonds was accentuated when political figures in the West seized control of the new state, dominating both political and economic power. This causes resentment in East Pakistan that gradually grew. East Pakistan’s Awami League, led by the Bengali leader Sheik Mujibur Rahman, won a majority of the seats in the National Assembly (1970). President Yahya Khan responded by postponing the opening of the National Assembly to prevent the Awami League from pursuing greater autonomy for East Pakistan. The result was civil war. Begali nationalists declared independence (March 26, 1971). The Pakistani Army attempted to regiain control in East Pakistan and committed terrible attrocities. Indian troops entered the war and quickly defeated the Pakistani Army. The Pakistanis conceded defeat (December 16, 1971). President Yahya Khan resugned. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took over Pakistan and recognized Bangladesh as an independent country. Formal diplomatic relations were initiated (1976)”.

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