We recently took a trip to Thirukkurungudi, a temple town approximately 40 kms from Tirunelveli, in the region historically known as Nellai. The temple is famous for its reenactment of kaisika EkAdashI nAtaka. Our eyes caught the temple elephant which was chained and tortured. It brought a tear to our eyes. Please check out our pictorial.
I prefer the heat in the afternoon. No cold water.
The poor mammoth was being bathed with cold water in the warm afternoon unnecessarily bringing some relief from the heat. The cruel mahouts didn’t care to ask for the elephant’s permission to bathe it. What brutality!
I beg you please stop.
The inhuman folks continue without an ounce of compassion despite the behemoth begging them to stop. If this isn’t savagery, we don’t know what is.
I give up.
The poor thing ultimately gave up like a common slave does. We hope someone files a FIR with the AWBI and contacts Maneka Gandhi immediately.
Did I ask for this?
The speciesist mahouts decorate the elephant with pagan symbols. Did they check if the ink was toxic? Did they check if it was manufactured cruelty-free?
PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!
The elephant lets out a cry asking us to save it. Heart rending.
I’m hungry!
The evil pagan authorities hardly feed the elephant. The poor thing is so weak & malnourished. Just 60-70 kilos of hay. How will it suffice?
They don’t even remove my excrements!
Look at how they keep the elephant dung close to the pachyderm. It can lead to all sorts of disease.
The article originally appeared at https://whitericevellasamy.wordpress.com and is written by @KarikadaiBoy.
There are a lot of smug South and West Indians on the internet who think that helping out our poor states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan etc. is wasteful expenditure and are asking why comparatively rich states of the union like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka etc. should support the poorer states. What is worse is the fact that most of these arguments are coming from the self-claimed nationalists and Hindutvawadis of the internet. It is a disgrace to the actual Nationalists of India that such pathetic questions from the supposedly nationalistic right wingers need to be addressed. One usually expects such disgraceful “what’s wrong with pimping the motherland for a few bucks?” type questions to be asked by the usual motherland-selling Communists, Maoists and Chrislamists — not the Hindu nationalists. Nevertheless, this is the level to which the discourse in India has stooped, and hence the need to address it in a manner and language deserving of these snakes and traitors masquerading as nationalists.
Questioning the right of Bihari labourers to work outside Bihar is a malignant idea
This is a very malignant idea to begin with, even though it might look to many half-informed people as a very legitimate point — specially to those who take their economic policies from the half-retards at Breitbart on immigration. India is a nation state and single unified country, a fact which many of these supposed nationalists seem to forget when questioning the right of anyone to migrate and work within India. Every Indian has the right to move, work and settle in any place he wants. India is the homeland and motherland of every Indian born here and hence the very basis of this question reeks of anti-nationalism.
This is the reason why Article 370 of the Constitution, which protects Jammu and Kashmir from the free movement and settlement of the rest of Indians, is a very malicious and divisive one. Making these kinds of arguments will lead to the creation of an Article 370-like situation in every state in India. Strangely enough, these same nationalists who oppose Article 370 (and rightfully so) don’t feel ashamed when questioning the movement of Bihari labour to other more fortunate parts of India.
Debunking the myth that Bihari migrants are a strain on the local economy
This has been debunked by every single economics paper and study on the entire planet. All cases of immigration, specially those where the immigrants are working for their livelihood, is good for the economy as a whole. Each immigrant adds a pair of working hands to the local economy and the society he migrates to. The greatest resource of any country is human resource — and hence immigrants add the biggest resource to the local economy.
In fact, logically speaking, immigrants are a better human resource than the local population. Unlike the local population which had to be supported from ages 0–15 by the local economy, immigrants from Bihar arrive already grown-up and in working age. They add to the economy and working population from day one without being dependent on the local economy.
Ironically, many of the people who sprout hatred against immigration from Bihar were also against emigration to Saudi Arabia, UAE or USA. Their concerns about India losing talent and human resource to host countries is quite valid. But for some reason, they don’t seem to apply the same logic that migration to their home states from less fortunate states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh is good as it brings human resource. Bihari bhaiyyas endure such hardships because the situation back home for them is even worse. They would rather save some money by working in richer states and send it back home for their poor kids.
Immigrant remittances help to ease up the wealth inequalities among states to a large extent. And by working in other states, they gain valuable experience and can in the near future establish new businesses to create jobs back home. This is a win-win situation for everybody. Of course, wages will drop in the short run in host states — but the lower wages are also responsible for lower overall costs for consumers in the local economy as a whole. So banning immigration to keep wages high is as brilliant as banning power-looms to keep wages from hand looms high — fully retarded. Thanks to the possibility of immigration, the economic engines of rich states continue to run. But sadly, the immigrants who help in this miracle only get contempt from their supposedly nationalistic Indians.
Why transfer of tax and wealth from rich states to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh is justified
One has to wonder what kind of Hindutva or nationalism these people follow when they have a problem with the transfer of wealth from one Hindu to another Hindu or one Indian to another Indian. Is the transfer of taxes from rich states to poorer states any different from taxing rich people to pay for the poor — which is how any government anywhere in the world operates?
These people claim to be Nationalists and Hindutvawadis but are unhappy with the transfer of wealth within the same nation and among Hindus. Even worse is the fact that they whine about wealth transfer although it is not even that significant — there is barely a 15% per capita transfer difference between rich states like Maharashtra and poor states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Also, the same people malign the poor development record of Bihar but per capita development expenditure of Bihar is less than 50% of India’s average. Do we really expect our poor brothers from Bihar to catch up when they get half the development assistance compared to average India?
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Per capita development expenditure is much lower in Bihar
Historical step-motherly treatment of Bihar
Bihar deserves far more wealth redistribution and compensation if we are fair and neutral. Bihar was impoverished by systemic discrimination by the central government since independence. The planned transfers to Bihar in every 5-year plan have always been much lower than the average. As the data shows, Bihar got much lower than projected expenditure in each plan — unequal distribution of resources against one state for such a long duration can hardly be justified.
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Plan Allocation to Punjab and Bihar since independence
Also, one cannot forget about the freight equalisation policy, which killed the competitiveness of any industry in Bihar till 1991. Under this policy, basic raw material like steel and coal, abundantly available in Bihar, was made available at a constant price across the entire country. But what it essentially did was blunt the competitiveness of Bihar while allowing coastal states to prosper at its expense. Having a coastline already improves competitiveness due to easy access to the world economy — and freight equalisation ensured that Bihar lost the only source of competitiveness it had. So when the reforms of 1991 happened, the other coastal states which were already well placed leap-frogged in development while Bihar-UP stayed stuck in a vicious cycle of crime and under-development.
It should be emphasised that when these RW types whine about being robbed to pay for Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, they follow the exact same propaganda as Maoists used in Bihar and Chattisgarh. Should Bihar and Chattisgarh now take over their mines and ban the use of vast natural resources from being used elsewhere in the Union — using the same logic these people seem to use? Isn’t this line of thinking as dangerous as the Chrislamist/Maoist version of political discourse?
Of course, even worse is the hypocrisy the South Indians — specially the Tamils influenced by Tamil nationalist snakes like Simon Sebastian Seeman of Naam Tamizhar Katchi — display when discussing this issue. These are the same people who salivate at the prospect of the river water linking project of Ganga with Cauvery. Do they have any shame that they want to share water from the same UP-Bihar belt but not their money?
Additionally, some people think that Bihar and Uttar Pradesh will always be backward. But this goes against the civilization history of Bharatvarsha. Historically the Gangetic plains have always been very rich, the seat of important power and the nursery of our civilization. Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh with a few years of good governance have already broken out of the BIMARU state tag — so there is no reason to think that UP and Bihar cannot. If given enough time, our Bihari and UP bhaiyyas will catch up with the rest of India. Till then, it is our duty as fellow citizens to help our brethren. Why else do we have the union of India if not to help each other in our times of weakness?
What is the most self-destructive and self-sabotaging creature to have ever traversed the grasslands of Bharatvarsha? In bitter parlance such loony creature goes by the name of liberal Hindu Right Wing. In the animal kingdom, the unwritten code of conduct is to not feed the snake because snakes are known to bite back the hands that feed them. But loony H RW is known not only to feed snakes but feed them milk, an expensive diet in these parts of the world.
Recently the loony H RW is busy feeding milk to the snake which goes by the name of Shatir Khan by paying for his shenanigans in #Dung-all. Few months ago this snake brought notice to the jungle authorities about growing intolerance virus in the lands of Bharatvarsha. The snake was worried about his future snakelings in the wild grasslands infected by intolerance virus. Given the false propaganda by the snakes and his tribe, loony H RW upped the ante against the snakes few months ago and boycotted their grass on TrapDeal and AirHel. The tribe of loony H RW and their Sarpanchs in different grasslands vowed to not entertain demands of snakes in the future.
Having shed too many crocodile tears in PaiseBanao Jayate, Shatir Khan realized that he can fool loony H RW by selling grass on sob stories, hence he produced the new grass called Dung-all. In Dung-all Shatir Khan showed how loony H RW has suppressed all the females of their tribe and need reform virus to rejuvenate their life. Not to forget, during all this time Shatir Khan never mentioned about the suppression virus unleashed on the females of snake family.
But the most surprising thing in this whole exercise is the self-sabotage action reflected in the words of supposedly H RW animal. Having boycotted TrapDeal and other products under the snake flagship, suddenly the whole H RW is buying grass with sob stories in Dung-all. One important point to note here is that Dung-all is produced from real life grass, which has already been harvested in the grasslands of Gharyana. Without the support of snake, Gharyana has produced enough Olympic grass. So, rather than using real grass owners like Makshi Salik for propaganda, the action of loony H RW to support known snake Shatir Khan is beyond the comprehension of all experts of animal kingdom. Giving free grass to Shatir will only increase the population of disruptive snakes in the grasslands of Bharatvarsha.
The self-sabotage virus has increased its population immensely in these parts of grasslands. Anything less than permanent Bhojaism is unlikely to cure any kind of daughter-selling/self-sabotage virus in the long run. The grasslands of Bharatvarsha are looking forward for complete sanitation and rise of Bhoja anti-dote against this loony virus which has infected the forever agitated brand of TrendVeer animals of H RW on bitter.
Also read: Different species of Hindus found in India
PS: The new scales of Shatir Khan in Dung-all were developed using steroid grass, a deadly variety of grass used as a short cut to build new scales by many animals.
There is a huge social media outrage over Saif Miya and Kareena Bibi naming their newborn after old Jihadi Taimur. The outrage on Twitter is quite understandable considering the fact that this move by the couple is a calculated one to rub insult into the sub-human second-class dhimmies of India, aka Hindus. After all, why would they name their kid after Taimur — a Muslim Jihadi who famously killed 100,000 Hindus in Delhi in one day and made a pyramid with their skulls? Since most Muslims in India are forced converts to the tune of 90% of the population, it is quite natural for the rape descendants to name their kids after their rapists so that they can later claim to be descendants of conquerors rather than the victims.
Illustration from Zafarnamah (c.1520 CE) — Source: @TrueIndology
Liberal Hindus and their defence
Whatever one may think of liberal Hindus, at least they are true to their principles — they are consistent in their lack of self-respect. Take any typical liberal atheist “Idea of India” type intellectual. They thank the Mughals for massacring Hindus by the millions and putting Hindu women into harems — all because they brought biryani to the subcontinent. These people are expected to lack self-respect. This kind of self-respect-lacking apologia is natural to the liberal Hindu who are quite happy to be sub-human dhimmies to the Jihadi elites. Seeing them celebrating the Jihadis openly mocking the sub-human dhimmies of the subcontinent — the Hindus — is “Idea of India.”
Twitter outrage by supposedly self-respecting Hindus
However, it is the Hindu reaction to this debacle which is puzzling. Many Hindus outraging at this act as if they have some self-respect and are hurt by how Jihadis name their Jihadi spawns. But the question is — do they really have self-respect? After all, these are the same self-respecting Hindu folks who turned PK into a superhit, adore the Jihadi Khans of Bollywood and glorify Pakistanis romancing Hindu actresses in Bollywood films. They are quite proud of this fact when some Jihadi predictably accuses them of being “intolerant” and they gladly prove otherwise by showing their secular certificate.
So the question is — why this double standard? Wouldn’t it be easier if these self-respect-lacking dhimmies outraging at the name of the Jihadi’s son just didn’t waste their time and energy on it? Is it going to change the fact that these dhimmies are going to make the next Bollywood movie featuring a Jihadi another super-duper hit? So when these self-righteous hypocritical dhimmies are not going to make any kind of impact whatsoever, then why whine and prove to the world that all Hindus are just dhimmies lacking self-respect at heart? To a neutral observer watching the drama, the only difference between the supposedly outraged RW Hindu Trend-Veers vs liberal Hindus is that the latter is far more honest about their lack of self-respect.
Maybe Hindu Trend-Veers should come down from their fake moral horse and fake self-respect and start addressing actual problems facing Hindus today — which are much more important for the Hindu cause than how Jihadis in Bollywood or anywhere in the world name their children and future Jihadis. While the shoddy demonetization tragicomedy is destroying the economy, RTE is being enforced with zeal by the Hindu thekadar BJP, and temple money is looted under the watchful eyes of Hindu BJP government in various states for development and healthcare. How Jihadis name their future Jihadis should be the last concern for our Hindu Trend-Veers.
There is a growing group of Hindu traditionalists in India who take up the label of Alt-Right to identify themselves and subscribe to their ideas. This might range from intellectuals of the traditionalist space who subscribe to the alt-right positions on various issues like gender, race, morality etc to Hindu Sena celebrating Trump victory while offering Pooja on his behalf. On the superficial level, the obvious alignment of the Hindu traditionalists with the traditionalists and alt-right of the west might look natural – both want to preserve family values, both see the threat that Islam poses to their societies and both see that the liberalism is a disease sold as a cure for the imperfect human civilisation. But what the Hindu traditionalists (or more accurately Dharmics) don’t seem to get is that enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend nor is that the alt-right has little in common with Dharma beyond the family, anti-liberalism and anti-Islam. Many of the alt-right views on gender, race and morality are downright adharmic and against facts and evidence. This series of articles will dig deep into various alt-right positions:
Alt-Right views on Race vs Reality
Alt-right thinks that white race is genetically superior to the Blacks, Indians, Arabs, Chinese etc and cherry-pick the examples of IQ tests and scientific advancements made by the west recently to claim it as “fact”. This is a flawed position because the facts don’t support their claims if accounted for various confounding factors. IQ is not a static measure which is set in stone for various races. IQ is largely influenced by nutrition, schooling, schooling of the parents of the kids, gender (gender has a statistically significant role in intelligence) and of course genetics. So the average IQ of India being 85, has a lot to do with the malnutrition rate of 50%, poverty rate of 60%, adult literacy rate of 65% (with literacy being ability to read or write and not education) of India and it obviously is not a marker of full genetic potential of Indian minds (actually proper nutrition can add another 10 or so points to Indian IQ). The same is true for Africans too as most of Africa is consumed in civil wars run by governments which are only slightly better than Indian government. But then the alt-right brings up the issue of IQ of African Americans in USA vs that of the white Americans. But then again, the African Americans in USA are not in the same level of social mobility vis-a-vis white Americans in the US with Africans having higher single and unwed mothers, higher divorce rates, lower schooling etc compared to white Americans. Again, not a fair comparison, although white supremacists blame the above problems as well on the African IQ. But this is not a very sound argument as one can notice that Africans in Africa have much more stable families than Africans living in America, thus removing one of the most equalizing force for Afro-Americans.
Then comes the curious case of East Asia. Chinese and other East Asians like Japanese and South Koreans have an average IQ of 105 which is higher than the average IQ of alt-right and of course, Askenazi Jews having a higher IQ than the average white guys. But this is somehow not addressed by the alt-right when they discuss about IQ differences being the reason for the backwardness of the black community in USA or their own failure in front of Jews. Their argument for black American backwardness in USA is due to IQ differences and not because of their systemic enslavement by whites or the fact that black Americans were the worst affected by the social liberalism and family breakdowns caused by feminism and other progressivisms. Of course, it is sometimes hilarious to watch these people confront this cognitive dissonance in debates as seen by Bannon of Brietbart news weaselling about why Indian and Chinese people dominating the IT field in USA is bad for the USA, which they achieved by merit unlike white American dominance of USA which they achieved through the lands they stole from the natives.
Then comes the issue of the scientific advances. This is where the IQ question becomes even more hilarious. The same Anglo-Saxons who boast of genetic superiority of the whites today were living in caves and engaged in looting and raping as a legitimate way of living in 500 BCE when Buddha and Mahavira were enlightening the minds of Indian Kingdoms and Vedas were in pristine glory. The same Anglo-Saxons who like to write how genetically superior they are now were bottom feeders of Human race well after 4000 years of first Human civilisations. Human civilisations began in Sumeria, Iraq (Babylon), Egypt i.e. brown Arabs, Iran(Persia) i.e. brown Persians, Indus valley i.e. brown Indians, Yangzte river/Chinese Civilisation of Yellow Chinese. The nearest equivalent for whites was that of Greece which dint even appear 2000 years after the ancient civilisations of the world rose. This is even funnier when one looks at the fact that Greeks were not even considered to be westerners, until the very late 19th century. The current West which boasts of being a civilisation today is actually made up of largely Anglo-Saxons of UK, Germany, Scandinavia, USA and its illegally invaded/conquered lands in Australia, North America. Even Irish were not considered whites until late 19th century in US, when they had to fight their Anglo-Saxon/British protestant descendants in US to even get acknowledged as “whites”.
It was not the Greeks who engaged in genocides across the world in the name of a Jew (Jesus) and conquered the lands around the world nor are the Anglo-Saxons descendants of Greeks. The reason why these alt-right neonazis even associate themselves with the Greeks and Romans is because without culturally appropriating the Roman/Greek history, much like how the Nazis under Hitler culturally appropriated Hindu civilisation as their own because Sanskrit was similar to German, the history of the Anglo-Saxons is rather pitiful and non-existent. It was the Romans who conquered these cave dwelling Anglo-Saxons of present day England and civilised them into a Kingdom in the 2nd century BCE. Then the Germans were conquered and civilised into a proper state/kingdom by the Romanised Gauls/Francia under Charlemagne in the 7th century AD, who proclaimed the Holy Roman Empire consisting of present day France (West Francia) and Germany (east Francia). The Scandinavians/vikings of course were still barbarians and looters even in 10th century before they were civilised. If the white Anglo-Saxons were so damn smart by genetics, they would not have been lagging behind Brown Indians, Brown Arabs, Brown Egyptians, Brown Persians, Yellow Hans in establishing settled human civilisations by 4000 years. If the same IQ test was done in 5th century BCE- Indians, Chinese, Iraqis, Egyptians, Persians etc would have blown the Anglo-Saxons and their illegal spawns in the Americas out of the water. The results would have been no different even few centuries ago.
Note that these are the same people who follow a Jew as their high lord and saviour while simultaneously whining, without any sort of cognitive dissonance, on how much Jewish influence is ruining their world. Their cognitive dissonance is so powerful that it can shake the gravity of the earth. These people are so brilliant genetically that they could not even bring their own set of morality and had to adopt the secularised/reformed morality of Christianity which again is a reformed form of Judaism which is again an Asian religion.
Then comes the question of major scientific discoveries of the world being from the west/Anglo-Saxons. This is of course a spurious argument because we are looking at the time period when West is at its peak after centuries of genocide of natives in Australia, North America, Africa, Asia and South America. This even discounts the fact that the second most powerful economy in the World i.e. Japan has nothing to do with the Anglo-Saxon whites whatsoever genetically. Also, the analysis of the 19th and 20th centuries, when Indian and Chinese civilisation was in decline due to conquest , will obviously yield a skewed result on which race has produced best science. The same west was a cultural backwater as late as in the 13th century CE when black plaque decimated 1/3rd of their population of Europe. Of course, if one has to look at the entirety of the Human history, it was the Indians and Chinese who contributed the most towards science and technology. Astronomy, Algebra, Numbering system, Architechture etc had their origins in India while gunpowder, paper, printing press etc have their origins in China. It was not without any reason that Europeans were dying to get to India in the 15th century, just like how present day Indians dream to reach the American shores. While Indians were building Mahabalipuram Cave temples, which still stand today, in 5th century CE, Anglo-Saxons were looting and pillaging the then Roman empire for feeding themselves. Was the supposed genetic superiority of the white race sleeping at that time? So next time you meet an alt-righter don’t expect any answer for this dormant IQ superiority.
This is of course not to argue that IQ differences cannot exist by race on a population level nor is it an argument that IQ differences are not important for success of an individual or a society. This is only to show that the present day intelligence/IQ testing does not take into account the various other factors which determine and help in development of intelligence. When this is the case, the white nationalist/alt-right version of genetic superiority of races should not be taken as anything but as a cruel joke born out of western genocides and imperialism.
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The suggestion that Indians as a people lack a sense of history is repeated often with little scrutiny. The beginnings of Indian historiography have been attributed to the marunmatta-s and mleccha-s, ignoring a much older native tradition of chronicling the past. The beginnings of historiography date back much earlier, to the period of oral transmission as reflected in the purANa-s and itihAsa-s. Likewise the nAstika-s have their own histories preserved in the biographical works of the jina-s and sthavira-s of their sect. Various other historical traditions were preserved within the narrative work the bR^ihatkathA. In addition there exists a vast corpus of historical plays. Several of these sources contain what appear to be reasonably accurate records of historical events that occurred long before their composition, suggesting that they drew upon pre-existing literature much of which is lost today. While the absolute dates are only speculative, much of the relative chronology is beyond doubt.
The bArhadratha-s
The territory of magadha lay to the east of Aryavarta (southern Bihar of the present day), separated from its northern neighbour vaishAlI by the ga~NgA. It had for its capital the town of girivraja, a town surrounded by the five hills — vaibhAra, varAha, vR^iShabha, R^iShigiri and chaityaka — and supposedly founded by the legendary king vasu chaidya, the progenitor of its earliest dynasty the bArhadratha-s.
It was in the line of bArhadratha-s that the villainous monarch jarAsandha was born. At the dawn of the kaliyuga the ruling monarch of the line was his grandson somAdhi. Very little other than the names of its kings of this dynasty is known.
A great deal of error has crept into the purANic accounts with regard to the following period. The purANa-s describe the pradyota-s as capturing power in the period following the fall of the bR^ihadratha-s and the vItihotra-s. The purANa-s seem to have mistakenly placed them amidst the dynasties of magadha, whereas they were the rulers of avantI.
The pradyota-s
The last vItihotra king was assassinated by his general puNika who placed his son pradyota on the throne of avantI, c. 598 BCE. The murder of a brother of pradyota by a tAlajangha named vetAla at the festival of mahAkAla mentioned by bANabhatta may have been an act of revenge by a member of the former royal clan. pradyota earned the epithet chaNDa-pradyota or mahAsena on account of his powerful army and remained feared by his neighbours. He led two campaigns against shatAnIka of kaushambI, while the first ended in failure, it was during the second that shatAnIka met his end. An impending attack by him on ajAtashatru is mentioned in the majjhima nikaya. The jaina tradition also alludes to a war with udrAyaNa of king sindhu and sauvira which ended in defeat.
Following a 23-year long reign he was succeeded by his second son pAlaka (r. 475–451 BCE), his elder son gopAla having abdicated the throne — an event that coincided with the nirvANa of mahAvIra according to jaina accounts. After ruling for 23 years he was overthrown by his nephew Aryaka (r. 451–430 BCE) the son of gopAla, who reigned for 21 years. The kingdom then passed into the hands of avantivardhana, the son of pAlaka. Their rule came to an end following defeat at the hands of shishunAga soon after assuming control of magadha.
The bimbisArids
The purANa-s place the shaishunAga-s after the pradyota-s whose fame shishunAga is said to have destroyed. This would mean shishunAga reigned after the time of bimbisAra, who was a contemporary of pradyota, and the later redactors of the purANa-s have mistakenly considered bimbisAra a descendant of the latter.
The overthrow of ripu~njaya the bArhadratha was carried out by a predecessor of shreNika bimbisAra (a contemporary of the buddha), likely his father named kshemajit/kshatraujas in the purANa-s and bhaTiya in the mahAvaMsa — an event that can be dated c.550 BCE. The mahAvamsA makes bimbisAra (b. 571 BCE) 5 years junior to the buddha and attributes to him a reign of 52 years following his accession at the age of 15. It was during his reign that a~Nga was conquered under its last monarch brahmadatta. He was also responsible for the establishment of the new town of rAjagR^iha.
ajAtashatru (r. 494–469 BCE), identified in the jain accounts by the epithet kUNika, imprisoned and later assassinated his father, seizing control of the kingdom. In the initial years of his reign he faced attacks by prasenajit of kosala and pradyota. Disputes also arose with the vR^ijji-s to the north, and the dIghanIkaya mentions the building of fortifications at pATaligrAma to hold out the invaders. A few years later the brAhmaNa minister varShakAra was planning a campaign against the vR^ijji confederation. The war with the vR^ijji-s led by the lichchhavI chieftain cheTaka lasted twelve years after which ajAtashatru emerged victorious, breaching the fortifications of vaishAlI.
The reign of his successor darshaka, mentioned only in the purANa-s but whose existence is vouched for by his mention in the svapnavAsavadattam of bhAsa, was likely but a short interregnum. udayin (460 BCE–?) another son of ajAtashatru, succeeded darshaka. Astika and jaina traditions attribute the foundation of pATaliputra at the site of the village of pATaligrAma on the southern bank of the ga~NgA to the king udayin. The reigns of the successors of udayin are obscure — muNDa named only in the southern and northern bauddha texts is encountered in the anguttara nikaya as a king of pATaliputra. He was succeeded by another obscure ruler aniruddha. These two rulers together reigned a total of 8 years. The final ruler of the dynasty nick-named nAgadAsa assumed the throne after killing his father and was ousted by the people of magadha tired of patricidal rulers.
The shishunAga-s
The first king of this line to rule over magadha was the obscure ruler shishunAga (r.411?–396 BCE), who as per certain commentaries on the mahAvamsha was a minister of nAgadAsa hailing from the lichchhavI clan, invited to invade magadha by its citizens. The purANa-s state that shishunAga shifted the capital back to girivraja from pATaliputra and placed his son on the throne of kAshI.
He was succeeded by his son kAlAshoka (‘ashoka the black’) also known as kAkavarNin (‘The crow-coloured’). He is said to have ruled at the time of the second Buddhist council at vaishAlI and was also responsible for presiding over the shift of the magadhan capital to pATaliputra once and for all. The purANa-s state that he ruled for 36 years from around 396–360 BCE. bANabhatta’s harshacharita refers to kAkavarNin shaishunAgi as having been murdered in the vicinity of his capital by having his throat slashed. His successor was ugrasena ‘mahApadma’ nanda who ruled initially as a guardian of kAkavarNI’s sons.
Other contemporary dynasties
The Vatsa-s: The ruling clan of vatsa was an offshoot of the kuru-s and claimed descent from parIkshit. They had their seat at kaushambI. sahasrANIka vasudAna the twentieth in line from parIkshit probably reigned in the mid 6th century. He was succeeded by his son shatAnIka parantapa who was a contemporary of mahAvira and the buddha. He was succeeded on his death by his young son udayana, who married vAsavadatta the daughter of pradyota and later padmAvatI the sister of darShaka. Famed for his mastery over the vINA, the stories of his romances were the subject of several plays and remained popular centuries after his death.
Kosala: At the time of the buddha, kosala was ruled by prasenajit, the son of sa~njaya mahAkosala who had annexed the neighbouring kingdom of kAshI. ajAtashatru of magadha is known to have waged war with him over the non-remittance of revenues from a village in kAshI given to his father as dowry. The war ended in a truce and a matrimonial alliance. He was succeeded by his son virUDhaka/kshUdraka. The AikShvAku-s too lost their independence three generations later under the reign of sumitra, probably annexed by the rising magadha under mahApadma nanda.
Gandhara: gandhAra fell under the control of achaemenid Iran around c. 500 BCE and is named along with hindush (sindhu?) amongst the achaemenid satrapies in the behistun inscription of Darius the great. Previously at the time of the buddha it was ruled by the king puShkarashakti. It seems to have regained independence soon after, being several smaller principalities in the time of Alexander.
The nanda-s
The nanda-s are conventionally identified as a set of nine rulers — a father and his eight sons in the Astika and jaina traditions, or as nine brothers by the pAlI tradition. Both the Astika and jaina traditions identify the nandas as a clan of low birth, though differing in explaining their relationship to the previous ruling clan. The purANic accounts identify the senior nanda as the son of mahAnandin through a shUdra wife while the jaina-s identify him as the son of a barber. The latter account seems to tally better with the accounts of graeco-roman writers, who identified the father of the king contemporary to Alexander as a barber who, having seduced the queen, murdered the reigning monarch.
mahApadma nanda was perhaps the first emperor since the decline of the kuru-s of old. He managed to capture vast tracts of land — the purANa-s compare him to bhArgava of the tret-yuga in being a vanquisher of kshatriyas. His reign included most of the Gangetic plain, extending south to ashmaka, kuru in the north-west and to kalinga in the east. He was succeeded upon his death by his 8 sons who ruled in succession. dhana nanda the youngest was the emperor at the time of chandragupta’s conquest. The PurANic accounts give the dynasty a century-long rule, though the la~Nkan chronicles reduce the reign of the entire nanda line to 22 years. Thus mahApadma nanda began his reign around 360 BCE, dying around 332 BCE. He was succeeded by his sons who ruled until c. 320 BCE.
The maurya-s
The origin of the maurya-s remains obscure. While later Astika traditions identify them as a line of kings of shUdra descent, the bauddha-s identify them as a kShatriya clan from pippalivana, mentioned as one of the kShatriya clans vying for a share of the tathAgata’s remains in the mahAparinibbAna sutta. There is sufficient reason to believe the tradition that chandragupta was assisted by the scheming brAhmaNa chANakya in his attempt to overthrow the nandas — as attested by Astika, bauddha and jaina sources. He even defeated seleucus I nikator, who ceded to him territories to the west of the sindhu perhaps as far west as arachosia. He was succeeded upon his death by his son bindusara amitraghAta, known to the Greeks as amitrochates. bindusara was eventually succeeded by his son ashoka, the last great maurya, after whose death the empire seems to have been divided up between his grandsons dasharatha in the east and samprati in the west. The dynasty was brought to an end with the murder of bR^ihadratha by his brAhmaNa general puShyamitra.
Dating the Mauryas: A clue as to the date of ashoka is from his inscriptions that mention the names of various contemporary yavana kings — antiyoka (Antiochus), turamAya (Ptolemy), magA (Magas), antekina (Antigonos), alikasudara (Alexander) — identifiable as Antiochus I or II of Syria, Ptolemy II of Egypt (285–247BCE), Antigonos of Macedonia, Magas of Cyrene, and Alexander of Corinth or Epirus. This would mean the edicts were commissioned between 272 and 250 BCE, placing ashoka’s coronation no later than 286–264 BCE.
Hellenic accounts of the reign of chandragupta maurya (known to the Greeks as sandrocottus of palibothra) suggest that chandragupta rose to power following Alexander’s death (323 BCE). His rise to power must have occurred before 302 BCE when seleucus I returned to Cappadocia following his campaigns in the east.
The date of the buddha and mahAvIra
That the buddha and mahAvira were contemporaries is borne out by multiple statements in the canonical texts of both traditions. The canonical texts of the bauddha-s refer to mahAvira as the nirgratha jnAtaputra and he is one of the chief rivals of the buddha. Both contain references to shreNya bimbisAra and his son ajAtashatru. The mainstream shvetAmbara tradition places the nirvANa of mahAvira in the year 527 BCE. However hemachandra’s chronology fits better with the chronology of sthAvira-s attested within jaina tradition, placing the nirvANa 155 years later. Legends associating the AchArya bhadrabAhu who died in the 170th year after nirvANa with Chandragupta are possible only if the latter chronology were true. Thus the nirvANa of mahAvira may be dated to around 475 BCE, and given that he was 72 years old at the time he was born around 545 BCE.
The pALI tradition identifies the date of the birth of the buddha at 644 BCE and the nirvANa 80 years later at 564 BCE, however this appears to be a later tradition with an older nirvANa era at 482 BCE. The corrected long chronology seems to best explain various circumstances, though a date closer to 420 BCE as proposed by some cannot be entirely ruled out.
pANini
pANini uses the word yavana, a derivative of the old Persian yauna referring to Ionian Greeks, suggesting that his work belongs to the period succeeding the achaemenid invasion. This is supported by the presence of the word lipi, another borrowing from old Persian. The aShtAdhyAyI also indicates a familiarity with certain Buddhist monastic custom and the existence of ascetics of the school of maskarI. All this suggests that the aShTAdhyAyI belongs to the period beyond the mid-fifth century. pANini recognizes the existence of shUrasena, avantI, kosala and ashmaka as independent states and seems to indicate no familiarity with a unitary empire. On this basis his work can be assigned to the last decades of the fifth century, allowing him to be a contemporary of mahAnandin i.e. kAlAshoka.
The article was first published elsewhere. The author tweets at @Dirghakarna.
The article in YP and twitter discussion on abortion led to a massive twitter outrage among the “Hindu” liberals and secular liberals alike, who want to justify murder in the name of choice for women. Somehow these people don’t seem to get that every action has its consequences and if someone eats salt, he/she has to drink water. The most common retort or justification from the liberals, who want to justify murder of babies, is that babies will not be taken care of if they are allowed to be born in an unplanned way. But what they seem to miss is that this was precisely why the ancient cultures put a heavy price on such pregnancies in the form of marriage, often at gun point. People were not supposed to be having unprotected sex resulting in pregnancies in the first place. Justifying murder of few week old foetuses in the name of “unplanned”, “economic”, “muh choice” etc is no different than justifying murder of infants for the same reason. After all an infant, which is less than one year old is as dependant on the mother and society as the foetus is on the mother which some disgusting subhuman animals masquerading as liberals like to call it- “a parasite”. But nobody justifies killing infants who cannot be taken care of by their parents. The same people, ‘which’ justify abortion under the pretext of not being able to take care of their foetus would still think it is murder to kill infants under the pretext of not being able to take care of them, unless they are complete psychopaths.
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Sample of subhumans
There is nothing Hindu about “Muh Choice” abortion:
Some pro-abortionists, who call themselves as Hindu “feminists”, claim that Hinduism is liberal and that anything can be done and still be consistent with Hindu morality. However, this notion that Hinduism is liberal and allows whatever one wants to do is a bastardisation of Hindu philosophy and theology. Hinduism allows “exploration” of various philosophies and questioning of various ideas. That is not the same as the bastardised version of the Hindu philosophy advocated by the animals masquerading as liberals as “anything goes”. That is one can choose the path of Sankaracharya for attaining moksha or path of Ramanujan and so on but one cannot go around killing people, who they perceive as being useless for society and claim that such psychotic killing is also the way of Hinduism and is a path for moksha. As one could see in the above example, there is a huge difference between “there are multiple paths to ultimate truth” as against “anything can be done and still be moral” philosophy.
Unlike what the “muh choice” feminists/Hindu liberals like to portray, there is no philosophy in Hinduism which justifies abortion. In fact, all the philosophies of Hinduism say the same thing about abortion (sisu hatya) i.e. it is an unforgivable sin. Hindu Shastras forbid abortions unless the life of the mother is in danger, since in this case not killing the foetus will kill the mother. Hindu Shastras make it pretty clear that sisu hatya is equivalent to 50 murders, since the life being killed/murdered here is as innocent a life can be. The curse for Ashvathama in Mahabharata should be enough of a lesson for anyone on this issue. This is where it is important to call out the self-identified “Hindu” feminists and liberals on their nonsense. There is nothing Hindu whatsover about either them or their philosophy. They just want to justify murder in the name of a bastardised version of Hinduism and philosophy.
Abortion in the name of rape:
The second biggest argument from the side of psychopaths who support murder in the name of economics is that rape victims should be allowed to have abortions. But rape as the reason for abortion accounts for less than 0.1% of the total abortions carried out today. As such an exception can be made on humanitarian grounds for such conditions. However, this is not a valid argument to give to justify abortion for the other 99%. This argument is no different than saying that killing someone in self defence is valid (abortion w.r.t. rape) and so killing anybody for any reason (abortion under the pretext of “muh choice”) which is murder is also valid.
Abortion and Premarital Sex:
Amongst all this, the most disgusting and disturbing observation in the debate was that most of the anti-abortion rhetoric came from men and many women, even those claiming to be pro-Hindu Dharma, supported abortion. The reason for that can range from the deep desire among today’s westernised, mentally colonised modern Hindu women to have premarital sex to them having fully bought into the idea that abortion is about women’s rights. The former is indicative of how much the society has decayed today. All of them have been corrupted by brothelwood and hollywood into thinking that premarital sex is somehow good for women and is about women’s rights. This is of course patently false. When premarital sex is restricted by the society, either by law or by social convention, it doesn’t restrict the sex activities of the women alone, but it restricts men too. For example, when government bans the manufacture of tobacco, is it restricting the right of only tobacco manufacturers? Of course not. It impedes the use of tobacco by the tobacco users as well indirectly. The same is true with premarital sex restrictions.
Premarital sex restrictions were imposed on women mostly because women bore the brunt of the responsibility if things go wrong. They were the ones who got pregnant. A man could impregnate a woman and take off to nowhere but the woman had to bear the child. So societies were far more protective of the girl child than of the boy child. This has nothing to do with misogyny or women’s rights, but rather the practical reality and biology. And restricting girls from having premarital sex also effectively restricts boys from having premarital sex, since the penalty for such activities in pre-westernised India or any other traditionalist culture for that matter was marriage, often at gun point or social outcasting.
Also, the very notion of premarital sex is incoherent. The act of sex is associated in all archaic ethos with the act of procreation. Sex outside of marriage is purely for pleasure and is akin to mutual masturbation. Sex within the marriage is a sacred act, and one who participates in this act with his beloved, their bind sanctified by the fire of ritual is one without fault. Thus society restricted both men and women from participating in sexual union outside of marriage because of this very fact. Since it is harmful more to women as discussed above, it is imperative for the young Hindu men to take note of this and behave with the chivalry that once populated the lands of our ancestors. For men in a society set the rules while women uphold them (सा स्त्री या अनुविधायिनी।). Therefore it is important for our young men to understand the dangers of free sex hedonism and to protect their sisters and potential love interests from this danger by behaving in a dutiful manner and engaging in Dharmic conduct.
Premarital sex is a snake oil sold as women’s rights:
Feminists and progressives have sold this snake oil that premarital sex is a sign of women’s rebellion against patriarchy and misogyny and that it is about women’s rights to women. This has been internalised to a deep extend by the anglicised and westernised middle and upper middle class women and men to a large extent in India. But as shown in the above paragraph, it has nothing to do with women’s rights as it restricts men’s right to have sex as well indirectly. But even if one looks past the motives of feminists and progressives in this respect and see into the effect of what happened to the societies which adopted these ideas, it will be very clear that premarital sex has actually caused a lot of chaos and destruction to families around the world, in every country. In countries where premarital sex is the norm, women have actually grown lot less happier than they were in traditional homes. Studies after studies have shown that premarital sex actually makes women miserable. So neither is the premarital sex a women’s rights issue nor is premarital sex something which does positive things for women
Pick Up Artists and MGTOWs of the west:
The US TV operas, Hollywood films and the Brothelwood films which glorify pre-marital sex of the west do not show the result of such premarital sex to either their audience back home nor the Indians who get colonised by those ideas. West is a miserable society behind their material wealth. The number of unmarried people there is now above 50% and is only growing faster. Women are getting miserable everyday. Most of their women do want to get married but could not find good men to marry. Most of the men who would have married in the traditional societies now do not see the point of marriage. Most of them end up as single mothers, mooching off the state, which is still overwhelmingly paid for by the men there in taxes, in the name of welfare and child support or from the guys they tricked into getting pregnant and use state force to get alimony. The half intelligent women who bought the feminist Kool aid of women empowerment and sought to further their careers while screwing around with meaningless sex find themselves partner-less in their 30+ age and are forced to live with cat piss as their true companions instead of babies.
The fact that premarital sex is the norm meant that the western men can get what most men want anyway i.e. free sex without commitment. They play platitudes to women empowerment and “you go girl” feminism since it is in their direct short term benefit of having sex without commitment. In the traditional families, penalty for such sex included massive penalties like shotgun wedding. But now, feminists have freed them from that shackles. So many men do not even see the point of getting married. Since the two most important things they got out of marriage – sex and children are now not a guarantee for them. Wife can legally deny them sex, the whole marital rape issue, and can legally take their children away from them in the courts in a divorce, which is increasingly initiated by them. Of course, women are increasingly initiating the divorces because when they do decide to settle in their 30s, all the good men were either already snatched by the intelligent conservative women who were still in their 20s and hence they are left to contend with leftover men, who they might never have even dated in their prime and hence become increasingly resentful towards after marriage.
Of course, women initiating majority of the divorces in a society where 50% of the marriages end in divorces meant that many men opt out of marriages even more there giving rise to the growth of MGTOW, or Men Going Their Own Way. These are men who have decided to opt out of anything to do with women outside of work and sex and would never become committed or marry. Given their options in the west, is it any wonder that this group is on the rise? Some of them even hail feminism for liberating men from their duties towards societies and family and instead allowing them to work for themselves and enjoy life with complete hedonism.
As any astute observer might notice, all of these problems are inter-related and it is all one leading up to another. The problems in the west started with the sexual revolution of the 1970s and the little cultural capital they had left was consumed up in the very next generation. Now their societies are in profound decay with their marriage rates plummeting. In fact, the problem has forced the government of UK to create massive incentives for creating and maintaining families, like giving two parent families tax breaks. The societal implications aside, what was the result of this supposed liberation of women on the psych and well being of women and men? Men for the large part were not actually affected by this social change. The men of today are not any worse off than men of the 1930s or 40s as they have substituted sex and family by porn and video games. Their happiness levels have remained the same today as it was back then. But as often pointed out in YP, women have become miserable as time went on. All the supposedly “women” liberating ideas of feminism and progressivism have only made the women miserable.
The question is, is Indian society willing to take a known poison willingly, if that poison gets labelled “Deva Prasadam”? Because this is how the premarital sex is being sold to Indian society as being women’s right and liberation of women. Even the most basic scrutiny of this poisonous idea would have shown that premarital sex is not a women’s right issue as the most significant beneficiary of the liberalisation of sex is men as men are the ones who are always looking for more sexual partners and sexual acts. Seeing the response of the urbanised, anglicised Indian women on twitter who responded to the issue, it looks they are indeed willing to or have already consumed the poison. The irony is that most of these women who defend this nonsense on twitter are well past their prime and are unlikely to find someone they think they deserve or they could have gotten when they were younger and had not wasted their youth on meaningless sex on the advice of feminist poison of career before family or meaningless sex being awesome. One has to wonder if these women are miserable inside and hence want other young Indian women to become sluts like they themselves are so that they themselves have company in their misery. Notice that men have benefits from both normalised premarital sex as seen by the emergence of PUAs and never married happy hippy men of the West as well as the traditionalist strict marital code societies of India as complained by feminists and liberals. But women have a lot to lose in a society where premarital sex is the norm if west is any indication. The anglicised urban Indian ladies should ask themselves if they would rather have a stable family like their mothers and grandmothers or the cat piss soaked single ladies of the west in their 30/40s, all for having few more sex partners, not necessarily more sex.
Not to forget, this does not mean Indian men should turn into PUA and MGTOWs as these men are hurting their pitRs by failing to procreate and provide for their children and building good society. The western society having turned against its men has not left any avenue for their men to behave responsibly and care for future generation. So, although PUAs might be happy in short run and enjoy hedonism while their societies burn, the death warrant of their future generations is already signed. This is another reason why India should tread carefully before its men decide to completely give up on future generation and fall into hedonism.
Abortion as Women’s right issue:
This is again a spurious argument. Abortion is not a women’s right issue any more than right to kill an infant is a women’s right issue. No body, in their right mind (or semi lunatic mind like the liberals) thinks that “muh child, muh right” as an argument to kill infants, they cannot take care of. Their right to decide on the life of the foetus ended when they decided not to take any precautions before their sexual act or ignored the risks associated with free sex (even safest contraceptions have some 1-2% failure rate). They have the right to use contraceptives, but that is not an excuse to kill the foetus. Unless the woman’s health is in direct danger from the foetus, in which case inaction on the part of society will kill the mother, there is no moral justification for killing the foetus.
Laws vs Societal Norms:
Many people who are against abortion think that changing abortion laws will fix this mess. It wont and it cant. For example, the single mother rate in anti-abortion Ireland is about 25%, less than the American figure of 50% but still is very high compared to single mother rate in present day, non-anglicised, non-mentally enslaved India i.e. 1%. This is a much more widespread societal problem and has to be advanced through social change and change in consciousness. But laws do play a role. There is a reason why the single mother rate in Ireland is only 25% as against the 50% rate of USA. A law which legalises what is immoral today, will become moral tomorrow since law will change the attitude of the society to it over time. This is why majority of our mothers and grandmothers would have seen abortion as an evil thing to do while majority of future anglicised culturally enslaved Indian women of today think abortion is a “muh rights” issue. If Government legalises murder of infants who cannot be fed today for economic reasons on “pragmatic grounds”, like how these animals view it, then in two generations questioning the killing of infants will evoke the same response from then young ones of the society who would have been brought up normalised to infanticide.
Fake CultureVeers and Indian Exceptionalism:
To make these matters worse, there are CultureVeers who think that these issues are real and yet think nothing needs to be done and that Indian society will survive this without any effort. That is when pointed out that India will become a middle income third world shit hole like Mexico ,Brazil or Romania, they will claim that uniqueness and oldness of deep rooted Indian culture will protect them from social rot which comes with liberalism and feminism. They are the cultural counter part of the “we survived Abrahamic assault for 1000 years and hence nothing will happen to us” type, i.e. the morons who forget that the very survival of our civilization required the blood and sacrifice of our countless number of ancestors. Their idea of anything goes will not help India or anybody except to serve as an excuse for these things for being lazy,hiding behind the myth of Indian Exceptionalism. India wont be a shit hole today if Indian exceptionalism is indeed true. Our family institutions are what kept us from turning into North Africa and these people want to take even that away. Preventing the demise of Indian society depends on whether or not we Indians learn from the mistakes of the decadent west and how much sacrifice we Indians are willing to make. Question is- are we ready to sacrifice and learn? If not, then there is no point in talking about Hindu civilisation and culture as there wont be anything left of it at the end of liberalism, just like how Christianity is all but dead in western societies.
Adverse effects of demonetization are finally trickling down into the economy. Although a lot can be said about the poor implementation part of the policy, this article will focus just on the economics. One very important point to keep in mind during this whole discussion is to not cloud the economics judgement of policy through moral lenses.
The developments in the last few weeks have confirmed YP predictions in the past:
1) It would lead to slowdown of economy: The service sector contracted in November which is the first time in last 18 months. The Nikkei Services Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 46.7 in November from 54.5 in the previous month, the sharpest reduction in three years. You can also take car sales as another metric of economic performance. Here again, November saw an 8% decrease in car sales pointing towards decrease in demand.
2) Big fish have found ways to escape: IT raid at the residence of two government officials found 6 crores of unaccounted cash, out of which 4.7 crore was in new currency. So while the poor and middle class are lining up at banks and ATMs and are restricted to withdraw puny amounts, those with large stash of black money have found illegal ways to change their currency.
The worst part in this whole exercise is the chest thumping by free market economists on rise of temporary tax revenue for GoI. Tax money for the Govt is just tax money of the government. It does not indicate the actual GDP of the country or economic growth.
For example, if people of the country are earning/producing 150Tn ₹ in total output and government tax rate on it is 10%, the Govt tax revenue will be 15Tn ₹. Let’s say if the Govt raises the tax rate by 1% to 11%, and the economy “contracts” by 1%, then GDP of the economy will go down by 1.5Tn ₹ to 148.5 Tn ₹, while the tax income for the Govt will still increase by 1.15 Tn ₹ to 16.33 Tn ₹. So, tax income increase for the Govt doesn’t automatically equal to GDP increase/growth/income for the public/citizens.
The same can be said about the other assumptions used by the author. Most of the figures quoted everywhere for black money are just guess-estimates with government or economists having little clue about the numbers.
But the analysis is flawed even from the welfare perspective of the policy. The way regular economists would evaluate any policy is by comparing growth with the counter-factual scenario. Agricultural sector picking up due to better monsoon is not an effect of demonetization and would have been there irrespective of the policy implementation.
The gains also rest on future increase in tax net. People who pay taxes today are in no way liable to pay taxes in the future and a large number of them can drop out again. Hence the push for digitizing the economy to make it easy to track the transactions.
And it is really difficult to understand how increase in government tax revenue at the cost of decrease in overall GDP growth is hailed as success of the policy. Once accounting for the pain faced by regular citizens plus deceleration of GDP growth, some temporary increase in GoI revenues does not seem such a great policy.
As predicted by YP, thanks to the jugadu nature of Indians and help of government officials, people have converted their old notes to new notes. Effectively, the claims of removing 4-5 Tn ₹ of black money from the total stock of money would not materialize. So, GoI has failed on its primary goal in the short run. On top we are witnessing a contraction in the economy, which would linger on for the next few quarters. Once taking into account all these factors, it seems that the whole policy was big farcical show for nothing substantial.
The recent decision by PM Modi government to take out Rs 500/1000 notes out of circulation has caught the media and the whole country into a frenzy. The policy seems to be the government antidote against the issue of black money in the economy.
The main reason behind this demonetization decision is to cut down the black economy in the country and dry up the illegal funds of those who have collected it over the years. So if you have large unaccounted cash, it is as good as piece of paper beginning November 8.
The government is acting on the premise that there is large amounts of black money in India and it is held in cash. This gives us two scenarios in the wake of this decision-
1) There is really large amount of black money in the economy. So if you take this money out of economy, it will hit the economy hard post this decision, thus making demonetization a bad decision
or
2) There is no large amount of black money in the economy and there would be no impact on the economy. If this is the case, then it hardly makes sense to demonetize.
Having seen how an average medium sized business operates in India, one should lean towards the first scenario that economy will be hit hard by this decision. There are large number of inefficient and unseen taxes on businesses, which makes them less productive and also makes it essential for them to engage into unlawful activities to keep the business running.
So who might have large amounts of cash sitting at their place? Just think of any neighbourhood shop which does not give a receipt for your purchase, the owner there might have generated some amount of black money. And if the amount of black money hoarded by them is really high, expect them to fire their employees and shut shops in the wake of this decision.
One of the sectors which is supposedly flushed with large amounts of black money is the real estate sector. The real estate sector has not done well for the past two years and it might get hit even more post this decision. There might be many people with white money, who have invested in unfinished projects, and they would lose all their investment because the real estate company cannot complete the project now.
Also, the whole exercise seems a bit futile once you take into account that the government has decided to reissue new Rs 2000 notes. The rules of the game i.e. the discretionary power with the babus, have not changed and those who earlier collected Rs 500/1000 notes will now switch to hoarding money in Rs 2000 notes. So, this will have no impact on the future generation of black money.
So, what should you make out of this policy? Brace yourself for a rude shock if you really believed that black money formed a significant part of Indian economy. And if you don’t get this rude shock, then it was just an empty noise without any substance and black money was not even an issue to begin with. Black money is a symptom of the inefficiencies and bad laws in the economy, which forces a large number of businesses to cut corners to remain viable.
P.S. 1- The article only dealt with the economic issues of black money and some people will point out its impact on terrorist infrastructure or future state elections.
P.S. 2- There is 3rd scenario not mentioned above, if you believe in super powers of black money hoarders- they have large amounts of money but they find a way to fool Modi government.
Donald Trump surprised everyone and defeated Hillary Clinton to become the next President of the United States. The rise and win of Trump can be simple explained by the fact that he promised change while Hillary offered “More Of the Same”. While the plebeians heard this message, the elites in the ivory tower ignored the message and tried hard to continue with the old system.
The parallels will be drawn with Modi’s win in 2014, as he too defied all the odds and all the negative campaign against him, while he just chanted- “Sabka Sath Sabka Vikas”. Trump almost seemed to have borrowed from Modi’s template when he kept saying -“Make America Great Again”. While Hillary had nothing new to sell other than her being the first woman to run for the President’s post as candidate of one of the two major US political parties, Trump gave a message of positivity. And the people accepted the latter.
US is on cusp of demographic transition with number of white kids born in US already below 50%. It is a changed country and white men have voted probably for the last time before demography hits them finally in the next elections. So, it is just the beginning of identity politics in US and it will only get worse. Identity politics is part and parcel of democratic system and there would always be politicians who will take benefit from it.
If Hillary Clinton can use her women card, Trump just trumped her with white card. But apparently in the insane world of leftists, only they are allowed to create identity boxes and no one else. Only such cultists can be proud of their own stance while ridiculing the others for their own position. Look at the below excerpt from New Yorker, the liberal elitist magazine, to understand how some identities are important for the author, but white men endorsing their identity is somehow disgusting.
In any case, the noise will die down and the world of politics will go on as usual. Trump or Hillary, one person can only change so much. So, lets take the time to congratulate the next POTUS with below video, which shows he just did not get lucky and had clearly worked for the position he won today.
