Chinese Dream vs New India

Every visit of a Chinese dignitary to India as was true of President Xi Jinping last week dredges up emotions of awe and inadequacy rage and despair in our collective soul This is because China represents a challenge to who we are China is a compelling argument to reject our self and become like well the ChineseWe harbour a wish to sock China for thumping us in the 1962 war for squatting over 42685 sq km of Kashmir and coveting Arunachal Pradesh China infuriates us with its support for Pakistan and its terror machine for ensuring we dont nest in international bodies like the Nuclear Suppliers Group for injecting in us a sense of inferiority as we know we cant make China bleedOpinion polls reflect our emotions Australias Lowy Institute for International Policy found in 2013 that 83 of Indians considered China a security threat Three years later seven in 10 Indians characterised Chinas economic impact a problem with 45 of them rating it as very serious in a Pew Research Centre pollYounger to us by two years China was poorer than us in 1990 It is 461 times richer than us today Between 1961 and 2018 China registered a 10 growth in 22 out of those 57 years We havent achieved that even once Chinas is a 1201 trillion economy Indias a 261 trillion one Wealth has turned China healthier The mortality rate for Chinese children below 5 years for every 1000 live births in 2017 was 9 it was 39 in India The mortality rate for Indian males and females between 15 and 60 years per 1000 population was 214 and 138 for China it was 93 and 67These statistical details are validated by Indians who return from China completely mesmerised Their cities match the Wests their infrastructure is inferior to none their civic life orderly and their nightlife vibrant and safe Indian importers marvel at Chinas inexhaustible capacity to produce Their orders for goods worth crores are shipped in a week unlike in India where it takes months to procure the supply Their verdict India is nowhere near ChinaWe want to imitate China forgetting the price its people paid for its rise Countless have died in the many Chinese experiments with nationbuilding it ruthlessly curbs dissidence and allows freedom of expression as long as criticism is to its liking Chinas growth has turned the demographic domination of the Han who constitute 91 of the population into a cultural hegemony Take the Tibetans who are being Hanised swamped and suppressed or the thousands of Uyghurs packed off to detention centres to wear the nationalist straitjacketThe nationstate project has always been a bloody one worldwide This is true of India as well but the price we have paid even though unconscionable isnt comparable to what the Chinese have Democracy demands negotiations and compromises with a range of social groups It was through a lengthy cacophonic mutinous process that the idea of India was imbricated with linguistic religious and caste identities and was still more than their total sum Democracy slowed us Unlike China it has been mostly impossible for the Indian state to relocate entire villages overnight to build say a damBut Indias pride in the democracydevelopment model seems to be ebbing as China under Xi employs its financial clout to muscle around In 2012 Xi popularised the idea of Chinese Dream which seeks to build upon the memory of humiliation suffered under colonial rule to bring about the great revival of the Chinese nation to make it the power it once was in the 18th century XIs Chinese Dream fans nationalistic fervour and unites a society increasingly becoming unequal and corrupt The One Belt One Road project symbolises Xis dreamAs China gallops to realise Xis dream leaving its footprints across continents many Indians identify democracy as the factor impeding Indias domination Its perhaps why they find psychologically comforting Prime Minister Narendra Modis dream of New India which too seeks to harness nationalism for breaking out of old habits and shattering the Nehruvian consensus to become a Great Power Modis New India like Xis Chinese Dream frowns upon dissent and diversity It doesnt dither to steamroll resistance of which Kashmir is an example The idea of New India neatly fits into the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sanghs ideological frame of One NationOne LanguageOne CultureConsciously or otherwise we are imitating the Chinese From RSSs perspective it is a tantalising prospect for the Sangh to stamp out the pluralism of India to Hinduise it Will the peripheries socially and geographically accept assimilation without resistance No for we will be turning against the essence of our own self It is always traumatic to become the rival who you wish to trumpThe writer is a senior journalistThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates