I agree with RKN here. Nehru, Gandhi and others in no way can be called the "middle class". They came from the lap of priviledge. (On another note, it is ironical the the priviledged children of British colonialism themseves fought against the forces that created them!)
On the other hand, I would submit that the 300 million strong "middle-class" is irrelevant in a 1000+ million country the size of India. At best, it could be considered the tail wagging the dog! For one, the "middle class" in India is overinflated in estimation. Many of us would be poorer than the poor of Europe. Secondly, and more importantly, all grandious dreams of an "Indian (or Asian) century" are meaningless when you have so many people mired in poverty and illiteracy and hopelessness. Don't get me wrong. I'm not being critical of the achievements of India here. Quite a bit has been done. A lot more remains to be done. And, while we shift to self-congratulatory mode, we can't afford to forget this. After all, it is in everyone's interest to improve the quality of life of those who are so badly off. Do we want to have 7/10ths of our population to be made up of empty stomachs, or to comprise productive hands and creative brains? Do we want our Shakespeares to die illiterate? We can't just "improve" things by playing around with the poverty line and manipulating statistics. --FN On 21/07/06, Radhakrishnan Nair <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > <<Cornel wrote: There was definitely a middle class in 1947 and well > before that in India. It was largely the educated/informed middle > clas that propelled the Quit India movement surely.>> > > Not really, sir! What you call the "educated/informed middle class" > were the upper class people -- the landed gentry, though they were by > and large comparable to today's middle class. Some of them were > fabulously rich, like the Nehrus. It's said that Motilal Nehru offered > to pay the British in the currency of their choice for India's > freedom! > > There is hardly any evidence of a middle-class population in British > India. There was a miniscule minority of WOGs and well-to-do > businessmen and the vast majority of the poor and depressed classes -- > though, towards the fag end of its regime, the British did make an > attempt to create an English-speaking middle-class population of > 'babus'. -- ---------------------------------------------------------- PHOTOSFORALL: http://www.flickr.com/groups/pfdindia/ Inviting anyone with a camera to share photos focussing on development issues and images.... and those otherwise excluded. * FN * http://fn.goa-india.org ---------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
