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The PL-480 cargo ships carrying wheat from America into malnourished India as a virtual gift were the epitome of humiliation for the Bengali intellectuals of the time whom I met with:
http://www.drfphoto.com/photo/486/
For, America was the very Devil in their perception, and rightly so, since in its attempt to encircle poor Russia trying to keep its proletarian revolution going by hook or crook, America embraced all sorts of tinpot dictators across the world including our sworn enemy and neighbor.
Even my Gudie, SDM, the pinnacle of political naivete, used to complain that he had to eat loochies (of which he was inordinately fond) made of American wheat (of dubious quality). He would have preferred wheat gifted by Russia but that country, with its own empire, sealed itself behind an iron curtain in the words of Winston Churchill (no friend of India):
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The PL-480 cargo ships carrying wheat from America into malnourished India as a virtual gift were the epitome of humiliation for the Bengali intellectuals of the time whom I met with:
http://www.drfphoto.com/photo/486/
For, America was the very Devil in their perception, and rightly so, since in its attempt to encircle poor Russia trying to keep its proletarian revolution going by hook or crook, America embraced all sorts of tinpot dictators across the world including our sworn enemy and neighbor.
Even my Gudie, SDM, the pinnacle of political naivete, used to complain that he had to eat loochies (of which he was inordinately fond) made of American wheat (of dubious quality). He would have preferred wheat gifted by Russia but that country, with its own empire, sealed itself behind an iron curtain in the words of Winston Churchill (no friend of India):
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow."
So, there was no way of knowing if there were famines afoot behind the curtain. Certainly Russia gifted MiG-20s at an exorbitant price but not wheat or rice.
So, the incommoded intellectuals of Bengal did the next best thing...they were surely not the first to split the atom, but they were the first to split the Communist Movement in India.
They got out of the America-Russia tangle of the Cold War by raising the slogan:
"China's Chairman is our Chairman!"
The walls outside the Campus of IIT KGP were replete with this slogan during the inconvenient 1960s.
Now, China is just a Bamboo Curtain and everyone could have a peep into it.:
"The Three Years of Great Chinese Famine (simplified Chinese: 三年大饥荒; traditional Chinese: 三年大饑荒; pinyin: Sānnián dà jīhuāng), referred to by the Communist Party of China as the Three Years of Natural Disasters or Three Years of Difficult Period (simplified Chinese: 三年自然灾害; traditional Chinese: 三年自然災害; pinyin: Sānnián zìrán zāihài or simplified Chinese: 三年困难时期; traditional Chinese: 三年困難時期; pinyin: Sānnián kùnnán shíqī) by the government, was the period in the People's Republic of China
between the years 1958 and 1961 characterized by widespread famine.
Drought, poor weather conditions, and the policies of the Communist
Party of China contributed to the famine, although the relative weights
of the contributions are disputed due to the Great Leap Forward.
According to government statistics, there were 15 million excess deaths in this period.[1] Unofficial estimates vary, but scholars have estimated the number of famine victims to be between 20 and 43 million.[2]
Historian Frank Dikötter, having been granted special access to Chinese
archival materials, estimates that there were at least 45 million
premature deaths from 1958 to 1962.[3][4] The phrase "Three Bitter Years" is often used by Chinese peasants to describe this period.[5] "
...wiki
Our own Amartya Sen was right.
I can't resist quoting my own version of Chairman Mao's Precepts even at the risk of being jailed:
Mao's Precepts
Give them food, they ask sex;
Give them sex, they ask house;
Give them house, they ask job;
Give them job, they ask news;
Give them news, they ask vote;
Then Freedom, that's your Doom;
Brinda swept by Mamata's broom!
DON'T GIVE THEM FOOD!
Give them food, they ask sex;
Give them sex, they ask house;
Give them house, they ask job;
Give them job, they ask news;
Give them news, they ask vote;
Then Freedom, that's your Doom;
Brinda swept by Mamata's broom!
DON'T GIVE THEM FOOD!
This was posted almost 4 years ago (and deleted last week). But I can now gloat that my prediction DID come true, although rather late...Didi is right there on the throne and where is Mrs Karate who was all over our TV screens just a few years back?
Sometimes even theoretical physicists reveal great common sense...didn't Abraham Pais chide Feynman:
"Publicity is a whore!"
When we were school-kids we understood that the last letter in U.S.A. stood for America. And so we extrapolated that the last letter in U.S.S.R. stood for Russia.
At IIT it was even worse: Many were convinced that C.C.C.P. used by the Soviets was pronounced: "See See See Pee". Since I had my rather painful Russian lessons, I knew better:
But the Bengali intellectuals, like my Guide SDM, had a secret love affair with England even after our liberation from its yoke...the "Nirad Syndrome".
And they didn't protest much when India joined the (British) Commonwealth. And were happy to receive British Aid that continued till recently.
How things have changed during my lifetime!
The paltry British Aid was 'rejected' by the Manmohan Government the other day:
"David Cameron was under intense
pressure last night to slash the £1billion in aid Britain gives to India
after the country said it no longer wanted the money.
India's
finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said the booming country should
'voluntarily' give up the £280million a year it receives from Britain.
He told the Indian parliament: 'We do not require the aid. It is a peanut in our total development spending.'
...Sources in Delhi suggested British
officials begged India to accept the aid. One commented: 'They said
British ministers had spent political capital justifying the aid to
their electorate. They said it would be highly embarrassing if [India]
pulled the plug' "
The Empire Strikes Back viciously!
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