India at 60

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  By Sunil Khilnani in 'India Today'

   Contemplating the 1950's, most of us slip into torpor. Lodged between the tragic 40's and later decades of manoeuvrings, personality cults, self-mutilations and shimmering aspiration, the 50's seem a black & white newsreel. Press Fast Forward. Even better, Delete. 

 The settled aura of the 1950's is a trick of retrospective vision. For the 1950's , as lived, were precarious times: years in which solutions to crises- political, economic and international- had to be invented on the fly in testing conditions. To some, this was the era when India took all the wrong turnings: towards socialism, big dams and vast industrial plants, non-alignment, bureaucratic babu-worship.  But the truth is, as usual, more complex.

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 It is striking how many of today's battles revisit the trenches of the 1950's. How should the economy work? What should be the role of the state?  What are the terms of redistribution?  What role shall we have in the world?  The persisitence of these questions is cause for frustration- but also reassurance. Beginning in the 1950's, we have accrued a body of experience from which we can learn, if we choose to learn. Authoritarian societies, committed to forgetting, obliterate their pasts. They live in a permanent present, defined by the exercise of political will.  Democracy is the most historical of political forms. Indeed, it is nothing else but history. And the 1950's launched us on a historical quest: to try to master our present by making whatever sense we can of our own cumulative choices. Our own history is the resource we have to draw upon to grasp our options, as we move forward.

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AVarun Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Super Member Joined: 08/15/2004 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 464	Post Options Post Reply Quote AVarun Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: India at 60 Posted: 09/12/2007 at 1:59am
	By Sunil Khilnani in 'India Today' Contemplating the 1950's, most of us slip into torpor. Lodged between the tragic 40's and later decades of manoeuvrings, personality cults, self-mutilations and shimmering aspiration, the 50's seem a black & white newsreel. Press Fast Forward. Even better, Delete. The settled aura of the 1950's is a trick of retrospective vision. For the 1950's , as lived, were precarious times: years in which solutions to crises- political, economic and international- had to be invented on the fly in testing conditions. To some, this was the era when India took all the wrong turnings: towards socialism, big dams and vast industrial plants, non-alignment, bureaucratic babu-worship. But the truth is, as usual, more complex. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ It is striking how many of today's battles revisit the trenches of the 1950's. How should the economy work? What should be the role of the state? What are the terms of redistribution? What role shall we have in the world? The persisitence of these questions is cause for frustration- but also reassurance. Beginning in the 1950's, we have accrued a body of experience from which we can learn, if we choose to learn. Authoritarian societies, committed to forgetting, obliterate their pasts. They live in a permanent present, defined by the exercise of political will. Democracy is the most historical of political forms. Indeed, it is nothing else but history. And the 1950's launched us on a historical quest: to try to master our present by making whatever sense we can of our own cumulative choices. Our own history is the resource we have to draw upon to grasp our options, as we move forward.

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