Against The Mahatma

Dunno about you, but in my case, the sudden remembrance of Gandhi’s birthday being today occurred last evening – and I rushed to my nearest booze shop. It was crowded. The sign outside said today was to be a “dry day.”

This dry day is enforced by State Violence.

So much for Gandhi, who studied in England, practiced English law, but never got to appreciate something so quintessentially English as The Pub. And so much for his “non-violence.”

Surfing through the morning papers, I found that our supreme leader, Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi, has thought of a magnificent way by which “the nation” can honour the mahatma’s memory; and that is – you guessed it! – the greatest swindle on earth is to be named after the mahatma.

Yes, the NREGS is to become the MGNREGS Read all about it here.

Then, read about the huge amount of embezzlement by tax parasites that is going on under this “scheme.”

And don’t forget – the mahatma’s photo is on the rupee note too.

Oh! How many swindles and how much violence your followers inflict upon our society in your name, dear mahatma. Why are your followers such monsters? Or were your teachings all wrong?

Samanth Subramanian has investigated the latter question in a feature article published in Mint today. It seems this year marks the centenary of the mahatma’s great vision for India – his book Hind Swaraj. The article begins by pointing out Gandhi’s fundamental Luddism, his hatred of machinery:

Most notably to our 21st-century eyes, Hind Swaraj inveighs against machinery—not with any caveats, but absolutely and bluntly, as if the further development of the idea could come later. “It is necessary to realize that machinery is bad,” Gandhi wrote. “We shall then be able gradually to do away with it.” On the subject of railways, in particular, he was withering: “Railways accentuate the evil nature of man.”

Defending Gandhi is a prof from the State-owned Delhi School of Economics – and it is interesting that this dude criticizes Gandhi for not being radical enough, for not taking a firm stand against the private ownership of machines and factories – the “means of production,” to use the Marxist term.

We can imagine the happy scenario. First, they ban machines. So there are no factories. And then they take over all these machine-less factories. Wah, Ustad!

Let us now proceed to the next step of Hind Swaraj: Economic Autarky. Gandhi opposed free international trade:

Hind Swaraj is also dismissive of that other great linchpin of the modern economy, international trade, and its allied model of competitive advantage. Scoffing at the need to import machine-made pins, Gandhi wrote: “As long as we cannot make pins without machinery so long will we do without them.” So, also for glassware and machine-made cloth.

This vision of “swaraj” was also to be achieved by State Violence – the guns of the Customs Department.

Let no pins enter India!

At the close of the article the good prof from the DSE makes noises about John Rawls, welfare economics, and ethics.

These ideas encourage tax parasites – like the MGNREGS baboos – while condemning the rest of us to tax slavery; and taxation is collected using State Violence.

And that is the crux of the fatal flaw in the Gandhian vision: the misuse of State Violence.

We missed the bus to Liberty and Prosperity. A hundred years have passed since the publication of this fatal vision. It is time to dump the mahatma, my fellow citizens.

Cheers! Prost! Skol! Kampai! Etc.