Reclaiming Beauty

Written by Meena Ramesh

India is no stranger to any aspiring traveller. The cultural mysticism dripping with nature’s beauty, awakening your taste buds with flavors you never knew existed captures any heart that visits… it’s truly a beauty. But anyone who’s been to India can’t help but notice the helpless stares and tattered palms of broken lives begging in the city streets. The grungy smell of the slums, creeping into the metro cities of India leaves every tourist wondering what life must be like for the residents there. The city, lost in the bustling crowd, runs back and forth, overcrowded lanes in all directions… Have we Indians forgotten these faces? Or have we become just too familiar to notice their very existence?

For most Indians who live in these cities, seeing them day and night, these helpless hands have been pushed to the category of “annoyance,” some even calling them “Katchara logh” (Meaning rubbish people in Hindi). Everyone sees the problem and it’s been rotting and crying out on the streets for decades now. Yet one would wonder, for a country that’s growing (the GDP rate is right behind UK and France), we still seem to lack so much. But how and why? How is that a country that was once deemed as one of the richest countries in the world has dropped so low as to have 22% of its population still below the poverty line? To put that in perspective that’s about 276 Million people, more than 10 times the population of Australia, living on less than $2 every day, starving themselves and going to sleep hungry every night.

Now what can a mere article do about such a huge problem, right? That’s probably one thing that made me hesitant to even write one on this topic when I was asked. The thought that a mere article can’t do much often stopped me from writing. But what I realized is that knowledge about any issue is a key to fight it, even if it’s in the shadows or just head knowledge, it all matters. I can use this article to spread awareness, pull an ear to listen and may be even shift your perspective a little. You might then realize what you can do to help your brown brothers and sisters across the globe. So here’s all my experiences with India’s poverty and the in depth reasons of why this is still going on.

Colonial Hangover

There’s a reason why you’ll see most Indians never wasting food at a restaurant even if they are full. Even when they might not do much to help the poor, they still know how many of their own suffer out of starvation.

The luxury and privilege of leftovers was a common theme growing up in my household despite coming from a high caste rich ancient royal family in Kerala. I grew up and watched my grandparents provide for the poor and the needy with clothes and food for every festival, special occasions or even just the daily needs when it came to food. You see, the royal families before the British colonized India, they looked after their respective tribes, villages and districts and provided them with food and other amenities as needed and instituted proper taxes to use for efficient rule. My family still carries out this tradition in small ways even though there’s no royal rule or any obligation.

But when the British came to India, they stumped our freedom by regulating access to our own crops, spices, gold and knowledge, etc. Slavery was introduced and sugar coated as a civil service, trade job and servant hood with minimum or no wages at all. It was doing more damage than any help that they still claim they did to India. They stripped India of her silk, gold, spices and even burnt several libraries that were storehouses of ancient knowledge. They built railway lines and brought in artillery for war and trade purposes. From an outside prospective, it looked like India was prospering. To the world, it looked like the British brought civilization, development, and industrialization and taught Indians to be part of the big world movement of Global unification, right? Wrong! This is what they teach you and make you believe but it couldn’t be far from the truth.

Now I love the British, don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against them but their rule left a huge dent in India’s economical development. Three Million were killed in a man-made famine in Bengal in 1943 when Winston Churchill was the prime minister of England simply because all the food was shipped to the UK for the British soldiers in World War II, stopping the Indians from receiving any food. “I hate Indians,” Churchill told Amery. “They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” And at a war cabinet meeting, he said the famine was India’s fault for “breeding like rabbits”.

In April 1919, thousands of unarmed protestors were killed in an open fire at the hand of British soldiers at the Jallianwala Bagh Park where all the park entrances were closed off by the soldiers, leaving no children, women or men alive. Throughout the British rule, Indians lost lives, jobs, land, schools, healthcare and even press rights, proving to be as ugly as a dictatorship as Hitler’s with millions dead every year.

The effects of this brought a huge fall in all of India’s economic growth and natural resources. Britain was a parasite over India and fed off of her whole body.

This caused a “Colonial Hangover” like never before, and India eventually split into three different countries (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh), depleting her of of her resources and left to die hungry and in massive debt. This caused emotional trauma, the mind-set and sense of striving to survive, division amongst the various religions (where before there was harmony) and extremist violence out of the need for democracy and justice… the list goes on. This is a huge gap that we’re still trying to bridge. Hence the poor families that were stripped of everything still remain poor.

Political Corruption

Once the British left India in 1947, you would think that a new constitution formed by the fire-blooded, patriotic Indians who fought for our freedom, would be a unified and a perfect one right? Well, it did seem to be perfect at first, but never unified. The British made sure that while they were in India, they turned Indians against each other: Hindus against Muslims, extremists against the ‘nonviolent’ (Gandhi supporters), the rich against the poor, the literate against the uneducated.

As India split, a new constitution now enabled freedom everywhere. But what followed were constant trust-issues, fighting over positions, cutting corners to rise above others and years of riots. Suddenly there was this immense freedom to do whatever you pleased make your own living again with no restrictions, but with limited supply. And so everyone fought for whatever they could to get their hands on anything. The political parties that rose from this desperation started using immoral means to attain what they needed. This became a festering habit and still continues today. What happened to Gandhi’s teachings you might ask? Didn’t he buy us freedom? Isn’t he the father of the Nation? Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for civil rights yet there is still racism, racial violence and unjust killing in the United States. Not everyone agreed with these morally right leaders and injustice still exists today.

Hence, India as a nation is still stunted in its growth because of the corruption among the political leaders and the business tycoons. The top 1% of the Indian population owns 73% of our economy! This concentrated capitalism is a huge contributor to the starvation that the country is experiencing. One of the good things India had was the Compassion India project, but since the current Indian government is a Hindu political party, they cut off Compassion’s work in India as it’s a Christian initiative. When this happened the government didn’t do anything to keep supporting these children and their families and they were stranded to starve again with no hope. That’s corruption bedded with injustice! A nation as corrupt as India can only be fully redeemed with God being the center of it all! With His kingdom like rule and moral values instilled in every man and woman, India can be redeemed and restored to the country it once was… So let’s pray for such a future for her!

The Caste System

British general (left) and guest are served in Bangalore, India, circa 19th century. ©Getty Images

Would you believe me if I tell you that there are still people being killed over this caste system issue? Either due to protests or even targeted attacks! Although the caste system originated from the early Hindu scriptures, it was meant to divide the society as per the various duties, but did not mean that the other castes starved or were denied of basic human rights. Under the British Colonial rule, the higher castes, which owned most of the wealth, land and resources, were given more influence and higher paid jobs by the British, while the lower caste was denied off their rights and were used as servants or slaves. This drew a huge wedge between the various castes. Now after decades of traumatized rule, it’s effects still live on. Though caste systems have been abolished by the Indian Government and treating individuals differently based on their caste is illegal now, people still do condemn those who marry outside their caste or even stand up for the lower caste rights. There’s still a huge wedge between these sections within the Indian society. By marrying within your own castes, (mostly through arranged marriage) wealth remains within these small yet higher caste group of people, leading to a slower development among those in the lower castes. Most of the lower caste communities are born into huge debts from their ancestors that they start paying off at an early age by doing low-income jobs such as servants or housemaids, cleaners, drivers, etc. Thus those in the lower caste are denied of opportunities for education and health care because they can’t even afford to pay for their next meal. See how this can go on as an endless cycle for entire generations? This is how caste systems can cause massive financial and developmental crises among povertystricken Indians.

So, what can we do to make this better for them? Spread awareness for this greater need of intervention into such societies. The more you know the more you can help! Pray together with your church for these families in India and even collect money and start a movement to help them if you can. Hoping for a brighter future for India and other such countries, for our brothers and sisters in the world.

“Clutching into her flesh, under years of oppression now; She is rising up on her bare back, Justice gleaming in her eyes. War cries rumbling in her heart, “Dear India, wake up!” she said to herself; Birthing a new generation, she lives on, hoping to see her children smile one day”