Turning insult into inspiration: A call for bold national reforms

I am not sure what’s more troubling: US President Donald Trump’s repeated disparaging of India on the world stage, or the likelihood that most Indians will quickly forget this humiliation and move on to the next viral distraction, like what elephant Madhuri ate at Vantara, or the court orders on stray dogs or the feeding of pigeons. Or, better yet, forwarding a “boycott foreign brands” WhatsApp message and feeling good about contributing to a national cause.

 

While Trump’s criticism may appear unfair and unwarranted, they are not unprecedented. History is filled with examples of Western leaders and opinion makers insulting India and our leaders, and we silently enduring them. 

Among the most notorious was UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who once declared: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” In White House tapes from the 1971 India-Pakistan crisis, US President Richard Milhous Nixon called Prime Minister Indira Gandhi “a bitch” and “an old witch,” while US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger chimed in, “Well, the Indians are bastards anyway.” In the 1990s, the Western financial press routinely dubbed India “the sick man of Asia.”  Following the 1998 nuclear tests, some US Senators labelled India “a rogue nuclear state,” and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright dismissed our security concerns as the tantrum of “a spoiled child showing off dangerous toys.” 

So why do we put up with such insults? As one columnist in this newspaper recently observed, “If Trump can bully us, it is because we can be bullied.” China once faced similar humiliation from the Western powers, yet it now commands global respect. Is there a lesson for us in how the Chinese leaders mobilised their people and channelled their anger

into resolve and build a powerful and prosperous nation?  The century of humiliation

 

Between 1839 and 1949, China endured repeated defeats, territorial losses, and unequal treaties at the hands of Western powers and Japan — a period remembered as the century of humiliation. 

Rather than bury this painful history, Chinese leaders embraced “never forget national humiliation” as a rallying cry. They wove it into their identity, taught it in schools, reinforced it through museums and official speeches, and commemorated it in public events.

 

They transformed humiliation into determination — an unshakable commitment never to be weak again — and instilled in citizens a duty to build economic, military, and technological strength. This is why many Chinese approach their normal chores with a missionary zeal, driven by the belief that their nation must rise to global pre-eminence.

 

A call for rejuvenation 

Critics might argue that a “Chinese-style” campaign is impossible in a noisy democracy like ours. But, this is less about governance structure and more about political leaders with conviction who can communicate tough messages to their citizens, in the same spirit that Lee Kuan Yew did with Singaporeans after they were expelled from Malaysia, or Deng Xiaoping did to inspire the Chinese to become rich before they become old. In India, for far too long, we have tried to hide our weaknesses and downplay our humiliating moments before our people. The result? A sense of complacency.

 

Indians are constantly told their country is the world’s fourth-largest economy, soon to be third; that we build more houses annually than Australia’s total housing stock; that we construct more toilets each year than Germany’s population; and that we provide piped water to more people annually than live in Brazil. These claims, while impressive, risk creating the illusion that India is already an economic superpower — even when citizens continue to evade taxes, civil servants focus more on their personal protocols than deregulating the economy, and the judiciary and executive blame each other for high pendency rates.

 

While we highlight our achievements, Chinese leaders emphasise their challenges. For example, at the height of China’s double-digit growth boom, Premier Wen Jiabao openly criticised his country’s growth process as “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable.” By openly acknowledging vulnerabilities, he was addressing the well-known problem that “a soldier doesn’t fight with a full stomach.”

 

Making Indians hungry for reforms 

If we want to turn insult into inspiration, we must rekindle the hunger for bold, meaningful reforms among our people. Our leaders should channel public outrage into a unifying national mission: To make India one of the world’s foremost economic powers. 

Rather than feeling outraged, we should be thanking Trump for providing the spark for India’s own national rejuvenation programme. The goal should be to forge a shared sense of purpose by reviving stalled economic reforms, ending political bickering, uniting citizens behind a common vision, and motivating civil servants and judges to act with urgency and resolve.  Announcing a national rejuvenation program that creates a compelling narrative and a favourable environment for implementing sweeping — and sometimes unpalatable — economic reforms, in the style of the 1991 variety, could be the best gift the Prime Minister can offer the nation on its 79th Independence Day.

 

The writer is the former director and CE of ICRIER