You may never have heard of Captain Anand Bodas (why should you), but back in 2016, he caused quite a stir at the 102nd sitting of the Indian Science Congress (www.sciencecongress.nic.in) which had, how shall we put this kindly, refused to give the oxygen of publicity to one of his wilder theories. In his fevered brain, Captain Bodas had convinced himself that thousands of years ago (in the Vedic age), India was doubling up as the interplanetary equivalent of Heathrow Airport. Enormous antediluvian aircraft were regularly shuttling into India from Venus and Uranus, and all points in between, to sell whatever it was they had to sell (Martian Trump sneakers?) and to buy whatever it was the Subcontinent had on offer.
It’s right up there with that fellow in Croydon who doesn’t believe in the Moon. And the basis of the good captain’s theory…well, he’d deduced it all from the (admittedly many) references to flying chariots in ancient Sanskrit manuscripts, jumping impetuously to the conclusion that flying machines 7,000 years ago were a nailed-on certainty…and from there it was only a small hop to believe they were coming from space.
With what might otherwise pass as admirable pluck, Bodas patiently explained to his dwindling audience that “…there is official history and there is unofficial history. Official history says the Wright Brothers flew the first plane in 1903, but the official history is wrong”…and, of course (until this Newswire), he hasn’t been heard of since.
We can, though, pick up a distant echo of his theme in some of the more recondite theories circulating across India in the last twenty years. Spokesmen for the BJP, no less, have occasionally been known to nail their colours to the existence of an Arcadia that existed thousands of years ago in what is now, more or less, modern-day Uttar Pradesh: and based on that theory, it seems the area was a hotbed for world-beating scientific research, including nuclear fission and stem cell technologies…thousands of years ago. It appears to have been an economic hotbed, too: leading the world in economic achievement, awash with gold, and redolent with the distant sound of an ever-wealthy populace plucking their idle guitars.
Now…let’s pause a moment before this gets out of hand and set the BJP side by side with Captain Bodas. One of them is successfully spearheading an unparalleled economic revolution on the Subcontinent that has made India the fastest-growing economy on the planet, currently the fifth biggest in the world (that’s not Captain Bodas). The other is a deranged, obviously unhinged conspiracy theorist (and, of course, that’s not the BJP). In short, they couldn’t be more different or diametrically opposed, but they do have something in common. Both of them draw (with an obvious sense of pride) from India’s richly textured history and seek to twist its glittering allure around the Subcontinent’s strikingly successful present. And although I don’t personally buy into the stem cell stuff or the nuclear fission theory either, it’s undoubtedly the case that India has been here before: historically, it led the world in economic achievement, and there’s nothing at all misty-eyed about that.
History repeating Itself…again
For more than 250 years, the Mughal Empire was the biggest and most successful economic powerhouse on the planet. When it came to conspicuous consumption, the Mughal elite made the British Empire look like a car boot sale: these were the folk who gave us the Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal, Humayun’s Tomb and the Shalamar Gardens (where you could certainly hear the plucking of idle guitars). The Mughal Empire became an international trading hub too (sound familiar?), sending cotton textiles, iron, saltpetre and spices across the globe: untold riches poured endlessly into its Treasury and fuelled a renaissance in painting and literature, as well as course, conspicuous consumption (see above).
The Mughal Empire reached its apogee in the mid-seventeenth century, at which point an army of blue-coated thugs (employed by the East India Company) sailed in to take over the show, but it limped on until 1857 before being finally dissolved (along with the East India Company) in the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion. In truth, however, it never really went away: the seeds of its success have been sleeping in India ever since, and now they’re taking root again.
So what lesson do we draw from all that? Well, obviously, pay no attention to Captain Bodas; take some public pronouncements with a pinch of salt (no matter how reputable their source), but never, ever be in any doubt that India’s resourcefulness, indigenous capacity for invention and boundless spirit of enterprise are irrepressible. The Subcontinent is still an economic powerhouse, a global hub for trade, and so much more as well. In short, what went around is coming around again…it pays to learn the lessons of history.
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Some things about India never seem to change: its spirit of enterprise, creativity and resourcefulness amongst others. So if you’re wondering where India’s going, pay closer attention to where it’s been.
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