Fire-spitting Dragon or just a Fat, Flabby and Jolly Bania

In pre-independence India, the people of trading class, Banias, were the stock markets, banks, treasurer, economists and much more, all rolled into one. Just a few households in every countryside settlement, they were the crown of the economy sitting affably on the head while farmers and laborers sweated out like ant swarms.

Caste and communities were not straightaway imposed on people randomly. These got ingrained with different attitudes and personal traits over generations. A farmer took pride in being called rough and rowdy that pacified his ego and he defined life in terms of keeping his temper and straightforwardness at the tip of his nose perched over mustache brimming with attitude, even if it meant surviving like a beast in the rough and gruff of a hard peasant life.

Some took pride in fighting and made it the illustrious element of life that validates one’s existence. They turned out to be Rajputs, the warrior clan. Others took menial jobs, probably finding these to be easier and less hassled, and came to be dumped at the bottom of caste hierarchy. Another matter that over a period of time these came to be cemented identities decided by birth and the social system fixed them as mighty disadvantages since birth. So the base sunk deeper and deeper into the pits of deprivation and miseries. Here we are concerned only with the way it started, not about the pains that ail the present time disadvantaged castes.

So casteism evolved as a sort of social Darwinism at play. In the same vein, Banias defined life in terms of gold and silver coins in their coffers. Their sense of worth, dignity, respect and over all identity came to be centered around money and the ways and means to pile more of it in their heavy metal chests set in lime and mortar fort like lakhori brick walls. A Bania won’t mind ill manners, abuses and disrespect by a rowdy outlaw kind farmer as long as the latter was indebted to him in his red-cloth bound account book that had the chronicle of many generations of indebtedness jotted down by his pen. From that standard, the farmer was simply a poor devil hopelessly indebted to the money lender. As long as the farmer kept pawning away his buffalo, grains or anything worth the appreciating eye of the moneylender to meet his emergency needs, his bad behavior hardly counted in the monetized version because it didn’t carry any price to the Bania. A farmer would keep grumbling obscenities under his breath, the Bania but would keep smiling and speak with sugar-coated words, all the while fully having a feeling of the foul words. To a well-meant spider the bickering of trapped flies hardly matters for anything.

The Banias kept lathaits, the muscled criminal type stick-wielding guards, their sticks well oiled and muscles twitching with wrestling pit acrobatics and push-ups. In between, the fat, flabby Bania chuckled good naturedly. He never intended to use the power for the sight of blood and broken bones. Never means never! Fighting wasn’t his domain. Trading and making money requires peace, gentle words and an ever-smiling countenance. A farmer would be the first to lose temper and a Bania would be the last. Well, that set up their antipodal positions on the economic ladder. The farmer used brawn and toiled all through life, thinking his rugged misdemeanor and arrogant attitude was all that mattered to define a human life. The Bania used brain and minted gold from the mine of peasantry’s drudgery. Nothing wrong at any end; just the difference between hard work and smart work.

Looking at the almost unused resource--rarely used and thus almost redundant--the stick-wielding group of outlaws, it appeared nearly unnecessary expenditure because trading was the theme not intimidation. It was primarily a symbolic force more for self defense because if you go belligerent you will kill the hens that lay eggs for you. To a Bania it only meant that the rowdy farmer would keep his anger to the limits of cursing and foul words even to the extent of these reaching his bodyguards’ ears. They won’t pounce till the farmer actually attacked the Bania. This possibility was rare because a symbolic force can at least stop the attacker. And if the situation developed to take the unlikely scene of a real physical fight, the Bania would in fact continue laughing in a jolly manner and ask his men not to attack and allow them to use force within the limits of repulsing the attacker only. The Banias indeed have had legendary patience. No wonder, Goddess Lakshmi, loves their peaceful households. The farmers have legendary uncouthness and the Goddess avoids their humble abodes.

The real threats to the Banias from the gangs of robbers—although always present theoretically yet farthest in practice—was more of an exception, since it happened just one or two times in the entire lifetime. For the rest of the time, the Bania was happy to be circled by his restful symbolic force and treated the peasantry like petty truants whose tantrums had to be tolerated to keep them there in the system of economy to continue raising their multi-generational debts. A Bania ate his bread out of his patience and smart work. A farmer did his on the basis of his hard work only.

China is that typical Bania. It has to earn profits and do business at any cost. It has a well-oiled army just like the Bania had his gang of muscle-men, who lazed under the sun most of the time. It cannot afford to kill its trading prospects by getting belligerent in the real sense in the form of  a bloody battle. I mean they may bellicose and create rhetoric like hell but they will surely fall short of an actual war; simply because they cannot think of losing their trade. With your priority to trade and make profits at any cost, you can’t be a belligerent hardcore soldier, however hard you may try. Money has its tremendous soothing effect on one’s senses.

The Chinese are the smartest Banias on earth and smart Banias never fight in the real sense. They just put up a mock show of aggression to keep trading. Even while investing the biggest sums of money in their military, the Chinese government basically thinks in economic terms. The economic and trading implications of maintaining a huge army, that’s the credo. A keen sense of trading automatically smoothens out lot many pinchy edges from one’s persona. One’s craving for profiteering allays the beast aside and puts precaution on the front. To be a really bloody fighting soldier one has to first be a non-trader, a loser in economic terms. The Chinese Red Army is the former and genocidal suicidal factions fighting in the middle east are the latter. You can calculate their economic worth. The Chinese calculate their defense expenditure as one of the overheads in the scheme of economy, where the armed strength and its symbolic visibility on the surface are more in symbol than in substance.

The current flare-up with India across Himalayan borders is a bit more than trading this time. Cornered by allegations over Corona, China is now engaged in these skirmishes to create dustier scenario of a war time situation so that Corona issue gets diverted a bit. Well, armies these days play more of symbolic role than they do actually on the battlefield. In fact, they are more useful in quelling internal dissent than in wading off external threats, which again are exception like an outright attack on a Bania by a robber gang that happened once or twice in his life time.

America keeps it army for all these and something more also. Something extra! Well, that makes it the superpower. About that extra, we will talk some other time!