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!
