Summary
D. R. Pendse argues that India's reputation as a perennially poor and backward country is a misreading confined to the last two hundred years. For thousands of years before the industrial revolution and the post-independence control regime, India consisted of many small kingdoms that were uniformly prosperous and commercially open to the world. He invokes the familiar image of ships arriving daily laden with gold because India produced everything the world wanted while needing nothing in return, sustaining a permanent trade surplus settled in bullion.
Pendse frames this historical claim as the foundation for a contemporary liberal argument: openness caused prosperity, and the controls introduced after independence reversed both. He calls the early Indian control regime 'absurd to the limit,' unprecedented for an economy that had never known such restrictions. The interview lays out a two-part program: first rewrite world history to re-establish that India was open and prosperous, and then use that record to persuade Indians to reopen the economy and recover prosperity.
Key points
- Except for the last two hundred years, India has been an open and prosperous country, not perennially poor as commonly believed.
- Pre-British India was a patchwork of small kingdoms unified only under British rule, but all were known for prosperity.
- India ran a permanent trade surplus because it produced everything the world needed and required nothing from the world in return.
- Foreign traders settled their purchases in gold because Indians would accept nothing else, with ships of gold arriving daily over thousands of years.
- Post-independence control regimes were 'absurd to the limit' and alien to an economy that had never experienced such restrictions.
- Openness caused prosperity historically, so the policy prescription is to reopen the economy to restore prosperity.
- The intellectual program has two parts: rewrite world history to establish India's open-and-prosperous past, then use that record to argue for renewed openness.
Transcript
D R Pendse on India’s ‘Open and Prosperous Past’
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKkwm22E5bY Duration: 212.7s
D. R. Pendse (00:10): Throughout history, except the last two hundred years, which include the industrial revolution and of course the post-independence, including post treatment, except the last two hundred years, India has been an open and prosperous country. That is the first fact which people have forgotten. People have always considered India to be perennially a backward poor country, which is wrong. India has been a perennially backward poor country only for the last two hundred years. Thousands of thousands of years before that, all along India has been an open and a prosperous country. Now India was not one country. India was a several kingdoms. They made into one country when the British came. So otherwise, there were small kingdoms all over the all over the geographical area of India. But all these kingdoms, they were famous for being very prosperous, very prosperous. I was telling you yesterday that our balance of trade was so surplus, we had nothing to buy from the world. We had only produced everything which the world needed, we produced it. And where there was nothing which the world produced and we didn’t we didn’t produce. So there was nothing which we could buy from the world. But we the world kept on buying things from us. We kept on buying clothes, kept on buying instruments, kept on buying jewelry, kept on buying everything. They wanted it and India had it. And every day, one ship fully laden with gold would come to the Indian shores. They would buy whatever it is and since India had nothing, they had nothing to give, they would give gold to the Indians. That is the only thing which Indians could accept because there was nothing else to accept. They didn’t want anything. That was the level of prosperity where and there is not one year or two year, there is for thousands of years. But that is that people have forgotten. Right? Anyway, so we were and we were open and we are prosperous. Now we are closed and we are poor. So I want to say it. So we want to have two areas. One is we want to establish that we were we were all along in history. We were open, and because we were open, we were prosperous. So we now go on to convince people that we should be open again so that we become prosperous. Fantastic. That is what and and then with with the independence and all the industrial revolution, we started controlling. I told you first control large. Whole thing was absurd to the limit. We never had economy and never experienced such controls. So that is one thing is that. So we want the first thing is we to reestablish and rewrite world history is to establish that India was prosperous, India was all open, India was open, and therein prosperous. So let us make it open in order to make it prosperous.
Notable passages
"India has been a perennially backward poor country only for the last two hundred years. Thousands of thousands of years before that, all along India has been an open and a prosperous country."
"And every day, one ship fully laden with gold would come to the Indian shores."
"I told you first control large. Whole thing was absurd to the limit. We never had economy and never experienced such controls."
"So let us make it open in order to make it prosperous."
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