The Merchant’s Scale, the Monarch’s Sceptre
It was not long ago—barely nine years—that Margaret
Thatcher, then Prime Minister of Britain, stood in the House of Commons and
dismissed the African National Congress as nothing more than a terrorist
outfit. She declared with her unflinching certainty that those who dreamt of an
ANC-led South Africa would wake only to the ashes of illusion.
History, however, is a mischievous playwright. Nine years later, in the same Westminster Hall, Nelson Mandela, the first black President of South Africa, rose to appeal for British investment to rebuild his nation. And among the attentive listeners was Thatcher herself. Whose defeat was it—the iron lady’s disbelief, or the revolutionary’s dream reduced to a plea? It is difficult to say.
For Mandela, who had wrested freedom from the jaws of apartheid, the reality of governance was sobering. Revolution had been one thing; the daily business of feeding a nation was another. He soon discovered that independence without capital was but another name for destitution. That equality and liberty cannot be kept alive merely on slogans, but require factories, jobs, markets, bread.
The parallel with India is haunting. After 1947, Nehru and the Congress raised the banners of socialism, equality, and democratic idealism. Yet behind the resounding speeches lurked a spreading rot—corruption, mismanagement, and an almost deliberate refusal to acknowledge that industry and capital were not the enemies of freedom but its sinews. Gandhi had warned that Congress should disband after independence. India did not listen, and the result was a politics where dynasty replaced democracy, and poverty became permanent.
Mandela, unlike Nehru, read the writing on the wall early. Within five years of power he had already swallowed the bitter truth: without capital, socialism decays into slogans; without industry, independence decays into hunger. And so he carried the begging bowl to the very empire that once enslaved his land—seeking not sympathy, but investment.
The Irony of Ideologies
What is ideology before an empty stomach? Marxists in India, like their counterparts elsewhere, made a theatre of slogans—against imperialism, against capitalism, against America. They found glory in debating Vietnam while ignoring the famine-stricken farmer of Bengal. Jyoti Basu, the titan of Indian communism, would sit in London with the very British capitalists his party condemned at home, even as in Bengal the factories closed one by one, their gates rusting under the flutter of red flags.
Amalashol, Belpahari—villages where peasants starved while the revolutionaries spoke of dialectics. Howrah station became the starting point of a grim pilgrimage: shuttered mills stretching into the horizon, each padlocked gate a gravestone of industry. And yet the leaders, eyes fixed on ideology, could not—or would not—see that capital is not betrayal, but survival.
The Market as Monarch
Across the globe, necessity has humbled ideologues. Yeltsin, fresh from a Russian referendum, rushed to meet America’s Vice President Al Gore—not to discuss missiles, but markets. Castro, once the lion of Havana, courted European investors. Arafat, who once vowed never to set foot in Washington, now flew there often in search of dollars. Even Saddam Hussein, once the scourge of the West, waited at the doors of the European Union with his plea for aid.
It is the same story everywhere: the language of ideology falls silent before the grammar of hunger. Where once the sceptre of kings ruled, today it is the merchant’s scale that weighs the destiny of nations.
Commerce as Common Ground
Business, in its bluntness, often succeeds where politics fails. Consider Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto: while fanning the flames of militancy in Kashmir, she simultaneously granted India “most-favoured nation” trade status. Why? Because her nation craved Indian sugar. Thus, even amid hostility, the bargaining table of commerce opened its doors.
So too in Europe, where the Union—ever pragmatic—reconsidered sanctions on Saddam not out of sympathy, but out of calculations of trade.
The lesson is clear: ideology divides, but commerce binds.
The Final Truth
In the modern world, agriculture alone cannot sustain nations. Sentiments, dogmas, flags—all fade before the unyielding truth that without capital there is no bread, without industry there is no dignity, without trade there is no survival. The merchant’s measure has become the monarch’s sceptre.
Those who recognise this truth may yet carry their people into prosperity. Those who cling to ideology at the cost of economy will drown, no matter how noble their banners, no matter how fiery their slogans.
In the end, it is not Marx or Milton, not slogans or songs, but the quiet hum of machines, the clinking of coins, and the certainty of employment that decide the fate of nations.
History, however, is a mischievous playwright. Nine years later, in the same Westminster Hall, Nelson Mandela, the first black President of South Africa, rose to appeal for British investment to rebuild his nation. And among the attentive listeners was Thatcher herself. Whose defeat was it—the iron lady’s disbelief, or the revolutionary’s dream reduced to a plea? It is difficult to say.
For Mandela, who had wrested freedom from the jaws of apartheid, the reality of governance was sobering. Revolution had been one thing; the daily business of feeding a nation was another. He soon discovered that independence without capital was but another name for destitution. That equality and liberty cannot be kept alive merely on slogans, but require factories, jobs, markets, bread.
The parallel with India is haunting. After 1947, Nehru and the Congress raised the banners of socialism, equality, and democratic idealism. Yet behind the resounding speeches lurked a spreading rot—corruption, mismanagement, and an almost deliberate refusal to acknowledge that industry and capital were not the enemies of freedom but its sinews. Gandhi had warned that Congress should disband after independence. India did not listen, and the result was a politics where dynasty replaced democracy, and poverty became permanent.
Mandela, unlike Nehru, read the writing on the wall early. Within five years of power he had already swallowed the bitter truth: without capital, socialism decays into slogans; without industry, independence decays into hunger. And so he carried the begging bowl to the very empire that once enslaved his land—seeking not sympathy, but investment.
The Irony of Ideologies
What is ideology before an empty stomach? Marxists in India, like their counterparts elsewhere, made a theatre of slogans—against imperialism, against capitalism, against America. They found glory in debating Vietnam while ignoring the famine-stricken farmer of Bengal. Jyoti Basu, the titan of Indian communism, would sit in London with the very British capitalists his party condemned at home, even as in Bengal the factories closed one by one, their gates rusting under the flutter of red flags.
Amalashol, Belpahari—villages where peasants starved while the revolutionaries spoke of dialectics. Howrah station became the starting point of a grim pilgrimage: shuttered mills stretching into the horizon, each padlocked gate a gravestone of industry. And yet the leaders, eyes fixed on ideology, could not—or would not—see that capital is not betrayal, but survival.
The Market as Monarch
Across the globe, necessity has humbled ideologues. Yeltsin, fresh from a Russian referendum, rushed to meet America’s Vice President Al Gore—not to discuss missiles, but markets. Castro, once the lion of Havana, courted European investors. Arafat, who once vowed never to set foot in Washington, now flew there often in search of dollars. Even Saddam Hussein, once the scourge of the West, waited at the doors of the European Union with his plea for aid.
It is the same story everywhere: the language of ideology falls silent before the grammar of hunger. Where once the sceptre of kings ruled, today it is the merchant’s scale that weighs the destiny of nations.
Commerce as Common Ground
Business, in its bluntness, often succeeds where politics fails. Consider Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto: while fanning the flames of militancy in Kashmir, she simultaneously granted India “most-favoured nation” trade status. Why? Because her nation craved Indian sugar. Thus, even amid hostility, the bargaining table of commerce opened its doors.
So too in Europe, where the Union—ever pragmatic—reconsidered sanctions on Saddam not out of sympathy, but out of calculations of trade.
The lesson is clear: ideology divides, but commerce binds.
The Final Truth
In the modern world, agriculture alone cannot sustain nations. Sentiments, dogmas, flags—all fade before the unyielding truth that without capital there is no bread, without industry there is no dignity, without trade there is no survival. The merchant’s measure has become the monarch’s sceptre.
Those who recognise this truth may yet carry their people into prosperity. Those who cling to ideology at the cost of economy will drown, no matter how noble their banners, no matter how fiery their slogans.
In the end, it is not Marx or Milton, not slogans or songs, but the quiet hum of machines, the clinking of coins, and the certainty of employment that decide the fate of nations.
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