International History: Why India Fails & Western Leadership & Intelligence Dominate --Brigadier Neil John, SM (R)

Date:- 12/05/26

"Is India therefore a weak nation, with weak leadership and without a heart to stand for itself against western bullying? Or is it intelligent enough to play the game of wait and watch through conflicts and eco centric policies, cause the patient are always rewarded in good time? "--Brig  Neil John 

"The military victories are lost due to inadequate information ambassadors who in the process of fastest news first, most of the time end up questioning our own credibility instead of assisting in narrative building and propagation of victory. Only our Prime Minister has international focus, not always for the right reasons, cause here too divisive rhetoric is at play. "- Brig Neil John 

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It’s amazing isn’t it, that the oldest civilisation in the world, with the biggest epics in intelligent history, the creators of analogies like the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The proponents of ahimsa. The masters of ethical justice and human psychology, discussing the dynamics of a JUST WAR (Lord Krishna’s sermon to Arjuna as his charioteer). The people who invented the zero, that today is the base line for digitisation and AI through Aryabhatta,  often called the "Father of Indian Mathematics," who also provided a precise value for Pi-3.1416 and correctly stated that the Earth is spherical and rotates on its axis.

The people who read stars accurately and predicted climates and eclipses much before science found a universal appeal. The ones that already had drawing of space crafts like the Pushpaka Vimana, the most famous Vimana, originally made by Vishvakarma for Brahma, later owned by Kubera, and stolen by Ravana, described as a vast, solar-powered "flowery chariot" that could fly wherever the occupant wished. They also wrote about inter celestial travel and maybe time travel through the Divya Viman described in the Mahabharata as an aircraft used by Arjuna to travel to Indra's realm, traversing different "Lokas". 

In a land where wisdom and intelligence were owned by the sages and the scholars and kingdoms flourished through teachings and practices. Takshashila, Nalanda, Vikramashila, and Valabhi, thrived as major educational hubs for Buddhist and Vedic studies. These universities offered diverse subjects like philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and law to international students. 

Here we have our own thinkers and scholars that delved in complex surgeries and medical practices. Sushruta known as the "Father of Surgery," he detailed complex procedures like rhinoplasty (plastic surgery), cataract surgery, and the use of over 120 surgical instruments in the Sushruta Samhita.

We had Panini regarded as the "Father of Linguistics," he systematised the Sanskrit language with nearly 4,000 rules in his work, Ashtadhyayi.

Chanakya (Kautilya) An influential political strategist and economist whose treatise, the Arthashastra, remains a masterwork on statecraft, governance, and economic policy and yet we know more of Sun Tzu and Mahan.

But what has gained prominence in the worl are names like Socrates, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Archimedes, Pythagoras, etc, and for what? For things that the Indians already knew and enunciated. 

Even in political and military leaders we have George Washington, Lincoln, Nixon, Lenin, Clinton (for all the wrong things). Lord Nelson, Napoleon, Hitler, Saddam, ED Amin, Mussolini. One Indian leader brought to prominence by intent due to non violence and the UN charter was Mahatma Gandhi. Mainly to suit the agenda of peace through negotiations and not violence. In Indian military leaders only Field Marshall Manekshaw found a little prominence, that too I guess locally. 

So why in a nation of 1.5 billion we do not have leaders of impact? Yes we have people in governance and in the right places in the IT world, but we still can’t boast of one Einstein. Even Srinivasa Ramanujam the greatest Indian modern mathematician is hardly known to 90% Indians. What do Indians lack, why are we not regarded as people that have leadership qualities that stand out, are worth idolisation and with prominence in history? 

We have the right tools, what negates our progress is the factor of INSECURITIES. It’s like in the race for survival in India, no one likes a winner. Even the richest men get bandaged internally with tags of being politically motivated to serve a certain agenda. The military victories are lost due to inadequate information ambassadors who in the process of fastest news first, most of the time end up questioning our own credibility instead of assisting in narrative building and propagation of victory. Only our Prime Minister has international focus, not always for the right reasons, cause here too divisive rhetoric is at play.

We will never be among the top military leaders in the world cause our military strategies are too border centric. All our wars and operations are with enemies who are rather weaker both militarily or financially except China. We don’t even remember the military general that was inclusive in the 1962 war of blunders. Today military leaders however smart and intelligent they are, will never be in the reckoning cause the visible face of war is always the political leader of that time. The political leader announces the decision, though it’s not singular and not his own. The politics leader talks about the reasons for war and sensationalises with it a factor of justification that hits at the emotions of people. Emotions always drive perceptions, therefore you have a captive audience who will lap away at every source of information you put across on the pretext of narrative building. A political leader receives the coffins with media drama and the political leader will declare victory and with it a party narrative. It’s not about one political party, it’s about politics the world over. Watch the USA-  IRAN war. The military leadership in the background, just fights cause the political system in negotiations and liaisons failed. Like they say, war is the last instrument of a nations national policy. So military leadership would naturally be in the domains of a practitioner rather than a perpetrator. 

Is India therefore a weak nation, with weak leadership and without a heart to stand for itself against western bullying? Or is it intelligent enough to play the game of wait and watch through conflicts and eco centric policies, cause the patient are always rewarded in good time? So are we not pro active and aggressive strategists. But businessmen that weigh world issues in profits and losses? Is this what makes us lose out as world leaders and social contributors? While we have Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, they still are CEOs of someone else’s buisness. 

I don’t want to sound like a pessimist, but India as a nation with the most exceptional intelligent minds in the world actually underplays itself in the world market and loses out on being the protagonists of intellectual and decisive leadership. Somewhere the men and women with the dynamic personalities that vibrate with confidence lack the capacities of intelligent thinking and the one that have the potential are either surviving or being played by the former.

And the white supremacy syndrome will always prevail, while it might not be visibly propagated, the stealing of rights, patenting of borrowed or bought propositions and strategic bullying is something we brown Indians will always have to deal with. 

Yoga and the lord Buddha are the only things today we can boast of that have an international appeal. Even Bollywood has failed due to plagiarism and cricket is a national sport or more so a MONEY SPORT restricted to a few nations. 

Will we ever get there. Putin and Trump will be remembered as world leaders of prominence whether good, bad or ugly. Will our own heroes wake up and do more, cause after all it’s a world of visible dominance and drama.

The symphony will only succeed when the audience applaud and history always supports the narrative cause history is mostly written by the people who either have won or have an agenda to drive.