Transcription
India operates on two fuels: corruption and connection. Indian authorities would do absolutely nothing. Not even lift a finger unless there's a material reward, money or sex involved.
In the system of India, you are either higher or lower in the pecking order. You're either an abuser or the abused. Achieving equality is impossible in that society. Men abuse women. Women abuse children. Women are no innocent in that country. Women abuse children. Children abuse animals. Higher cast individuals abuse lower cast individuals. But then it's not a linear oneway higher cast to lower cast issue either because lowerass people fight like hyenas to determine which of those lower cast groups is higher than the other lowerass group. and a compulsive need to recreate India wherever they move to. That is why when you even when you go to a million-doll get milliondoll house ghettos in the western society occupied by Indians and other third world people you you face familiar smells and noise and chaos.
In economics there's a concept called middle income trap. I prefer to call India's situation low income trap. It will stay here and it will get worse with time.
What you just heard was an excerpt from a speech delivered by writer and investment adviser Giant Bandari at a conference in Bodram, Turkey in September 2024. Today, nearly all Western mainstream media and think tanks are speaking enthusiastically about the rise of India, a vibrant democracy and an economic engine poised to surpass China. However, what we are about to hear is a perspective that is 180° the opposite of this mainstream narrative.
Giant Bandari's life experience gives him a unique dual perspective. He was born and raised in India, witnessing the inner workings of its society firsthand. As an adult, he moved to Canada, allowing him to look back and dissect the culture he knows so intimately from an external vantage point. In this speech, he will systematically argue why he believes the core of Indian society has become cancerous. Why western values such as trust, fairness, and justice are in his view completely alien concepts to the Indian mind. And why he pessimistically predicts that prosperity and education will not save India but may actually make it worse. This is a chilling diagnostic report from an insider. Let's continue.
Um over the last 33 years uh since I first left India, I have traveled to almost 100 countries and to many of them repeatedly. Um this in my view has given me a perspective on societies. Uh India which is what I'm here to talk about today is the grandfather of the third world. The third world has uh two out of three human beings on the planet. 800 million people in India in India which is equivalent to the combined population of North America and 27 nations of European Union rely on free grains from the government. onethird of Indian children below the age of five are stunted and that's an exaggerated figure in the sense that the number is actually much higher a low singledigit um Indian Indians might have the material resources even among them I have never met one never met one Indian who is not constantly plagued by concerns stemming from lack of trust. He cannot trust his family. He cannot trust his friends. He cannot trust the institutions. India is a veritable hellhole. I will explain how Indian culture has become cancerous warping and perverting everything that that the west has provided it. This has significant implications um for the west because immigrants keep pouring in. I will in my talk outline the structure or lack thereof that renders life in India a constant drudgery filled with momentto- moment exploitation and abuses.
As a child, my experiences was one where might is right underpinned everything. Absolutely everything. Animalistic instincts sublim subliminally were hardwired into us. Power was invariably abused with those in control thinking that they had the god-given right to exploit, dominate, and dehumanize others. The display of authority was so extreme that any questioning even you asked your teacher a simple question or or expecting those in authority to perform their duties led to immediate retribution. Those in authorities those days and even more today and uh that's what I'm going to come to later. how India is worsening with time. They believed that their positions were not for serving others. That's invariably the case. No government person or person in authority even in private sector thinks that he's there to serve other people to provide the service. He thinks he gets he's in that position for personal gain whether through bribery which is uh omnipresent in that country and shamelessly asked for uh sadisma which is a perversion of human character and pursuit of reverence. They want you to prostrate in front of them the authorities in in the country. The only person who shows respect in India is the one and was the one who had who accepts a lower subservient position in life in the hierarchy. I have never I'm 56 years old. I have never witnessed a situation in India where someone in authority took the initiative to address a problem he was responsible for. When I was at the university in India, a boy, a young boy, a male boy was sodomized and raped by the janitors. I reported the man matter to the authorities. I went, I took this boy to the police and to the university officials. No one, not one person stepped forward to take an action. something that was very straightforward, something that was within their powers to take actions on. In fact, the authorities and the fellow students threatened me with grave consequences if I pursued the matter further. Now, this is what confuses me even now. I understand it intellectually, but emotionally I don't get it. It confuses me and frustrates me no end that in a situation I just described where even if I were corrupt um I would actually find a soulenriching experience by booking a culprit properly because I knew I wasn't I wouldn't be getting bribes and I knew that there wouldn't be any connections involved. India operates on two fuels corruption and connection. Um why did they not book that case? Indian authorities would do absolutely nothing, not even lift a finger unless there's a material reward, money or sex involved. Their apathy is a bottomless pit.
Now here is the problem. Doing your job in that culture is seen as epheminite by those in authority. Doing your job means that you are the this you are a weak-minded person. You are not mature. If you can shoke from your responsibilities, you are considered a mature in that culture. There's no pride or honor in doing what is right. There's no concept of pride and honor in that society. But it goes a bit further. Quite a bit further. If you call a plumber for repairs, he comes. He will see it beneath him to leave without creating a mess. He will deliberately do a shoddy job even if it would not have taken him more time to do a better job. Why does this happen? A complex web of arrogance, egotism, civility, castism, tribalism, sexism, rigid dos and don'ts, dogmas, and magical thinking drives what they do, leaving them emotionally constipated and incapable of making a rational or moral decision.
Fairness. Now, these are all European concepts. You think that these are parts of you firmament they aren't. The the concepts like fairness, justice, trust, empathy and impartiality are completely alien concepts to the Indian mind. They cannot differentiate between right and wrong. They can't simply can't differentiate between what is right and wrong. They do not have the concepts the western value concepts that you think are a part of the natural existence. They aren't. Indians are indifferent even when there is no cost involved in doing the right thing in delivering fairness or justice. I would go as far as by saying that if they could do if they could deliver fairness and justice without any personal cost, they would still prefer not to do it because they see doing the right thing as a sign of weakness. I guess anyone who has been to India on a budget of less than $50 a day would recognize what I'm saying here. If you spend $500 a day, you will never understand India.
We were as growing up indoctrinated to be submissive. The indoctrination is so profound that Indians address even those slightly above them in authority as sir. Their behavior tends to tends to be survile sophentic sophentic and ingratiating and they call you sir even after they have moved through the western countries for years because that's how deep the hardwiring of submissiveness in among Indians but this you should never ever take they're calling you as so as a sign of respect Because respect is another concept that is alien to Indians. When they call you sir, it reflects their view of you as a stronger person in the interaction. Consistent their consistent with their mindset of might is right. They will demean you the moment you are in a weaker position in this system.
In the system of India, you are either higher or lower in the pecking order. You're either an abuser or the abused. Achieving equality is impossible in that society. Once a person has started living in that country for a while, he soon realizes from experience that saying please and thank you are signs of weaknesses and reserved for those who wish to demean themselves.
Indians cannot maintain the institutions established by the British. These institutions have been completely hollowed out and corrupted. They have become predatory. The constitutions and laws hold no value in that country. The only forces driving these institutions are bribes and connections. You go to go in front of a judge and you bribe policemen and the bureaucrats in the judge in the court right in front of the judge. That's how openly bribe is conducted in that country. Um the higher you go the only thing that changes is the quantum of bribes. Uh if you go to the court uh the the level of bribe changes. That's the only thing that matters in that country.
Street smarts culturally street smartness is highly valued in that country. uh criminals who managed to evade justice are socially celebrated. People will in social c uh settings praise those people who were criminal and evaded justice. A a close relative of mine brimming with pride um once told me that he would never pay the rent for the house he had rented. He declared that his his dead body will would leave the property and that's what actually happened. Rationality is is absent in that country. Um when someone is cheated and trust is nowhere in that country, he rarely seeks justice against the cheater. Rarely. Instead, he rationalizes his cheating of others.
Men abuse women. Women abuse children. Women are no innocent in that country. Women abuse children. Children abuse animals. Animals attack whosoever they can. Higher cast individuals abuse lower cast individuals. But then it's not a linear one-way higher cast to lower cast issue either because lowercast people fight like hyenas to determine which of those lower cast groups is higher than the other lowercast group. It is a perpetual cycle of irrationality and arbitrariness. People lie openly. Everyone knows everyone lies. that everyone lies anyway. Most people feel no cognitive dissonance because they cannot distinguish between truth and falsehood. And I'm going to come to it in a bit explaining that it was the meaning of truth was a revelation to me when when I moved to the United Kingdom. They convince themselves of their lies so much that they can no longer differentiate between myth and reality, fact and fiction. Now I know this sounds dystopian and some people who have never been to India are probably shaking their heads thinking this couldn't be true. But I cannot imagine what about India that is not dystopian. George Orwell was actually born in India by the way.
Conversations in that country are driven solely for personal gain with a steadfast belief in a zero sum game or actually they prefer a win-lose game. If you don't lose in in in an in a transaction they don't feel good about it. There is this strong element of sadism in the culture. Those who are closest to you will turn out to be your biggest enemies. Everyone in that country built solid a strong highrise high fences around his property. That is the first thing you do when you build buy a property fully aware that his neighbors would encroach on his land. If given a chance, you sleep without a fence on your on your property and next day morning your land would have been encroached encroached on and you can do nothing about it.
Once I started living in the United Kingdom, it took me years to comprehend why people in the West don't do the same thing. The concept of loyalty and honor are conspicuously absent in that country. Conversations revolve around backbiting, gossiping about friends, discussing celebrities, exchanging superstitions and animosity towards another other groups. Hindus hate Muslims. Muslims hate Hindus. Siks harbor huge animosity towards Hindus. These groups however within themselves fight all the time leaving everyone atomized. Yet it is the hatred for the other group that superficially unites them.
When I first traveled to the United Kingdom, I was amused to find uh that animals weren't fearful of me or aggressive towards people. I was surprised that those in power did not expect civility or reverence. For years and even today sometimes I feel uneasy uh in a situation when I need someone to do his job and he does it. I feel as if I'm not doing my part of the transaction by offering him bribes. That's how you grow up in that society. I doubt if I connected the concept of truth and with on the concept of loyalty and honor to their deeper meanings until I started until I had lived in the United Kingdom for a year. It took a long time for me to start understanding the deeper meanings of these concepts. I was working in an office in in Manchester and during that time someone told me not to exaggerate while promoting the organization. Something I was responsible for during my summer days. For the first time in my life, I began to see that people wanted to speak the truth for the sake of speaking the truth. I had always of course known the word truth but for the first time I started to grasp its essence.
Now strangely very anomalous in India were my grandfather and my dad who were in financial matters very extremely honest and held self-respect uh very highly. Um, our family was pretty reasonably well off and well connected politically. But this only allows me to understand 25% of India's depravities and degradations. I simply don't have an understanding of what else really happens in the country because I'm not a woman. I'm not from the lower cast. I don't live in slum areas and I'm not raped and brutalized by the police the way 80 to 90% of Indians do. Um the problem however is that if you invited someone who understood who had experienced more than 25% of Indian deprivity deprivities and degradations his mind would have been fried by what what he would have experienced and he would have been incapable of communication. Indians of course fail to differentiate between the difference between depravity and non-depravities.
So here is the foundational principle to understanding India. It is an amoral it is an immoral irrational society devoid of values. any values you try to instill will slip off like a water of a a duck's back. In my lifetime, I have seen a continual worsening of Indian society. Whatever grace and civility Christian missionaries and European colonizers had instilled in India in Indians has been slowly but surely eroding.
I I distinctly recall the first day I was in outside the country. I flew into London. I was on a train to Manchester. What I observed outside the train um made me very gloomy. I saw dull-looking houses which were too clean for my taste. Very clean waterways and very clean air. The absence of hustle and bustle in the trains and calmness of the train made me disoriented and gloomy. I did not know how to cope with a situation where there was no constant assault on my senses. With time um uh in living in the west I realized that for most immigrants the sit this situation of calmness, peace, lack of noise, lack of a smell in the air leads to an existential crisis and a compulsive need to recreate India wherever they move to. That is why when you even when you go to a million-dollar get million-dollar house ghettos in the western society occupied by Indians and other third world people you you face familiar smells and noise and chaos they desperately know need those smells and chaos and a constant hustle and bustle they create neverending emotionalism fruitless conflicts and intellectual inbreeding in those ghettos in the western society.
When I was in the Manchester Business School, um we were given um the the fob, the electric electronic fob to enter the university whenever we wanted to 24 hours a day. Um um we the the fellow immigrants I talked with, we always wondered if British were so stupid that they that they trusted us. This was so unusual, so completely unusual for us. Most of these people, however, most of these immigrants would never try to grasp the emotional significance of trust and gratitude. Worse, they discovered as time passed by that complaining often led to material benefits. uh the only thing that genuinely cared for in the multicultural west.
Once a friend of mine and I went for a drive in Manchester. My friend had had a couple of drinks too many. He ran a red light. We were pulled over by the police. I was completely stunned by the respect with which the police treated us, treated my friend. In India, the police would have humiliated and exploited even the passengers who were who had no no business in the game. U abusing and exploiting uh the weak was and is a way of life in India. Of course, because my friend friend had um high alcohol level, he was arrested. The policeman who arrested him of said that instead of leaving me on the highway, he would be happy to give me a ride to the police station. if I wanted to do something else from there on. I said yes, I will come with you. So I sat next to the policeman in the car. Now this was a year into my life in the United Kingdom. But I was emotionally overwhelmed that on the way to the police station. I talked with him, this police guy, how the same situation would have turned out in India. The cycle of abuse and exploitation and humiliation. they they would they would have inflicted on the driver and the passengers. U now those days I used to live in a very high crime area of Manchester. I was I had no money. The police would follow me late at night with just they would just follow me while I walked. I asked this policeman who was driving me to the police station, why did they never stop me to ask me questions on what I was doing? And he he told me that they followed me to ensure my safety, but more importantly, they had no authority to stop me without a legitimate cause. For the first time in my life, I was beginning to grasp the British respect for personal space. Now I my intention was not to manipulate the policeman at that time but after making my friends uh what he did was he got my friend to sit for an hour or two to sober up and without charging him he let us go. um uh I began to realize over a period of time that while those in those in power in the United Kingdom often applied the law with flexibility considering the spirit behind it. I guess the policeman realized that we were decent fellows. He he did not really want to pursue that anymore. um in India, every single law is wielded as a tool for exploitation and predation. There's no exception.
Now I will soon elaborate on how the positive aspects that the west um contributed to India uh has be have been all perverted. um, so we often talk about how prosperity and education will actually benefit these poor countries. That's a myth. That's fellacious. It does not work. And I will expand on that. But the problem is that how do you change the underpinning irrationality and immorality of those people? How do you remove the operating system of magical thinking and implant that mind with rational thinking? And because British are no longer in charge, the situation has continued to worsen. Statistics fail to resonate in the Indian psyche. There is no sense of gray area among Indians. Everything is perceived as black or white with no appreciation for nuance. This lack of pro proportionality leads to indecisiveness and inability to value things. In the end, unrestrained emotions drive their lives even of the intelligent people.
I carried I carried the same a part of the same mindset with me when I moved to the UK. Realigning my thinking with reason, morality and western values was a cispian task. In India, I attended one of the top engineering colleges and believed myself to be very creative, decisive and well-grounded. But as I w started witness witnessing social interactions in Manchester and behaviors of people in the United Kingdom, I I I I started to realize that even a grocery store grocery shop operator had more confidence and was more decisive. I realized my cloud my mind was clouded with confused thinking, conflicting motivations. they were which were implanted in me as growing up and rules lacking a principled foundation. Now imagine working on that kind of mind. Imagine the layers and layers of confused worldviews, behavioral patterns and dishonest scheming tendency your upbringing in India ingrains you in with. Despite my best intentions, shaking them off and rewiring my thinking took decades, not years, decades. Even if I believe that something was good, it was often still even if a belief was is still good, I of it was of often still based on irrational or magical thinking uh principles. uh if I can you call those principles an erroneous belief I became aware of and tried to change clashed with other deeply ingrained beliefs and behavioral patterns. It was a cispian task. It was like trying to change a broken brick in a castle of my beliefs and worldviews um without this destabilizing the entire structure. However, with time and consistent effort, I noticed that I started to sleep better and felt mentally freer despite facing severe financial crisis and often going hungry. My body started to change and the mental cloud that had clkeded my thoughts began to lift. A reassuring sense that those around me had my back was immensely helpful. Now remember in in India your family and friends are your biggest enemies. Um um strangely um a chronic stress that afflicted me started to fade away as well. Um India continues to be one of the most stressed countries on the planet. Most of the third world countries are.
My grandmother told me two things u to which I thought were very backward-looking something that I have changed my views on and I have come to side with her ways of thinking. She believed that some people needed to stay on the edge of starvation because if given more they would create problems. Despite being one of the most egalitarian people I knew, befriending Hashaur and Taylor, she would remind me that not everyone deserved a seat at the table unless he was truly fit for it. Human rights is a western concept that is incomprehensible to Indians. They fail to understand personal space and respect for the individual is speaking to them about rights um even negative rights. I'm not talking about positive right. Even about negative rights only leads to confusion. They fail to differentiate between negative and positive rights. When taught about negative rights, what will they do? Because remember the underpinning the substrata is irrationality and immorality and a absence of values. They glean only the selfserving part of the negative rights. For example, when people are taught about property rights, what do they glean out of it? They learn to protect their property but fail to recognize rights of others. Women, when they are taught about that rape is a violation, begin to perceive rape in everything and use it as a tool to exploit men. Most of the filed rape cases in India are today fake. As as Indians are introduced to the concept of rights, their minds instead of getting some sense out of those negative rights, their minds start to shift from uh focusing on their rested lives to and accepting their rest life as fate is start adopting a victim mentality. That's where my grandmom was coming from.
So here is the problem with Indians. You cannot teach them anything good until the foundations of morality, rationality, causality, and other western values have first been laid in their minds. How would you do that job? I don't know how you can do it. Without these foundations, the fruit of the western civilization only serve to turn their hedonistic tendencies into something more malevolent. Every civilizational fruit, education, western clothing, prosperity, western institutions have been perverted in India. The left the institutions left behind um by the British have been hollowed out become purely predatory and sadistic. This occurred because in post British India those in power prize, expediency and resource acquisition. Remember their instinct is all about money and sex. They have no interest in ideas. They have no interest in anything spiritual. um they see acquisition of resources as the sole purpose of their lives. Today India lacks even the vague rule of law that existed before the arrival of Europeans. This is why in my view when India has fallen apart and it will fall apart and a Taliban-like system comes into exist in in India from the ashes it will be an improvement on what India is today.
U I'll continue talking about how the good things that the western civilization offered to India have been perverted. uh without western missionaries, Christianity has been nourished by um Indian Indian superstitions and magical thinking um and has become voodoo. um given the lack of interest in ideas that Indians have a lack of interest that they have in abstract thinking, grammar is unnecessary to them, English for most people have become pigeon. uh western western education and western clothing have been adopted purely from a cargo cult mentality. The focus is on obtaining certificates, putting on western clothes and they think that is all that matters. The skills behind those certificates is completely immaterial to their minds. um they they completely fail to see education as a path to intellectual growth or as a means to become better human beings. um now what happens to education applied on irrational mind u which processes um information through magical thinking education becomes burdens burdensome. It burdens your mind making educated Indians worse than their uneducated counterparts. They function as rigid cogs. Cogs not understanding the meaning and value of their actions. They are micro compromises in a complex society may be untraceable but result in horrible outcomes. I worry about what why those max 787 fell from the skies and why forest fires are so many these days. I wonder what happened. what what is behind it.
In economics there's a concept called middle income trap I prefer to call India's situation low income trap it will stay here and it will get worse with time now let's talk about another western concept prosperity uh prosperity has led to u not led to social peace um it hasn't become a platform for intellectual or spiritual growth in that country. Indians do not understand the concept of comforts either. So they cannot use their money for comforts. They build garish houses um only to show off to other people and to control those weaker than them. um worse the easy prosperity of recent decades which is essentially a result of western technological advancements has disincentivized the pursuit of rationality and morality so now Indians are actually becoming more irrational and more immoral more immoral because they just don't need to the causality in their minds is functioning the the other way social media serves as a platform for exchanging myth and superstitions. Today is India is more entrenched in magical thinking and superstitions than it ever was in when I was a child.
Now again another fruit of western civilization was the institutions those elevated Indians elevated to higher position become arrogant and sadistic. This behavior stems less from a desire to mask their incompetence and psychological weakness and more from a genuine belief that arrogance and sadism define power and class. Think about it. They think arrogance and being sadistic is have being classy. Additionally, it serves as a mechanism to cope with deepseated inferiority complex. I talked about u the the the constant um um brutalizing of people who are weaker who who are in weaker position and everyone is weaker at some point of time. um um the the wealth that the when Indians look at the western society and when they look at the wealth it hypnotizes them. um they fail to understand the underpinnings of that circus success because they are only interested in the facade and that's all they can under see. They when they they view the west they equate westernization with Hollywood stereotypes. Girls wearing short clothing, promiscuity, um drinking and using drugs, flaunting wealth, um and generally a hedonistic way of life. They see in their souls. They see what their souls want to them to see. In Hollywood, India see a reflection of their pre-colonial, pre Victorian moral hedonic culture.
So here is u where I conclude my talk and this is the whole narrative was to come to this conclusion. um and the the basic issue with understanding the Indian mind is that it is irrational and immoral and it does not hold any of the western values like honor, loyalty, dear to itself. They don't understand the concept of truth. They view the universe as as arbitrary and engage in magical thinking. They cannot think beyond. Now this is where animalistic instincts operate. When you don't have a civilizational values, animalistic instincts operate. They cannot think beyond sex and money. Uh but this should be expected and this is why I think there's a problem with why things cannot change. This is what happens with a society with an IQ of 77. Low IQ people cannot hold any values in their psyche. Driven by animalistic instincts and expediency, they rationalize everything to serve their materialistic and self-serving purposes. Every western value given to them has been caric caricaturized and corrupted to these ends which is materialism. uh they have no interest in honor, faith, spirituality, loyalty, truth or truth or um or any of the western values. They have no ten commandments. Western people think that ten commandments just exist in nature. They don't. Civilization does not exist in nature. They are so unaware of these values that they remain oblivious about these values even if they are forc even if these values are forcefully presented to them and there's nothing you can do about this except to understand how immigration from India and the rest of the third world will impact the west ladies and gentlemen thank you very much.
A subversive and brutally candid insider's report. In this speech, Giant Bandari completely tears apart the rosy picture of India often portrayed in the Western world. Let's quickly review a few of his most shocking arguments.
A cancerous culture. He argues that Indian society is built on might is right and pervasive distrust. That its foundational culture has become cancerous and has perverted and corrupted all the fruits of Western civilization such as its institutions and education.
Alien values. He asserts that fairness, justice, trust, honor, and even truth itself are Western concepts completely alien to the Indian way of thinking. He believes India is a fundamentally irrational and immoral society.
A pessimistic future. He delivers his most stunning conclusion that prosperity and education cannot save India and will only make it worse. He even suggests that when India falls apart and a Taliban-like system rises from the ashes, it will be an improvement.
Bandari's diagnosis stands in the sharpest possible contrast to the rise of India narrative we hear in the mainstream media today. Is his view a profound insight or an extreme prejudice? This speech leaves us with several unavoidable questions.
First, to what extent does a culture's underlying logic decisively shape the outcome of its modernization process? Second, when faced with harsh criticism from an insider like Bandari, should we dismiss it as an individual case or should we begin to reexamine the optimistic image the outside world has of that country? Third, if even a part of Bandari's diagnosis is true, how should other nations adjust their expectations and strategies towards India?
We are eager to hear your thoughts in the comments below. If you believe this brutal report from an insider has provided a valuable perspective for thinking about India and our world, please like, share and subscribe to our channel. Thank you for watching. Thank you.