Ok, the title may be click-baitish, but this is not a rhetorical question. It is a real question, in the sense that I am enquiring, when and by whom did India start being called a 'superpower'. The use of this word in the Indian context generates a range of emotions - ridicule, sarcasm, surprise, pride and bravado.
In my entire existence I have never interacted with an Indian (face to face) who has said that we are a superpower. Online Indians are a different category and I believe they feel compelled to defend a narrative that has been strung around their neck. Back in my teens and early 20s, only the US and Soviet Union were considered superpowers. Somewhere in the early 2000s, international publications and think tanks started using this word for China and India by adding the prefix 'emerging' to it.
Initially for me, the image of a super power was purely based on military aspects. I would imagine huge ballistic missiles, bombers, destroyers and heavily armed soldiers when I thought of super power. Therefore even when the Soviet Union collapsed, I considered Russia to be a super power. When I started reading in magazines that India is an emerging super power, I thought they were being very generous and even patronizing, a typical exoticization of the poor. Nothing around me in the real world suggested that we are remotely close to being a super power even in the next 40 years. Even right wing Hindus were not peddling this narrative.
Meanwhile a collection of entities - credit rating agencies, investment advisory firms, business consultants, writers and media houses started focusing their attention to the east, and this word acquired common usage. Some Indians started believing this hype but were outwardly more realistic and continued to be critical of the slow pace of reforms and decision making. It was when social media became a monster that this delusion started compounding, both organically and by design. Super power became a casual, all-encompassing word, just like 'awesome' and 'amazing' are used to describe pretty much everything.
Even Indian politicians do not use the word super power for India. It may be uttered in their presence, for example when a gora chief guest at a conference after being garlanded and lighting diyas will describe India as a super power in his/her inaugural address, and some neta will clap and acknowledge the compliment. People living in the rural areas, who constitute about two-thirds of the population aren't even aware of the concept, let alone understand the word. Now you will say that it is not people in the rural areas who construct narratives. This is true and precisely my point.
Super power is not a technical or official word, like say, credit rating. It does not automatically attract investment or scare your neighbours into submission. The reality is what it is. Business people are aware of it, so are politicians. So why are so many Indians claiming they are a super power? Or are they? Or is it just a bait being thrown at them to draw them into a fight?
Non-Indians on the forum will be surprised that the average person in India does not care for the super power tag even remotely. There is perhaps some truth in the argument that there is an over compensation for the years of underestimation that Indians have been prone to about themselves, and with some people this manifests in an unrealistic way. Right wing Hindus will say that this underestimation was a deliberate strategy by the Congress to nurture a 'maai-baap' culture and they are only doing a recalibration. The problem is that for some people this recalibration has no limits and has become an escapist fantasy.
For manipulators this works well, because by declaring India as a super power, they have created a 'single window clearance' for all thorny issues. Did we win in Galwan? Of course we did. Why? Superpower. Will Americans come begging to us? Yes they will. Why? Superpower. Did we mismanage Covid crisis? Absolutely not. Why? Superpower. Can we ever make mistakes? You got to be kidding me. Why? Superpower.
To be fair, super power believers can be skeptics too, but it takes so much convincing and evidence to change their opinion that it is at best a lot of hard work, and at worst, not worth it. There are many sitting on the fence types who will turn believers if poked by an outsider and go back to the fence after the skirmish is over. It is also important to realise that people who are on social media regularly are a small minority of the total population, and among them, those who engage with strangers actively in a troll fest are still smaller. One needs to have a sense of proportion of what they are dealing with when they encounter such people.
Personally, I am neither a blind critic nor a bhakt. I am proud of my country and people on many accounts, and not on some. One thing I can say unambiguously is that we have underperformed by a huge margin historically and continue to do so. Some Indians advocate patience on the grounds that 70 years of rot cannot be undone in 5 years. People who advocate this line of thinking are only destined to be disappointed because they believe that government is the solution to everything.
what a moron, lying cheating honorless Indians, culture supa powa?
