Where did those riches go?

In response to a blog complaining about India posted by an Indian:

I am sure we can make a blog and crib about New York's back alleys as well, rubbish and smells are the same everywhere. There are poor homeless people in San Francisco and many are scared to walk the streets at night. The parks at night are an absolute no-no.

India has a lot of beautiful places that could be the best in the world, someone should make a blog about those places and post it here.

Have you seen the valleys of Kashmir? The snows of the Himalayas in Darjeeling? The lush coastal region of Kerala, that Marco Polo once called the richest country in the world hundreds of years ago? (Where did those riches go?)

And have you studied your own Indian scriptures, your own culture in detail, and realized the height of moral culture to which Indian civilization had attained? Where Kings were so righteous than wrong-doers confessed of their own before the King, and where the farmer was considered to be in such a noble profession where he was always protected, even by warring armies?

This is the land where Emperor Ashoka reigned, and made the first  animal hospitals in the world - the Emperor that HG Wells called the greatest King in the world. This is the land of the Mughal emperors, that the English were awed of as the greatest kingdom on the earth at that time, much before the British Empire. They called Akbar "the Great Mughal". They said that India was the "Treasury of the world". (Where did those riches go, but to the West?)

The land of riches and gold, where the Greek philisopher Megathesenes said 2400 years ago that the people strived to excel each other in noble works of righteousness, and where there were no serious crimes among the people.

Fellow Indians, be proud of your India rather than attacking it just because you are living elsewhere. Everyone else is proud of their home land. India has a lot of good points, and all countries have their problem points, Things will slowly get better and better in India, e-commerce will create transparency and reduce corruption, but constructive action is needed - not blogs showing the bad things.

The Lay of the Last Minstrel (excerpt)

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

Breathes there the man with soul so dead

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,

As home his footsteps he hath turned

From wandering on a foreign strand!

If such there breathe, go, mark him well;

For him no minstrel raptures swell;

High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonored, and unsung