Being Indian

Being Indian, Pavan K Varma, New Delhi, Penguin Books, 2004.

Preface

…To every generalization there is a notable exception.  For every similarity there is a significant difference….—p. i

…truth is not universal and could have notable exceptions….—p.i

Chapter One. Introduction: Image versus Reality.

…British scholarship was good on specifics, such as the description of flora and fauna, and the writing of gazetteers.  But specifics were often effortlessly stretched into less researched generalities.  The German Sanskritist F. max Muller, who spent a lifetime studying Hindu philosophy, argued with great passion that Indians were also very honest.—p.2

… [for the tourist] The tout who cheats them is proof of the essential corruption of underdeveloped economies.  The filth and poverty is nauseating but is hazily attributed to the timeless other-worldliness of spiritual India….—p.3

…Over the years the Indian leadership, and the educated Indian, have deliberately projected and embellished an image about Indians that they know to be untrue, and have willfully encouraged the well-meaning but credulous foreign observe (and even more the foreign scholar) to accept it.  What is worse, they have fallen in love with this image, and can no longer accept that it is untrue.

            The image has been created by a quantum leap of logic, an ideological sleight of hand that derives an untenable ought from an undeniable is….—p.4

…Partition had severely bruised the hope of communal harmony. The unity of the country could not be taken for granted.  In such situations all nations indulge in a bit of myth-making to bind their people together, and India’s need was, if anything, greater than most.  But what was expedient for a fledgling polity soon became the conscious—and enduring—deceit of an entire nation….—p.5

            The first requirement of any attempt at reappraisal is honesty….—p.6

…Indians are extraordinarily sensitive to the calculus of power.  They consider the pursuit of power a legitimate end in itself, and display great astuteness in adjusting to, and discovering, the focus of power.  They respect the powerful, and will happily cooperate or collude with them for personal gain.  In the game of power they take to factionalism and intrigue like a fish takes to water.  Those who renounce the lure of power are worshipped, not because their example is capable of emulation, but in sheer awe of their ability to transcend the irresistible.—p.7

…Indians are exceptionally hierarchical in outlook, bending more than required before those who are perceived to be ‘superior’, and dismissive or contemptuous of those accepted as ‘inferior’.  Understandably, notions of self-esteem and personal image, in conformity with perceived ‘status’, are of great consequence to them.  They are not democratic by instinct or temperament….—p. 7

…Democracy has survived and flourished in India because it was very quickly seen to be one of the most effective systems for upward mobility, and for the acquisition of personal power and wealth.—p.7

… Their [Indian’s] spiritualism, although lofty in its metaphysics, is in religious practice mostly a means to harness divine support for power and pelf…. Most Indians are ‘other-worldly’ only in their indifference to anything in the external milieu that is not of direct benefit to their immediate and personal world.—p.7

…There is no notion of ultimate sin in Hinduism.  Any action is justified in certain contexts, and gods are routinely bribed.  Corruption has grown endemically because it is not really considered wrong, so long as it yields the desired result.  If discovered, it provokes great moral outrage, in inverse proportion to the degree to which it is accepted.  The concept of morality, and of high-minded principle, is dear to Indians as a theoretical construct, but largely ignored in real life as impractical.—p.8

            ‘Modernity’, in the Nehruvian or Western sense of being able to react to issues ‘rationally’, without prejudice or subjectivity, is a professed goal for many educated Indians, but in reality only a garb to hide the continued hold of tradition; and modernity and tradition continue to coexist within them in ways which are truly unique….—p.8

..Hindus are not so much non-violent as they are practical in understanding the limits of violence.  They are willing to eschew violence for the more important goal of ensuring survival. They are hesitant to be violent against a superior force, preferring insular coexistence to suicidal annihilation.  Their historical ‘tolerance’ of other religions, especially those backed by superior military strength, is understandable in this context….—p.8

…In general, Indians are opposed to violence if it creates a degree of instability or disorder that threatens the social system.  However, in a controlled milieu, such as the enforcement of caste hierarchy or purity, when violence has social sanction or is backed by numerical strength, they can be as violent as any other race.—p.8

..Every rule has exceptions.  The human personality allows for infinite nuances, and character can always have specific variations….—p.8

…nations are not good or bad, or strong or weak, (p.8)  in accordance with some absolute moral yardstick….—pp.8-9

…The intrinsic attraction of a quick ticket to personal power gave an increasing number of influential Indians (and their camp followers) the incentive to participate in the democratic process….—p.9

            A second development is the slow but perceptible erosion of social hierarchies, earlier considered sacrosanct.  Indians continue to be very hierarchy conscious, and the influence of caste loyalties is still pervasive, but the quiescent downtrodden, at the lowest end of the social spectrum, are restive as never before….—p.10

…The right educational degree, like a career in politics, is now recognized as a passport to fast-track upward mobility…. Software exports from India are being compared to what oil exports have meant to the Arab world… Will the innovative example of the new Indian millionaires in Silicon Valley be replicated?  Or will most Indians be happy to remain software coolies?….—pp.11

…The ability of nations to create social and economic prosperity will depend, he [Fukuyama ]argues, on their culture.  Culture is ‘inherited ethical habit’, a compound of images, habits, and social opinions that are arational, and ‘incapable of being systematized into universal laws’ [Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, New York: Free Press, 1995, p. 33-34]—p.12

… Huntington argued that culture and cultural identity is what most people give real importance to.  In the post-Cold War world, he asserts, the most important distinctions among peoples are cultural, and not political, economic or ideological; and ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs and institutions are the attributes by which people define themselves. [Samuel P. Untington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996, p.22]… Attacking the ‘universalist pretensions’ of the West, he warns of an impending clash with other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China, that could pose a grave threat to world peace.—pp.13

…Is there a reason why both Fukuyama and Huntington, in arguing theses that purport to encompass the globe, omitted India from their research?  Perhaps Indians are a sui generic people.  They cannot be colour-coded for convenience into white, black or yellow.  They do not belong to the Christian world.  They cannot be included in the Islamic.  Hindus, who constitute the overwhelming majority in India, live (in such large numbers) only in India and the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal.  They cannot easily fit into a mould.  They are too many to be ignored, but somehow too different to be included in convenient generalizations.  Moreover, for all their complexity, they are not entirely unfamiliar.  They practice parliamentary democracy, and their elite can often speak very good English.—p.13

…Policies based on false assumptions about the character and traits of a people are likely to be subverted in practice, and will fail to achieve desired national goals.  A basic mistake by policy makers in India was to assume an underlying idealism in the people, a commitment to some larger ‘public good’.  Lawmakers sought to construct, and act upon, a transcendent set of desired goals, without focusing on the intricate web of narrow personal interests that actually motivate Indian society.  The result is one of the world’s largest corpuses of high-minded laws, and one of the poorest records of implementation.  On the other hand, a more honest self-estimation would have directed policy making to laws that rewarded ingenuity rather than equity, resourcefulness rather than compassion, profit rather than welfare, and the private rather than the public sector….—p.15

…Given the essential nature of Indians, only an increase in the size of the pie can hope to benefit the millions who are poor.—p.15

… A portrait of a people cannot be drawn only through theoretical paradigms.  Individuals are complex, and cultures far too deep, to submit to a dry hypothesis without illuminating surmise with example, inference with anecdote, and deduction with personal experience….—p.16

Chapter Two

POWER, The Unexpected Triumph of Democracy.

            In the Indian tradition the powerful are not expected to be reticent or modest in the projection of their power….—p.18

…Colonized elites all over the world emulate the pomp and ceremony of their oppressors, once rid of them….—p.18

…Even those who believed in him [Gandhiji] could hardly be expected to be as austere, or as utopian, or as self-denying as him.  But, considering the massive following he commanded, why were his values betrayed so easily and almost immediately?—p.18

…Power, in the Indian way of thinking, was a legitimate pursuit, and the powerful were entitled to display their success.  Those who wielded power were nothing if they could not convey to others the visible symbols of their acquisition…..—p.19

…Ideologies take root in the psyche of a people through the prism of their own tradition and hereditary way of life….—p.19

…Colonized societies were particularly vulnerable to swallowing the idealized prescriptions given to them ‘for their own god’ by their former rulers….—p.19

…Distortions occur when an idea is exalted as a universal goal, without an accurate appreciation of the milieu in which it is to grow and mature.—p.20

…The caste system began several thousand years ago as a functional categorization, but over the years it degenerated to become one of the most inflexible and institutionalized tyrannies of any society….—p.21

…The structure of hierarchies may be changing, but ‘for an Indian, superior and subordinate relationships have the character of eternal verity and moral imperative—(and the) automatic reverence for superiors is a nearly universal psycho-social fact’. [Sudhir Kakar, The Indian Psyche: The Inner World; Shamans, Mystics and Doctors; Tales of Love, Sex and Danger, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 138].—p.21

…Under the caste system transgression was impermissible.  Old rigidities are blurring today, but the preoccupation with the notion of hierarchy very much persists, and in some respects has become even more frenetic. In the past, status was prescriptive, a consequence of one’s birth.  Today it can be acquired by other means, including greater avenues of upward mobility.  This has not made people more egalitarian in their outlook.  On the contrary, the new uncertainties—and opportunities—have heightened sensitivities about who stands where in the pecking order, and only accentuated the obsession with status and power….—p.21

            Societies reveal how they actually think and behave in the smallest things.  Behavioural patterns have to be discovered not in the considered stance before an observer, but in the insignificant reflex preceding or following it…..—p.22

…First, he [Krishna] admitted that he had resorted to unfair means.  The Kauravas, who were warriors of great prowess, could not have been killed by fair means.  Deception, Krishna argued, is acceptable when the enemy is stronger.  ‘The gods themselves are not above it; we have only followed their example’, he said.  The Kauravas symbolized adharma.  They had to be defeated.  In such a situation, the end justifies the means….—p.28

…There is no binding or universal code of conduct in Hinduism that gives unequivocal primacy to the moral dimensions of power.  ‘India has no developed indigenous ethical system—it has concentrated more on the mystical apprehension of an ultimate reality which transcends good and evil than on differentiating between good and evil acts.’ [Richard Lannoy, The Speaking Tree: A Study of Indian Culture and Society, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 12971, p. 294.]  Dharma is an undefined and ephemeral ideal, too subtle (sukshma) to be etched in stone—as Yudhishtira, the very symbol of rectitude, himself says in the Mahabharata….—p.29

…And finally, almost anything he [man] does would be justified in a situation of distress or emergency, when he would be guided by his appadharma, conduct that is right in moments of crisis.—p.29

            The essential point is that Hindu tradition has always allowed for a conveniently fractured response to the moral imperative. (p.29). There are no uncontested definitions of right and wrong.  The only consistent concern is the end result.  In the pursuit of the desired goal, morality is not so much disowned as it is pragmatically devalued.  ‘Hindu ethics has its public face—Dharma, or normative rules—and its private wisdom, or pragmatic rules, to distinguish between the principles men espouse and the tactics they adopt.’ [Prof. F.H. Bailey, cited in Lannoy, The Speaking Tree, : A Study of Indian Culture and Society, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 12971, p. 294]  The consequence is a down-to-earth relativism, a flexibility of approach, a willingness to prune absolutisms in the interests of a larger purpose….—pp.29-30

…the power of his [wazir in a folk story] position was more important than the strength of his convictions….—p.31

… most Hindus genuinely believe that irrespective of their expedient behaviour, they belong eternally, by the very nature of their being, to the moral sphere.  They see no contradiction between this vague sense of moral superiority and the obvious immorality of their actions. This explains why Indians moralize so effortlessly.  In any case, in traditional Hinduism, almost any wrong can be washed away by ritual expiation.  The Hindu gods are benevolent, infinitely forgiving, easily mollified, and eminently bribable….—p.31

…The powerful have hierarchic pre-eminence.  They have status, and can help others to retain or advance theirs.  There is no element of doubt in Kautilya’s declaration: ‘it is power and power alone which … maintains both this world and the next.’….-p.31

…Hindu culture was not, as is widely believed, benevolent towards interactions with outsiders.  It regarded all foreigners as mleccha, unclean, perennially beyond the pale….—p.32

…Why then were so many Indians willing to work with an ‘unclean’ and socially unacceptable foreign vanquisher?  The answer is quite simple.  The conquerors were more powerful….—p.32

…Of course, all colonizing powers seek to colonize the minds of their subjects.  But the degree to which the British succeeded must surely be unprecedented even among the history of the colonized.  Their success was due not so much to their own ingenuity, or their undoubted military superiority, as to the essential absence of opposition to such attempts among their subjects.  Accommodation with the power of the moment held the promise of visible benefits in the here and now….—p.33

…Chandogya Upanishad says with telling brevity: ‘Power is superior to knowledge.’—p.33

…Tulsidasa says in the Ramayana: ‘Sur nara muni sab ki yeha riti, svaratha lagi karahin sab priti: Gods, men and saints, the practice is the same, self-interest is behind their display of loyalty.’….—p.33

…In actual fact an Indian is not being deceitful or duplicitous, in his own estimation, when he believes that his loyalties must be (p.33) agile.  How can there be a betrayal when the trust was never meant to be absolute?  But, so long as the next incumbent is nowhere in sight, and the power base of the current one is beyond doubt, the practical Indian will serve with complete devotion, even servility.  The outsider sometimes errs in thinking that this dedication is personal; the Indian remains consistent in his detachment.  Nirad Chaudhuri  comments on this in analyzing the manner in which the Indian served the British.  ‘The more thoroughgoing his external and interested servility, the more complete was also his emotional disaffection … The Hindu clung desperately to his disloyalty but gave service to the foreigner.’ [The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, Delhi: Jaico Publishing House, 1976, sixth impression, p. 422]  This detachment, this ability to collude without ever being subsumed, probably explains why historically Indians were easily defeated, but never fully subjugated.  Their personal world, their culture and civilization, may have been mauled, but could not be destroyed.  With the exception of the British, who too were more influenced than they were willing to accept, it was ultimately the foreigner who was assimilated, even if the Indian willingly served him when he ruled.–pp.33-34

…A patron can pretend to be annoyed by a subordinate’s maskabazi, but the subordinate knows that it is only pretence, and knows further that the expected response is to protest that the praise is absolutely true, and will be voiced whether the patron likes it or not….—p.35

            Flattery fulfils a social need, but both the flatterer and the flattered know it for what it is.  The consistent focus is power…. This is well understood by both parties.  The bedrock of the relationship is therefore distrust.  No one can be taken at face value.  Everyone is suspect.  Benevolence can never be presumed.  Motivations must be doubted….—p.36

…Kapila Vatsyayana, who has spent a lifetime studying India’s cultural traditions, told me once in all seriousness that the only enduring emotion (sthayi bhava) among Indians is envy (irshya).  Even educated families routinely succumb to the need to ‘utaro nazar’.  A handful of chillies sprinkled with salt are waved around the victim of the ubiquitous evil eye.  The chillies are then thrown into a fire.  If the smoke does not hit the eyes or cause one to cough, it is proof, if proof were needed, of the need to ward off the evil eye.—p.36

…Altruism, the ability of an individual to act in the public good without a self-serving ulterior motive, is deeply suspect.  This ambience of distrust creates two opposed but coexisting worlds, one of deference, the other of hostility.  Deference exhibits itself when the gravitational pull of the centre of power is strong; hostility surfaces when this pull weakens; both coexist when the situation is in balance.—p.37

…Conversely, a person who falls on bad times will be deserted without much ado by those who happily fawned on him.  This is not an uncommon trait in other societies as well, but in Indians such behaviour is vivid and extreme.  A rising star is greeted with disproportionate adulation, a fallen hero condemned with unjustified vehemence.  When I commented on this trait to an elderly gentleman, he said in a matter-of-fact way: ‘Chadhte sooraj ko sab salaam karte hain: Everyone salutes the rising sun.’….—p.37

…when the hierarchy unravels, there is unmistakable glee at the discomfiture of the fallen.  Political leaders are keenly aware of this phenomenon, which is enacted without the slightest sense of guilt or embarrassment.  The deference of the past is forgotten by an amnesia that has social sanction.  The future is immediately animated by speculation about the next focus of power. This too has social sanction….—p.37

…In India, the pendulum swings naturally to two extremes: adulation or rejection, and the journey in between is littered with factionalism, intrigue and division.—p.38

…Swami Vivekananda had once observed that ‘three Indians cannot act together for five minutes.  Each one struggles for power and in the long run the whole organization comes to grief.’  A strong centre of power can keep factions in abeyance.  But not for long….—p.38

            There is also the feeling that constant mobility in finding new relationships of support is the only antidote to isolation.  Isolation threatens Indians.  Their conditioning from birth is to belong to a group: caste, kin or extended family.  The desire to have a scaffolding of support against other groups that only have their own narrow interests at heart, predisposes Indians to view all (p.38) associations as a collection of factions with constant hostility towards each other.  Unity as a concept is valued, but as something transcendental, even remote: the cosmos is a seamless continuity, the Absolute is indivisible, mankind is an undivided fraternity (vasudhaiva kutumbakam).  Such theoretical notions attract precisely because they are so different from affairs in real life.  In real life a divisive milieu is taken for granted….—pp.8-39

…The notion of ‘objectivity’ in social interactions is quite alien to Indians.  They cannot believe that anyone can transcend the loyalties of the immediate milieu.  The approach to foreigners, who are outside the milieu, is a simultaneous oscillation: unceasing distrust, because they will always remain ‘the other’ outside the impenetrable walls of acceptance, and inexplicable trust, precisely because being outside the known milieu, they are unlikely to be influenced by it….—p.39

…Indians are very insulted if denied the esteem that they think is their due….—p.39

            The paradox is that this exaggerated notion of self-esteem can be renounced as easily as it is invoked.  A person who swears that he will never countenance an insult to his izzat will compromise it the very next day if the benefits are verifiable.  The enormous contradiction between the two stances will be apparent but, ultimately, irrelevant.  Critics who vehemently criticize the hypocrisy will privately understand the need for such pragmatism.  If the negation of self-esteem is efficacious, and delivers enhanced status and power even in the short term, the betrayal will be forgotten….—p.40

…Indians have the greatest appreciation for the manner in which rules are respected in other countries.  When British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s 16-year-old son was arrested for being drunk, educated Indians were full of admiration that Blair and his wife were present at the police station when their son was ‘cautioned’.  But this admiration sat in perfect harmony with the acceptance that a similar incident in India involving the child of a high-up would be ‘suitably’ hushed up.  Any attempt at egalitarianism or accountability flounders against an earlier and more powerful tradition that runs directly against it….—p.42

            An Indian will always seek to give expediency the garb of ideology.  His ‘self-image’ about his innate morality compels him to try and camouflage his unprincipled behaviour.  Just as an immoral world needs to conjure the protective awning of a higher moral order, ideology is used to provide an omnipresent fig leaf to the unethical pursuit of power.  No Indian will ever admit to wrongdoing for the advancement of his personal interests.  There is always a larger purpose, a bigger goal, a nobler reason, a higher justification to explain his conduct to himself, and to an audience (p.42) that sees through the charade, but would behave in exactly the same way in a similar situation.  Ideologies proliferate in the barren moral landscape of India.  Politicians spout them endlessly, people dispute them ceaselessly.  Tradition is invoked, and tradition is condemned in their support.  The legacies of leaders are interpreted and reinterpreted to justify a course of action.  Political parties are born, and reborn, on the basis of ‘ideological differences’.  Indians need to always prove to themselves, and to others, that their relationship with power is ‘honourable’.  They like to project that they seek power not for itself, but for a cause separate from themselves.  Ideology is the perennially available midwife to deliver ‘respectability’ to the jockeying for power.  Ironically, the ability to renounce power is a goal all Indians accept as laudable.  It is part of a philosophical tradition that looks to spiritual salvation beyond the finite world.  Indians will often cite this tradition to prove their ‘detachment’ from the lure of power.  They do not expect to be taken seriously, except perhaps by foreigners excessively taken up by India’s ‘spirituality’, and increasingly not even by them.  A few, like Mahatma Gandhi or to a lesser extent Jayaprakash Narain, who could actually transcend conventional nations of status and hierarchy, were promptly deified, for only ‘great souls’ could be expected to have the strength to resist the pull of power.—pp.42-43

…The end was power, and the rewards it could yield in terms of personal benefit and access to the resources of the state.  All the rest were instrumentalities, of importance only in reaching that end.—p.43

…Manifestos are carefully and elaborately drafted; political parties compete to spell out their high-minded concerns; every grouping endlessly reiterates concern for the weakest and the poorest; the supremacy of precept over power is proclaimed by all leaders.  However, in actual practice, the blatant use of money power, the incitement of sectarian prejudices, the cold-blooded calculation of caste equations, the forging of the most unprincipled alliances, and the recourse to a kind of populism that would invite criminal proceedings in any other system, are the norm.—p.44

            In India, the working of democracy has effortlessly adapted to the undemocratic social structures of the past…. In India the older tradition co-opted the younger institution.  People flocked to polling booths but voted mostly according to caste affiliations.  Numerical majorities prevailed, but candidates continued to represent segments of the established hierarchic structure….—p.45

…the Other Backward Castes—sought to convert their steadily growing economic clout into political power.  Their leaders asked for—and got—reservations in government jobs in the name of the downtrodden.  But the OBCs remained inimical to those lower down the traditional social hierarchy, the Dalits and minority tribes, earlier beneficiaries of affirmative action as part of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.  The opportunity for democratic empowerment did not obliterate the preoccupation with hierarchy, and in many ways only heightened such concerns.—p.45

            When parliamentary democracy was introduced, most Indian politicians were attracted by the rewards of the democratic process, not by the democratic idea….—p.46

…Success in democratic politics therefore ensured rapid upward mobility, and the possibility of this sudden accretion of power sent a surge of anticipation through the stagnant waters of Indian society.  The entrenched classes, especially in the countryside, saw democracy as a means to enhance status, and reinforce the existing pattern of domination and hierarchy.—p.46

…Political parties are rarely democratic internally.  The word of the leader is law.  Political dynasties proliferate, regardless of merit.  Dissent is neither encouraged nor (p.46) tolerated.  Sycophancy abounds, and has conventional sanction.  Strong leaders are venerated for the power they exude, not always for their democratic credentials….—pp.46-47

…The modern arena of politics continues to mimic the cloistered world of the ashram, where the guru is supreme and devotees are judged by their absolute surrender to his will.  Powerful political leaders routinely give darshans to their followers; and followers seek to be noticed by newer and more bizarre exhibitions of loyalty.—p.48

…The projection of authority and the display of servility are two sides of the same coin of power….—p.49

…Indian politicians do not like to be laughed at. They do not like to be profiled awkwardly.  In an unusual but understandable pact, the media rarely focuses on the personal lives of public persons.  Comments on political corruption are incessant; but reportage of personal matters, including several instances of deviant sexual behaviour, are considered to be inimical to the universally accepted code of deference to the powerful who, after all, are entitled to certain ‘privacies’ in the exercise of power.  The contrast with America is striking: in the United States, where democracy is genuinely entrenched, sexual scandals are constantly in the news; in India, where the practice of democracy still leaves much to be desired, such matters are considered akin to hitting below the belt.—p.50

…In his book, Mistaken Modernity, the sociologist Dipankar Gupta gives several instances to show how caste alliances ‘appear to emanate from secular and political factors and do not spring fully-formed from primordial loyalties… If a particular combination of castes does not deliver, or has run out of steam, a new combination is immediately formed’, he writes. ‘Alliances such as the KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Ahir, Muslim) or (AJGAR (Ahir, Jat, Gujar, and Rajput) defy the logic of the traditional caste system’.  Similarly, the ‘All India Kurmi Sabha is made up of disparate castes such as the Ayodhyas, Dhanuks, Mahatos, Kurmis, and Koeris.  These castes do not intermarry, and in many cases there would be a problem of interdining as well.’ [Mistaken Modernity: India Between Worlds, New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 2000, p. 115]  The cementing hold of power, and the ability it imparts to persevere in an insular internal world while pursuing the secular rewards that may accrue by cooperating in the external, has ample precedents in the pre-republican period too.  Gupta cites one such, the Oudh peasant movement of the 1920s. In that struggle, ‘the Kurmis, Ahirs, Pasis, Brahmins and Muslims came together against landlordism, but throughout their struggle, they ate in separate kitchens’. [Ibid. p. 118].—p.51

… [In India] The democratic experiment did not collapse prematurely—as happened in most other former colonies—because of a unique process of adjustment: the opposed traditions quickly carved out a complementary playing field, where neither could prevail fully, but both could survive.—p.52

…Educated Indians behave in exactly the same way in the pursuit of power as their poor or illiterate compatriots, with one important difference: among the educated there is a great expression of moral outrage….—p.53

…Little will be achieved in merely bemoaning the symptoms of the crisis if the underlying reality is not analysed, accepted and then dealt with.  In a country where resources are scarce, and opportunities for upward mobility are limited, political power opens the gates to both.  The resources of the state, which is the single largest source of patronage, are very highly prized.  Success in politics holds the most effective key to such resources.  Politicians vie for them; people aspire to them.  In this happy condominium, traditional attitudes towards power, status and hierarchy have only been reinforced in the functioning of the world’s largest democracy.—p.54

            The truth then is that democracy has survived in India not because Indians are democratic, but because  democracy has proved to be the most effective instrument for the cherished pursuit of power.  A people stifling in the pressure cooker of a hierarchically sealed society embraced the machinery of democratic politics for the promise it held of upward mobility within the inherited framework of an undemocratic society.  The hierarchical frame of mind did not give way to a new egalitarianism; democracy was attractive for its unprecedented ability to provide legitimacy to hierarchies, both old and new. No other institution could provide such a nationwide canvas for the interplay of existing notions of power, status and hierarchy.  Democracy did not adopt India.  Indians usurped democracy (p.54) because it could be moulded to fit earlier structures without threatening them.  It caught the popular imagination not for the new values it symbolized, but for the possibilities it opened up for the consolidation of the old.  The miracle of India is that the practice of democracy has flourished within its boundaries for over five decades in the absence of a democratic temperament.—pp.54-55

…The real triumph of Indian democracy is not that it has succeeded in bringing about a qualitative change in such [‘crisis of’] values, but that it has effected a shift in power towards hitherto excluded constituencies, thereby creating new vested interests in the (p.56) continuation of the institution….—pp.56-57

…Indians do not like the disorder—and unpredictability—of system-less situations.  They are past masters in the art of compromise, in stepping back from the precipice, in forging a modus vivendi that obviates the need to choose between extremes, and in finding solutions that accommodate conflicting interests.  Such an approach has the sanction of classical notions of statecraft. For instance, according to the Digvijaya theory of the Ramayana, ‘vanquished kings were reinstated in their kingdoms as a matter of principle’….–.57

…Democracy can take root not because of the intrinsic strength of the ideas it represents, but because of certain ‘strengths’ in the character and way of thinking of the people in whom it is being transplanted.  Such ‘strengths’ need not be congruent with the democratic idea.  But however antithetical they are, they should, in the crucial early years, be tolerant or supportive of the working of the democratic machinery. This gives time to the democratic idea to take root, and demonstrate its advantages, especially to the weakest sections of the people.  Indians provided this critical gestation period, not because they were democratic by temperament, as they would like the world to believe, but because their centuries-old undemocratic instincts were strong enough not to view the new implant as a fatal intrusion.  In societies where indigenous traditions are not so strong, democracy can be summarily rejected as an unacceptably strong threat. The paradox is that there co9uld be greater chances of democracy failing in societies where civilizational opposition to it is weak, out of fear that it could completely destroy existing structures and hierarchies.  In India, with its complex and ancient culture, and entrenched ways of thinking and behaving, democracy did not provoke so many antibodies.  The transplant grew stronger, (p.58) almost by default; it followed no conventional patterns; in some respects it shriveled even as it grew stronger.  The most important thing is that it grew in conformity with the ethos of the people, their values and their social structures…. By not dying prematurely, it began, ever so gradually, to change the texture of the soil in which it was implanted…. Democracy in India has finally found a lasting home because of what the Indian people are, and not because of what they should have been, or presume themselves to be.—pp.58-59

Chapter three

…Indians have deliberately promoted an other-worldly image.  They quite enjoy being seen as perched above the gross pursuits of the materialistic world.  The image is a myth.  Indians have always had a down-to-earth relish for the materialistic world.  Far from being disdainful of the temptations of money and wealth, they have consistently given value to these goals. Given the right opportunity they can emerge as among the most resilient and focused commercial operators of the new millennium.—p.61

…Contrary to the notion that Indians are “spiritual”, they are really “material minded”. They are materialsists….’ [A.K. Ramanujan, The Collected Essays of A.k. Ramanujan, general editor, Vinay Dharwadker, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999, p.46]…-p.61

…This concept of the Ultimate is however a theoretical construct, valid (p.61) at the level of hypothesis, but spectacularly ignored in practice.  For instance, Hindu metaphysics may postulate that the Absolute is attributeless, but Hindus, without questioning the loftiness of such a concept, have proceeded to extravagantly humanize their gods.  They rejoice at their births, laugh at their childhood pranks, follow their dalliances, celebrate their marriages, participate in their enmities, and worship their progeny.—pp.61-62

..The traditional Hindu concept of heaven is very ‘this-worldly’, replete with houris and the comforts and embellishments money can buy.  Rituals prescribe that the physical needs of even the gods must be looked after through periodic oblations.  Hindu gods are not ascetics, shying away from the mundane pursuits of this world.  Almost universally they are physically appealing, and enthusiastic participants in the affairs of mortals….—p.62

…Ganesha’s appeal transcends sectarian divisions.  He is worshipped not only by all sections of Hindus, but also by Buddhists and Jains….—p.64

…In fact, the texts specifically state that if a person pursues Dharma, Artha and Kama in a harmonious manner, giving each its due, and not excluding any, Moksha could be a natural consequence.

            In such a holistic approach, a person who neglects Artha would be in transgression of the ideal code of conduct.  Hinduism gives materialism philosophically validity, not by inference but by specific inclusion.  Indeed, Hinduism must be the only religion that expressly includes the fulfillment of physical desires, and the pursuit of prosperity, among the supreme aims of life….—p.65

… ‘without artha, dharma cannot be practiced, nor karma obtained, without which sons cannot be born to worship gods and ancestors, and thus moksha itself is in jeopardy.’ [J.Duncan M. Derett, ‘Social and Political Thought and Institutions’, in A Cultural History of India, edited by A.L.Basham, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997, second impression 1998, p. 139].  Material well-being was never seen as an obstacle to moksha; on the contrary, only a person with a livelihood could be expected to properly devote himself to the pursuit of salvation.—p.66

… ‘dhanam arjaya kakuthstha dhanamulam idam jagat, antaran nabhijamn nirdhanasya mrtasya ca:  Acquire wealth.  The world has for its roots wealth.  There is no difference between a poor man and a dead one.’-Ramayana.—p.67

…It is interesting that although usury was common, moneylending ‘did not incur the reprobation of Hidnu moralists, as it did that of medieval Christianity and Islam’. [A.L. Basham, The Wonder that was India: A Survey of the Culture of the Indian Sub-continent before the Coming of the Muslims, New Delhi: Fontana Books in association with Rupa & Co., 1971, p. 223].—p.67

…Undoubtedly, the essential Indian acceptance of hierarchy and inequity has worked against the fullest expression of entrepreneurial talent….—p.70

…It is estimated that ten million men and women work as street hawkers and vendors, (p.74) and more than sixty million people are directly dependent on this trade.  The organized sector of the economy—private, public and corporate—employs only 3 per cent of the workforce.  The overwhelming majority—almost nine out of ten people—are self-employed, squeezing out an income in conditions of work that can hardly be imagined by a businessman in the developed world.  In Europe, 90 per cent of the people work in the formal sector; they are productive in controlled environments where the predictability quotient is high and the safety net visible.  By contrast, the ‘footpath businessmen’ of India work on a razor’s edge: everyday is a new challenge, and almost no coordinate can be taken for granted.  In spite of this, almost 60 per cent of India’s gross savings comes from the unorganized sector.  Business is, indeed, the livelihood of a great many of the poor.—p.75

            There are roughly 2.5 million small-scale units in India. It has been estimated that cumulatively they pay something like a billion dollars a year in bribes.  The extortion is an inconvenience, but there is no startling moral issue involved in the transaction….—p.76

…Businessmen survive because they are concerned with the final result, not the morality of the means.  Predators proliferate because they know this.  In fact, those who take graft and those who pay it are both entrepreneurs, bound by the same principle that nothing should distract from the opportunity to make money.—p.76

            Corruption is, of course, not unique to India.  What is unique is its acceptance, and the ‘creative’ ways in which it is sustained…. Indians …. Understanding of right and wrongs is far more related to efficacy than to absolutist notions of morality.  An act is right if it yields the desired end; it is wrong if it does not.  To pay ‘chai pani’ costs to an official flunkey is right if it smoothens the way to the desired goal.  The payment of baksheesh is a matter of the right investment, not morality.  No invocation to Lakshmi emphasizes the importance of making money only by conventionally legitimate ways.  The goddess stands for wealth and prosperity; she is worshipped for these, not for her sermons….—p.76

…For all the condemnation that corruption publicly 0provokes, Indians are ambivalent about the practice.  They consider it bad if they have to bribe when they don’t want to; they consider it good if a bribe gets them what they want.  In this sense, corruption is like litmus paper: it takes the colour of the specific experience.  The immorality associated with it is subsumed by an ingrained inclination to be worldly-wise.  The world is not inherently fair; it does not guarantee a level playing field.  In such a situation, success is the consequence of a well-understood transaction: give to the world what is unavoidable, in order to get from it what you want; and take from it what it can give, in order to obtain for yourself what you desire.

            For this reason, business in India has rarely been hostage to morality….—p.77

…Indian charted accounts are in demand worldwide for their ability to suitably ‘mould’ balance sheets.  More than half of the top 1,500 companies in India pay no taxes.  The over-invoicing of imports and the under-invoicing of exports is normal practice for many…..—p.77

…Undoubtedly, a bloated bureaucracy and archaic rules and regulations encourage corruption. But these cannot explain why more and more (p.77) instances are being reported of parents happily conspiring with their children to buy a leaked question paper for a school exam…. In a recently revealed scam, the Chairman of the Public Service Commission of the state of Punjab is alleged to have pocketed as much as Rs 25 crores to recruit as many as 3,500 doctors, engineers, police officers, teachers and revenue officials, totally unqualified for their jobs.  Anything and everything is for sale….—pp.77-78

…In Lucknow upper-caste Brahmins and Thakurs queue up to buy false Other Backward Caste and Scheduled Caste certificates in order to avail of affirmative action to which they are not entitled.—p.78

…Educated middle class citizens steal 50 per cent of the electricity in Delhi…. Doctoral theses are available for sale on a website, and academicians with influence can ‘arrange’ for the theses of their favourite students to be sent only to the right examiners.  In the holy city of Hardwar on the banks of the river Ganga, the mahants who head the religious ashrams are linked to the local land mafia, and involved in land-grab activities….—p.78

…Spectacular malfeasance, especially in politics, always provokes a great deal of moral outrage, and there has been no dearth of scams of this kind to keep indignation simmering.  But in the daily business of life, Indians are willing to live with an ethical deficit quite easily.  Their priority is survival, not salvation..

            Survival is the imperative of the present; salvation the promise of the future, desirable, but negotiable once survival is ensured….—p.79

            If this Indian attitude—this irrepressible energy to somehow get ahead, to survive in the most difficult circumstances, to be clear about personal objectives, and to work for a desired end irrespective of the means—nurtures corruption, it is also the nursery of resourcefulness and enterprise….—p.80

…Indeed, for every example of corruption, there are countless others that illustrate a far more important truth: Indians are simply better at pursuing material gain than pondering moral deficits.—p.81

…The lethargy and laziness of which the British accused the natives was a colonial myth perpetuated by the British….—p.81

…The philosophy of socialism, which sought to curb private initiative for the ostensible purpose of a larger public good, was clearly not in sync with the Indian psyche.  The discordance had nothing to do with the intrinsic merits or demerits of the doctrine, or the objective reasons for its application in a country with the largest numbers of the absolutely poor in the world.  The truth is that Indians have an inherent suspicion of collective altruism, and are not willing to dilute their exuberant commitment to personal profit, even if the larger public good dictates otherwise.  Any system ignoring these inherent biases was bound to fail.  Vested interests used the infrastructure of socialism for personal gain.  Politicians fattened on its lack of transparency.  Bureaucrats reveled in the power—and money—it yielded.  Businessmen learnt quickly to work it to their advantage.  The poor occasionally benefited, and were grateful for the crumbs rhetoric could deliver.  But nobody really believed that socialism could work in India—least of all some of its most vocal votaries.—p.86

            Of course, socialism had failed in other countries too.  But in India, where half the population in 1947 lived below the poverty line, the need for a policy that legitimized the intervention of the state in favour of the poor seemed to be self-evident.  Jawaharlal Nehru was convinced of the moral imperative to orient policy for the benefit of the downtrodden.  His socialism was the counterpart of Mahatma Gandhi’s strong emotional identification with the poor.  The idealism of these founding fathers was genuine.  But whereas Nehru believed socialism was the answer, Gandhiji did not.  He was born a bania, ‘conditioned (p.86) by birth to follow the ethic of the Porbandar bazaar-entrepreneur’. [Richard Lannoy, The Speaking Tree: A Study of Indian Culture and Society, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1971, p. 395]]  He did not hold capitalists in disdain, as the patrician Nehru was wont to do, even though the Congress Party was running on the ‘donations’ of such capitalists in Nehru’s own lifetime.  Gandhi felt deeply for the poor, but never questioned the raison d’eter of the rich.  He was aware of their utility, and understanding of their motivations.  His mistake was to try and motivate them to voluntarily forsake some of their wealth for the poor.  This they would never do, and as a man of the masses Gandhi should have known that, were he not blinded by the intensity of his own idealism.  It is ironical—but entirely in keeping with the Indian reality—that the messiah of the poorest of the poor died in the Delhi home of the Birlas, one of the richest business families in India.  This did not dilute his identification with the poor, but it recognized the legitimacy of wealth in the land of the poor, and reflected the instincts of the people far more accurately than the idealistic socialist vision of Nehru.

            Indians could never understand the personal austerity of Gandhi.  They respected him for it, but more as a person from earth may look up to the powers of someone from another planet.  As we have discussed earlier, Indians revel in the fruits of the material world.  Notwithstanding the pervasive poverty, their tradition is to welcome material gratification, not denigrate it.  Gandhi’s imperviousness to the temptations of the material world left them awed, but unconverted.  They admired his ability to restrict his wants, but were not prepared to emulate him.  His ashrams were a place of curiosity, not of inspiration.  He was revered because he could renounce the lure of power and pelf, something Indians did not expect anyone to do.  He was looked up to as a Mahatma because in his denial and sacrifice he was so different, so unlike everyone else.  Even conventional saints, the sadhus and babs who proliferate in India, are porous to earthly munificence.  I once accompanied the President of India to Puttaparthi, the seat of Sathya Sai Baba, who has one of the largest followings in India.  The swanky red Mercedes used by (p.87) the saint dwarfed the presidential limousine.  Most Indians do not consider such a display to be wrong or antithetical to spirituality.  Gandhiji did, and did so inflexibly, which is why his brand of self-denial failed so dramatically.  No sooner did he die, and even during his lifetime, than his followers betrayed his Spartan code of living.  They wore the homespun khadi that he wore, and paid copious amounts of lip service to his ideals, but took to the opportunities of the good life effortlessly.

            Mahatma Gandhi’s triumph was the independence of India.  His failure was the subsequent rejection of Gandhism. The personal austerity that Gandhi propagated found very few takers, for the same reason that socialism found very few believers.  Both went against the grain of the way Indians are.  Nehru’s personal faith in socialism spawned a vast and unproductive hypocrisy.  During his years as prime minister (1947-64), and for more than two decades after that, socialism became an article of faith to be breached in practice and praised in theory….—pp.87-88

            In discussing the impact of 1991 [economic liberalization], we have to be very careful not to confuse an ‘ought’ with an ‘is’.  Given the number of the poor in India, state policy ought to have retained its bias for the (p.89) poor, and effectively implemented policies that attacked poverty and curbed the conspicuous consumption of the rich.  But such an ought ran squarely against the entrenched Indian is, the proclivity to pursue personal well-being with little thought of any other social priority.  The options, in terms of policy formulation, were thus very narrow.  Socialism, or even a widely spread out welfare state, was doomed to failure.  And only that kind of capitalism could succeed that was socially insensitive.  An active concern for the deprived and the suffering is not a prominent feature of the Indian personality.

            The rich in India have always lived a life quite uncaring of the ocean of poverty around them….—pp.89-90

…Though identified with a larger social grouping—kin, caste or community—Indians are generally incredibly self-obsessed, wrapped up in their personal world of loss and gain to the exclusion of anything else.  It is accepted that people are born to their own destiny, and suffer or prosper in accordance with their previous karmas.  Life is a continuing saga, and the possibility of redemption from want and hunger that the poor seek can await a next birth, with no need for human intervention.  Hierarchy is an integral feature of society, with near divine sanction.  Those below are ordained to be deprived, and those at the top are entitled to what they have.  If the opportunity arises to break out of a preordained slot, it must be seized against the opposition of others, through individual effort, and for personal gain, not that of the (p.90) community….—pp.90-91

…While he [Dhirubhai Ambani] was in Aden, Yemeni officials found that the country’s currency, the silver rial, was becoming scarce in the market.  They soon discovered that Ambani was melting the silver coins and selling them as ingots to bullion dealers in London.  When reminded of this much later in life, Ambani said with disarming sincerity: ‘I don’t believe in not taking opportunities.’…. (p.94)

            …Dhirubhai Ambani was a successful entrepreneur, not a moralist.  He played the licence-raj to his benefit, and cultivated political patronage to milk the command economy.  This aspect of his meteoric rise was known to people, and commented upon, but Indians respect him nevertheless for the unprecedented wealth he created and the returns he guaranteed to the ordinary investor.  The rough and tumble of Dhirubhai’s life, its fantastic success and its canny pragmatism, its carpet-bagging odour and its smell of the bazzar, is a metaphor for the aspirations of the Indian entrepreneur.  It is the ability to pursue opportunity and profit, that he so flamboyantly exhibited, which have yielded dividends in the challenging economic milieu of India, and created wealth in shores far beyond….—p.95

            If Indians really are such pragmatic materialists, what is the role of spirituality in their lives?  In answering this question the first thing to understand is that in India affirmation of one attribute never fully denies another.  This is not a country of simple blacks and whites.  Its reality cannot be comprehended by a mechanical yes or no.  Shades of grey streak the most vivid contrasts. It would be wrong therefore to infer that since Indians are material minded they are not spiritual at all.  Religion plays an important role in their lives and, according to the latest survey by the Census of India, there are 2.4 million places of worship in the country, as against only 1.5 million schools and half that number of hospitals.  What is important, however, is to understand how the spiritual tradition impacts on the personality of the people, what strengths it gives them, what weaknesses it fosters, and how it is sustained in parallel with the resilient materialism we have portrayed.—p.96

            Hinduism has no organized church, no one god, no paramount religious text, no codified moral laws and no single manual of prescribed ritual.  The predominant emphasis is on personal salvation, a journey in which the individual is essentially alone with his karma and his god.  The absence of one universally-followed form of religious worship does not,…. (p.96) necessarily contribute to a liberal temperament.  But it does create a peculiar mood of hope in which the individual never ceases to believe that, as a consequence of his personal and private compact with the Almighty, his destiny could one day change….—pp.96-97

…A sense that, out of the blue, a personal god can smile, a guru’s blessings can work, a religious donation can fructify or a ritual can do the trick never leaves a Hindu. Hinduism sets no ceilings on divine intervention.  Anything is possible. People believe that one day the wheel of fortune will turn the right way, and religion can help it in the direction.  ‘Kismet ka karvat lena’, the turn of fate, or ‘Bhagya ka badalna’, a turnaround in luck, are not only common Indian phrases but also articles of faith….—p.97

…A very well-known—and often=quoted—Sanskrit shloka says that a woman’s character and a man’s fortune can never be predicted.  ([S]triya charitram purushya bhagyam, daivo no janati kuto manushya)…..—p.97

…In the direst of situations they have an emotional identification with every rags-to-riches story, and this identification is personal: if it can happen to others, it can happen to me.  In this sense, Hindus do not labour under the ponderous certainties of Christianity or Islam, where human redemption is predictable in measurable ways.  Hinduism, as practiced, is full of the mysterious possibilities of a tropical jungle.—p.98

            Hindu metaphysics constitutes a truly magnificent structure of thought.  But most Hindus have no inclination for the intricacies of philosophy.  They know little about the six schools of Hindu thought, and even less about the thinkers who spelt them out.  Their preoccupation is with the ritual of religion, and the rewards it can confer, and in this pursuit they can be, within the framework of their religion, surprisingly eclectic.  At the Sri Bhagwati Sai Sansthan Mandir at Panvel, not far from Mumbai, a dog is worshipped as the reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi.  When Sai Sri Pandu Baba (as the dog has been christened) left for his heavenly abode in 1997, he was bathed in waters from India’s holiest rivers, and buried in a Samadhi lined with sandalwood to chanting of Vedic hymns!  Needless to say, the priests at the temple have found a successor to the Pandu Baba in the form of another dog, and the crowd of worshippers has not lessened.  In a village near Lucknow, the grave of an English captain who died during the 1857 Revolt is widely worshipped.  The Gora Baba is known to fuflil every wish of his followers, and being an Englishman he is especially pleased when offered liquor, cigarettes and meat.  A prayer is incomplete without the lighting of a cigarette, which is then offered along with an (p.98) incense stick.—pp.98-99

…[in Hinduism] This dual appreciation of reality, in which the world both is and is not, provides the perfect peg on which to hang the burden of setback….—p.99

…The Hindu has chosen selectively from his spiritual (p.100) legacy—faith in a personal deity, the devaluation of the phenomenal world when needed, and the juxtaposition of a larger canvas to suffering and setback—to create a protective cocoon around him.  Certainly, the hope and resilience he displays is not warranted by the circumstances in which he and most of his compatriots are.  But his religious beliefs provide the psychological ballast to stay afloat in the roughest of waters.  Perhaps that is why Indian society, with so much deprivation and inequity, has never gone under.—pp.100-01

…Foreigners are often fooled, because Hindus appear to be ‘other-worldly’.  In reality they are not so much other-worldly as they are oblivious to anything in the world that is not of direct interest to them.  A pious Hindu will take a dip in the holy waters of the Ganga totally unaffected by the filth and garbage on and around the bathing ghat.  His concern is the religious ritual, and the rewards it could yield; anything outside this personal zone of priority remains perpetually out of focus.  The practice of religion sanctions this self-centredness: a Hindu will be obsessed with the ritual purity of his person, but not notice the filth around him….—p.101

…A Hindu is impervious to the milieu, and indeed to the very visible pain and suffering around him, because anything outside his own narrow ken of interest matters little to him.  Islam and Christianity have a more visible link between the individual and the community.  In Islam there is the Friday congregational gathering, and in Christianity the visit to the church on Sundays.  There is no such institutional counterpart in Hinduism, and almost no emphasis on the need for the individual to contribute to his community within the arena of spiritual search and fulfillment.  The emphasis on the self as the centerpiece of the spiritual endeavour tends to stunt the individual’s concern for the community.  This insensitivity to the external milieu, coterminous often with the most overt preoccupation with spiritual pursuits, has become so much a part of life that it is mostly not even noticeable to the educated Hindus….—p.102

…Hinduism, while not espousing amoralism, does not have an unambiguous or single ethical centre, and accepts a moral relativism that refuses to be straitjacketed by simplistic notions of right and wrong….—p.103

Chapter Four: TECHNOLOGY: Success in the Shadows of the Past.

…Is it sheer coincidence that the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Vinod Khosla, the creator of the Pentium chip, Vinod Dham, and the creator of Hotmail, Sabeer Bhatia, are all Indians?….—p.104

…The term ganita, meaning the science of calculation….—p.106

…There are nine kinds of emotions: wonder adbhuta), terror (bhaya), disgust (bibhatsa), humour (sasya),  pathos (karuna), anger (rudra), love (shringara), heroism (vira) and peace (shanta)….-p.109

…Women are of four basic types: padmini (lotus-like), sankhini (conch-like), hastini (elephant-like) and chitrini (variegated).  Men too are of four essential categories: anukula (sincere and devoted), dakshina (one who distributes his affections equally), satha (cruel) and dhrishta (shameless)….—p.109

…The Bhrigu Samhita, a treatise on astrology first written in Vedic times, compiles at least 5,00,000 horoscopes, and claims to have an infinite number of records of people and the events in their lives.  On the basis of this database, 45 million horoscopes can be permuted….—p.111

…Constitution adopted by free India in 1950 provided for free and compulsory education for all children until the age of fourteen.  The first five-year developmental Plan (1951-56) allocated 56 per cent of the education budget to primary education. However, the more influential citizens—from the middle and upper classes—were less animated by the provisions for basic education, which they already had, and more excited by the opportunities for higher education, which could provide (p.114) new avenues for upward mobility, away from the spectre of hierarchically inferior manual labour.  It was their pressure which led to a most remarkable growth in institutions of higher learning, no doubt at the cost of primary and secondary education.

            In the first two decades after 1947, the budget allocated for technical education was consistently higher than that for secondary education.  If in the first Five Year Plan 5 per cent was allocated for secondary education, 14 per cent was earmarked for technical education.  The second Plan (1956-61) gave 18 per cent to technical education, and the third (1961-66) 21 per cent….The resultant educational edifice, in which the foundations were neglected while building the superstructure, is an accurate reflection of the nature of Indian society.  Today India has the largest number of out-of-school children in the world and one of the world’s largest reservoirs of trained and skilled manpower.  The enormity of such a contradiction can only be sustained in India, for only an Indian can so unperturbedly accept the inevitability of social disparities, and pursue personal interest so unconcernedly at the cost of the larger good of the community.—pp.114-15

…Unlike China, India did not make a choice dictated by considerations of equity and equal opportunity.  Thus, while the campaign against illiteracy languished and suffered the consequences of official apathy, some of the finest technical institutes were set up as part of an enviable infrastructure of higher education.  China’s literacy rates are significantly higher than India’s, but India sends six time more (p.115) students to universities and other institutions of higher education than China….—pp.115-16

…The choices before a developing nation are not infinite.  Within the framework of possibilities, people in different societies will make different choices.  In some cases, like in China, the political system was coercive enough to enforce a leveling of hierarchies.  In India it was not.  Democracies are not very effective in imposing their will, especially when the self-interests of the privileged have deep-rooted sanctity.  In such societies, policies that contravene tradition are likely to remain for much longer as statements of good intent only.  For instance, for all the lip service paid to it by officialdom, vocational education never really took off in India.  A government scheme for the vocationalization of secondary education was finally drafted as late as 1998, but is still awaiting proper implementation….—p.116

…Even today the Webster’s dictionary defines a ‘baboo’ as a native clerk who writes English….—p.121

…People were judged on the hierarchical scale by their ability to speak English with the right accent and fluency.  The British aim to not only physically subjugate the natives but also to colonize their minds was a spectacular success.—p.122

…A language is not only a utility; it is a symbol of a culture, the repository of the heritage of a people, an indispensable mark of identity. The Japanese have done quite well for themselves but their mother tongue remains their first language; so does it for the Russians and the Chinese.  To the credit of our founding fathers, the Constituent Assembly sought to give free India a national language of its own.  But the decision to make Hindi in the Devanagari script the official language of the country within fifteen years after Independence could never be implemented.  The linguistic chauvinism that overwhelmed the cause of the national language was a rather convenient development for the pan-Indian English-speaking elite, whose knowledge of Hindi was minimal or inadequate.  Hindi, the proponents of English argued, was being made into an unspeakably difficult language by the ‘narrow-minded’ experts entrusted with its development….—p.122

            In James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the character Stephen Daedalus expresses the anguish of an Irishman at having to speak English: ‘The language in which we are speaking is his (the Englishman’s) before it is mine.  How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master on his lips and on mine!  I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit.  His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be fore me an acquired speech.  I have not made or accepted its words.  My voice holds them at bay.  My soul frets in the shadow of his language.’  Indians have fretted too in trying to learn English, but their souls do not appear to have been in much anguish.  In fact, the votaries of English have actually argued that its perpetuation at the cost of a national language is in the national interest….—p.123

            The truth is that for most Indians English has been largely an instrument of social exclusion; the upper crust of India has presided over this linguistic apartheid, while the rest of India has consisted of victims or aspirants….–.124

…The acceptance of hierarchy, and the consequent preoccupation with upward mobility, shut out any notion of national pride, or outrage at the transparent inequity of the process.  ‘No source of inequality in our society operates in as subtle and intractable a manner as language’, writes the educationist Krishna Kumar.  ‘Competence in English has become the single most important yardstick of a person’s eligibility for negotiating the opportunity structure that can be availed of in a modern economy.’ [Learning from Conflict (Tracts for the Times), New Delhi: Sangam Books, 1996.]  The ‘opportunity structure’ is what mattered to Indians, a tribute as much to their undistracted pragmatism as to their insular priorities.  Inequity was not new to them; the opportunities were, and they were not about to let them go by….—p.125

…Those who think they know English take pride in their distance from their mother tongue; those who speak English inadequately claim to know it well.  The result is a nation of linguistic ‘half-castes’, insecure in English and neglectful of their own mother tongue….—p.126

…Narayana Murthy himself asked the question: ‘Why is it that independent India does not boast of any product of international class and with worldwide recognition?’  Delivering the Convocation Address at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad at the end of 2001, he said there is not a single field in which Indians can confidently say that they are the best in the world.  Some of our technical institutes rank among the best globally, but their well-trained products lack the confidence to do more than the routine.  Somehow they are better at obeying instructions than in giving them.  The Dutch traveler Pelsaert had observed at Agra in 1620 that the city has ‘all sorts of artisans in great numbers who can imitate nearly whatever they see, but design nothing by themselves.’  Why do Indians lack the spirit of innovation, the originality, the spark and the rebelliousness that can make them creators rather than merely well-behaved employees?

            Centuries of hierarchic regimentation have mentally enslaved most Indians.  It has emasculated their ability to question and conditioned them to obey rather than to innovate.  Their energies are directed towards the possibilities of upward mobility within a preordained hierarchical order, not to look beyond these possibilities, or do anything ‘unconventional’ that could rock the accepted structure of things and the predictable expectations it generates.  The nature of their society predisposes Indians to tread the beaten path, to embellish the groove rather than to (p.129) explore new avenues.  They are easily satisfied by the visible signs of success that give greater status within the traditional social order: a higher educational degree, a better-paying job, a bigger home, a position of power, the chance to travel and work abroad.  These goals are highly coveted, but are pursued along well-worn paths; they fuel great ambition but rarely such virtues as independent thinking.  Educated Indians like to conform, because conformity confers social approval.  For instance, a middle class engineer or technician feels he has fulfilled his svadharma (duty to oneself) when he gets a good job, and nothing more needs to be expected from him.  The result is a nation of stunted aspirations, full of well-behaved job applicants, but very few pioneers in the realm of ideas.

            Long-established traditional societies perpetuate themselves by the absence of questioning.  As products of such a society Hindus, by reflex, prefer to accept rather than to challenge…. Good students from good institutions are proficient but rarely inquisitive; they are capable of diligently mastering facts, but ill-equipped to question premises.  Western visitors to South Asia have noted the passive, uncritical attitudes of students who expect both teacher and textbook to spoonfeed them with just enough morsels of information to pass their exams….—pp.129-30

…As a colonial power Britain was opposed; as a democracy, and a strong military and economic power, she was admired…. The British succeeded quite spectacularly in creating an Indian elite patterned after them.  A few members of this elite were able to sustain their Westernization without diminishing themselves as Indians…. Rammohun Roy maintained two houses, ‘one in which everything was Western except Roy and another in which everything was Indian except Roy’, [Anirudh Deshpande, Pioneer, 24 January 1996] but could speak authentically about the rediscovery of India.

But these stalwarts were in a minority.  Most members of the Westernized elite tended to measure their self-worth in terms of the degree to which they were able to imitate British and Western lifestyles….—p.132

…Many works of ‘scholars’ have often nothing more to contribute than extensive quotations from ‘foreign’ experts.  Artistic talent has scandalously languished until recognition and acclaim has come from abroad.  If appreciated by the West, all discrimination (p.132) is thrown to the winds in lauding the new find.  There is no balance, no equilibrium that comes from a confidence in one’s own worth, irrespective of certificates from others.  This deferential insecurity manifests itself in an excessive sensitivity to any criticism or praise emanating from the West: the one is countered with disproportionate aggression, the other welcomed with unbecoming effusiveness.—pp.132-33

…there is little doubt that the areas of excellence that have confidently assimilated the influence of the West are the exceptions, not the rule.  The rule is a vast imitativeness that has dulled the pursuit of excellence and creativity, and made common a debilitating acceptance of lower standards.  When people think they cannot be as good as someone else, or spend all their energies trying to be like someone else, they usually end up by being much less than what they can be.  A nation that internalizes a sense of inferiority begins to accept inferior standards for itself.  If, as Murthy says, there is not a single field where India can say it is the best in the world, it is because Indians do not believe they are capable of being the best in the world.  In the barren stretch between ability and expectation, between what Indians can do and what they have reconciled themselves to doing, there is a mutilating mimicry, which would be comical if it were not a symptom of something far more pernicious eating away at the identity and genius of a people….….—p.134

…The reason why very few Indian working in India have produced world-class products is because Indian society encourages status quoism and tolerates (p.134) mediocrity.  When caste and regional loyalties are more important than merit, when the use of money can determine recognition, and when networking and nepotism overshadow real achievement, there is no incentive to excel….—pp.134-35

…If material wealth motivates in exclusion of the innovation that should sustain it, entrepreneurs will not invest in Research and Development.  Not surprisingly, private industry accounts for only 15 per cent of the nation’s total spending on R&D, prompting P.V.Indiresan to contemptuously say: ‘Indian industrialists are nothing but traders.’ [quoted in Rakesh Kalshian, ‘The Devil’s Laboratory’, Outlook, 23 October 20000, p.64]]  A nation will glorify the short cut if its vision is limited to the system as constituted.   Only a vision that has the incentive to transcend it can motivate a different kind of behaviour.  When people live only for immediate returns on traditional goals, society cannot nurture the excellence that creates innovators.—p.135

…Prescriptive hierarchies value obedience above creativity.  To obey is to respect; to question is to err.  Less regimented societies, less preoccupied solely with notions of status and power, value creativity above obedience, and encourage people to think on their own.  Indians take some time to understand that thinking on one’s own is not an act of subversion, an unproductive deviationism, but the beginning of (p.137) a voyage of creation and discovery.  They soon realize too that the pursuit of excellence begets rewards, and that there is a direct correlation between achievement and return, unlikely to be deflected by extraneous considerations.  Money, they discover, is a consequence not only of manipulative profittering but also of innovation and invention.  If they do more than the ordinary, they will benefit in direct proportion.  In such a milieu, the influences of the past are not so much erased as they are transmuted.  The barren pursuit of power morphs into a desire for recognition based on personal achievement; the desire for status manifests itself in genuine pride in one’s work; the emphasis on obedience reinvents itself in a greater capacity for discipline; the lack of confidence is replaced by a sense of self-worth; the mimicry, not entirely eradicated (a study reveals that Indians are the fastest among foreigners to pick up an American accent),  is less servile, fostering greater adaptability to the new culture and society; and the pursuit of material rewards had less reason to be divorced from ethics.—pp.137-38

…The famous Chamundeswari temple in Mysore in fact has an official notice announcing the rates for pujas of scooters, cars, jeeps, buses and vans. Karnataka, the state of which Bangalore is the capital, seeks to provide modern governance, but when its Raichur thermal power station was giving trouble in the summer of 2002, an official enquiry concluded that ‘evil spirits’ were plaguing the plant! [‘Vastu, evil spirit and a power plant’, Times News Network, Times of India, 19, June 2002.].—p.139

…Young Indians who soon after Independence flocked wide-eyed to the newly opened institutes of technology were no doubt excited by the opportunity to study a modern discipline, but in their social thinking were as conformist as their approving parents.  Their talent for the new science was in stark contrast to their willingness to accept the unquestioned sanctity of tradition and (p.139) the dominant values of the past.  The pioneers of India’s technical prowess were ‘good’ traditional sons of the soil, not enthusiastic supporters of Nehru’s idealized vision of the ‘new man’.—pp.139-40

…If our surface-to-air missiles are as good as nay in the world, we must ask ourselves why, at the turn of the new millennium, 50 km away from one of our largest cities, Kolkata, a six-month-old girl was ceremonially married to a dog on the advice of an astrologer….—p.141

…If technology (p.141) and illiteracy coexist, so will science and superstition.  But if the behaviour of the illiterate masses is understandable, the shallow modernity of the educated is much less so.  Those with engineering degrees wear rings on their fingers on the advice of quacks; they respond to matrimonial columns on the basis of caste; they rely on pandits to decipher the exact time for mahurats; they accept that weddings must be celebrated with lavish vulgarity; they demand dowry and consider women to be subordinate; they match horoscopes and propitiate evil spirits.  What they don’t ever do is question.  Tradition perpetuates itself by default, beyond scrutiny or interrogation.  The sociologist Dipankar Gupta in his book Mistaken Modernity makes the point that modernity is not about technology and consumption, as is mistakenly believed in India, but about attitudes….—pp.141-42

…As a proclaimed agnostic he [Nehru] had, in his final testament, expressly said that he did not want to be cremated with religious rituals.  His last rites were nevertheless performed with full Vedic honours.  Tradition and technology sleep in the same bed in India….—p.142

…The Indian personal is a layered accretion; like an onion, the outer layer is never the only one.—p.143

            The mistake one should never make is to accept the amiable Indian as a monolith.  He is a most well-adjusted split personality, capable of living simultaneously and effortlessly on two mutually opposed planes.  He can make a quantum leap from one epoch to another without showing any strain.  His mind is like a chest of drawers—never a single cupboard; each drawer can be a world unto itself, and can be pulled out, without reference to the others, in response to a given situation.  If the moment demands working the keyboard of a computer, a certain drawer will open to cope with the task at hand.  But in the very next instant, another drawer could open in response to a tradition that goes back thousands of years before the computer was invented.  In this space of parallel domains, tradition and technology do meet, but in typically Indian ways….—p.143

…In Embalam village in Pondicherry, the local temples runs an IT outlet for fishermen.  The temple has two doors.  One leads to the information both and is open to all; the other still does not open for people of lower castes and menstruating women….—p.144

Chapter Five.  PAN-INDIANNESS. Violence and the Power of Accommodation.

…Irreverent in expression, it is dismissive of critics, and has no time for apologists….—p.150

… ‘Attempts to tinker with the lives of people in order to build homogeneous nations have almost everywhere proved counterproductive’, warns political scientist Neera Chandoke. [‘Holding the Nation Together’, IIC Quarterly, volume title India: A National Culture?, vol. 29, nos. 3-4, Winter 2002-Spring 2003, p. 93. The Indian state was adept at accommodation, not confrontation. This was the outcome not so much of conscious policy as of the peculiar Indian genius to somehow deflect a crisis, by capitulation, deferment or compromise….—p.152

…At the time of Independence in 1947, the fledgling state-owned broadcasting service, All India Radio (AIR), adopted a motto, ‘Bahujan Hitaya; Bahujan Sukhaya: The happiness and welfare of the masses’….-p.153

 …In Utter Pradesh, for instance, only 2 million homes have toilets, but 6.4 million have television!….—p.154

…History shall be witness to the fact that Indians found what they could share in common while being entertained, not while listening to the sermons of the government, whose ideologues probably looked down on such lightweight distractions as films and film music.  But there is no doubt that Bollywood has been the single biggest integrating factor in the evolution of the pan-Indian persona….-p.154

…Perhaps the most ubiquitous element of this subcontinental continuity is the Government of India (GOI).  Nothing in independent India has grown as phenomenally as the GOI. It touches lives everywhere, in small villages buried deep in the countryside, in the barren outreaches of the Himalayas, in inaccessible hamlets of the Thar desert, in the militant-infested jungles of the North-East and in the scattered islands of Nicobar.  The touch is uniform—the same shabby corridors and paraphernalia of privilege and power; the same odour of corruption, paan-stained walls, musty files and sweating supplicants; the same programmes and jargon; the same spools of red tape—a huge bureaucratic adhesive that binds and trusses and sometimes helps Indians in (p.164) almost every area of endeavour.—pp.164-65

            Indians are not non-violent per se.  The myth of ahimsa or non-violence, as an intrinsic part of the Indian personality, was sold by Mahatma Gandhi and conveniently bought by the nation.  In actual fact, ‘the only pre-modern use of ahimsa in a social context was by (Emperor) Ashoka in the third century BC, and then only after considerable violence’. [Leroy S. Rouner, ‘Civil Loyalty and the New India’, in Crisis and Change in Contemporary India, edited by Upendra Baxi and Bhikhu Parekh, New Delhi: Sage Publications in association with The Book Review Literary Trust, New Delhi, 1995, p. 183]  Indians are capable of a great degree of violence, and newspapers routinely report instances of domestic servants battered by educated employers, of brides tortured and burnt for dowry and of unprovoked police brutality.  A few examples, taken at random, bear this out….—p.165

…The genius of Gandhi was that he understood why his people would support (p.166) his kind of political protest.  Indians are not inclined towards self-annihilation.  It is not their way to initiate a confrontation where the consequences of violence could be suicidal.  They have a deep-seated fear of unremitting unrest, of disorder that is endemic.  Their lives are structured around a highly complex and ancient social system that would be vulnerable in a milieu of uncontrolled upheaval.  Octavio Paz, who served as Mexico’s Ambassador in New Delhi in the 1960s, and later won the Noble Prize for Literature, wrote rather perceptively that ‘castes were invented not for change, but for endurance’. [Octavio Paz, In Light of India, translated from the Spanish by Eliot Weinberger, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997, p. 60]  Indians are afraid of any situation where violence may spiral out of control, threatening the very survival of the system.  Gandhi’s system of passive resistance, which allowed a militarily superior outsider to be opposed without fatally risking life and limb, or without risking the system in one cataclysmic confrontation, was in tune with their temperament.  Revolutionary movements like those led by Bhagat Singh, which wanted to throw out the British through violence, were over-praised but under-subscribed.  They remained on the fringe, unable to dislodge a pragmatic mindset that paid homage to martyrs but considered them cannon fodder.  The Indian emphasis has always been on tenacious survival, not glorious martyrdom.  Resilience rather than retribution, survival rather than conquest—where the weapon becomes the ‘passive, “feminine” cunning of the weak and the victimized’ [Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983, p.111]—has been their civilizational trait.—p.167

…The impact of Hindu civilization is visible all over South and South-East Asia, but it is mostly religious and cultural.  Among the major civilizations, India is ‘uniquely unassertive towards others’, [Stephen P. Cohen, India: Emerging Power, New Delhi: Oxford University Pres, 2001, third impression, 2003, p. 8] and as uniquely forgiving….—p.167

…The simple truth is that Indians are not warmongers.  They have never initiated war against another country.  In victory they have been accommodating. In defeat, such as that suffered at the hands of China in 1962, they have endeavoured to be forgiving.  Their military track record has been marked by a distaste for military adventurism, and lack of desire for conquest by violence.  No other recently independent country does the army have such a small role in the power structure.  If history is a guide, and the Indian temperament an indicator, there is every reason to believe that modern India will be a responsible nuclear power, in fact more so than those who consider themselves to be above scrutiny in such matters.—p.168

…It is significant that Indians have largely been indifferent to the allegations of human rights violations by the police or the armed forces.  This is, of course, partly because Indians are generally insensitive to the sufferings of others in any situation, but the government is also regarded by most of them as a legitimate source of power, and they are rarely motivated to question its raison d’etre….—p.173

            It is important to remember that the state has rarely initiated violence against a potential internal threat.  Mostly its response has been reactive, and the first attempt has been to try and accommodate the danger.  Experience has taught Indians the efficacy of compromise over rupture, especially in a situation where the violent exclusion of any one group could become the domino to topple the inclusion of others.  The internal segmentations of society could be exclusivist, but the principle of interdependence, in which society itself is seen as an adjustment of interfacing interests, is something Indians don’t forget….—p.174

…Appeasement, the offer of incentives, prolonged negotiations, personal blandishments, the sensitive handling of egos, and the hint of the iron hand under the velvet gloves are all aspects of the policy of accommodation.  If local sentiments are mollified by a symbolic concession, the government will make it.  Few people know, for instance, that the only radio station in India that does not call itself All India Radio is Radio Kashmir in Srinagar….—p.175

…However, the apocalyptic vision of an India engulfed in unending religious strife is vastly exaggerated if not blatantly inaccurate.  Hindus would like to believe that this is because they are inherently tolerant, which is not true either.  The practice of Hinduism is tainted by a great degree of (p.176) intolerance.  The violence and bigotry traditionally inflicted by higher caste Hindus against members of their own faith, the Shudras, has no parallel in any other religion.  Nor is Hinduism particularly welcoming to outside influences. It needs only to be recalled that until recently Hindus considered all foreigners to be mleccha, inherently unclean, and regarded those who ventured to foreign lands—as Mahatma Gandhi famously did when he left for England to study law in 1888—as having polluted themselves.  Why then have so many faiths found a home in India, and why do I believe that religious disharmony will not be a sustained or widespread feature of India in the future?

            The first reason is that Hindus are not, and have never been, insecure about their religion.  The paranoia that Hinduism is under siege, and needs to aggressively reassert itself, has been sought to be whipped up only recently by fringe fundamentalist groups whose credentials to speak for all Hindus are very doubtful.  Historically, Hinduism has shown a supreme complacency towards any threat to its existence.  It has never felt the need to codify its practice in one scripture, nor thought it necessary to regiment its faithful at the altar of only one god, nor created a single church for its defence and propagation.  At the level of theory it allows a freedom to dissent that is not to be found in any other major religion.  Hindu metaphysics and philosophy even give space to those who argue that there is no god, and Amartya Sen has pertinently pointed out that ‘Sanskrit has the world’s largest literature in the agnostic and atheistic tradition.’ [From the Second Sir Dorab Tata Memorial Lecture on ‘The Predicament of Identity; delivered by Amartya Sen in New Delhi on 26 February 2001]

            Hinduism has always existed in a remarkably self-assured way, largely immune to attack or demise because no one entity—scripture, church or god—limits its diffused omnipresence.  For its believers it is more a way of life, not without its own certainties and rituals and samskaras, but without the constant need to test loyalties.  A Hindu does not seek to convert, nor is he willing to be easily converted…. A person was either born a Hindu, or (p.177) was forever outside the pale.  The representatives of two major proselytizing religions conquered India by force, first the Muslims from about the eleventh century, and then the British in the seventeenth century.  Both invaders openly used their military superiority for evangelical purposes.  The Hindus accepted their political supremacy, but in spite of the obvious rewards on offer, not their faith.  Of course, there were conversions, but the number of those who converted, as against the vast majority that did not, was relatively small.  One has only to see what happened in other countries in similar situations to appreciate the difference.  For instance, as the official religions of conquering or colonizing powers, Islam and Christianity overwhelmed the people of the African continent; their success in South-East Asia and Latin America was no less spectacular.  In India they failed.  The Hindus were the overwhelming majority a thousand years ago, and remain so today.

            It is a matter of historical record that Indus have not been hostile to other faiths.  The reason quite simply is that they were not afraid of them…. If the Hindus were insecure about their religion, they could have overrun them.  They did not because they did not feel threatened.  On the contrary, other religions have felt the need to resist the creeping encroachment of Hinduism.  Jainism distinguishes itself from Hinduism, but there are eighty-seven castes and sub-castes among Digambara Jains and thirty-eight among the Svetambara sect.  Many Indian converts to Christiantiy still identify themselves according to the castes to which they belonged.  The Hindu god Ram figures in the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, more than any other name.  Buddhism may have emerged in the fifth century BC as a protest movement against the orthodoxies of Hinduism, but Hindu theologians claimed the Buddha as one of their own, as the eighth incarnation of Vishnu…. (p.178) Even organized Islam has been concerned about loss of identity in India.  ‘The dominant ideology of Islam in India has always been confident that it could hold its own against Hinduism in statecraft and in martial prowess; it has always feared being overwhelmed or swamped by the slow, soporific sedativity of everyday Hinduism.’ [Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983, p.111].—pp.176-79

            Coexistence is an imperative, not an option in India.  Indians are pragmatic enough to understand this….-p.180

…Even when political parties invoke religion, the common person instinctively understands that the real goal is political power, and devalues the religious rhetoric (p.183) accordingly….—pp.183-84

…When Mahant Gyandas, a prominent religious figure from Ayodhya, arrived at Nasik to participate in the historic Kumbh Mela in August 2003, he threatened to boycott the ceremonial bath in the Godavari river if the local authorities did not immediately sanction him ‘Z-plus’ security cover.  This category of security is the highest possible, and ensures that the government provides a posse of gun-toting and uniformed guards to accompany the VIP wherever he goes.  To the saintly mahant this visible recognition of his status, and its projection among the hundreds of thousands of devotees gathered at the pilgrimage, was more important than the simple sacraments of worship, and he was honest enough to admit it.—p.184

…The Indian state, in whose Constitution secularism is enshrined as an article of faith, has not been beyond the temptations of tokenism towards the minority.  But ever so gradually, and in spite of ‘a large apparatus of patronage run by salaried commissars’, [Mukul Kesavan, Secular Common Sense, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2001, p. 19] identity in this new India is increasingly being defined not by notions of majority or minority, but by instances of individual success or failure….—p.190

… In a pan-Indian context ‘we are all minorities’, says Narayana Murthy.  ‘I am a Kannada-speaking man’, he says about himself, ‘a minority; a Brahmin—a minority; educated—a minority; English speaking—a minority.’  In this mosaic of minorities, the only majority that appears to be emerging is that of Indians….-p.190

…In the early years after Independence, Muslim film stars used to adopt Hindu names for their screen avatars: Yusuf Khan became Dilip Kumar, Mahajabeen Ali Bux became Meena Kumari and Mumtaz Jehan became Madhubala.  Today Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Salman Khan rule the box-office destiny of Bollywood and feel no need to be anything but themselves.—p.190

Chapter Six EPILOGUE A Critical Equilibrium for Take-off

            There is something that the Indian people have … and that is the freedom to ventilate grievances in an imperfect system which goes by name of democracy….—p.191

…The basic fact is that India has survived, and Indians are impatient about the genuine sense of marvel—often condescending—of outsiders for something they now take for granted.  When Rushdie asked historian Robi Chatterjee what was the ‘glue’ holding India together, the good professor, who taught me too, retorted that India did not need glue, that it was not going to fall apart, and that he rejected completely ‘all that Balkanization stuff’.  India, he declared, was ‘simply here and we will remain here.’ [Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991, New Delhi: Penguin Books India in association with Granta, 1991, p.32].—p.192

            Why will India not fall apart, and why can its people expect to prosper in the years ahead?  No one reason can answer these questions satisfactorily, but a combination of factors can, and we have spelt them out in this book.  The unexpected survival of democracy, in a people not democratic by temperament or heritage, is one factor….—p.192

…A nation has to generate wealth, for if it remains irremediably poor the stability of the democratic system will be jeopardized.  India does, indeed, have the world’s largest concentration of the poor, but it is also (p.192) true that never before have more Indians been more preoccupied with the possibility of becoming richer than with the inevitability of remaining poor…. ‘On an average, 30-40 million people are joining the middle class every year’. N.K. Singh, ‘Four-fold Path to Nirvana’, Indian Express, 14 November 2003].  This is a huge psychological watershed, especially for a people who take to enterprise like ducks to water.  The socialist era, although not entirely unproductive, was antithetical to the genius of the Indian people.  Its demise has unleashed new energies and new aspirations, and the confidence that they can be fulfilled.—pp.192-93

            The birth of the knowledge era around the turn of the new millennium was a catalyst that came at the right time.  If it had happened earlier, Indians would have been unprepared for it.  If it had come later, it might have been too late to retain the faith of the army of technically qualified specialists the country was producing.  In the evolution of a people and in the destiny of nations, timing is important.  Assets unveiled before their time can be thoughtlessly squandered or underutilized.  They can reinforce atavistic tendencies, or strengthen undesirable elites, or widen discrepancies in society to unsustainable limits.  Assets released after their time lose their impact and relevance, and the ability to play a transforming role.  In India, the opportunities created by the knowledge industries caught the crest: democracy had become by then an entrenched way of life; the economic reforms of 1991 had better prepared the people and the economy to harvest global opportunities; and the higher educational infrastructure, which had taken years to build, was on optimum yield.—p.193

…Stability is a key parameter.  Without it, the achievements of the past can rapidly dissolve, and the trajectory of growth be set back by decades….—p.194

…The Soviet experience also shows that systems that have for long been undemocratic cannot be reformed partially. Carefully crafted piecemeal changes careen out of control, swept away by forces bottled up for too long.  A reformer may think that he will be able to calibrate the pace of change, but the change of pace outpace him.  The result is years of instability threatening the integrity of the nation, severe damage to the economy, and hardship and anguish for the people.—p.194

…like the former Soviet Union, China is missing a crucial factor: democracy.  Recent historical experience would indicate that no country can be stable only on the basis of its economic achievements.  The Chinese people will, sooner or later, ask for political freedoms, and when (p.194) this happens it is difficult to predict the degree of instability that could follow.  It is possible of course that the present Chinese leadership is able to make the transition to democracy without upheaval.  However, the experience of the former Soviet Union does not bode well for the gradual or partial dismantling of long-entrenched totalitarian systems.  The protest of 4 June 1989 in Tiananmen Square could be history, or it could be a portent for the future.—pp.194-95

…The authors [Yasheng Huang, Associate Professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tarun Khanna, Professor at Harvard Business School] conclude that the two countries have followed very different strategies for development, and while India’s performance overall is not better than China’s, it has outperformed China in some key areas.  If these successes enable India to match and even overtake China, then it will be a testimony to the value of indigenous entrepreneurship in long-term economic development, as well as a demonstration of the limits of China’s FDI [Foreign Direct Investment]-dependent approach. –p.195s

            One economic paradigm is beyond doubt: the Indian people have the freedom to pursue what they enjoy and do best, while the Chinese do not.  The difference could be very important in the long run.  Sustained rewards can only be reaped when a nation’s policies are in congruence with the genius of a people…–p.196

…The appurtenances of democracy—a free media, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, the sanctity of property rights—are essential to a conducive corporate milieu.  None of these work in an entirely unblemished way in India, but each of these exists unquestionably, and is taken for granted by most Indian.  Amartya Sen rightly points out that growth is helped by the friendliness of the economic climate rather than the fierceness of the political regime [speaking at a seminar on ‘Development as Freedom: An Indian Perspective’, organized by FICCI and the Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations and Human ‘Resources, New Dehli, 30 July 2003]….—p.196

…The new reservations [given by V.P.Singh, in 1990] were denounced by the upper castes and huge demonstrations greeted the announcement.  A great deal of sectarian jockeying is a feature of the process of social empowerment in India.  Everybody resents what the other is getting and nobody is entirely happy. The Dalits felt that the OBCs were undeservedly eating into their quota, and even that quota was being hijacked by a ‘creamy layer’ within their own group.  The OBCs felt that what they got was too little too late, and that the Scheduled Castes and Tribes had been the sole beneficiaries for too long.  The upper castes felt that the entire policy of reservations was wrong.  But in this melee of group interests, there is no doubt that there has occurred an enduring shift of real power towards the weaker sections….—p.198

…Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) were until recently derisively called ‘Non-Required Indians’; a vague sense of guilt clung to them for having deserted their country; the motherland had little use for them; and they, in turn, were embarrassed by her poverty and backwardness.  Culture was the umbilical cord that held the two together; but in every other way they were on independent journeys, burrowing along tunnels of their own in the elusive search for prosperity.  Today, in the light that both sense at the end of the tunnel,  they are rediscovering each other.—p.200

…Nothings unites Indians more than success, just as nothing brings out their natural fractiousness more than failure. A lovefest is now on between the motherland and her far-flung progeny…. No longer do migrants have to be defensive about where they came from; no longer do they have to talk only about past greatness and ancient cultures; now they can speak of their roots in terms of present achievements and future possibilities.  They love the profile of India as a ‘technical’ power, be it in IT, automobiles, or pharmaceuticals.  The image of an India with a begging bowl was humiliating and made them lose face.  On the contrary, when they hear that India is actually pre-paying some of its debts, has loaned $300 million to the IMF, and is exporting food, they are willing to open their wallets in support.  Indians working abroad sent $ 10 billion home in 2001, the highest remittance figures in the world.  In 2003, software professionals in the USA contributed to remittance figures being the highest in a decade.  In this ‘feel good’ ambience, divided loyalties are no longer the issue, common destinies are.—p.201

            Unlike immigrant communities from some other countries, Indians do not blend in easily in Western cultures; they learn the new rules quickly, but unlearn their cultural particularities with great difficulty.  Many foreigners don’t fully realize how much India continues to be a part of Indians.  Indians are good at conveying the impression that they are well integrated in their new settings.  But non-resident Indians are often well-adjusted split personalities: English or American in their work environment, irrepressibly Indian in the privacy of their homes.  Indians who (p.201) have lived abroad for generations will continue to consider India ‘home’; a desire to ultimately return to their ‘roots’ is a pervasive sentiment.  Many Indians abroad can speak only English, but perform religious rituals at home that have long been forgotten even in India.  Acutely image conscious, they hate their country of origin when it embarrasses them, but love it demonstratively when it does them proud….—pp.201-02

..Having prospered materially, Indians will—in response to their genes—hanker for status and recognition.  Already, they are on the donor lists of major British and American charities.  All political parties woo them for funds….—p.203

…Of course, the ability of Indians to unite will always be held hostage to their inherent talent for factionalism.  The new aggression is often informed by a narrow religious chauvinism, which divides the community even as it spurs its mobilization.  Typicall6y, factions proliferate, and egos jostle for individual recognition.  There is the danger too that the new assertiveness could create a conservative backlash in the indigenous community.  But Indians can be expected to be on the right side of the power balance.  For instance,  throughout his campaign, Jindal took care to ascribe his success to ‘American values’.  He converted to Christianity (p.203) while still a student, and won the support of powerful conservative lobbies for his strongly anti-abortion views.—pp.203-04

…This congruence of aspirations, between upwardly mobile Indians and upbeat non-resident Indians, is already a potent driving force.  It will influence the vision Indians have for the future, and mould the priorities of the government.  Inevitably, and not inaccurately, critics will label the vision as elitist, but this is the only model which can succeed in India.—p.204

            Whether in India or abroad, Indians have one quality which has stood them in good stead: resilience.  The quality is a bequest of centuries of experience in handling adversity.  No foreigner can ever understand the extent to which an Indian I mentally prepared to accept the unacceptable….—p.24

…In this unending cycle of rising expectations, adversity is taken in stride.  The tribulations of today are tolerated for the rewards of tomorrow.  The amazing thing is the retention of hope in circumstances that should normally nurture despair.  Even the destitute have an energy that refuses to accept defeat.  This is not an attempt to romanticize poverty.  The deprivations in India, and the social callousness which ignores them, are condemnable.  But the Indian is the ultimate stoic.  He is so prepared for the (p.205) worst that when things are just bad he considers himself lucky.  For so long has he been used to surviving in less than ideal circumstances that an inventive fortitude has become a part of his personality. A springy hardiness lies coiled within him. Nothing fazes him easily.  The obstacles of the world are par for the course.  And he deals with them with an insouciance and stoicism that is best summed up in scrawl I once saw written behind a three-wheeler in Delhi.  The words of wisdom, remarkable for their brevity, simply said: ‘Hota hai” It happens.’—pp.205-06

…Indeed, the real Indian rope trick is the persistence of hope in the most hopeless of circumstances.  Sudhir Kakar once ascribed it to a mind that is able to transmute ‘even the slightest ray of hope into a blaze of light’…..—p.206

…In July 2002, in Raipur, the capital of Chhattishgarh tucked away in the heart of India, a Dalit girl threw her slipper (p.206) in anger at a judge who acquitted her alleged rapist;[‘Dalit girl hurls slipper at judge’, Hindustan Times, 31 July 2002] in the same month a hundred Dalit students, whose parents were forbidden to even hear a Sanskrit shloka, graduated as priests from the newly set up Uttar Pradesh Sanskrit Sansthan. [Amit Sharma,

Dalit priests hit caste ceiling in Maya’s UP’, Indian Express, 10 July 2002, p.1]  In the burning summer of 2001, dozens of debt-trapped marginal farmers in Punjab and Andhra Pradesh committed suicide; in the same year a whopping six million farmers joined the exclusive club of credit card holders—over 20 million farmers now use credit cards to finance their agricultural operations.  In Pune, a tour company, Travel Designers, specializes in agro-tourism—its clients are thousands of farmers who travel to Israel and Europe to observe new agricultural techniques….—pp.206-07

…Public policy can only be successful if it is congruent with the behavioural patterns of a people.  Policy planners need to keep this in mind, especially in India, where a great deal of planning has for too long been based on cherished but unproductive hypocrisies.  As the legatees of a centuries-old system of hierarchy, Indians have a special weakness for status; power is coveted for the status it guarantees; the state is the highest repository of both status and power; and politics is the highest-yielding path to the resources of the state.  For a great many (p.208) people, therefore, the business of politics will be irresistible.  The bad and the ugly among them will not respond to moral exhortation since, in any case, to most Indians the ends are more important than the means.  There is no alternative therefore to stringent and sustained electoral reform, which will enforce a system of punitive action against the corrupt and the unethical.  Simultaneously, the powers and reach of the Election Commission must be strengthened.  Indians respect those who exercise power effectively.  They will obey laws that are implemented with firmness.  When the hierarchy of power is coherent, and the chain of command clear-cut, they are amenable to discipline, and that is often why they do well abroad.  Even if democracy has, improbably enough, become a way of life, the process of democracy needs to be consciously improved, for it is utopian to believe that Indians will reform themselves in this respect on their own.  Moreover, since Indians do not believe in the principle of equality however much they speak of its merits, only the effective working of democracy can ensure a more rapid empowerment of the deprived against the elitist biases of the powerful.—pp.208-09

…Public policy needs to close the perennial debate on equity versus growth.  State intervention in favour of the poor is needed in India, but realism requires us to distinguish between the desirable and the feasible.  Indians suspect altruism, lack concern for the deprived, and work best in their personal interests.  Any attempt to curb or restrict economic activity in response to notions of equity will lead to unimplemented plans and subverted schemes.  The government’s efforts to redistribute the economic pie have expectedly fallen far short of targets.  The only economic model that can work in India is a percolation of benefits pursuant to an increase in the size of the pie.  Since the poor are far too many, the pie needs to grow faster….—p.209

…Obviously, the government needs to be engaged with issues of poverty alleviation, basic education, and primary health, but it would improve its ability to do so through a partnership with the corporate sector.  Some corporate leaders realize that they must be more involved in such matters in their own self-interest, but they are in a minority.  Unless the government devises a comprehensive scheme of financial incentives for the corporate sector to invest in these key sectors, the much-needed synergy between government and business in human resource development will remain over-discussed but under-subscribed.—p.210

            Third, the menace of corruption must be handled by new policy directions.  The moral relativism of Indians allows them to practice and condone corruption on a scale that has few parallels in other societies with pretensions to be called modern.  Laws to handle the malaise will work poorly, or not at all.  Punitive provisions will find loopholes.  Those assigned to keep a check will be checkmated or bought over.  Convictions will be scandalously scant.  The answer is not to waste more time on laws that are well meaning but ineffectual.  The nature of the Indian people requires a different kind of remedy.  Firstly, the government must drastically reduce its discretionary powers.  To some extent this is already happening, but more needs to be done.  Secondly, incorruptible technology must replace corruptible human beings much more rapidly.  Even as IT is creating jobs and increasing revenue, it needs to be consciously harnessed to devise systems that eliminate or greatly reduce human intervention in the conduct of everyday life and the daily needs of individuals.  An entire range of activities—booking of rail tickets, allotments, payment of bills, tax calculations, the issuing of licenses, admissions to educational institutions—which normally incubate corruption, can be made transparent through the intervention of technology….—p.210