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AUTHOR Schafer, John TITLE India at 50. Fulbright-Hays Summer Seminars Abroad, 1997 (India). SPONS AGENCY United States Educational Foundation in India. PUB DATE 1997-00-00 NOTE 71p.; For other curriculum project reports by 1997 seminar participants, see SO 029 067-086. Seminar Title: "India and Her Ethos." Some material may not reproduce clearly. PUB TYPE Guides Classroom Teacher (052) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC03 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Asian Studies; Cultural Awareness; *Culture; Ethnic Groups; Foreign Countries; Higher Education; *Indians; Instructional Materials; Modern History; Multicultural Education; Non Western Civilization; *World History IDENTIFIERS *India

ABSTRACT This unit is intended to provide students with an understanding of India in 1997 by drawing on some of the major cultural, political, intellectual, and economic themes of its recent history. This snapshot of India uses the 50th anniversary as the occasion to evaluate the path modern India has taken. The unit examines the country's reactionsto internal and external pressures for change. The final project asks students to plan for India's next 50 years. Sections of the unit include: (1) "Intellectual Overview"; (2) "India, 1997"; (3) "Unity and Diversity"; (4) "Traditional Culture"; and (5)"Final Project." (EH)

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TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES John Schafer Points of view or opinions stated in this INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. 1

Curriculum Projects Developed by 1997 Seminar Participants

Submitted to Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), USDE

by United States Educational Foundation in India

2 Curricular Project India and Her Ethos Summer 1997 By John Schafer

INDIA AT 50

The purpose of this teaching unit is to foster a good understanding of India in 1997 by drawing on some major cultural, political, intellectual, and economic themes of its recent history. This snapshot look at India todayusing the 50th anniversary as the occasion to evaluate the path modern India has takenwill look at the country's reactions to pressuresinternal and externalfor change. The final project will be to chart or plan for India's next 50 years.

I Intellectual Overview

Assignments:

Read "Tagore and His India" "Gandhi and Nehru: Frustrated Visionaries"

Classroom discussions and projects:

Look up basic demographic facts: popular, diversity of languages, religions, political conditions Write a paragraph for each Nehru, Gandhi, and Tagore that explains their vision for modern India

II India, 1997

Assignments:

Read "India's 5 Decades of Progress and Pain" "Making Sense of India"

Classroom discussions and projects:

Discuss India-Pakistan partition, show film clip from "Gandhi" on communal violence, have a student read a chapter from Freedom At Midnight and present to the class, have a student do outside reading on the on-going Kashmir conflict and present to the class. Discuss how would Tagore, Gandhi, and Nehru assess the last 50 years. What would they cite as accomplishments, as deficiencies? Discuss how would you evaluate the last 50 years? (use chart from "India's 5 Decades"

III Unity and Diversity

Assignments:

Read "India's Odd, Enduring Patchwork" "Awakening of the Shudras" "Growth of violence has been phenomenal" "Subaltern Politics" "The Bombay Rush"

Classroom discussions and projects:

Brief lecture on the political situation Have a student do extra reading and lead a discussion of the caste system Define "modernization" socially, economically, politically, and culturally Define India's traditional culture. Discuss to what extent are Western notions of democracy and capitalism appropriate for 1997 India? Discuss is India's diversity an asset or a liability in its modernization effort? Discuss how is multicultural India like and not like other multi-ethnic nations we have studied: Bosnia, the former USSR?

IV Traditional Culture

Assignments:

Read "MTV Age Dawning in India" "MBA plus MTV: India's Yuppies Lead a Revolution" "India's Lewd Awakening: MTV & the Film Industry Are Putting Sexy Lyrics on Everyone's Lips" "On Ganges Plain, Modernity Is Straining Tradition" "Early to Wed: Still Common in Rural India, Child Weddings Highlight Clash Between Tradition and Today" "Changing India, Wedded to Tradition: Arranged Marriages Persist With 90s Twists"

Classroom discussions and projects:

Discuss: these are stories from the Western media, are they fair? Write an essay, if you were a leader of India, what kind of relationship Would you want.with Western investors, the international

I 4 community (vis-à-vis Pakistan, given India's desire for a permanent UN Security Council seat), the onslaught of Western popular culture movies, cable tv, and music? Discuss: what is the future of the caste system, MTV in India, and arranged marriages?

V Final Project

Drawing on the thinking of Tagore, Gandhi, and Nehru, your knowledge of India's last 50 years, and the current trends in globalizationespecially economic and cultural, what do you see as the course to set for India's next 50 years. Deal with the pressing social, political, economic, cultural, and diplomatic issues. You paper can take the form of

a memorandum to the prime minister a speech to be delivered on August 14, 1998 an expository essay an op-ed written for a Delhi newspaper 4 11:114-77;341AS-/II

Judith Brown st' assesses the curiou coupling of sage and politician that achieved much but not allfor Hindu aspirations. ear Common goals? Nehru and Gandhi together at the All-India Congress in Bombay, July 1946: but were there inevitable GANDHIANDNEHRU differences in their objectives for a post-Raj India? FRUSTRATED VISIONARIES?

The observer of India in 1997 is rightlydespite the seminal role of these two lead( struck by the immense stability of this,amongst the greatest visionaries of the p( the world's largest democracy, in con-colonial world, after fifty years of democr: trast with her South Asian neighbours andgovernment and economic developme many other new nation states which emergedthere is still widespread and desperate p out of the former British Empire. But equallyerty in India. With inequalities of status, c, striking is the great dichotomy between thesumption and opportunity as great as an' reality of India at the end of the century andthe world, the economy, having teetered the vision of the new nation offered by its twothe edge of international bankruptcy at greatest leaders at the time of independence, start of this decade, now moves towards Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. open market policy with little ideologi Froth 1920 at least, India's growing nation-framework to distinguish it from West, alist movement had stressed through its maineconomies. Moreover, this secular state ha organisation, the Indian National Congress,times been rent by sectarian loyalties and the meaning of independence for the poorlence, and India's religious minorities rem and disadvantaged. There was to be a newfearful and often profoundly disadvantag and more egalitarian society, where the stateWhy has this happened in place of the Mai would have a moral obligation to help thema's spiritual vision, and despite Nehru's poor and under-privileged and providequent pledge at the moment of independe opportunities to those who for centuries hadthat India would keep her 'tryst with destir been despised and deprived. These ideals Gandhi and the younger Nehru were were enshrined in the new constitution ofcourse, very different as people and als( 1950, whose preamble committed India totheir vision of the new India to be create( securing for all its citizens justice, liberty,imperial rule ended. A generation separa equality and fraternity, and were spelt out inthem, as did social origin and political exp the sections on Fundamental Rights andence. The older man came from a far m Directive Principles of state policy. provincial and less privileged backgrou Gandhi and Nehru had, in their differenthad reached professional competence ways, spoken constantly of the moral, sociallawyer by strict personal discipline an and political regeneration of the country asregime of self-denial and hard work: an:: :!-.2-.t.----.7...",:l-,-,-,-----c. -,-...-,.,. :.."'_. --,-!::Th:Y. SEPTEMBF.R 1997

Africa. where exposure to a wide range of cul-ruthless denunciation of 'modern civilisation' tural influences and the experience of racialand of Western educated Indians who ac- discrimination refined both his political skillscepted its values. He persisted in defining and his religious sensibility. swaraj in moral and social, rather than politi- The younger man had been brought upcal language, affirming that its hallmarks with everything that money could buy, edu-would be a more equal society. mutual toler- cated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cam-ance between different religious groups, and bridge, and inducted with ease into the worlda commitment to small-scale economic of Indian public life by a father who was onearrangements which put people before gain. of India's most successful and respected Above all, the hallmark of new Indians lawyers. With an effortless sense of superior-would be a commitment to non-violence in ity and no experience of hardship or personalall public and private relationships, as the challenge, he had no religious beliefs worthonly moral means of achieving true change. the name, and little knowledge of the India ofFor Gandhi non-violence was the only way to the vast majority of his compatriots. It wasfollow after what one perceived as truth with- little wonder that his father. Motilal, greatlyout endangering the perception of truth held feared what would befall his cosseted son, inby others: by its very presence and working it Icons of a new dawn: personal and material terms, as he camewould transform attitudes and relationships. Gandhi and Nehru linked as under the influence of the homespun Mahat-and so begin the process of change at thepatres patriae in this ma. roots of the individuals who formed thepopular oleograph Yet Gandhi and the somewhat aimlessbedrock of society. In this vision a modern celebrating independence. Jawaharlal formed a strong attachment and political partnership which was to last for almost three decades, until Gandhi's assassi- nation in 1948. The attachment was partly personal, founded on mutual attraction between two strong and idiosyncratic person- alities.It was partly forged out of mutual need, as both needed the other to further their public aims. To Gandhi. Nehru was the symbol of the younger generation. the heart and touchstone of a younger India whom he needed to weld into the nationalist move- ment. To Nehru. Gandhi was unique in his ability to sense the mind and mood of the vast numbers of uneducated Indians, and thus essential for the forging of a broad-based nationalist movement to oust the British. But far beyond mutual need the two shared a pas- sionate conviction that India must change radically as independence was won. This was central to the commitment of each man to a public role, and far more than populist rhetoric. Sensing this core of visionary com- mitment in the other drew them together in a unique way. Gandhi first worked out his vision of a new India in a small pamphlet published in 1909, entitled Hind Swaraj (Indian Home Rule). Here he made plain his belief that true self- rule was far more than mere political inde- pendence, or an inheritance of imperial struc- tures of control, but manned by Indians. True Swaraj would be founded on a moral revolu- tion of the individual upwards through soci- ety as a whole, changing both the pattern of the economy and the nature of political authority. What was needed was a society based on moral individuals who cared for each other and followed spiritual goals, rather than false standards of gain and wealth, imported from the West, along with the means' of large-scale production and their 7potential for the increase of inequality and of violent relations between individuals and rii!STORY TODAY state had little role to play. Gandhi wasthose, like Nehru, who believed in the need deeply distrustful of the power of the state,for a strong state, both to serve their political and felt that individual self-control was theambitions and also to fulfil their genuit only true regulatory power which couldhopes for India's economic and social devel- change society.' At the end of his life heopment. After his assassination he was gteatly advised Congressmen to disband their party,revered: but the only ways in which his vision turn their backs on political power andwas even partially enacted was in the legal engage in grass-roots social service. abolition of the status and practice of Gandhi drew his inspiration from aspects ofuntouchability, a gross form of social and rit- Hindu and other religious traditions, andual discrimination practised against those at from a wide range of dissenting voices inthe base of Hindu society, and in the encour- Western culture who feared for the spiritualagement of 'cottage industries' alongsid: and social implications of industrialisation inlarge-scale industrialisation. Western society. Nehru's vision, by contrast, Nehru, on the other hand, was India's was generated by his contacts with severalprime minister without a break from indepen- variants of Western socialist thinking duringdence until his death in 1964. Yet even his his years of education in England and latersocialist dreams remained unfulfilled. Despite during his European travels (including a visitattempts at far-reaching social legislation, he to the Soviet Union in 1927), and through hiswas unable to achieve genuinely radical wide reading. Despite his 'alliance' withreform of landholdings on any scale, which Gandhi, he made plain the differences in theirwould have been a prerequisite for extensive hopes for India's future, for example, in aredistribution of resources and abolition (). series of press articles republished as avested interests. He was unable to push pamphlet entitled Whither India? (1933) andthrough a uniform civil code which would in his subsequent longer writings, includinghave done much to ameliorate the legal posi- Sliver spoons and wooden An Autobiography (1936). As he wrote in thetion of women and reduce the entrenched ones? Nehru's privileged former: differences between various religious groups. and Anglicised upbringing Although there was significant economic (above seen as a Harrow India's immediate goal can. .. only beconsid-development, particularly large-scale indus- schoolboy) contrasted with ered in terms of the ending of exploitation of Gandhi's more self-made her people. Politically, it must mean indepen-try. planned and partly managed by the state roots as part of a beleagured dence and the severance of the British connec-there was little change in agricultural prat Indian minority in South tion. .. economicallyand socially it must meantices and production, and the incidence of Africa (the photograph life-threatening poverty, malnutrition and dis- below is of him as a young the ending of all special class privileges and lawyer), which inevitably vested interests. .. The real question before us.. . ease remained widespread, making a mockery produced a difference of is one of fundamental change of regime, politi-of the directive principles of the constitution. attitude to the power of cally, economically, socially. Furthermore, India continued to be gov- elites, the role of the state and a 'small is beautiful' The means to this end was first a powerfulerned by Nehru in ways which were remark- philosophy. and broadly-based nationalist movement toably similar to those of his imperial predeces- oust the imperial ruler; and second, a power-sors. both in the structure of the stateitself. ful modern state to redistribute resourcesdespite the universal adult franchise, and it more equitably and to manage a modernthe style of the administrative services which economy. Nehru had little time for Gandhi'she had once denounced as anti-national and commitments to non-violence and to individ-requiring drastic reform. At the end of his life ual moral 'change of heart' as the route tohe was, like Gandhi, frustrated at his inability truly radical change; and he had no sympathyto achieve so much of his life's dreams. On with the Mahatma's religious language andhis desk he kept the words of the poet. priorities, aiming instead, in more straightfor-Robert Frost: wand political terms, for both a secular state But I have promises to keep, and society. And miles to go before I sleep After India's independence the visions of both men were soon dashed on the rocks of The reasons for the frustrations of these reality. In Gandhi's case this was less surpris-great visionary leaders lay in part in theirdif- ing. He had always known that few Congress-ferent, but unique, pathways into Indian men had shared his very particular moralpolitical life. Both were to an extent 'apart viewpoint or sympathised with his broad-from' the ordinary world of Indian profes ranging plans for the reformation of Indians,sional and business life, or that of the nation their society and polity. When Congressmenalist politician. Gandhi had failed as a lawyer had begun to gain significant power atin his native Western India and had achieve( provincial level under successive constitu-professional success and personal maturity it tional reforms, he had lamented that theyanother continent, working among the Indiar were behaving like their imperial predeces-migrant community. Nehru had been insu sors; and he spoke with sad realism of thelaced, indeed isolated, by the great wealth o way they left his 'constructive programme'his family and by his prolonged period o lying littered on the floor at party gatherings. education in England. Back home in Alla Gandhi never held high office in Congress.habad with his family he saw for himself n( either after the Second World War, when itclear role either in politics or in the profes was clear that independence was imminent,sion of the law, for which he was destined or, ._..later, in the new nation state; he recog-On their return to India both found that the SE Vit,%1 99V!" of Indian politics, and no groups of allies or supporters with whom to make their mark. Perhaps more importantly, their exposure to the world beyond India had created in each of them a distinctive and idiosyncratic vision of the meaning and nature of 'national- ism' and the Indian nation as they thought it should become. By contrast most of their contemporaries who saw themselves as nationalists thought primarily in terms either of ameliorating British rule and making more room for Indians within the imperial struc- tures of power, or of removing the British altogether. But few thought beyond indepen- dence or had visions of radical change grounded in religious belief or a powerful secular ideology as did Gandhi and Nehru. Their eruption into the politics of national- ism was therefore unpredictable. Gandhi emerged in 1920 as a leader within the Congress because he offered the party a mode of non-violent protest against the British Raj, at a specific juncture in nationalist politics when constitutional politics seemed Lk

to have achieved little and when few were Y willing to resort to the opposite tactic, namely that of violent protest. In the euphoria which followed, Nehru willingly became involved in politics for the first time, sensing that in Gandhi he had met a leader who would address real social and political problems, would lead Indians in fearless resistance tothe national Congress. It had little full-time Salt of the earth: Gandhi with Congress supporters the imperial ruler. and would 'do away withand effective party organisation. and de- leaving camp on their the parlour politics of an older generation hepended largely on the co- operative stance ofmarch to break the British had so despised. As he wrote in his auto-local individuals and groups who used its 'salt laws' monopoly - a biography of the heady experience of partici- namea fact which Gandhi and Nehru bothfocal point of the campaig pating in Gandhi's first nation-wide campaignrecognised and sort to remedy. because they of Civil disobedience he perfected throughout the of non-violent non-co-operation with the Raj: realised how it reduced the Congress's politi- 1930s. Many of us who worked for the Congress pro-cal effectiveness as a party of direct action or gramme lived in a kind of intoxication duringof long-term change. the year 1921. We were full of excitement and A further consequence was that Congress Affairs of state: Nehru at optimism and a buoyant enthusiasm. We sensed had little in the way of a defining and driving talks with Khruschev and the happiness of a person crusading for a causeideology, apart from its anti-imperial stance. Bulganin (opposite) in . . Above all. we had a sense of freedom and aIdeological compromise was more often the Moscow in 1955 - pride in that freedom. The old feeling of oppres- cement which held its members together; par-emblematic of the role sion and frustration was completely gone. Nehru tried to carve out 1, ticularly as so many of them were compara- India as a leader of the no However, the Congress party was never trans-tively privileged and had social and economic aligned movement in the formed into a band of moral Gandhian enthu-interests to safeguard in the future. Conse- 1950s and 60s. siasts, committed to the Mahatma's construc- tive campaign for the renewal of the nation. Although many Congressmen and many more outside the Party's ranks were attracted by his fearlessness, by his personality and by his Indianness, few accepted his religious vision of man and society. and few were converted to his belief in the rightness and transforma- tive nature of non-violence. The Congress remained what it had become over the forty years since its incep- tiona loosely organised association of groups of local men (and a few women), many of high educational and professional background, who were politically active on a full or part 'time basis. who wished to gain accessto the decision-making and executive power of the state which the imperial author- ity was creating, and who knew that their C

Old and new: this scene of market day in Mayurakshi with its 'Canada Dam' in the background symbolises the tensions between Nehru's post-Independence vision of a modernised India and the continuing reality (and attraction) of Gandhi's peasant society.

quently those of its declarations which had ainhabited so much of their mental and p socialist ring were generally little more than.cal world. But even though he became lc vote-catching rhetoric. of the transitional government which say In this party Gandhi and Nehru were intransfer of power to Indian hands. and st their own ways unique. and that uniquenessquently prime minister. Nehru was not sc was both their strength and a long-term weak-as the party's undisputed leader and : ness in terms of their ability to galvanise logue until some years later. Congress into action in pursuit of visionary Although Gandhi lived for a brief pert, goals. Gandhi was never a 'leader' In any an independent India. it was Nehru whi Western sense of the word. His role fromto wrestle with the problem of trying It 1920 to the 19-i0s was more that of anhis vision of change under the new cir 'expert' on non-violence who could he wel- stances when Congress had hecomt comed and to an extent used by Congress parry of government rather than of n-atio when they felt his particular non-violentrhetoric and protest. and when he 'a a> strategy of opposition and profoundly moral strained by the structure of the state an stance and style suited their purposes; toability of the administration. For him achieve compromises between differentwere a range of seemingly insurmour groups within Congress when its internal divi-barriers to the achievement of radical ch sions threatened to rend it apart and destroyOne continuing example was the natt. the vital unity of the nationalist movement. the Congress party. Even though he ava Nehru's role was similarly not that of athe early 1950s its undisputed leader leader with a natural power base in a localitythough it paid lip service to his visior or in a group of like-minded allies. His 'ticket socialist transformation of society. it xva- in Congress was that of Gandhi's protege and a party which even more than before later heir, a fact which at times caused him pendence represented the interests of a embarrassment and distress.In the laterwho had no wish for radical social ant 1930s his ideological position was so anti- nomic change. Its very success as a flaw pathetical to many of the more conservative party had attracted into it many who nt in Congress that the latter would have madeaccess to power. Increasingly it becarr his position in the party impossible if it hadparty of the businessman, the prosy not been for Gandhi's presence and watchfulfarmer and the professional, those eye on the internal dynamics. stake in the India inherited from the r: As independence became imminent afterbeing made more prosperous for thot the end of the Second World War, Congressresources by the actions of an indepe activists recognisedlehru's skills as a nego-government anxious to boost the cc(); tiator with the imperial authorities = in partThis rootedness in groups of locally in because he spoke their language and had tial people was its great strength at eli time, but its weakness as an instrument ofsubcontinent. But they have proved incapable change. This Nehru learned the ,hard wayof making a national appeal or providing the when it came to attempts at land reform andbase for a stable all-India coalition. Perhaps social legislation for the benefit of thethe one party which has been able to con- deprived. struct a national vision is the revivalist Hindu Moreover, the very structure of the stateParty, the BJP, which has emerged as a highly inhibited change. Just as in imperial India thesignificant political force over the past country had been administered throughdecade. But this vision of the nation itself provinces, often the size of small Europeanendangers the unity of a nation with many countries, now these became the basis of thereligious minorities and cultural diversities, States within the Indian Union, bound to-which Gandhi sort to safeguard with his ethi- gether in a federation. Consequently on manycal religion and tolerance, and which Nehru issues legislation had to pass through the leg-hoped to cement and strengthen with a vision islatures of the States rather than through theof modern secularism and socialism. Lok Sabha in New Delhi. As in the case of the India's politicians need to dream dreams

-A abolition of great landlords and the redistri-and see visions of a tolerant and compassion- bution of land into moderate holdings belowate India as their nation's fiftieth birthday is a certain `ceiling', those with vested interestscelebrated, for their electorate is telling them could either get themselves into the State leg-sober truths about the lack of repute in which islature where they could modify or delaythey are held, and their need for integrity and reforming measures, or could use the monthsa commitment to real change as the country's while legislation was being passed to hireexpanding population grows increasingly lawyers and so equip themselves to avoid thesophisticated and aware of the nature of the law. Or in the case of agricultural improve-political system and its departure from the ment and the dire need to grow more food,hopes so manifest in 1947. Gandhi and Nehru policy implementation was in the hands ofmay have been frustrated in their hopes for the agricultural ministries of the States: andIndia: but they laid down a marker and a stan- Nehru found it impossible to chivvy them indard by which subsequent leaders and aspi- the way he would have wished. Added to this,rant leaders are judged. the actual tools of government were frustrat- ingly weak and slow. FOR FURTHER READING: A.J. Parel (ed.), M.K. Gandhi. Hind Swaraj and other Independent India inherited an administra- writings (Cambridge University Press. 1997); B. Parekh. ti- tion structured on an immensely slowGandhi's Political Philosophy. A Critical Examination er bureaucracy, which had made a speciality of (MacMillan, 1989); Judith M. Brown. Gandhi Prisoner of he generating endless files and pushing them Hope (Yale University Press. 1989): S. Gopal.Jawaharlal Nehru. A Biography (3 vols. Jonathan Cape, 1975-1984); ;e- from one level to another with agonisingJ. Nehru, An Autobiography The Bodley Head, 1936); re slowness. It was a system where those at R.L. Hardgrave, India. Government and Politics in a o- lower levels were neither trained nor accus-Developing Nation (Harcourt. Brace. 1970); Robert W. Dynasty at play: Nehru tomed to take responsibility and make deci- Stern, Changing India. Bourgeois Revolution on the Sub- his daughter Indira am sions. At the top it was manned by elite gen-continent (Cambridge University Press. 1993). grandson Rajiv (both destined to follow him ad eralists who, though highly educated, wereJudith Brown is Beit Professor of Commonwealth His- prime minister and die ict essentially trained to conserve the status quo, :my, at the University of Oxford and author of Modern violent deaths) in the m- to enable the collection of adequate revenue, India. The Origins of an Asian Democracy (Oxford Uni- garden of their home b he but not to innovate or manage a social revolu- versity Press, 1984). New Delhi, October 19C:' .ist tion. Nehru as a young nationalist had dis- )n- trusted and criticised the elite Indian Civil he Service, although over half of them were Ind- :re ian by 1947. He spoke of the need for a total )le overhaul of the administration and the evolu- ge. tion of a new people-orientated class of ad- of ministrators. But no administrative revolution 3M occurred, and he found himself increasingly nd having to rely on the heirs of the service he fa had castigated, who remained in ethos, back- ow ground and modes of operation so like their ie- imperial predecessors. It was little wonder )se that he became increasingly frustrated, and at CO- times bad-tempered. at his inability to `get list things done', despite his own vision and fre- led netic energy. the The frustrations of the idealisms of India's )US greatest nationalists, and the pragmatism of a the Congress Party, created a profound ideo- ind logical vacuum in independent India. Into rith this vacuum have emerged a host of parties in ent place of the once-great and embracing party ny. which led the country to independence. Many ,en- are regional in origin and orientation, foster- Tagore and His India

Ai 4.7 c,-P 0.(4-5 7/2/ Amartya Sen Rabindranath Tagore, who died in 1941 at the age of eighty, is a towering figure in the millennium-old literature of Bengal. Anyone who becomes fa- miliar with this large and flourishing tradition will be impressed by the power of Tagore's presence in Bangla- desh and in India. His poetry as well as his novels, short stories, and essays are very widely read, and the songs he Composed reverberatearoundthe eastern part of India and throughout Bangladesh. In contrast, in the rest of the world, especially in Europe and America, the excitement that Tagore's writings cre- ated in the early years of this century has largely vanished. The enthusiasm with which his work was once greeted was quite remarkable. Gitanjali, a se- lection of his poetry for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in1913, was published in English translation in London in March of that year and had been reprinted ten times by November, when the award was an- nounced. But he is not much read now in the West, and already by 1937, Gra- ham Greene was able to say: "As for Rabindranath Tagore, I cannot be- lieve that anyone but Mr. Yeats can still take his poems very seriously." The contrast between Tagore's com- manding presence in Bengali litera- ture and culture and his near-total eclipse in the rest of the world is per- haps less interesting than the distinc- tion between the view of Tagore as a his Bengali family as the product of "a deeply relevant and many-sided con- confluence of three cultures, Hindu, temporary thinker in Bangladesh and is now Bangladesh. But whatever wis- Mohammedan andBritish."' Rabin- India, and his image in the West as a dom there might be in Akhmatova's dranath'sgrandfather,Dwarkanath, repetitiveand remotespiritualist. invoking of Hinduism and the Ganges, was well known for his command of Graham Greene had, in fact, gone on- it did not prevent the largely Muslim Arabic and Persian, and Rabindranath to explain that he associated Tagore citizens of Bangladesh from having a grew up in a family atmosphere in "with what Chesterton calls 'the bright deep sense of identity with Tagore and which a deep knowledge of Sanskrit pebbly eyes' of the Theosophists." his ideas. Nor did it stop the newly in- and ancient Hindu texts was combined Certainly, an air of mysticism played dependent Bangladesh from choosing with an understanding of Islamic tradi- some part in the "selling" of Ra- one of Tagore's songs ("Amar Sonar tions as well as Persian literature. It is bindranath Tagore to the West by Bangla." which means "my golden not so much that Rabindranath tried to Yeats, Pound, and his other early Bengal") as its national anthem. This produceor had an interest in produc- champions. Even Anna Akhmatova, must be very confusing to those who inga "synthesis" of the different reli- one of Tagore's few later admirers seethe contemporary world asa gions (as the great Moghul emperor (who translated his poems into Rus- "clashof civilizations" with "the Akbar tried hard to achieve) as that his sian in the mid-1960s), talks of "that Muslim civilization," "the Hindu civi- outlook was persistently nonsectarian, mighty flow of poetry which takes its lization," and "the Western civiliza- and his writingssome two hundred strength from Hinduism as from the tion," each forcefully confronting the booksshow the influence of different

Ganges, and is called Rabindranath others. . parts of the Indian cultural background Tagore." They would also be confused by Ra- as well as of the rest of the world.' Most bindranath Tagore's own description of of his work was written at Santiniketan Rabindranathdid come froma (Abode of Peace), the small town that Hindu familyone of the landed gen- grew around the school he founded in try who owned estates mostly in what 12 Bengal in 1901. He not only conceived there an imaginative and innovative system of educationto which I will wrote to an Indian academic,in March also within much of India 1923: "I have finished itself makes return hut, through his writings and my Gandhi, in it, important to understand"Tagore's his influence on students and teachers, which I pay tributeto your two great side" of the GandhiTagore river-like souls, overflowing debates. he was able to use the school as a base with di- In his prison diary, Nehruwrote: from which he could take a major part vine spirit, Tagore andGandhi." The "Perhaps itis as well that [Tagore] in India's social, political, and cultural following month herecorded in his died now and did diary an account of not see the many movements. some of the differ- horrors that are likelyto descend in in- Theprofoundlyoriginalwriter ences between Gandhi and Tagore creasing measure on the world written, by Reverend C.F. and on whose elegant prose and magical po- ikridrews, India. He had seen enoughand he was etry Bengali readers know well is not the English clergymanand public ac- infinitely sad and unhappy." tivist who was Toward the sermonizing spiritual guru ad- a close friend of both the end of his life, Tagorewas indeed miredand then rejectedin Lon- men (and whose important rolein becoming discouraged aboutthe state don. Tagore was not only an im- Gandhi's life in South Africaas well as of India, especially India is well portrayed in as its normal bur- mensely versatile poet; he was also a Richard At- den of problems, suchas hunger and great short story writer, novelist, play- tenborough's film Gandhi).Andrews poverty, was being supplemented described to Rolland by wright. essayist, and composer of songs, a discussion be- politically organized incitementto as well as a talented painter whose pic- tween Tagore and Gandhi, at which he "communal" violence betweenHindus tures. with their whimsical mixture of was present, on subjects that divided and Muslims. This conflict them: would lead - representation and abstraction, are in 1947, six years after Tagore'sdeath, only now beginning to receive the ac- The first subject of discussion was to the widespread killingthat took claim that they have long deserved. idols; Gandhi defended them, be- place during partition; butthere was His essays, moreover, ranged over lit- lieving the masses incapable of much gore already during hisdeclining erature. politics, culture, social change. raising themselves immediately to days. In December 1939he wrote to religious beliefs, philosophical analy- his friend Leonard Elmhirst,the Eng- sis, international relations, and much abstract ideas. Tagore cannot bear to see the people eternally treated lish philanthropist and socialreformer else. The coincidence of the fiftieth who had6worked closelywith him on anniversary of Indian independence as a child. Gandhi quoted the great things achieved in Europe by the rural reconstruction in India(and who with the publication of a selection of flag as an idol; Tagore found it had gone on to found theDartington Tagore's letters by Cambridge Uni- easy to object, but Gandhi held his Hall Trust in England anda progres- versity Press' is a good occasion to ex- ground, contrasting European flags sive school at Dartingtonthat explic- bearing eagles, etc., with his own, itly invoked Rabindranath'seduca- amine the nature of Tagore'sideas on which he has put a spinning tional ideals):5 and reflections. and the kindof leader- ship in thought and understanding wheel. The second point of discus- It does not need a defeatist to feel he sionwasnationalism,which provided in the subcontinentin the deeply anxious about the future of first half of this century. Gandhi defended. He said that millions who with all their innate one must go through nationalism culture and their peaceful tradi- to reach internationalism, in the tionsarebeing simultaneously 1. same waythatonemust go subjected to hunger, disease, ex- through war to reach peace.4 ploitations Gandhi and Tagore foreign and indige- nous, and the seething discontents Since Rabindranath. Tagore and Mo- Tagoregreatly admired Gandhi but of communalism. handas Gatrahiwere two leading In- dian thinkers in this How would Tagore have viewed the century, many he had many disagreements with him India of today, we may well ask on the commentators have tried tocompare on a variety of subjects, including na- their ideas. On learning fiftieth anniversary of itsindepen- of Rabindra- tionalism, patriotism, the importance dence in 1947? Would he see progress nath's death,JawaharlalNehru, then incarcerated in of cultural exchange, the role of ratio- there, or wasted opportunity, perhaps a British jail in India, nality and of science, and thenature of even a betrayal of its promise and con- wrote in his prison diary forAugust 7, 1941: economic and socialdevelopment. viction? And, on a wider subject, how These differences, I shallargue, have a would he react to the spread of cul- Gandhi and Tagore.Two types clear and consistentpattern,with tural separatism in the contemporary entirely different fromeach other, Tagore pressing for moreroom for world? and yet both of themtypical of reasoning, and for a less traditionalist India, both in thelong line of view, a greater interest in therest of India's greatmen.... It is not so the world,' and more respect for sci- 2. much because ofany single virtue ence and for objectivity generally. East and West but because of the Rabindranath knew that he could tout ensemble, Given the vast range of his creative that I felt thatamong the world's not have given India the political lead- great men today Gandhiand ership that Gandhi provided, and he achievements, perhaps the most aston- Tagore weresupreme as human was never stingy in his praise for what ishing aspect of the image of Tagore in beings. What goodfortune for me Gandhi did for the nation (itwas, in the West is its narrowness; he is recur- to have come intoclose contact fact, Tagore who popularized theterm rently viewed as "the great mystic with them. "Mahatma"great soulasa de- from the East," an image with a puta- Remain Rolland scription of Gandhi). And yet eachre- tive message for the West, which some was fascinated by mained deeply critical of many things would welcome, others dislike, and the contrast betweenthem, and when he completed.his that the other stood for. That Ma- still others find deeply boring. To a book on Gandhi, he hatma Gandhi has received incompa- great. extent this Tagore was the It' rably more attention outside India and13West's own creation, part of its tradi- tion oemeSsage-seeking from the East, poet, and it could have made it some- us," and yetwe nave met ourown. I particularly from India, whiChas what easier to pigeonhole him. Com- image,... or heard, perhaps 'foi the' Hegel put ithad "existed for millen- menting on Rabindranath's appear. first time in literature,our voice 'as in a I nia in the imagination of the Euro- ance, Frances Cornford told William dream."' ' peans."6 Friedrich Schlegel, Schelling, Rothenstein, "I can now imagine a Yeats did not totally rejecthis early Herder, and Schopenhauer were only powerful and gentle Christ, which I admiration (as Ezra Poundanil:,sey, 3z; a few of the thinkers who followed the never could before." Beatrice Webb, eral others did). and he included,soMe same pattern. They theorized, at first, who did not like Tagore and resented of Tagore's early poems inThe- Ox- that India was the source of superior what she took to be his "quite obvious ford Book of Modern Verse,which he wisdom. Schopenhauer at one stage dislike of all that the Webbs stand for" edited in 1936. Yeats also hadsome even argued that the New Testament (there is, in fact, little evidence that favorable things to say about Tagore's "must somehow be of Indian origin: Tagore had given much thought to this prose writings. His censure of Tagore's this is attested by its completely Indian subject), said that he was "beautiful to later poems was reinforced byhis dis- ethics, which transforms morals into like of Tagore's own Englishtransla- tions of his work ("Tagore doesnot know English, no Indian knows Eng- lish," Yeats explained), unlikethe English version of Gitanjali which Yeats had himself helped toprepare. Poetry is. of course, notoriously diffi- cultto translate, and anyone who knows Tagore's poems in their origi- nal Bengali cannot feel satisfied with any of the translations (made with or without Yeats's help). Even thetrans- lations of his prose works suffer, io some extent, from distortion. E. M. Forster noted, in a review ofa trans- lation of one of Tagore's great Bengali novels, The Home and the World, in 1919: "The theme is so beautiful," but the charms have "vanished in transla- tion," or perhaps "in an experiment that has not quite come off."' Tagore himself played a somewhat bemused part in the boom and bust of Tagore and Gandhi, in Santiniketan, 1940 his English reputation. He accepted the extravagant praise with muchsur- asceticism,itspessimism, andits look at" and that "his speech has the prise as well as pleasure, and thenre- avatar," in "the person of Christ." But ceived denunciations with even greater then they rejected their own theories perfect intonation and slow chant-like moderation of the dramatic saint." surprise, and barely concealed pain. withgreatvehemence, sometimes Tagore was sensitive to criticism, and blaming India for not living up to their EzraPound and W.B. Yeats, among was hurt by even the most far-fetched unfounded expectations. accusations, such as the charge that he We can imagine that Rabindra- others, first led the chorus of adora- tion in the Western appreciation of was getting credit for the work of nath'sphysicalappearancehand- Yeats, who had "rewritten" Gitanjali. some, bearded, dressed in non-Western Tagore, and then soon moved tone- glect and even shrill criticism. The (This charge was made bya corre- clothesmay, to some extent, have spondent for The Times, Sir Valentine encouraged his being seen as a carrier contrast between Yeats's praise of his work in 1912 ("These lyrics ...display Chirol, whom E. M. Forsteronce de- of exotic wisdom. Yasunari Kawabata, scribed as "an old Anglo-Indianreac- the first Japanese Nobel laureate in lit- intheir thought a worldIhave tionary hack.") From time to time erature, treasured memories from his dreamed of all my life long," "the Tagore also protested the crudity of middle-school days of "this sage-like work of a supreme culture") and his some of his overexcited advocates. He poet": denunciation in 1935 ("Damn Tagore") wrotetoC. F. Andrewsin1920: "These people His white hair flowed softly down arose partly from theinability of ... are like drunkards both sides of his forehead; the Tagore's many-sided writings tofit who are afraid of their lucid intervals." tufts of hair under the temples into the narrow box in which Yeats also were long like two beards, wantedto placeand keephim. and linking up with the hair on his Certainly, Tagore did write a huge 3. amount, and published ceaselessly, cheeks, continued into his beard, God and Others so that he gave an impression, to even in English (sometimes in indiffer- the boy I was then, of some an- ent English translation), but Yeats was Yeats was not wrong to see a large re- cient Oriental Wizard.' also bothered, it is clear, by the diffi- ligious element in Tagore's writings. culty of fitting Tagore's later writings He certainly had interesting and ar- That appearance would have been into the image Yeats had presented to resting things to say about life and well-suited to the selling of'Tagore in the West. Tagore, he had said, was the death. Susan Owen, the mother of the West as a quintessentially mystical product of "a whole people, a whole Wilfred Owen, wrote to Rabindranath civilization, 1'strange to in 1920, describing her last conversa- is "among the images of the heart did his reservations about patriotism, tions with her son before he left for the turning to God." But in Yeats's coh- which, he argued, can limit both. the " war which would take his life. Wilfred siderate attempt to make sure that the freedom to engage ideas from outside said goodbye with "those wonderful reader does not miss the "main point," "narrow domestic walls" and the free= words of yoursbeginning at 'When I something of the enigmatic beauty of dom also to support the causes of peo- go from hence, let this be my parting the Bengali poem is lost even what ple in other countries. Rabindranath's word.'" When Wilfred's pocket note- had survived the antiquated language passion for freedom underlies his firm book was returned to his mother, she of the English translation. Tagore cer- opposition to unreasoned traditional- found "these words written in his dear tainly had strongly held religious beliefs ism, which makes one a prisoner of the writingwith your name beneath." (of an unusually nondenominational past (lost, as he put it, in "the dreary.. The idea of a direct, joyful, and to- kind), but he was interested in a great desert sand of dead habit")., (ally fearless relationship with God many other things as well and had Tagore illustrates the tyranny of :an be found in many of Tagore's reli- many different things to say about the past in his amusing yet deeply se-_ gious writings, including the poems of them. rious parable "Kartar BhoOt" ( "The C3itanjali. From India's diverse reli- Some of the ideas he tried to pre- Ghost of the Leader"). As the re- gious traditions he drew many ideas, sent were directly political, and they spected leader of an imaginary land )oth from ancient texts and from pop- figure rather prominently in his letters about to die, his panic-stricken foil. liar poetry. But "the bright pebbly and lectures. He had practical, plainly lowers request him to stay on after his' eyes of the Theosophists" do not stare expressed views about nationalism, death to instruct them on what to do. )ut of his verses. Despite the archaic war and peace, cross-cultural educa- He consents. But his followers find.. anguage of the original translation of tion, freedom of the mind, the impor- their lives are full of rituals and con- 3itanjali, which did not, I believe, help' tance of rational criticism, the need straints on everyday behavior and are for openness, and so on. His admirers not responsive to the world around to preserve the simplicity of the origi- in the West, however, were tuned to them. Ultimately, they request the', nal, its elementary humanitycomes the more otherworldly themes which ghost of the leader to relieve them of through more clearly thanany com- had been emphasized by hisfirst his domination, when he informs plex and intense spirituality: Western patrons. People came to his them that he exists only intheir public lectures in Europe and Amer- minds. Leave this chanting and singing Tagore's deep aversion to any com- and telling of beads! Whom ica, expecting ruminations on 'grand, transcendental themes; when they mitment to the past that could not be dost thou worship in this lonely modified by contemporary reason ex- dark corner of a temple with heard instead his views on the way doors all shut? public leaders should behave, there tended even to the alleged virtue of in- variably keeping past promises. On Open thine eyes and see thy God was some resentment, particularly (as is not before thee! one occasion when Mahatma Gandhi visited Tagore's school at Santinike- He is there where the tiller is till- E. P. Thompson reports) when he de- tan, a young woman got him to sign ing the hard ground and where livered political criticism "at $700 a her autograph book. Gandhi wrote-, the pathmaker is breaking scold." stones. "Never make a promise in haste. Hav- ing once made it fulfill it at the cost of He is with them in sun and in your life." When he saw this entry, shower, and his garment iscov- ered with dust. 4. Tagore became agitated. He wrote in the same book a short poem in Bengali Reasoning in Freedom An ambiguity about religiousexpe- to the effect that no one can be made rience is central to.many of Tagore's For Tagore it was of the highest im- "a prisoner 'forever with a chain of devotional poems, and makesthem portance that people be able to live, clay." He went on to conclude in Eng- appeal to readers irrespective of their and reason, in freedom. His attitudes lish, possibly so that Gandhi could beliefs; but excessively detailed inter- toward politics and culture, national- pretation can ruinously strip away that ism and internationalism, tradition read it too, "Fling away your promise ambiguity.'' This applies particularly and modernity, can all be seen in the if it is found to be wrong.' to his many poems which combine im- light of this belief." Nothing, perhaps, ages of human love and those of pious expresses his values as clearly as a Tagore had the greatest admiration devotion. Tagore writes: poem in Gitanjali: for Mahatma Gandhi as a person and as a political leader, but he was also I have no sleep to-night. Everand Where the mind is without fear highly skeptical of Gandhiji's form of again I open my door and look and the head is held high; nationalism and his conservative in out on the darkness, my friend! Where knowledge is free; stincts regarding the country's past' I can see nothing beforeme. I Where the world has not been traditions. He never criticized Gandhi wonder where lies thy path! broken up into fragments by personally. In the 1938 essay, "Gandhi By what dim shore of the ink- narrow domestic walls;.... the Man," he wrote: black river, by what far edgeof Where the clear stream of reason the frowning forest, through has not lost its way into the Great as he is as a politician, as an what mazy depth of gloom,art dreary desert sand of dead organizer, as a leader of men, as a thou threading thycourse to habit;.... moral reformer, he is greater than come to see me, my friend? Into that heaven of freedom, my all these as a man, because none Father, let my country awake. of these aspects and activities lim- I suppose it could be helpfulto be told, its his humanity. They are rather Is Yeats hastens to explain, that"the Rabindranath's qualified support for inspired and sustained by it. servant or ,the bride awaitingthe mas- nationalist movementsand his op- 5 ter's home-corning in theempty house" position to- the unfreedom of alien BEST COPY AVAILABLE rulecame from this commitment. So ! And Vet there is a deep division be- spin like the others. Let him burn ..tween the two men. Tagore was ex- his foreign clothes; that is the duty today. God will take care of the Tagore's personal life was, in many plicit about his disagreement: ways, an unhappy one. He married in We who often glorify our ten- Morrow. 1883, lost his wife in 1902, and never dency to ignore reason, installing If Tagore had missed something in remarried. He sought close compan- in its place blind faith, valuing it as Gandhi's argument, so did Gandhi ionship, which he did not always get spiritual, are ever paying for its miss the point of Tagore's main criti- cost with the obscuration of our mind and destiny. I blamed Ma- hatmaji for exploiting this irra- tional force of credulity in our people, which might have had a quick result [in creating] a super- structure, while sapping the foun- dation. Thus began my estimate of Mahatmaji, as the guide of our na- tion, and it is fortunate for me that it did not end there. But while it "did not end there," that difference of vision was a powerful divider. Tagore, for example, remained un- convinced of the merit of Gandhi's forceful advocacy that everyone should spin at home with the "charka," the primitive spinning wheel. For Gandhi this practice was an important part of India's self-realization. "The spinning- wheel gradually became," as his biog- rapher B. R. Nanda writes, "the center Albert Einstein and Tagore, in New York, 1930 of rural uplift in the Gandhian scheme of Indian economics.' Tagore found cism. It was not only that the charka (perhaps even during his married life the alleged economic rationale for this made little economic sense, but also, he wrote to his wife, Mrinalini: "If scheme quite unrealistic. As Romain Tagore thought, that it was not the you and I could be comradesin all our Rolland noted, Rabindranath "never way to make people reflect on. any- work and in all our thoughts it would fires of criticizing the charka." In this thing: "The charka does not require be splendid, but we cannot attain all economic judgment, Tagore was prob- anyone to think; one simply turns the that we desire"). He maintained a ably right. Except for the rather small wheel of the antiquated invention end- warm friendship with, and a strong specialized market for high-quality lessly-, using the minimum of judgment Platonic attachment to, the literature- spun cloth, itis hard to make eco- and stamina." loving wife, Kadambari, of his elder nomic sense of hand-spinning, even brother,Jyotirindranath. He dedi- Withwheelslessprimitivethan 5. cated some poems to her before his Gandhi's charka. Hand-spinning as a Celibacy and Personal Life marriage, and several books after- widespread activity can survive only Tagore and Gandhi's attitudes toward ward, some after her death (she com- with the help of heavy government personal life were also quite different. mitted suicide, for reasons that are not subsidies." However, Gandhi's advocacy of the Gandhi was keen on the virtues of fully understood, at the age of twenty- charka was not based only oneco- celibacy, theorized about it, and, after five, four months after Rabindranath's nomics. He wanted everyone to spin some years of conjugal life, made a wedding). for "thirty minutes every day as a sac- private commitmentpublicly an- Much later in life, during his tour of nouncedto refrain from sleeping Argentina in 1924-1925, Rabindranath ' rifice," seeing this as a way for people who are better off to identify them- withhiswife. Rabindranath's own came to know the talented and beauti- selves with the less fortunate. He was attitude on this subject was very differ- ful Victoria Ocampo, who later be- impatient with Tagore's refusalto ent, but he was gentle about their came the publisher of the literary mag- grasp this point: disagreements: azine Sur. They became close friends, [Gandhiji] condemns sexual life as but it appears that Rabindranath de- The poet lives for the morrow, inconsistent with the moral prog- flected the possibility of a passionate and would have us do likewise.... ress of man, and has a horror of relationship into a confined intellec- "Why should I, who have no need sex as great as that of the author tual one.' His friend Leonard Elm- to work for food, spin?" maybe of The Kreutzer Sonata, but, un- hirst, who accompanied Rabindranath the question asked. Because I am like Tolstoy, he betrays no abhor- on his Argentine tour; wrote: eating what does not belong to rence of the sex that tempts his Besides having a keen intellectual me. I am living on the spoliationof kind. In fact, his tenderness for understanding of his books, she my countrymen. Trace the source women is one of the noblest and was in love with himbut instead of every coin that finds its way most consistent traits of his char- of being content to build a friend-- into your pocket, and you will re- acter, and he counts among the alise the truth of what I write. women of his country some of his best and truest comrades in the 16 orpat movement he ig le.adino ship on the basis ot intellect, s11C was in a hurry to establish that 6. seem to be searching fora line ot rea- soning that would later be elegantly kind itproprietary right over him Science and the People which he absolutely would not developed by Hilary Putnam, who has, brook. Gandhi and Tagore severely clashed argued: "Truth depends on conceptual over their totally different attitudes schemes and itis nonetheless 'real Ocampo and while remain- toward science. In January 1934, Bihar truth.'"" Tagore himself said little to ing friendly. were both quite rude in was struck by a devastating earth- explain his convictions, but it is impor- what they wrote about each other. quake which killed thousands of tant to take account of his heterodoxy, Ocampo's hook on Tagore (of which a peo- ple. Gandhi, who was then deeply in- not only because his speculations were Bengali translation was made from the volved in the fight against untouch- invariably interesting, but also be- Spanish by the distinguished poet and ability (the barbaric system inherited cause they illustrate how his support critic Shankha Ghosh)isprimarily from India's divisive past, in which for any position, including his strong concerned with Tagore's writings but "lowly people" were kept ata physical, interest in science, was accompanied also discusses the pleasures and diffi- distance), extracted a positive lesson by critical scrutiny. culties of their relationship, giving from the tragic event. "Aman like quite a different account from Elm- me," Gandhi argued. "cannot but be- hirst's, and never suggesting any sort lieve this earthquake is a divine chas- 7. )f proprietary intentions. tisement sent by.God for our sins"in Nationalism andColonialism particular the sins of untouchability. Victoria Ocampo, however, makes Tagore was predictably "For me there is a vital connection be- hostile to clear that she very much wanted to munal sectarianism com- (such asa Hindu ;et physically closer to Rabindranath: tween the Bihar calamity and the un- orthodoxy that 'Little by little he [Tagore] partially touchability campaign." was antagonisticto Islamic, Christian,or Sikh perspec- amed the young animal, by turns wild Tagore, who equally abhorred un- tives). But even nationalismseemed to Ind docile, who did not sleep, dog- touchability and had joined Gandhi in him to be suspect. the movements against it, protested Isaiah Berlinsum- ike, on the floor outside his door, sim marizes well Tagore's )ly because it was not done."" Ra- against this interpretation of an event complex posi- tion on Indiannationalism: Andranath, too, was clearly very much that had caused suffering and ittracted to her. He called her "Vi- death to so many innocent people, including aye' (the Sanskrit equivalent of Vic- .Tagore, stood fast.. on the:narrow ;...t.: children and babies. He also oria), dedicated a book of poems to hated the causeWay,.and,did_nothetray.his ter,Purabi an "evening melody." epistemology implicit- in seeingan visions. of ,ithe.,ditfiCtiit.truth. tnd expressed great admiration for earthquake as caused by ethical fail- condemned:romantic overattich- ter mind ("like a star that was dis- ure. "It is," he wrote, "all the more un- went to the .past; whit calleil fortunate because this kind of unscien- .the tying Of India. to: the past"like ant"). In a letter to.her he wrote, as if tific view of [natural] phenomena is o explain his own reticence: a sacrificial goat:tethered, toa too readily accepted by a large section post,'!andmhe *Usedmen. who of our countrymen." When we weretogether,we displ;lyed 4.77they seemedto-hini... mostly played with words and The two remained deeply divided tried to laugh away our best op- over their attitudes toward science. reactionaryofnot knowing portunitiestoseeeach However, while Tagore believed that other what true politicalfreedom was, modern science was essential to clearly.... Whenever there is the un- pointing out that itis from English least sign of the nest becoming a derstanding physical phenomena, his thinkers and Englishbooks that jealous rival of the sky[,] my mind. views on epistemology were interest- the very notionof political liberty like a migrantbird,triesto ingly heterodox. He did not take the was derived. Butagainst take... flight to a distant shore. simple "realist" position often associ- cos- mopolitanism hemaintained that ated with modern science. The report 'lye years later, during Tagore's Eur- the Englishstood on their of his conversation with Einstein, pub- own ipean tour in 1930. he sent her a cable: feet, and somust Indians. In 1917 lished in The New York Times in 1930, he once moredenounced the dan- 'Will you not come and see me." She shows how insistent Tagore lid. was on in- ger of "leaving everything But their relationship did not terpreting truth through observation to the eem to go much beyond conversation. unalterable will ofthe Master," be and reflective concepts. To assert that he brahminor Englishman.21 ,nd their somewhat ambiguouscorre- something is true or untrue in the pondence continued over the years. absence of anyone to observeor per- ',The duality. Berlinpoints to is well Vritten in1940, a year before his ceive its truth, of to forma conception reflected also inTagore's attitudeto- leath at eighty. one of thepoems in of what it is, appeared to Tagoreto ward cultural diversity.He wanted In- ;esh Leklut ("Last Writings"), dians to learn seems be deeply questionable. When Ein- what is goingon else- o be about her: "How I wish I could stein remarked, "If therewere no where, how otherslived, what they trice again find my way to that foreign human beings any more, the Apollo valued, andso on, while remaining and where waits forme the message interested and )f love!! Belvedere no longer would be beau- involved in theirown ... Her language I knew not. tiful?" Tagore simply replied, "No." culture and heritage.Indeed, in his tut what her eyes said will foreverre- educational writings Going furtherand into muchmore the need forsyn- nain eloquent in its anguish."' thesis is strongly interesting territoryEinstein said, "I stressed. It can also However indecisive,or confused. or be found in hisadvice to .Indian agree with regard to this conception of. stu- .wkwardRabindranath may have dents abroad. In beauty,' but not with regard to truth." 1907 he wrote tohis he.certainly did not share Ma- son-in-law Nagendranath iatma Gandhi's censorious Tagore's response .was: "Why not? Gangulee, views of Truth is realized through men."" who hadgone to America to study ex. In fact*, when itcame to social agriculture: ,olicy, he advocated Tagore's epistemology, which he contraception never: pursued systematically, would 13EST COPY AVAILABL.r-. .nd family planning whileGandhi pre- erred 9 I ,' ; , , .. . , oaton in hand, a reign of 'law and To get on familiar terms with the BothGandhi and Nehru expressed order,' or in other words a policeman's local people is a part of your edu- their appreciation of the important rule, such a mockery of civilization cation. To know only agriculture part Tagore took in the national strug- can claim no respect from us." is not enough; you must know . gle. Itisfitting that after indepen- America too. Of course if, in the dence, India chose a song of Tagore process of knowing America, one ("Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka," begins to lose one's identity and which can be roughly translated as 8. falls into the trap of becoming an "the leader of people's minds") as its Critique of Patriotism Americanised person contemptu- national anthem. Since Bangladesh ous of everything Indian,itis Rabindranath rebelledagainstthe would later choose another song of strongly nationalist form that the inde- preferable to stay in a locked Tagore ("Amar Sonar Bangla") as its room. pendence movement often took, and national anthem, he may be the only this made him refrain from taking Tagore was strongly involved in one ever to have authored the national a particularly active part in contempo- protest against the Raj on a number of anthems of two different countries. rary politics. He wanted to assert occasions, most notably in the move- Tagore's criticism of the British ad- India's right to be independent with- ment to resist the 1905 BritiSh pro- ministration of India was consistently out denying the importance of what posal to split in two the province of strong and grew more intense over the India could learnfreely and prof- Bengal, a plan that was eventually years. This point is often missed, since itablyfrom abroad. He was afraid withdrawn following popular resis- he made a special effort to dissociate that a rejection of the West in favor of tance. He was forthright in denounc- his criticism of the Raj from any deni- an indigenous Indian tradition was not ing the brutality of British rule in gration of Britishor Westernpeo- only limiting in itself; it could easily -India, never more so than after the ple and culture. Mahatma Gandhi's turn into hostility to other influences Amritsar massacre of April 13, 1919, well-known quip in reply to a ques- from abroad, including Christianity, when 379 unarmed people at a peace- tion, asked in England, on what he which came to parts of India by the ful meeting were gunned down by the thought of Western civilization ("It fourth century, Judaism, which came army, and two thousand more were would be a good idea") could not have wounded. Between April 23 and 26, come from Tagore's lips. He would Rabindranath wrote five agitated let- understand the provocations to which ters to C. F. Andrews, who himself was Gandhi was responding involving extremely disturbed, especially after cultural conceit as well as imperial he was told by a British civil servant in tyranny. D. H. Lawrence supplied a India that thanks to this show of fine example of the former: "I become strength, the "moral prestige" of the more and more surprised to see how Raj had "never been higher.", far higher, in reality, our European A month after the massacre, Tagore civilization stands than the East, In- wrote to the Viceroy of India, asking dian and Persian, ever dreamed of.... to be relieved of the knighthood he This fraud of looking up to themthis had accepted four years earlier: wretched worship-of-Tagore attitude 110'14.4priVOrticinn-te-**erity -of is disgusting." But, unlike Gandhi, Tagore could not, even in jest, be dis- °Minato people-and the meth=_'' missive of Western civilization. oo g diem on ,:weiare Even in his powerful indictment of British rule in India in 1941, in a lec- the ture which he gave on his last birthday, and which was later published as a Rabindranath in later life, nients; barring Sothe-cOiispiCuouX-: drawing by Satyajit Ray exceptaons; pamphlet under thetitleCrisis in tongdering that such Civilization, he strains hard to main- through Jewish immigration shortly has been 'meted out to a popula tain the distinction between opposing after the fall of Jerusalem, as did tion disarmed .'and' resourceless;` Western imperialism and rejecting Zoroastrianism through Parsi immi- by a power whioh.hi,iih6. teti' Western civilization. While he saw gration later on (mainly in the eighth riblYefficient orgaiiiitiOnfor.de'; Indiaas having been "smothered century), and, of courseand most sirigEtion of humanlives,we. must' under the dead weight of British ad- importantlyIslam, which has had a ministration" (adding "another great very strong presence in India since the strongly assert that it canclaim no and ancient civilization for whose re- tenth century. less cent tragic history the British cannot politicalexpediency,far Tagore's criticism of patriotism is a moral justification....The univer- disclaimresponsibilityisChina"), Tagore recalls what India has gained persistent theme in his writings. As sal agony of indignationroused in early as 1908, he put his position suc- the hearts of ourpeople has been from "discussions centred upon Shake- speare's drama and Byron's poetry and cinctly in a letter replying to the criti- ignored by ourrulers--possibly cism of Abala Bose, the wife of a great for im- above all ... the large-hearted liberal- congratulating themselves Indianscientist,Jagadish Chandra parting what they imagine assalu- ism of nineteenth-century English pol- itics." The tragedy, as Tagore saw it, Bose: "Patriotism cannot be our final tary lessons....I for my part want spiritual shelter; my refuge is human- to stand, shorn ofall special dis- came from the fact that what "was truly best in their own civilization, ity. I will not buy glass for the price of tinctions, by the sideof those of diamonds, and I will never allow patri- my countrymenwho for their so- the upholding of dignity of human re- otism to triumph over humanity as called insignificance areliable to lationships, has no place in the British suffer a degradation notfit for administration of this country." "If human beings. inits place they lia,Ner estaplished, BEST COPY AVAILABLE ' long as I live." His novel Jhare Haire humiliated people, of people left be- bolic, awakening, and has now &- (The Home and the World) has much come itself a worse menace to the to say about this theme. In the novel, hind by developments elsewhere,as defenceless peoples of the East. , Nikhil, who is keen on social reform, was the case in Japan before its emer- including women's liberation, but cool gence during the nineteenth century. How to view Japan's position in the toward nationalism, gradually loses At the beginning of one of his lectures Second World War was a divisive issue the esteem of his spirited wife, Bimala, in Japan in 1916 ("Nationalism in in India. After the war, when Japanese because of his failure to be enthusias- Japan"), he observed that "the worst political leaders were tried for war tic about anti-British agitations, which form of bondage is the bondage of de- crimes, the sole dissenting voice among she sees as a lack of patriotic commit- jection, which keeps men hopelessly the judges came from the Indian judge, ment. Bimala becomes fascinated with chained in loss of faith in themselves." Radhabinod Pal, a distinguished jurist. Nikhil's nationalist friend Sandip, who Tagore shared the admiration for Pal dissented on various grounds, speaks brilliantly and acts with patri- Japan widespread in Asia for demon- among them that no fair trial was pos- otic militancy, and she falls in love strating the ability of an Asian nation sible in view of the asymmetry of with him. Nikhil refuses to change his to rival the West in industrial develop- power between the victor and the de- views: "I am willing to serve my coun- ment and economic progress. He feated. Ambivalent feelings in India try; but my worship I reserve for Right noted withgreatsatisfactionthat toward the Japanese military aggres- which is far greater than my country. Japan had "in giant strides left cen- sion, given the unacceptable nature of To worship my country as a god is to turies of inaction behind, overtaking British imperialism, possibly had a- bring a curse upon it."' thepresenttimeinitsforemost part in predisposing Pal to consider a achievement." For other nations out- perspective different from that of the As the story unfolds, Sandip be- side the West, he said, Japan "has bro- other judges. comes angry with some of his country- ken the spell under which we lay in men for their failure to join the strug- More tellingly, Subhas Chandra Bose torpor for ages, taking it to be the nor- 11. gle as readily as he thinks they should mal condition of certain races living in (no relation of Rash Behari Bose),a ("Some Mohamedan traders are still certain geographical limits." leading nationalist, made his way to obdurate"). He arranges to deal with But then Tagore went on to criticize Japan during the war via Italy and therecalcitrantsby burningtheir the rise of a strong nationalism in Germany after escaping from a British meager trading stocks and physically Japan, and its emergence as an imperi- prison; he helped the Japanese to form attacking them. Bimala has to acknowl- alist nation. Tagore's outspoken criti- units of Indian soldiers, who had ear- edge the connection between Sandip's cisms did not please Japanese audi- liersurrendered tothe advancing rousing nationalistic sentiments and ences and, as E. P. Thompson wrote, Japanese army, to fight on the Jap- hissectarianandultimatelyvio- "the welcome given to him on his first anese side as the "Indian National lentactions. The dramatic events arrival soon cooled."' Twenty-two Army." Rabindranath had formerly that follow (Nikhil attempts to help the entertained great admiration for Sub- victims, risking his life) include the end yearslater,in1937,duringthe has Bose as a dedicated nonsectarian of Bimala's political romance. Japanese war on China,Tagore re- fighter for Indian independence.' But This is a difficult subject, and Satya- ceived a letter fromRash Behari their ways would have parted when jit Ray's beautiful film of The Home Bose, an anti-British Indianrevolu- Bose's political activities took this and the World brilliantly brings out the tionary then .living in Japan,who turn, although Tagore was dead by the novel's tensions, along with the humar sought Tagore's approval for his ef- time Bose reached Japan. affections and disaffections of the forts there on behalf of Indian inde- Tagore saw Japanese militarismas story. Not surprisingly, the story ha' pendence, in which he had thesupport illustrating the way nationalismcan had many detractors, not just among of the Japanese government. Tagore mislead e'en a nation of great achieve- dedicated nationalists in India. Georg replied: ment and promise. In 1938 Yone Noguchi, the distinguished poet and Lukacs found Tagore's novel to be "i Your cable has caused petit bourgeois yarn of the shoddies me many friend of Tagore (as well as of Yeats restless hours, for it hurtsme very kind," "at the intellectual service o much to have to ignore and Pound), wrote to Tagore, pleading the British police," and "a contempt your ap- with him to change his mind about peal. I wish you had asked formy Japan. Rabindranath's reply, written ible caricature of Gandhi." It woulc cooperation in a cause against of course, be absurd to think of Sandi. which my spirit did not protest. as Gandhi, but the novel gives a "stron I on September 12, 1938, was altogether know, in making this appeal,you uncompromising: and gentle" warning, as Bertolt Bred counted on my great regard for noted in his diary, of the corruptibilit the Japanese for I, along with the It seems to me that it is futile for of nationalism, since itis not ever rest of Asia, did once admire and either of us to try to convince the handed. Hatred of one group can lea look up to Japan and didonce other, since your faith in the infal- to hatred of others, no matter how f2 fondly hope that in Japan Asia lible right of Japan to bully other such feeling may be from the minds had at last discovered its chal- Asiatic nations into line with your large-hearted nationalist leaders lik lenge to the West, that Japan's Government's policy is not shared Mahatma Gandhi. new strength would be conse- by me.... Believe me, it is sorrow crated in safeguarding the culture and shame, not anger, that prompt 9. of the East against alien interests. me to write to you. I suffer in- tensely not only because the re- Admiration and Criticism ofJapan But Japan has not taken longto betray that rising hope andrepu- ports of Chinese suffering batter Tagore's reaction tonationalism in diate all that seemed significant against my heart, but because I As in the in Japan is particularly telling. her wonderful, and, tous sym- can no longer point out with pride case of India, he sawthe need to build the example of a great Japan. the self-confidence of adefeated and 19 Russia: Hewould have been much happier Rabindranath went on to note "with with the postwar emergence of Japan I must ask you: Are you doing since admiration how a band of valiant Eng- your ideal a service byarousing as a peaceful power. Then, too, lishmenlaid down theirlivesfor 177) he was not free of egotism, he would 1 inthe minds of those under Spain." class-hatred, also have been pleased by the atten- Tagore's view of the Soviet Union your training anger, tion paid to his ideas try the novelist and revengefulness against those Yasunari Kawabata and others.' has been a subject of much discussion. whom you consider to be your He was widely read in Russia. In 1917 enemies? ... Freedom of mind is several Russian translations of Gitan- neededforthereceptionof jali (one edited by Ivan Bunin, later truth; terror hopelessly kills it.... 10. the first Russian Nobel laureate in lit- For the sake of humanity I hope International Concerns erature) were available, and by the late you may never create avicious 1920s many of the English versions of force of-violence, which will go Tagore wasnotinvariablywell- his work had been rendered into weavinganinterminable informed about international politics. Russian by several distinguished trans- on He allowed himself to be entertained lators. Russian versions of his work chain of violence and cruelty.... by Mussolini in a short visit to Italy in You have tried to destroy many continued to appear: Boris Pasternak of the other evils of [theczarist] . May-June1926, a visit arranged by translated him in the 1950s and 1960s. Carlo Formichi, professor of Sanskrit When Tagore visited Russia in 1930, period. Why not try to destroy at the University of Rome. Whenhe he was much impressed by its develop- this one also? askedtomeet BenedettoCroce, ment efforts and by what he saw as a Formichi said, "Impossible! Impossi- The interview was not published in real commitment to eliminate poverty Izvestia until 1988nearly sixty years ble!" Mussolini told him that Croce and economic inequality. But what im- was "not in Rome." WhenTagore said pressed him most was the expansion of Tagore's reaction to the Russia of he would go "wherever he is," Mus- basic education across the old Russian solini assured him that Croce's where- 1930 arose from two of his strongest empire. In Letters from Russia, written hisuncompromising abouts were unknown. in Bengali and published in 1931, he commitments: Such incidents, as well as warnings belief in the importance of "freedom unfavorably compares the acceptance of mind" (the source of his criticism of from Romain Rolland and other of widespread illiteracy in India by the friends, should have ended Tagore's the Soviet Union), and his conviction British administration with Russian that the expansion of basic education flirtation with Mussolini more quickly efforts to expand education: than it did. But only after he received is central to social progress (the source graphic accounts of the brutality. of In stepping on the soil of Russia, of his praise, particularly in contrast to Italian fascism from two exiles, Gae- the first thing that caught my eye British-run India). He identified the tano Salvemini and Gaetano Sal- was that in education, at any rate, lack of basic education as the funda- vadori, and learned more of what was thepeasant and theworking mental cause of many of India's social happening in Italy, did he publicly de- classes have made such enormous and economic afflictions: . noUnce the regime, publishing a letter progress in these few years that nothing comparable has happened In my view the imposing tower of .to the Manchester Guardian in Au- misery which today rests on the gust. The next month, Popolo d'Italia, even to our highest classes in the course of the last hundred and fifty heart of India has its sole founda- the magazine edited by Benito Mus tion in the absence of education. solini's brother, replied: "Who cares? years.... The people here are not at all afraid of giving complete ed- Caste divisions, religious conflicts, Italy laughs at Tagore and those who aversion to work, precarious eco- brought this unctuous and insupport- ucation even to Turcomans of dis- tant Asia; on the contrary, they are nomic conditionsall centre on able fellow in our midst." this single factor. Withhishighexpectationsof utterly in earnest about it.' Britain, Tagore continued to be sur- When parts of the book were trans- prised by what he took to be a lack of lated into English in 1934, the under- Tagore was concerned notonly that official sympathy for international vic- secretary for India stated in Parlia- there be wider opportunities for edu- tims of aggression. He returned to this ment thatitwas "calculated by cation across the country (especially in theme in the lecture he gave on his last rural areas where schools werefew), distortion of the facts to bring the be birthday. in 1941: British Administration in India into but also that the schools themselves more lively and enjoyable.He himself contempt and disrepute," and the early, While Japan was quietly devour- book was then promptly banned. The had dropped out of school ing North China, her act of wan- largely out of boredom, and had never English version would not be pub- bothered to earn a diploma. He wrote ton aggression was ignored as a lished until after independence. minor incident by the veterans of extensively on how schools should be British diplomacy. We have also made more attractive to boys andgirls witnessed from this distance how- and thus more productive. His own co- actively the British statesmen ac- 11. educational schoolatSantiniketan quiesced in the destruction of the Education and Freedom had many progressive features.The Spanish Republic. TheBritishIndianadministrators emphasis here was on self-motivation were not, however, alone in trying .to rather than on discipline, and on fos- But distinguishing between the British intellectualcuriosityrather government and the British people, suppress Tagore's reflections on Rus- tering sia. They were joined by Soviet offi- than competitive excellence. cials. In an interview with Izvestia in Much of Rabindranath's life was spent in developing the school atSan- 1930, Tagore sharply criticized the much lack of freedom that he observed in tiniketan. The school never had money, since the fees were verylow. r His lecture honoraria, "$700 ascold," Ray's words about Santiniketan in This state of affairs is the result of 1991 would have greatly pleased Ra- the continuation of British imperial went to support it, as well as most of neglectof mass education, which his Nobel Prize money. The school re- bindranath: has been reinforced by India's tradi- ceived no support from the govern- I consider the three years I spent tional elitism, as well as upper-class- ment, but did get help from private in Santiniketan as the most fruit- dominated contemporary politics (ex- citizenseven Mahatma Gandhi raised fulof my life....Santiniketan cept in parts of India such as Kerala. money for it. opened my eyes for the first time where anti-upper-caste movements The dispute with Mahatma Gandhi to the splendours of Indian and have tended to concentrate on educa- on the Bihar earthquake touched on a Far Eastern art. Until then I was tion as a great leveller). Tagore would subject that was very important to Completely under the sway of see illiteracy and the neglect of educa- Tagore: the need for education in sci- Western art, music and literature. tion not only as the main source of ence as well as in literature and the hu- Santiniketan made me the com- India's continued social backward- manities. At Santiniketan, there were bined product of East and West ness, but also as a great constraint that strong "local" elements in its emphasis that I am.' restricts the possibility and reach of on Indian traditions, including the economic development in India (as his classics, and in the use of Bengali writings on rural development force- rather than English as the language of 12. fully make clear). Tagore would also instruction. At the same time there Fifty Years after Independence have stronglyfeltthe need for a were courses on a great variety of cul- greater commitmentand a greater tures, and study programs devoted to As the fiftieth anniversary of Indian sense of urgencyin removing en- China, Japan, and the Middle East. independence approaches, the reck- demic poverty. Many foreigners came to Santiniketan oning of what India has or has not At the same time, Tagore would un- to study or teach, and the fusion of achieved in this half century is becom- doubtedly find some satisfaction in the studies seemed to work. . ing a subject of considerable interest: survival of democracy in India, in its "What has been the story of those first relatively free press, and in general Iampartial to seeing Tagore as an ed- fifty years?" (as Shashi Tharoor asks from the "freedom of mind" that post- ucator, having myself been educated inhisbalanced,informative, and independence Indian politics has, on at Santiniketan. The school was un- the whole, managed to maintain. He usual in many different ways, such as highly readable account of India: would also be pleased by the fact the oddity that classes, excepting those From Midnight to the Millennium)." If noted by the historian E. P. Thompson requiring a laboratory, were held out- Tagore were to see the India of today, (whose father Edward Thompson had doors (whenever the weather permit- half a century after independence, written one of the first major biogra- ted). No matter what we thought of nothing perhaps would shock him so phies of Tagore): Rabindranath's belief that one gains much as the continued illiteracy of the All the convergent influences of from being in a natural setting while masses. He would see this as a total be- the world run through this society: learning (some of us argued about this trayal of what the nationalist leaders Hindu, Moslem, Christian, secu- theory), we typically found the experi- had promised during the struggle for lar;Stalinist,liberal,Maoist, ence of outdoor schooling extremely independencea promise that had democraticsocialist,Gandhian. attractive and pleasant. Academically, figured even in Nehru's rousing speech There is not a thought that is being our school was not particularly exact- on the eve of independence in August thought in the West or East that is ing (often we did not have any exami- 1947 (on India's "tryst with destiny"). not active in some Indian mind." nations at all), and it could not, by the In view of his interest in childhood usual academic standards, compete education, Tagore would not be. con- Tagore would have been happy also to with some of the better schools in Cal- soled by the extraordinary expansion see that the one governmental attempt cutta. But there was something re- of university education, in which India to dispense generally with basic liber- markable about the ease with which sends to its universities six times as ties and political and civil rights in class discussions could move from In- m,any people per unit of population as India, in the 1970s, when Prime Min- dian traditional literature to contem- does China. Rather, he would be ister Indira Gandhi (ironically, herself porary as well as classical Western stunned that, in contrast to East and a former studentatSantiniketan) thought, and then to the culture of Southeast Asia, including China, half declared an "emergency," was over- China or Japdh or elsewhere. The the adult population and two thirds of whelmingly rejected by the Indian vot- school's celebration of variety was Indian women remain unable to read ers, leading to the precipitate fall of also in sharp contrast with the cultural or write. Statistically reliable surveys her government. conservatism and separatism that has indicate that even in the late 1980s, Rabindranath would also see that tended to grip India from time to time. nearly half of the rural girls between the changes in policy that have elim- Theculturalgiveandtakeof the ages of twelve and fourteen did not inated famine since independence Tagore's vision of the contemporary attend any school for a single day of had much to do with the freedom to world has close parallels with the vi- their lives.' be heard in a democratic India. In sion of Satyajit Ray, also an alumnus Tagore's play Raja 0 Rani ("The of Santiniketan who made several King and the Queen"), the sympa- filmsbased on Tagore'sstories.' thetic Queen eventually rebels against the callousness of state policy toward the hungry. She begins by inquiring about the ugly sounds outside the 21 palace, only to be told_ that the noise is coming from "the coarse, clam- orous crowd who howl unashamedly too food and disturb the sweet peace of the palace." The Viceregal office desh, and nearly as many as in Pak- in India could have taken a similarly istan. Only Indonesia has substantially callous view of Indian famines, right more followers of Islam. Indeed, by portunity of access Into the richest of up to the easily preventable Bengal pointing tothe immense heteroge- all poetical literatures of the world." famine 'of 1943, just before indepen- neousness of India's cultural back- There seems to me much force in Ra- ground and its richly diverse history, bindranath's argument for clearly dis- dence, whichkilledbetween two Tagore had argued that the "idea of tinguishing between the injustice of a. andthreemillionpeople. Buta India" itself militated against a cultur- serious asymmetry of power (colonial- government in a multi-party democ- ally separatist view"against the in- ism being a prime example of this) and racy. with elections and free newspa- tense consciousness of the separate- the importance nevertheless of ap- pers, cannot any longer dismiss the ness of one's own people from others." praising Western culture in an open- noise from "the coarse, clamorous Tagore would also oppose the cul- minded way, in colonial and postcolo- crowd.' tural nationalism that has recently nial territories, in order to see what Unlike Gandhiji, Rabindranath been gaining some ground in India, uses could be made of it. would not resent the development of along with an exaggerated fear of the Rabindranath insisted on open de- modern industries in India, or the ac- bate on every issue, and distrusted celeration of technical progress, since conclusions based on a mechanical he did not want India to be shackled to influence of the West. He was uncom- formula, no matter how attractive that the turning of "the wheel of an anti- promising in his belief that human be- formula might seem in isolation (such quated invention." Tagore was con- ings could absorb quite different cul- as "This was forced on us by our colo- cerned that people not be dominated tures in constructive ways: nial masterswe must reject it," "This by machines, but he was not opposed and is our traditionwe must follow it," to making good use of modern tech- Whatever we understand "We have promised to do thiswe nology. "The mastery over the ma- enjoy in human products instantly must fulfill that promise," and so on). becomes ours, wherever they might chine," he wrote in Crisis in Civiliza- have their origin. I am proud of The question he persistently asks is tion,"by whichtheBritishhave whether we have reason enough to my humanity when I can acknowl- consolidated their sovereignty over of want what is being proposed, taking their vast empire, has been kept a edgethe poets and artists everything into account. Important as sealed book, to which due access has other countries as my own. Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that history is, reasoning has to go beyond been denied to this helpless country." all the great glories of man are the past. It is in the sovereignty of rea- Rabindranath had a deep interest soningfearless reasoninginfree- in the environmenthe was particu- mine. Therefore it hurts me deeply domthat we can find Rabindranath larly concerned about deforestation when the cry of rejection rings Tagore's lasting voice.' loud against the West, in my coun- 0 andinitiateda"festivaloftree- planting" (vriksha-ropana) as early try with the clamour that Western education can only injure us. as 1928. He would want increased pri- vate and government commitments to In this context, it is important to em- environmentalism; but he would not phasizethat Rabindranath was not derive from this position a general short of pride in India's own heritage, caseagainst modern industry and and often spoke about it. He lectured at technology. Oxford. with evident satisfaction, on the importance of India'sreligious ideasquoting both from ancient texts 13. and from popular poetry (such as the verses of the sixteenth-century Muslim On Cultural Separatism poet Kabir). In 1940, when he was given Rabindranath. would be shocked by an honorary doctorate by Oxford Uni- the growth of cultural separatism in versity, in a ceremony arranged at his India, as elsewhere. The "openness" own educational establishment in San- that he valued so much is certainly tiniketan ("In Gangem Defluit Isis," under great strain right nowin many Oxford helpfully explained), to the pre- countries. Religious fundamentalism dictable "volley of Latin" Tagore re- still has a relatively small following in sponded "by a volley of Sanskrit," as India; but various factions seem to be Marjorie Sykes, a Quaker friend of doing their best to increase their num- Rabindranath, reports. Her cheerful bers. Certainly religious sectarianism summary of the match, "India held its has had much success in some parts of own," was not out of line with Tagore's India (particularly in the west and the pride in Indian culture. His welcoming north). Tagore would see the expan- attitude to Western civilization was re- sion of religious sectarianism as being inforced by this confidence: he did not closely associated with an artificially see India's culture as fragile and in separatist view of culture. . need of "protection" from Western He would have strongly resisted influence. LIE defining India in specifically Hindu In India, he wrote, "circumstances T.ST COPYAVAIL& terms, rather than as a "confluence" of almost compel us to learn English, and many cultures. Even after the parti- this lucky accident has given us the op- tion of 1947, India is still the third- .. largest Muslim country in the world, with more Muslims than in Bangla- 22 THU RSDAYi AL/GUST 14, 1991:. India's 5 Decades of Progress and Pain By JOHN F. BURNS KAITHWARI, India With monsoon rains sheet- 50 YEARS PAST MIDNIGHT ing down outside, Dawa Chand has passed many days First of two articles. recently in his tiny, darkened tent-maker's shop in this north Indian village, stitching bunting to flutter over village rooftops on the 50th anniversary of In-so vast, so populous and so diverse that is hasalways defied attempts to define it. dia's independence at midnight on Aug. 19, 1997. Should Indians celebrate that their country, a As he has pedaled his treadle sewing machine,grand tapestry of castes, languages, regions and Mr. Chand, 31, has considered what India's halffaiths, has survived despite forecasts that it would century as a free country has meant to people likesplinter once Britain's controlling hand was re- himself, villagers who account for nearly three-quar-moved? Or do they despair because inherent strains ters of the country's 970 million people. The question have spawned secessionist movements and other goes to the heart of India's nationhood, since it was in forms of violence that have made India one of the the country's 650,000 villages that Mohandas K. Gan- most lethal places on earth? dhi, who led the independence struggle, found what he Should Indians take pride in their parliamentary considered to be India's soul. democracy, vigorously upheld in a world where coun- Mr. Chand strikes a note of optimism, crediting tries with far fewer problems have remained stifled free India with achieving more for people like himself,by autocracy? Or should they lament the failures in an untouchable at the lowest rung of India's socialtheir system, the demagogues who have risen to hierarchy, than has been acknowledged by many ofpower on the votes of illiterate masses only to betray the country's critics. "We are still backward, ofthem, the politicians at every level who have built course, but we are moving forward, and we owe this tolives of sybaritic comfort for themselves while 350 the Mahatma," he said, referring to Gandhi, a cham-million Indians remain mired in poverty? pion of the untouchables. "Because of him,. peoPlelike In recent years, there has been another conun- myself are making progress our fathers and giandla-drum, the huge gap that has emerged between the thers never imagined." new India of high technology, and the old India of the In the myriad voices that have been riiisd inbullockcart.In Bombay, New Delhi,Calcutta, India in its 50th year, there have been many like.Mr.Madras and scores of other cities, an economy is Chand's, full of satisfaction for what the decades ofemerging based on computers, rapid jet travel, air- independence have brought. Many others have been conditioned hotels and mobile telephones. filled with doubt and recrimination. But perhaps the This economy's new middle class numbers in the largest number of Indians have reacted with ambiva- lence, unsure of how to take the measure of a country Continued onPage A10

Mr. thand, the tent-maker, is an obvious case of success. The son of an illiterate cattle - trader, he won a lower-caste scholar- tens of millions, yet it exists in an uneasy ihip from the government to attend college Symbiosis with an India where tens of mil- in Meerut, an old British garrison city close lions of others cannot afford medicine when to this village in western Uttar. Pradesh they are sick and send their tiny children state; then returned home after graduation into the street_to bang on car windows for to set up his business. His income from the coins. shop and running a village post office is $130 In weighing these contrasts, Indians are a month, a fortune to the village's poor. asking what matters more, that a country But among Mr. Chand's neighbors, there once racked by famines is now feeding itself are some who have never traveled outside and even exporting grain, or the crushing the village, never used a telephone and levels of illiteracy, disease and poverty that never . had anybOdy in their family who remain India's scourge? stayed in school long enough to learn to read As Indians search for answers, many or write. In one muddy courtyard, a group of cannot even agree on what standard they 25 Muslims, in rural India often poorer even should use. Should they compare India now than the* poorest Hindus, said that the four to the India of 50 years ago or to the generations of their family were living off a accompliShments of a dozen more prosper- combined income of $50 a month, and that ous Asian nations, most of which India none of them had owned even a bicycle, a 1 dwarfs in complexity and size? sewing machine or a radio, the first luxuries for India's poor. These contradictions, apparent every- . . where in India, were plainly evident in the For -these villagers, the India of ..:1997 differing attitudes towards the ihdepend- ence anniversary in Kaithwari. The vil- seems much too much like the India of half I lage's 5,000 residents include a dominant a century ago, a place where Gandhi's name minority of landowners, upper-caste fam- is ritually invoked by politicians on great ilies who still rule the roost, but it also has public occasions but where his memory is low-caste families who have found a small mocked by some of the realities of a country-- measure of prosperity that their families he did not live to see. Although Gandhi was never previously knew. There is also a large assassinated by a Hindu nationalist on Jan. block of families, at least a third of the . 30, 1948, fiire months_ afterindependence, village, who are still deSperately poor. Indians everywhere still like to muse -over what he would make of India if he were to return today. . twvng the poorest in Kaithwari, there is a.ready answer. "'What is the Mahatma to acquisitive politicians,some little more than usftoday?,fsaid Mohammed Yunus, 48, gangsters. The Skeptics ' who works in the fields for the upper-caste For years, hardly a day has passedwith- Hindus who own 90 percent of Kaithwari's out a front-page scandal involvinga a politi- What Would Gandhi land.' Rolling a home-made cigarette of cian accused of, selling favors. Morethan a crushed leaves, Mr. .Yunus said modern dozen Cabinet ministers who servedin the Think Today? India was little different than the India of Congress Party are under Investigationfor his forefathers. corruption, including former Prime Minister While views like these are widely held; tne. "The Mahatma brought 'us freedom, but P.V. Narasimha Rao. In Biharstate, India's official mood at the anniversary hasbeen, after that, what?" he said.% poorest, the low-caste politician who headed heavily influenced by the skeptics. Thatuj:'' the state's Government until hewas arrested ral Government has deferred the plaCerhetit last month, Laloo Prasad Yadav,has been of a Gandhi statue on Rajpath, the cereindhi-'' The Optimists jailed on charges of scamming $280million al avenue at the heart of New Delhi, expreth-- from the state's animal husbandry funds. ing reluctance to have Gandhi, the apostle of Stable Democracy While each scandal swallowsmoney that nonviolence, installed where he would'Staie;! might have gone to developing thecountry, down an avenue used every January 'for 'a Inspires Pride some have had a direct impact on everyday military parade. But many say that ereetihgv: life. Millions of Indians are paying theprice a statue would be hypocrisy anyway,' since' for a decision in the early 1990'sto rebuild the country, in their view, has betrayed For many Indians, the answer to that ..t question lies in accomplishments they say the country's telephone system. Thetelecom- Gandhian ideals. have been overlooked in the breast-beating munications minister, Sukh Ram, whowas a Among these is Khushwant Singh, 8Z-in - the anniversary has provoked. They hail former postal clerk who rose throughCon- author and columnist who covered the tide; three achievements in particular: the resil- gress Party ranks, awarded contracts fora pendence struggle and wrote "Train ~to ience of democracy despite a two-year lapse $40 billion scheme that was to havebrought Pakistan," a novel that gave a searing*-.- when Indira Gandhi assumed dictatorial the country 10 million new phones,more than count of the 1947 partition. double the number then installed, bythe end Resisted by Gandhi to the last, the diviSion powers in 1975; the country's success in of the decade. feeding a population nearly three times larg- resulted in the migration of at least 10 milj er than in 1947, and India's survival as a But according to investigations that began, lion Hindus and Muslims across the -new' nation despite protracted insurgencies in the frontier, and as. many as 500,000 of them; I Punjab, Kashmir and the remote border after the Narasimha Rao government's' 'de:" according to Khushwant Singh's estimate, states of the southeast. feat in a general election last year, Mr:liari: being killed in the bloodletting that ensued: !!!! "India can.only be compared with India," rigged the bidding process and took 'large Those passions have not abated; Mr:-Singh argues Yogendra Singh, a sociology profes- sums in payoffs. In the wake of the scandal:' spoke from the apartment where he -has sor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New the project to modernize the country's anti.: lived under armed guard since the 1980's, Delhi, a sentiment shared by many of India's quated telephone system has. effectively.' WfieiV:he angered Sikh militants with arti- optimists: By that measure, there is much to stalled, with not a single new- handset ahy:- CWCandemning a separatist insurgency in celebrate today. where to show for the plans announced by tlisllativePunjab. "Poverty now is not at all what it was in Mr. Ram. !:-;"Gandhi gave the world an illusion that 1947," said Mr. Singh, who grew up poor and Even shadoWs like these have not persuad; all Inf:Hails were like him, inspired by a low-caste in a village in Uttar Pradesh. ed most Indians that democracy itself isat rnisainnary concern for nonviolence and the "Then, 80 to 90 percent of the people had no fault, only that abuses are inevitable withan, plight of the poor," he.said, "but I'm sad to proper clothing; now, almost everybody is electorate of nearly 600 million people, half of say:that it has turned out that hardly any of

properly dressed. Then, many people were them illiterate. Some say that political trends us are." ! ! emaciated; now,just about everybody gets that have ended the Congress Party's roleas "Government surveys offer plentiful am- two meals a/day. Then,, life expectancy was India's natural ruling elite have prodiicid! Munition for such dismal views: the 350 about 30 and it's more than 60 now. These new political forces, and that some of These; million, Indians who live below the official including low-caste parties like Mr. Laloo's poverty line ;. the 48 percent of the popula- are tremendous changes, so I don't think we in Bihar, have been under pressure to have any reason to hang our heads." gener- tion:who are illiterate; the 100 million city= ate slush funds that can be used to birid!the dWellers living in vast, dismal slums known Many Indians are particularly proud of the parties together and give their leaders persiStence of their democracy, and contrast a as jhyggis, where homes are mostly struc- lifestyle their followers can admire. !. rUies.7Of metal and timber scrap; the 70 their country with -.Pakistan, the nation Others say that India's greatest triumph -is percent of Indians with no access to toilets; carved out of British India_when Muslim simply that. it still exists. In British times, the.'30.'percent with no supply of safe water, leaders demanded a separate state. Although half of the country consisted of nearly 600. and -the millions who fall victim every year Pakistan has been ruled by elected govern- princely states, mostly ruled by maharajahs to rates of infant mortality, diarrhea, tuber- ments for the last nine years, it has been under British control. While most of these culosis, malaiia and AIDS that are among under military dictatorship- for nearly half states were successfully integrated soon af- the highest in the world. its half-century as a nation. ter independence, strong separatist tendety, : Conditions like these contribute heavily to On the one occasion that Indian democra- cies have pulled at the country's seams,- a culture of violence that some Indians say cy was imperiled, Mrs. Gandhi's declaration setting off a series of ethnic, religious- and is ti=e country's worst failure. Outside India, of emergency and suspension of civil rights linguistic insurgencies. So far, none has 'stfc- the:.best-known example has been the cycle iri1975, voters outraged by the imprison- ceeded, and few Indians expect that any will. of :ricks between Hindus and Muslims, about ment of thousands of leading politicians and "You must remember that people' were' 8,006:Of which have been recorded since intellectuals turned on her in the 1977 general writing books in the 1950's and 1960's asking 1947.-But far more Indians have died from election and ousted the Congress Party from whether India could survive," said M.Jr-Ak: other: causes. power for the first time .since it led the bar, a biographer of Nehru who is the found Aii4big cities like Bombay, thousands of independence struggle. ing editor of The Asian Age, anew newspa,.. murders go unsolved, and for the most part In recent years, a wave of corruption and per that has quickly become one of India's-, barely investigated, every year. In the vil- criminality in Indian politics has caused most influential. "In 1947, it was very, diffi... lages,,lhe situation is .much the same. Ac- some Indian commentators to say that de- cult to see how a seething mass of hungry.. dirding to Indian human rights groups, 5,000 mocracy is facing a new and more insidious and mostly illiterate people could keep,this-- women are killed every year in disputes peril. In the assemblies of many of the 25 nation together. But now, the country's-sur- over- dowries, mostly by men, but only a Indian states, and even in the Parliament in vival is taken for granted. You hardly!hear, handful of cases ever result in convictions. New Delhi, the independence generation has anybody questioning it anymore." Alongside these deprivations, many privi- been repricecnif a breed'eambitious and leged Indians enjoy lives of opulence that mirror the inequalities of earlier times. 24 on meltingearth. At pot, its hascurrent the secondgrowth largestpace, it population will not define, India'as a nation,are the India,illucpui Then fewerMoredialects.surpassIndians than China They speak half onpractice ofthe 17 this the childrenlanguages countpopulation six majoraround under and can religions. 22,000 five2020. read, have distinct but HerecircumstanceIndonesiacradlingmountains is how the emergedcapping theyrest. at similar compare thefromIndia north times similar alongtoday.. and in witheconomicoceanshistory. Pakistan, China and InPopulation millions;And 1997 Now PermortalityInfant 1,000 live 'BirthsPer expectancyLife capitaG.N.P. per TotalArmed troop forces investmentForeign direct linesTelephone PercentIlliteracy of rate Engineers, births 1,000 people At birth andIn dollars; 1953. 1995 thousandsstrength, in dollarsBillions of Per1,000 people thanpeople 15 older techniciansforce:Percentscientists, 1990 of labor squareINDIA1,222.000 miles '50-'51 360 '95 973 - 14668 111126 40 111; 32 1 62.3 1111.$60 340 N.A. 1,145 N.A.I$1.3 1112.9N.A. N.A. ?. 110.96% 3,695,000CHINA307,000PAKISTAN '95'95 10 30 .5' 59.9 Mi,.,460 T620 .1587, 0.4 MO 6.4 62.2 f1.481.48' 575,000INDONESIA , 51 i980 ,V1,9 275 1.30 plishbuckle in-the down, next and 50 see years." whatAt first we glance, can accom- visitors to Kaithwari could ofthewields "therise the of donkeys reallower-caste power taking in politicians this village, as spokea matter., of. over, from the thatquietlythethinkBuffalos sunlightare that ontraditional little hookahs,wander after in thethe indown the ruralrains,village brass'cobbled India. old has water men pathways.Atchanged. street- draw.pipes In worseKumarvisitorshorses." than speak fromOnly the later,up.outside horses?" "Can when theIn the he.said. Kaithwari,he village, donkeys was alone did dothere with' Mr.any were many conversa-,. AFGHAN..I loenscamper,washcorner dungmove shoulder-length pumps,for silentlychasing fuel. young along goats, hair. lanes girlswhile Barefoot gatheringgiggle Muslim childrenas buffa-wom- they widerthings,hardening.Mr.tions Kumar, with world, has poorerWatching suggestingintroduced and villagerstheir television, commentsthat the like attitudes villagers' theamong sounded,.one maybe other withto a , threerut,pavingthat schools, ,15 have of miles withonce-muddy improved. away; enrollments for roadsForBut others, villagerssome,accounting leading the it villages' to are Mee- eager to list the things is the generationvisionabeginlike more a challengethe ofdetermined country/is a of better India's to the life second effortpoor country's held '50 tohalf-century outyearsdeliver politicians to ago. another. on with the to' Karachi :1 powerfourothersfor 90 hours pumpspercentstill, on electricity that most of irrigateall days, village that fields, long flows children; enough.raise three water for orto man'spictures life, on with- our televisioncars, refrigerators,"When sets we of sit theair-con- in ourrich homes at night, we see areexcept1995All figures for as Arabian Sea . Bombay ;:-.1 BANGLADESH of Bengal Bay boldenedmanyfrom wells,better-off many and villagers villagers,powerThese television now leadingimprovements own. setsthem that to. seem to have em- outhisMohammedditioners, liying what sellingheeverything Rafiq, said vegetables. was28, wea hisMuslim don't most Mr. have,"who Rafiqtreasured makes heldsaid . GovernmentEconomicSources:noted. of IndiaWorld Survey; Bank; The Madras' morequestion from old theirsocial government. roles and even Naresh to demand Ku- aboutpossession, $3.90. a Andwatch then he hebought added: for "So 120 natural- rupees, . Millennium""India:Military From Balance, by Shashi Midnight 96-97; to the background,membernonviolentJeetmar, Tyagi,a 35-year-old of heldprotests the his high-caste man tongueagainst from whenthe anclan British untouchable' Brahma that andstill a 89, a veteran of Gandhi's webely we borndo?" think: here? Why Is it is our it that-Godfate to live caused always us asto - Year-bObk:Tharoor; World The Statesman's Gazetteer"- Indian Ocean LANKA*SRI 26 lthough the bejeweled maharajahs of Brit.; U h days have faded 'away, a new overclass that Indian politicians ever since hax..: The Futurw, cities like Bombay, mostly politicians,'I ed birth-control programs as taboo. Lisiness tycoons and mafia bosses, parade Because national wealth has to esr,,, Rising ExpectatiOnS; wealth, inviting India's glossy maga- more than the rate of population g rn w. nes-tO palatial.villas and to weddings that percent a year just to keep the et: In Cities andVillages iimic the maharajahs' displays. While In- growing, the government's failure ro : population has crippled its ability to :..::.. :....i E'ven with these shortcomings, the' eco- many of India's vast, social problems.espe- nomic reforms have produced a startling .cially education,', which many Indians...,.- growth of the middle class. Indian econo- 2civerty in India sider to be the key to all other progres.;. mists argue about whether there are 30 while the number of people living in poverty In the 1950 Constitution, the new rulers set million, 100 million, or even 150 million in the as risen, the percent of the total population in: 1960 as 'the deadline for universal pr. In o ry urban consumer class, but by any measure ,overty has declined. education, but government figures four j.et:- the Indian "yuppie" has become a pervasive 'ides later show that 33 million children of fact of life, driving smart new cars, taking . he.Nomber Percentage school age, about one in three, have never mortgages on the high-rise apartment build- If:P6Or In India Who Are Poor been to school, and that about half of all ings mushrooming. beside every highway students never reach secondary school. and griping about the quality of the cable Women are worst affected, with a literacy systems that bring the Cable News Network 51"164 million 50.0 rate of 39 per cent, against 64 per cent for or the ESPN sports channel into their homes.

men. At least 70 million Indian children While many university graduates used to , under -16 end up in child labor. 13- head overseas to market their skills, now ' 94 Another legacy of the Nehru yearsis many are returning to exploit new opportuni- India's huge military establishment. Al- ties in India though reliable figures are hard to pin down. A heart surgeon who returned to Ahmad- 'dirice: World Bank Western experts say that India's armed abad last year from a thriving practice in forces and a network of paramilitary 7niice 1. The New York Times California said he had come home for the forces have a strength of at leas.our sake of his children. "It's a shock readjusting is has many discreet philanthropists, some million men; and cost more than $10 billion a to the heat and the dirt and the traffic, but iillionaires admit to having ventured no year, as much as the Government spends on having the kids back in their own culture is loser:to a jhuggi than an airport highway. health and education combined. To this worth every bit of it," he said. . But -it has not been the concentration of must be added the huge expense of India's The rising expectations of the new middle 'ealth, so much as the failure to create ,covert programs to develop nuclear weap- class are one of the factors that are wearing lore, that has mattered most. For this, it is ons, along with the missiles to carry them. down resistance to the economic reforms. ommon nowadays to blame Nehru, the first Although left -wing critics often cornpiain Although left-wing 'politicians -still denounce 'rime. Minister, Who believed that Soviet- that the country's military might ofends the "Westernization" of Indian culture, even tyle, style economics held the solution to Gandhian principles of nonviolence, there is they use mobile telephones. And even the 'little dispute about the issue in mainstream leftists have been forced to recognize that riding poverty. Even before Gandhi was Indian politics. illed,Nehru had rejected his vision of India ultimately there can be no turning back to For one thing, the expense is justifies: by the discredited socialism of the past. To even "village republic," with its future root- the need to co d in the welfare of its rural masses, and ont Pakistan, especially in suggest it these days is to enrage many the disputed territory of Indian-held Kash- ordinary Indians who have to put up with the mbarked on a rush to industrialize. mir, where a The.result of Nehru's policies was a'vast ree of -more than 500.000 legacy of past mistakes. etwork of state-owned factories, and a sti- Indian troops and police have been :led - - down by an insurgency backed by Pakistan. The flaws of the old syatem 'show up in'. ing system known as the. "license raj," FOr another, Indian leaders have become 'ithofficials determining the products, every sphere. of life, with maddening cons& rices and markets for the private enter - increasingly concerned about the growing quences for rich and poor, alike: In narrow, military might of China, although almost potholed highways choked with traffic that risethat remained. The bureaucracy bur- none ever say so Publicly. eoned, into a national army of 60 million, contribute to an annual road carnage of Partly because of the' four decades of 65,000 deaths; in antiquated power plants otorious for its inefficiency and sloth: In political dominance by three members of me, Indian economists began speaking of the Nehru family who served as Prime that leave large areas of the country without le "Hindu rate of growth," a yearly in- MinisterNehru himself, who died in ::6,i; power for hours, sometimes days, at a time; rease in per capita income of about 1.5 per Mrs. Gandhi, assassinated by Sikh security in hospitals with no medicines; in schools ent for the first three decades after 1947, as guards in 1984, and her son, Rajiv Gandl:i. with no notebooks, pencils or chalk. ':ipinething intrinsic. to India condemned assassinated by a Tamil terrorist from Sji Many Indians contrast these conditions le Country to economic stagnation. Lanka in 1991 their policies faced no with progress elsewhere in Asia, where Alailure to control population compound- major challenge until 1991, when Prime many countries that were as poor as India in d socialism's burdens. The number of Indi- MiniSter Narasimha Rao, facing national .1947 have leapt to prosperity. TWentygive ns has nearly tripled since 1947, and contin- bankruptcy, ordered socialism scrapped in years ago, most of these countries were no es to ,grow by 18 million a year. Although favor of free markets, low tariffs, and fcr- more advanced than India; but then the gap opulous northern states like Uttar Pra- eign investment. began to yawn. Some of these nations, such esh, with 140 million people, have been Although growth rates in the 1990's have as Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea, eporting lower growth rates in recent zoomed beyond 7 percent, resistance from have achieved per capita incomes 10 to 20 ears, the absence of effective government politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen times higher than India's $340 a year, along irth-control programs has put India on accustomed to the comforts of the old sys- with literacy rates of 90 per cent and more. tack to surpass China as the world's most tem have blocked new changes needeu :o While some Indians dismiss such compari- opulous nation sometime in the 21st centu- make the reformed economy work. sons as unfair, because of the differences in y:. By then, perhaps around 2025, India is More than half the country's $350 ':-ii;on the scale of the problems India faces, others xpected to have a population of at least 1.3 annual output is still produced by say it is time to reject the rationalizations. illion., oivned companies. Almost none of :he60 "As a 16-year-old in Bombay in 1947, I felt The failure to control population growth million state employees have lost their ;ohs. there .was nothing to stop India from doing ; most often blamed on Nehru's daughter, or been retrained for other work. With ::-.7.,:ly whatever it wanted," said S. L. Rao, an irs..-Gandhi, who encouraged a disastrous foreign companies becoming disillusioned, economist who has been an key adviser on xperiment with coerced sterilization dur- outside investment, less than $3 billio. 'n the economic reforms of the 1990's. "But the ig the Emergency of the 1970's that was 1996, has been far below that elsewheri. 'n fact is, we haven't delivered the people of verseen by her son Sanjay. The experiment Asia, including China; which reports.: India what we promised. We are far, far nded with the collapse of Mrs. Gandhi's eign investment of.._ Mime than $40 bil 1 i c i,. behind, and our only. choice is to admit it, irtation..with dictatorship, but a, lasting year. onsequence of -the. popular anger has been 20 EST COPY AVAIIABLE Isibry' of Hope, Achievement, Violenceand Sadness AUG. 159.1947:India and Pakistan .gain their independence from Great Britain. Jawaharlal Nehru, leader of the Congress Party. the leading independence movement, becomes India's first Prime Minister. OCT. 26, 1947Facing an invasion from Pakistan, Kashmir's Hindu rulers agree to become part of India. JAN. 30, 1948Mohandas K. Gandhi is assassinated by a Hindu nationalist. JAN. 26, 1950India adopts a constitution, becomingtheworld's largest democracy. APRIL 1951A five-year economic plan to increase India's production of goods and services is adopted. Reuters OCT. 1951-FEB.1952 India holds its Mohandas K. Gandhi with Lord Louis first national elections. to divorce. A year later, the Hindu Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, India passes the Hindu Succession Act gives women equal and his wife, Edwina, shortly before 1955 rights to inherit property. "2:::; independence. Marriage Act, giving women the right 1961India's third five-year plan is Sources.' Stanley Wolpert, 'A New History of India"; Percival Spear, The Oxford begun. At its completion India has History of Modern India"; Shashi Tharoor. "India from Midnight to the Millennium

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.2" . Portedield/Chtdrering., Bombay is a coirirOrcial:::ceriter;;2rapicily entering the era of computers and mobile telephones, to the point that the city-makes a shaviydisplay ofwth.tetth.CNJIMO of a new tinddle crass has not encompassed the homeless who sleepon the city's doorstep-- . . APRIL 1965 India and Pakistan gotosaying it had become a fortified war over Kashmir without resolving the dispute. center for radical Sikh separatists: Hundreds are killed. JAN. 20, 1966 Indira Gandhi, OCT. 31, 1984Two of Indira Nehru's daughter, becomesPrime Minister of India. Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards assassinate her. In retaliation, NOV.-DEC. 1971Agitation for thousands of Sikhs are killed by independence in East Pakistan outraged Hindus. Later, Rajiv causes a refugee exodus into India. Gandhi, Indira's son, becomes India goes to war withPakistan on Prime Minister. behalf of the rebels andBangladesh DEC. 1, 1984 emerges as an independent nation. An accident at the Union Carbide chemical plant in MAY 18, 1974India tests a nuclear Bhopal kills 2,000. device. :. JULY 29, 1987Rajiv Gandhi Strike JUNE 26, 1975Indira Gandhi Asseetated Press an agreement with Sri Lanka's r independence, millions of Muslimsand Hindus fled across the declares a state ofemergency and president to use Indian troops to.Z: ier, many on trains. Communal Pakistan-India suspends the constitution after violence killed more than a millionpeople. being suppress a Tamil independence ')* convicted of election fraud. movement there. MAR. 16-20, 1977Indira Gandhi MAY 21, 1991Rajiv Gandhi is significantly increased its industrial voted out of office. production and agriculturaloutput. assassinated by a Tamil militant. JAN. 1980Indira Gandhi regains MAY 10, 1996The Congress Party OCT.-NOV. 1962India loses a border office. -war with China. which had held power almost JUNE 5, 1984 continuously since independence; MAY 27, 1964Nehru dies. Indian troops attack the Golden Temple inAmritsar, -::wfers a devastatingelection loss.

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.: *4' Steve McCurry/Stegeumu.. Women working at an electronicsplant in Bangalore symbolize the economic transformatiodtbai'isbeginning to affect much of India. But cOmpeting Asian countries thatwere no more advanced than India 50 years ago have' beyond it to prosperity.;!' . . .. , , v.:4 _.0 INTERNATIONAL. AKING SENSE OF

It is the world's largest democracy and an emerging economic superpower, yet Americans care little about it. As India celebrates itsgolden anniversary, can't the United States find something to love? BY TONY CLIFTON

T THE STROKE OF THE MIDNIGHT HOUR, WHEN "a menace and a boor." To Washington, neutrality meant kee: the world sleeps, India will awake to life and free- ing quiet; India instead formulated its own moral stands For dom," Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru told an America, a country that feels a need to cloak foreign policy in ecstatic nation on Aug. 15, 1947. "We end today a moral righteousness, that may have been the ultimate affront period of ill fortune and India discovers herself Geopolitics, including the touchy issue of nuclear prolifera gain." Weeks from the 50th anniversary of its in- tion, shredded what good will remained after the early years. dependence, India finally has defined itself; the world's largest The nadir was 1971, when President Richard Nixon "tilted" ti democracy will become one of its economic superpowers early ward India's archrival, Pakistan, seeking an opening toward next century. Yet Americans, who ponder their relationship Pakistan's ally, China. Still, Washington often helped India with China and Russia, remain apathetic to the nearly 1 billion openly by donating food, covertly by building the campaign people who populate India. Who can name the nation's prime chests of such favored politicians as Indira Gandhi. The payc minister? Mention India, and Mother Teresa is more likely to was small. "They're not grateful enough," said a U.S.ambas- come to mind, not its booming software business. It's a curious sador late one night in a flash of candor. The hostility was mu relationship. The two countries should be natural friends al. S. K. Singh, once India's top diplomat, called his U.S. cow both former British colonies, firm allies during two world wars. terparts "absolutely ruthless in pursuing their self-interest." India's burdens may still be heavy it is home to more than a Nixon was the last U.S. president to officially visit New Dell: third of the world's poorbut Nehru's heirs have kept the core Now the cold war is over, and India again has rediscovere promise: India remains a democracy. That accomplishment itself as a champion of market capitalism. And hostility, alone should have won Washington's admiration, if not love. though deeply rooted in the two countries' bureaucracies, m But since 1947 the view from Washington has ranged from out- be eroding. Since India reformed its investment laws in 1991 right hostility to indifference. And among Indian bureaucrats U.S. companies have poured in up to a billion dollars a year. and intellectuals, suspicion that Washington is maneuvering Indians now can watch MTV and "The Bold and the Beautif against New Delhi has hardened into reflex. How could that They eat Big Macs (made from lamb) and Kentucky Fried be, if the countries really stand for what they claim? Chicken, and buy their kids Reeboks and Nikes. Upper -class The forces of history at midcentury dashed any hope of a love Indians who used to school their children in England now lc, affair. Nehru toiled to found a socialist utopia just as the start of to American universities. More of them than ever arevisitin the cold war had Washington dividing the world into friends the United Statesand 355,000 immigrated between 1985 and enemies. India willfully defied categorization. In the name 1995. There now are a million Indian-Americans, and they's of neutrality, Nehru declined America's invitations begun to assert themselves politically, as befits c of the country's most affluent immigrant groups. to help build a regional bulwark against Soviet ex- tion, India As a new na Indians are learning the game. And two thin- pansion, a position John Foster Dulles once called insisted ondoing "immoral and shortsighted." Nehru sent the bril- things its way:The skinned democracies may yet realize that their liantly acerbic V. K. Krishna Menon to the U.N.; af- Maharajahof Baria's shared values far outweigh their differences. ter one meeting, President Eisenhower called him wedding in1948 With TOM MASLAND in Nen

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a new national idealrapid growth and. India used to pride itselfon poverty-stricken self- at least m spirit, they have thrown open the sufficiency. Now it seeks doors to multinationals everywhere. More growth, exports and important, they are forging a national iden- foreign investment, andtheeconomy is booming. tity more suited to modern times. India, at BY STEVEN STRASSER last, has begun to see itself as another Asian AND SUDIP MAZUMDAR nation dedicated to the accumulation of wealth and the spread of prosperity. In the next century that vision will hold infinitely TRAVEL INTO THE DEPTHS OF can soap operas and Scotch whisky ads Bihar, India's poorest state, more power than the old asceticism. "Per- from Hong Kong. This is the Indian dreamhaps our industrialization is not complete," along the dirt paths thatcon- at ground level. As the vision of "Bay- nect its stagnant pools of hu- says Srini Rajam, head of the Texas Instru- watch" filters through Bihar,so even thements branch in booming Bangalore, "but manity, past government signspoorest of the poor finally begin to rise touting chimerical health and we can leapfrog into the Information Age." from the depths of rotted isolation. India has always had pride. Now it has education programs, into the hopelessheart And so does poor old India. For 50years of a subcontinent where the squalid ambition. In the early years of independ- villages the national identity has dependedon isola- might remind you of sub-Saharan Africa ence, Jawaharlal Nehru's government re- tion from perceived enemies from plot-joiced in standing apart, the epitome of the except that the poorest Africans fare betterting neocolonialists in the West, from than the destitute of Bihar. Eventually "nonaligned" nation. As a conglomeration you greedy multinational companies, even fromof peoples with seven major religions and will stumble onto the village ofKalipahari, those intrepid Indians who resisted the of- blessed with electricity thanksto a nearby 18 official languages, India made itsown ficial creed of self-sufficiency. Butnowrules: a democracy on a continent ruled by hydroelectric dam. Hereyou will see, in satellite TV has come to Bihar, and Coca- practically every hovel, despots, a planned economy whose bureau- an incongruousCola, too. Health and education willone sight: a television set, pulling down cratic stewards were satisfied tocreep Ameri-day follow. The leaders in New Delhi havealong at a 3 or 4 percent "Hindu rate of 42 NEWSWEEKAUGUST 4, 1997

1 r 31 and, growth." Only when the New Delhi eliteNearly two thirds of Indian Bombay (they call it Mumba the squarely acknowledged that its hubris hadchildren younger than 5 arePride: Nehru and Ma- the bywords of the new Inc fore put the nation on the sidelines of the global malnourished, and those who hatma Gandhi (left) are growth, foreign inve den- economy while India's great rival Chinareach school age can count onpreached self-reliance ment and, most hallowed a, at was getting rich did real reforms begin. an average of only 3.5 years ofin the early days all, exports. .sian Now, six years into India's opening to theeducation if they are boys, 1.5 The strategy, formed n of world, the economy is growing by nearlyif they are girls. By the time Ambition: A modern 1991 by the then prime min 71 the 7 percent a year, a rate that by 2020 willthey reach adulthood, half are Indian uses a cellular ter P. V. Narasimha Rao a transform its economy into the world'sstill illiterate. Think of it: In-phone before a Gandhihis finance minister, Mann `Per- fourth largest (after China, the United dia is trying to accelerate ontomural in New Delhi han Singh, was ruthlessly si iete," States and Japan). "There is a lot of politi- the Information Superhigh- ple: to dismantle the stiff: .stru- cal cacophony," says Finance Minister P.way with nearly 300 million adults whobureaucracy that once ruled India as int "but Chidambaram, who has served under twocannot read road signs. sively as Moscow's planners once ran coalition governmentsinthelast14 Comparisons between India and the eco- Soviet Union. Rao and Singh cut much t has months. "But we are on course." nomic tigers of East Asia are equally dismal. the bureaucracy's "license raj" of red to : >end- There is no lilt to his optimism. A visitor Pacific Rim economies that once ranked farthen went on to simplify taxes, reduce it re- to urban China (which is churning along atbelow India and its South Asian neighborsscope of the state sector(which provit if the a growth rate of 9.5 percent a year) can al-now enjoy per capita incomes 27 times everything from power to motor scoote -ation most hear the hum of enterprise in a nationgreater, according to the Human Develop- liberalize foreign investment and cut t s and that is fairly bursting to build a better life. ment Centre, a Pakistani think tank thatifs. From the earliest days, says Sir own The reformers of India, by contrast, tend tostudies regional economic trends. The blunt"our goal has been to show the world t ed by bow under the weight of their nation's greatreality of India's failures is now driving itsIndia can compete with any country wean- poverty. Even now, 52 percent of their peo- reforms, and most Indians agree on what Southeast Asia in our hospitality to inv. : creep ple still live on incomes of less than $1 amust be done. From the Marxists running ment and our spirit of enterprise." : ate of day, according to World Bank figures.Calcutta to the Hindu nationals running India's culture has also been a force AUGUST 4, 1997 NEWSWEEK STGIMA (LEFT). KAIICUS OLEMAK-IPOL V 32 ow- WHINE)

alone has helped to spur tle- mand among low-incomecon- sumers to unprecedented lev- els. A manufacturer of $1.20 bottles of shampoo for middle class Indians found a hugenew market for two-cent packets of the brand in poor areas. The race is on to produce cheap television sets and appliances. One entrepreneur found a way to convert devices for making lassi (a yogurt drink) into cheap washing machines. And the first developer of a good $50 re- frigerator, suggests economist S. L. Rao, would now find a' huge new market in rural India. Moreimportant,India's The three R's: Students in poor are beginning to find their Mumbai's Dharavi district, political voice. Indian democ- Asia's worst slum (above) racy has always been hobbled by the primitive state of its The Raj: In the heyday of grass-roots politics. Too many British rule, the Prince of local leaders bubbled up to na- Wales (center) kills a tiger tional power on their ability to buy votes and deliver favors reaching out to the world. The and subsequently used their film industry turns out both national platforms mainly to masterpieces and tawdry B enrich themselves. But the rur- movies in astonishing profu- al awakening that came with sion. Using the imported Eng- reform also has revived state lish language intheir own and local politics. State compe- uniqueway,novelistslike tition for the spoils of reform is Arundhati Roy, 37, a formerac- now common. Tamil Nadu at- tress and screenwriter, have tracted a Ford plant by waiv- become international best sell- ing state sales taxes and offer- ing land at a concessionary ers. The literary tradition has deep roots; among many millions of India's other poor. Hindu poet and philosopher Rabindranath price. Uttar Pradesh won the battle to lure New Delhi's program of teaming with for-an electronics project set up by the Korean Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literatureeign investors to string outcopper wire for as long ago as 1913. giant Daewoo. telephones is proceeding in fits andstarts. The southern city of Bangalore. India's Neither culture nor industry has doneEven in the capital, the wait fora new anything yet for the dregs of Indian Silicon Valley, stands as the glittering tiara society. phone can still stretch to threeyears. None-of the new India. Indians themselveson the 200 million or so people at thevery bot- theless, the government's decision to let in tom of the ladder. But for the first time in only 1.8 million installed personal comput- foreign satellite television has ledto an ex- ers about a third the number in New York history, economic growth and the spreadofplosion of more than 20 million cable-TV communications are working a revolution City. But what the info-tech companies connections within the last two years. That stand for is vitally important.

Colonialism 1906 Muslims A British duke and a on the March establish the Mus- staffer go hunting India wasn't content to remaina colony; the seeds of its independ- lim League to de- ence were sown less than 30 years after the British tookover. fend their interests 1940 The Muslim League against the Hindu demands that a separate feats French and Mogul forces majority Muslim country, Pakistan,;; be carved out of India 1858 After a century of growing 1920 Mahatma influence on the Subconti- Gandhi takes 1942 The Con- nent, the British govern- over the Con- gress party ment takes direct control gress and passes the 'Quit of India presses for 'nonvio- India' resolution, lent disobedience' calling on the Brits The Brits battle for India 1885 The Indian Nation- to leave the coun- al Congress is fOrmed and 1935 The British 1757 The British East India gov- try; Gandhi is pushes, with increasing ernment approves a con- imprisoned Aidio Company gains control of Bengal stridency, for a greater In- stitution that gives Indi- after Lt. Col. Robert Clive de- dian voice in governmentEarly days ans more political power Gandhi 41.

. CLOCKWISE FROM TUIP: RODENT WALLISSABA. PA NEWS. CONBISBEITMANN 'IL HULTON CE7TT. CORMS NEWMANN s. 33 INTERNATIONAL

The homegrown firms and those allied with all the big names, from IBM to Intel, have exuberantly cut through red tape and pro- tectionism, welcoming competition while becoming successful software exporters .., themselves. "If we can't compete with in- ternational brands in our own country, we can't hope to ever compete in other coun- tries," says software-industry spokesman can be no big-bang theory of growth." Dewang Mehta. Hindu verse:Nobel Prize winner An outsider can gauge India's progress As India streamlines its bureaucracy and Rabindranath Tagore (left) in 1905 by measuring the market's success at shift- unclogs its courts, New Delhi and Mumbai ing resources to the government's neediest may become more attractive to multina- Best-selling fiction:Arundhati Roy, constituentssomething thecentralized tional corporations than the regulatory author of The God of Small Things' bureaucracy never could accomplish. How wilds of Beijing and Shanghai. If India can will life change in the most desolate regions mobilize its hundreds of millions of young, poor country that will continue to regardof Bihar? At the absolute end of the line, in cheap workers at a time when the work itself,culturally and politically, as the the village of Devnagra, a foreign donor re- force of the developed world is aging, aworld's great exception. Nor will. India cently gave $7,000 for a new well, the kind boom of Chinese magnitude might not belikely become a classic Asian tiger. As aof gesture that short-circuits India's ineffi- out of the question. "Just think of the eco-vibrant democracy that must always tendciencies (to put it politely) rather than vali- nomic output we can generate from thisto its own first, the nation will never pro- dating reform. Nonetheless, once fresk, population when our per capita income ofduce a Deng Xiaoping to dictate its strat-water comes to the village, it will be less $330 doubles early in the next century," egy from on high. The new Indian dynamo hard to imagine a school, a clinic, even says Mukesh Ambani, vice chairman ofwill muddle along, sure of its direction road and along that road, a thin copper Mumbai's Reliance Industries. "That willbut never of its strategy, obsessed always wire connecting the darkest corner 0: clearly boost us into range of becoming an with the myriad demands from within. "WeIndia to the riches of the world. economic superpower." will take one sector at a time, show that it With Rom MOREAU inMIIIMba: Somehow the mantle of "superpower"works and build confidence," says Man- TONY CLIFTON in NewDelhi an= does not quite fit the personality of a huge,mohan Singh. "There JOSHUA KWAN inHong Kon

1984 Indi- The Fall of the Union Jack raGandhi is After a turbulent beginning, India has transformed itself from a assassinated British colony into the world's largest democracy. by a Sikh. A Union Car- Bhopal Pakistani POWs bide gas leak to death by a Hindu extremist 'ins 1947India gains in Bhopal kills 2,000 people. independence one 1966In a compromise, the left a war against West Pakistan. 1991Rajiv Gandhi, Indira's so: day after Pakistan and right wings of East Pakistan becomes and successor, is assassinated is created; Nehru the Congress par- Bangladesh. becomes prime ty name Indira 1996 TheCor minister Gandhi India's 1974India ex- gress party, In- first woman plodes its first dia's longtime 1947-49IndiaNehru nuclear device and Pakistan fight prime minister ruling party, is underground, defeated over Kashmir on the China border 1971India as- but denies it has 1948Gandhi, on his way to an sists East Paid - plans to build Mourning at evening prayer meeting, is shot stan in winning Indira Gandhi nuclear weapons cresnati

LEFT TO RIGHT. TOP: TMIALBHAI COLDPASIPA. PABLO BB.RTHOIXIMEDIGUla 46 NEWSWEEK AUGUST 4, 19,97. LETT TO RIGHT. BOTTOM: CO RBIS-BETTI4A104. BOCCON MOD SIPA. ARCUEIL ?HOT PRANCE. ERIC *OUT= MATSUI. JAY ULLAL DAS TOTOARCHIV MACK ST

...... I INTERNATIONAL From the Old to the New Fifty years after independence, India is redefining itself. Some changes are overdue, others worrisome. All are unstoppable. BY FAREED ZAKARIA

ITIS SURELY ONE OF dia employed 247,000-people to produce the great speeches of the 6 million tons of steel while South Ko- century,India'sGet- rea's privately owned Pohan Steel paid ..1 tysburg Address. Jawa- 10,000 people to make 14 million tons. harlal Nehru's stirring But things have changed. The liberaliza- announcement of Indian tion and free-market reforms of1991 have5.1 independence was, like Abraham Lin- unleashed a market revolution. India's coln's speech. a consecration of both ar private sector is growing by leaps and victory and tragedy (about as many died a. bounds. The quality and quantity of in India's bloody partition as did in the goods available to consumers and busi- Civil War), and, like Lincoln's, it gave nesses have shot up. Foreign investment voice to a new nation. Nehru saw Aug. 15, is moving in slowly but steadily. Whether . 1947, as a watershed, marking the end of or not India grows fast enough to becomt. two centuries of European dominion and another "Asian tiger" (about 7 percent 1 the rebirth of an ancient civilization: "A year is the magic number), capitalism it : 1." moment comes, which comes but rarely already remaking India's economy and ss in history. when we step out from the old perhaps more important, its society. ft- to the new, when an age ends and when The effects are striking. Visit a city o: :st the soul of a nation, long suppressed, town in India and everybody is on th, ed finds utterance." make. People who once sought govern On reading these words now, howev- ment jobs, with security and low sala ns er, one is struck by how much better they ries, now look for business opportuni in apply to India today than they did 50 ties, franchises and financing. A societ: years ago. During the past decade, India that has, for thousands of years, honore, . nd has been rediscovering herself, casting the status of the state, of princes and c off a mantle designed abroad for one caste now exalts the market. di- more distinctly homespun. As the nation It is no coincidence that just as the s sh moves into the 21st century it will in all cialist basis of India's nationalism is b( likelihood be less socialist, less secular, ing challenged, so is its secularism. Th a less centralized and less Anglicized than two are part of the same old order. Th ter it has been since independence. years since 1992 have seen the rise of of It is often remarked that Nehru was powerful Hindu nationalist party, the d, the last Englishman to rule India. He struction of mosques and religious riot was indeed a product of England's great Perhaps most important, it has becom institutionsHarrow, Cambridge, the acceptable to articulate a Hindu fund: end mentalism unthinkable 25 years ago. TI: on g London bar but Nehru spent many more years in His Majesty's prisons than danger of religious conflict haunted I! in his schools. He was, above all, an In- dia's founding generation. (Mahatn dian nationalist. But his conception of Gandhi was assassinated by a Him 1. nationalism was entirely European, a Capitalism has put the nation back on track: fanatic who felt betrayed by Gandhi product of Enlightenment ideas about Passing a breakfast tray along a train "appeasement" of the Muslims.) Incli: self-determination, liberalism and ra- Gandhi amended the preamble to the I tionalism in politics. He and his generation of "freedom fighters"than Constitution to add the word "secular" to its description of 0 created a new India that was secular, democratic and republican, state. That ideal seems far away today. Outside of a highly cosmopt with a strong, centralized state that defined the nation and directed,itan, urban elite, the younger generation of Hindus and M usFir. in a socialist fashion, its economic development. It was a model an seem less committed to integration than their parents. ;on English Labour Party leader could have created. The old order has yielded: it cannot be rebuilt. But how Ind . In the past 10 years the founding conception of Indian national-casts off its old garb will determine its future. It needs a new ec :on- ism embodied by the Congress partyhas been steadily erodednomics, but also the old tolerance. Perhaps it will achieve both. n- by what V. S. Naipaul has called "a million little mutinies": Hindu"India: From Midnight to the Millennium," Shashi Tharoor re6. pride, lower-caste empowerment, a rising bourgeoisie, regionalthat Nehru described India as "an ancient palimpsest on which LI is assertiveness. Perhaps the most powerful of these forces areer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed,and yet capitalism and religionan unlikely combination. succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had be.. For 40years India's mixed economy was famously inefficient. One written previously." Building a modern country upon an ancie Mon ofthe saddest of many sad statistics: in 1986 the Steel Authority of In- civilization: that is India's challenge for the 21st century. AUGUST 4, 1997 NEWSWEEK tOTOS . nwa 5 .11.0y 1.01/141./Ja AIL la ICU %IVA ' year ago, when India cele- tion,to byHindu butsome hea". 13? belongsmajority percent to of theof the thefaith countrypopula- adhered i insomeare the advertising intermarriagecities, Indians our origins.among still largely the Despite elites re- contradictions.thatan idea, is greater the Idea thanof an theever sum -ever of land its Gowda,ishpendencebratedversary rule, the H. from 49thof D. Deveanni-Brit- then its inde- the ofanddoes Kerala, it nothe were hailspeak he wouldvisiting,from Hindi, Uttardiscover say, a majorityPradesh, the that state a . mainofteneasily endogamous, are distinguished stronger and than a Suchfrom Bengali what adifferences Punjabi. they is among Indians be manyformitiesa good things Muslim, on andits citizens; onea good thing.This youKeralite Youland can canimposes be no narrow con- partsFortPrime of andNew Minister, delivered Delhi's 16th-centurystood the traditional at the Red ram- In- thefaithfrommay two withKarnataka havediverge a Kurmi in common.completely shares from hisBihar, A whenBrahminHindu but it and a good Indian all at once. othe oneidea of India is of ' land embracing independence Hindi, India's Day "nationaladdressEight to language." the other nation prime ministers had In 50 years, we've . politicalsocial.comes objectives. tocustoms, physical food, appearance, language dress, and modateaMany. nation It ' isdifferencesmay the ideaaccom- that of done exactly the same thing 48 times , ! time whichspokeernerbefore,was that fromtohe butthe scarcelyMr. thewhatcountry Gowda, state knewwas in of aunusuala a Karnataka, languagesouth- word. Tra-this of pluralism.seen the evils Nowlet's of praise it. sharesHaryanaMuslimcommonwould thefeel than withHindu that with, awhom heTamilreligion. hassay, At he Christianfar athe formally Jatmore same from orin time, a Tamil Hindu ingdifferencesdemocracyandture; an still cuisine, Indian's be insuresare a nation:costume opportunities.decisive that none andin determin- custom,of these caste, creed, color, cul- so long' as they,hishavingindition Hindi, native of and beencourse, so Kannadapolitics he written gave made required onescript, outnoSuch 'sense. for ina an himspeech which episode in is almost incon- the words chromeonlymajority to mingle crowds there with thronging is the not polyglot,Worse, even any male.' of thispoly- In- archetypal Hindu has andgeography,choicevery reflected nature made reaffirmed of ininevitable theits ethnography. Socountry; bypluralism byits India'shistory it is In- emergesa from the someplaguedideals,stitution minority severalbut that violent gavegroups, border secessionismpassportsOur like states, founding Assam to astheir has fathers wrote a con- doesa countrymaketheceivable not best India understand be elsewhere,of India. ruledthe oddities Onlyby butits a in man' "nationalit India thatrepresents who -helpcould ityautomaticallyofEvenhowdia's majorityhood, as muchmain his well. HinduiSm railwayof If aplaces heminority is becausestations isahim noBrahmin, he inguarantee toreally.hisa minor-realize caste 90 is. - Constitutiondependingindeed.dian(since nationalism It weis on notor whetherhaVe the bas_ed isethnolinguists). at ayou lelifrareon followlanguage_ animal-17or the glebutreligious:regional-orthemselvesand affects inPunjab, a landallS Indians.from haveof minorities, the sought The ethini-grounda;-eIndianSome powerto no idealsubtract of strug- ofthese on troubles continue, guage"matter,language." half is there Onlythe population aIn "national India, does for Ian-that not diatepercentif he castes), isof ahis Yadav fellow85 percent (one Indians of of the Indiansare interme- not; electorallastlessen month, castenumbers discrimination. for hasthe beenfirst abletime, Indeed, to an ers,hisenablethisunderstand. people. K. particularJ. theYesudas, Prime And solution onlySangMinisterOne in his beIndiaof toway foundIndian address could to tocinema's finest sing- languages,day,of areIndia but recognizesin facteach there spoken 17 areOrlanguages take 35by Indian morelanguage. to- Thenot, Constitution and so on. Alanguages has its country with 35 eignties,the,den"untouchable" endlessof India: hesitant multiplication wasbefore electedFor the theof clamor sover- asrest Presi- of the world, wary of thetoinwith thesee primetop lyrics Malayalamthe of ministerialsame thein that Hindi practice script language addressmusic for elevated him, writtencharts on butIn- to we'reassumptions,grammaticallanguagesthan a millionto count with notstructurespeople dialects,theirjust dialects own and there scripts,cultural (and are if and these are Itown is not baseddefinition on geography. of(The unity. sub-nationalityismsabbuthundredfor self-determination andmurderous different unconvinced is newworthy dialects, fundamental- echoing thatof anxioussupport, every in a firmationdependence of IndianDay was pluralism. a startling af- tusmore in India. than 22,000). Thanks inNo part language to 'the enjoys majority sta- been"natural hacked frontiers by the partition of India of 1947.)have forthere the may Indian be idea.somethingIf the to overwhelmingbe said majority of a ' , he representsdesh,GangeticHindi-speakingtypical the might Indian "majority plain cherish stepping Hindu state commu-':., the ofmanWe off illusion Uttar areafrom train, all Pra- thatIt;the minorities a in India. A ItinginigeOfspoken,dipopularity is.India,.bitt. understood, by. of ofnearly the Bombay'sit majority-Indeed, ifhalf not 'the always cinemajlin- population well its Is in no 'sense': the :,,haye. more er,deshlsin BengalisIt commonIndians.) is andnot basedPakistanis withand And Punjabis,Bangla-, onit 'is ethnicity. than 'not for withbased instance, (Indian oth- on onandsharedunity,people their the if historyshareMudfeet, andOf the onan ifpolitical theiruncertainthey realize foreheads will 'future they 'for they wear the dust of a .nity,"GreatShashifavored to use IndianTharoor by an the expression lessNovel" is the industrious author and much "India:of of "The our namematter.southunfamiliarloCutioni, immediatelyor Most northeast gender to of most the rules revealstime, Indians Ethnicityand an scriptwhere Indian's in furthertheare he complicates the exemplifieschurchtionaleveryHinduism faith or ecclesiastical knovin our diversity to mankind, hierarchy more than and organization,(We are home 'to 'almost a religion without a na- established ' hasandnationasKanpurare those better emergedfreedom. exists, dreamingin off Kohlapur inliving Thatcelebrating the thelast isin orthe Kothikodesame50 Kohima, Indiayears, diversity dreams: thatand or a From Midnight to the Millennium." is from and what his mother tongue ,f'.7,-,%}.:," our common cultural heritage.) Indi- it is well worth Celebrating. Cltn : : . . ' : ' .

'? . ;.., .-.(affects-lift years almost after independence, every Indiantrators itsandviolence victims directly; others perpe- mdi- violence.Withviolent Partition history. Partly andoverlapping Independence a deluge Norwith of itselfcommunal hasit were Indiacame the had a particularly non- v!oiencdI&as venerandestswith favours. whichthe Byin political'social showerHiOnmay This and and makes itseconomic economic members it a partisanconflicts, vested with bribesinter- Karlekar and nymityarenotedidentities frequently in and the in inconsequentiality.theirimpersonal oppressed villages byurban and a feeling generally'. milieu, they ig- For them of ano, 'f :tly in the form 'Of a feeling of insecurity Mrththe of Pradesh and the latter particularly violent. In rural areas a violence often criminal is a desperate, thanks partly to communications peasant uprisings in Andhra been' the subconicious assertion of both self and eiis- phenomena .xree,Jolution. brands' with Newspapersaccounts one's consciousnessimage increasingly 'and 'of magazines death with. .graphic;'and rein-'destruction the idiot The andonIndia.West non-violence repressing Bengal Earlier, led Mahatma .byhadnotwithstanding, the marked CommunistGandhi's the insistence freedom Party of violence . proSperitywhichmajorhanced sourcehas theheightened of premium such conflicts disparities on landowning. has and en.: This created by the Green Revolution , thetenet,villages. social which restraints They is facilitated operating by theon themabsence in the of also marginalised urban utuallyi-pervasiveter reinforcing dia,and feeling however,violence, of dialectic insecuritywhichcould nothas between havegrownwithout sustained therapidly. a an ofhadstruggle, Indianit. followed Besides, andpolitics thenot periodic increasing merelysince Hinduthe the communalisation'seventies terrorist Muslim strandof riots the ofpoorhas the intensified, peasants Other Backward mostlymovements Castes by landless (OBCs) and for ing Dalits and members ' : elements" esteem. 'tendidentitymass to associate organisations and awith feeling whichmilitant of remove power andof insecurity and lend them a collective their feel- self- )ininating,mprisesstictedom; or masochisticAs attempts ora feelingErichmanipulating toFrommbehaviour. of bolster insecurity others shows one's The physically leads selfformerin his toby sa-Fear of conflictopmentrelationssupported19th century. hasandin oppressive India's aggravated 'createdSocially, vast and newomnipresentrural exploitativeThe ones.hinterland. post-Independence It violence has ex- pattern of devel- the old sources of feudal N D I A ethnic,mobilisationlowed.tions and linguistic the -violencealong and religious regional theyA proliferationunleash lines for has gov- fol-of militant mass organisa- Increasingly' aggressive caste, political class, id/orur is psychologicallypsychologically.surrenderingentity one's and Masochistic deriving self physically a behav- feeling of security a superior being ' running of enterprisesnopoliestendeddomestic the providing somegovernment's of them telephone mo-functions to the services,airlines, ' of exemplifiedprocess.ernmentalstate led This developmentpower, aggravatedby' thewhich vicious apportions has helpedturn thegiven the fruits to social cleavages as ; ,dividualsom the latter. often'Attempts cause at violence. sadistic domination At the ail- over other unitsshipping and companies,even hotels. banks Simultaneously, and insurance the electricity or running unevenandcaste Mandir relations geographical politics and communal respectively. distribution ties Alongby of Mandal devel- with . itionsctive like level, Hitler's these Sturmabteilung lead to the rise (SA) of organi- and ingtraditional the secretariat, administrative district structureadministration compris- and . thoseopment for it hasseparate also spawned Uttarulthand movements and Bodo like 'nderle kind terplayanyto ofsadistic and violence ofthe sadism domination.world. he unleashedand masochism In India, on thecontrib-. Masochism induces sur- Ger.: andthesectionsextendedbetween local diversified. self-governing of thosestructures both Despite manning have of bodiesbecome frequentadministration, the has traditional allies expandedconflicts in extor- large and -A TIMES OF INDIA . states.exposurelatentexplosive The aggression resultant to beciuse humiliation inviolence of people the' accumulation oftenthrough 'repeated and injustice from becomes of tes roups.enaitalitariantd both and theindividual mass various organisations crime*terrorist and and likethe insurgent risethe Shivof countries"newplundering,tionDjilas, and class" corruption. "maywhich, exploitative be insaid the Theyto words havestrata constitute been ofakin Milovan to the in the erstwhile communist made up of the andantssultantland thebelongingand clashes' affluent higher with mostlyagriculturalOBCsD landlords' havetoE the wages. oftenand Bupper rich' assumed The castesA peas- re- T E,i era.govenimentRBombay The Ambedkar's violence onfunctionaries. July statue,that 12 erupted following is rindan exampleaUGhatkcipar, otherEven an exploit-insult when of this. to there B is no explosion, latent :rnyetich:cling characterof has economicO been' insecurityThe by given the dialecticdevelopment. post-independence 'isan aespecially legacy between Despite of destruc- historyviolence pat- and the the tivenomicthosefeature monopoly who preference ofhave the they special Indianbecause hold". privilegevariety of The the administra- distinctiveis and its specialeco- for oftenLeninistAndhrastatesthe character particularlymost Pradesh parties severely of wherearecaste savage active.affected confrontations.Marxist in conflictsThe are and violence Bihar Marxist.: involv: The. and is ganisationiassociationagainstintensifiesaggression individuals whose causeswith terrorist violent orcombative groups.' ideologies.strikeand It insurgentbehaviour also leads or- or toa subconscious hatred formation he nillvittliatimaInfluenceaChings of of the 'Gandhi'sGautam Bhakti Buddha morecult and recent and Sufism,: Mahaviraempha- ' their monopolyprivilegereleasing control of extorting goods, and servicesstealing money fromorgovern- facilities people under whom,ing Dalits beneficiaries and OBC of landlords, the inadequate 'most land 'of ' ismchord threatens in people. to smoulderingrevisit Punjab, within. insurgency Terror- India and vitili'liroisniraditionallyis'.on noti-vitilence',. and th the Indian psyche has glerified; violence associated defence of virtue: '. ment funds: tionisttense new because class of hai its been generally particularlyResentment insulting againstin- be- the corrupt and extor- .:reforms: unwilling effected,commandedfeudal! to extend'. demandobeisance thitil;the from ',440es'fliiptiei' the awakened Debts the !'eastei DalintIlare4,t!Contininis s'once Jithithir1. northeastern '1-, .. " d lefish regularly; With thi,ffivnteti ashmir MarxlsLen1nlSf 'OM the lepen&))+audedtehilitionak Tlgsrth,4 'Wring andviolence the Marxist-Leninists freedom and movement,terrorism after were and In- incolonialhaviour its implications, administrativetowards people however, ethos. which isMore itsreflects alliance serious its unfamiliarMigrant villagers environs tend* of cities.feel Industrialisationinsecure Sans their ln`the 1,!: hisispurred urbanisation.. I. armiei.of Biharlaiidlimis and and'Andhra the Security Pradesh.nnal %realty Whetheetooted, exploitation as.,, 11thar.i and Andhra I & . ..!. 0 r.)- .) 39 ' Pradesh or stoked from outside -as in Jammu and Kashmir insurgency and ter- rorism reflect alienation not only from the administration and the entrenched socio- economic order but India's political system!" Parliamentary democracy has failed to de- ; liver rapidly enough; politics has becom Criminalised and debased. Latent aggression also frequently gives a vicious turn to violence accompanying crime which has increased alarmingly because of industrialisation, urbanisation andthe, spreading consumer culture. The craving foil consumer goods leads to robbery, theft, da- , coity, murder, white collar crimes like fraudst and scams, dowry demands and bride killing' when the loot' is considered inadequate/ Dowry deaths underlineacrucialf women have been the principal victims oft the violence engendering social changes which have occurred. Ripe has increasingly( been an instrument of terrorisationand/ vengeance in rural caste and class conflicts. Feelings of insecurity and frustration have/ been major causes of escalating domestic violence. Women family members of male migrants to cities have been rendered vulner- able. In cities, sexual frustration amongmi- grant males has increased the incidence or rape and molestation, which have also ceived a fillip from Bollywood finis and? soft-porn South Indian movies glorifyingn eve-teasing and projecting women as setia objects. Commodification of women by ad.l vertising has also contributed to these trends.1 In the developed countries centuries of turmoil has produced a balance of power and interests between social strata and institu- tional arrangements for conflict resolution) resting on consensus. India is undergoing aq dual transition a readjustment of sociali.8 equations and emergence into modernity Relations between social formations midi conflict resolving institutions are in a flint,as are values and legitimising authorities. A blinkered strategy of development and an,. utterly bankrupt political leadership have only stoked conflict and violence. 1 -Hirartmay Karlekar is a senior journalist3a and a farmer editor of The Hindustan Times.4

4 0 A4EtwOejt," . 1 .0P-ED, THE PIONEER baltern. politics Segmentation has always been the drivingforce, of politics in the

The sublime may merely be a step away Ghosh from the ridiculous. But it has taken al- country, saysPothik most 50 years for the members of the "hallowed" Indian polity to recognise that a united nation state called India isan ab- surd proposition vis-a-vis a fragmented soci- ety and polity. Segmentation has always been the driving force of politics in this country. However,our leaders have always chosen to depict ground realities otherwise. It is high time now for them to admit that their patriotic and syncretic slo- gans like "Unity in diversity" do not cut much ice these days. The transformation of the Bharatiya Janata Party has been the most astounding political development in this regard. Despite its rhetoric of Hindutva. the BJP has failed to prevent it- self from being drawn into a cesspool of caste politics. The party, which had thrivedon up- per caste, petty bourgeois Hindu sentiments of political discipline and social order, relented in the course of time to the pressure of caste pol- itics. Its idea of India as a monolithic Hinduna- tion state has started showing chinks. Time, It seems, is up for patriotically clenched fists and hearts pounding withna- BEST COPY AVAILABLE tionalist fervour. A strong sense of communi- ty is parochial alright, but relates better with nationalism and a united nation state. Politics of caste, on the other hand, is essentiallyan- ti-nation state. That the BJP would give up its nationalist (read Hindutva) plank and play its cardsac- cording to the ever-changing caste alignments, ofsisting of Shivaji, Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, Hindi heartland in general and Uttar Pradesh inVeer Savarkar and Bhagat Singh (their subtle ide- particular, was simply unimaginable atone ological and political differences notwithstanding). point of time. no longer works. This is reflected in its affiance But it has happened. The first signal of changewith the BSP. a representative of the subalterns.. was when it decided to ally with the Bahujan The former has also, ik Samaj Party (BSP) this year despite the fiasco withsort of. approved the which itsfirst entente met, in 1995. Theinvention of lower INationa ism, wediscover,iscover, has Chitrakoot conclave of the party held from Julycasteiconslike 9-12. primarily reviewed the party's ties with theChatrapati Shahu Ji always, been an alien concept forour Dalits. The remarkable feature of the meet, how- Maharaj and Raja NH . ever. was the presence of Suresh Ketkar, a top soCiety. The Unifying homogenous Pasi. It hasgiven a nod ...... RSS functionary. The Rashtriya Swyamsewak to an anti-nation state .., Sangh (RSS) has also surprisingly been a partydiscourse espoused by discourse of nationalist history of the to the casteisation of the BJP. Mayawati and her ilk. In fact, in a meeting held a week before the freedom struggle invented .17.the-:.: Raja Bijli Pasi, for in-. . Chitrakoot conclave, in Delhi, the Sanghpro-stance, was glorified, claimed that it wanted to share power with the in .a BSP rally held on COngreiS, and then f011Owed,.moreor Dalits as this would marginalise OBC leaders likeJuly1,1997at Laloo Yadav and Mulayam Yaday. less in thesame way by the Bharatijla Lucknow, against the . .. What makes the situation even more interest- traditional Rajput he- . . ing is that UP, which has traditionally been theroes .Aalha and Udal. Janata Party, does.not.give a nationalistic ambition S of'the Congress, should be The BJP has gone the stage on which the drama of anti-nation stateall out for- the' Dalit : complete picture of the Indian subaltern politics is being played. Ironically, thecause at the cost of BJP's acceptance of fragmentary caste politics al- historical:reality. Their ideology Of ... losing, its ,:backward,.:,. -. - so began in UP. constituency. -, It :hak . The BJP has at last come to terms with the fact ..:, .2:::'nationalism has eggon its faCe. put . __ .. that its homogenous nationalist pantheon ...... - ._.. con- ortlitietrYk:-::=:'.".:'.7'.. . II.;1'1119 4 1 ',`',: \ ''' . to theicalIts pre-Mandal SCsstatus and,STI4 ',Thesethey automaticallycaste changeswho alliance'ofAJGR have'taken UP are classic subalterns. moved away fro somewhat ba (Ahl 4.Y , , ,,,,s .; A .1.,,,,. r ,4 ''''.447,ve ;t . :'.. First field ofit politicswasCongressCharanJat, the ofGujjar emergence the alliance -Singh and of as Rajput). Kt-1AM ofa third the Jaforce, UP(Khsatriya, became followe fragmentary kind to a ttl :`.0p1.7.. A:Se:,:,.., Adivasi, Muslim) under. Indira ,. Gandhi in 97 ... repeated.;-supremo. .itself. The monolithiediscoursewhich and was of bornog nationalism supposed to on,whicbAs' be for the the 'BJP's transformation, an answer to'(h'e J ,.'. ', hIstogy'.' iooh Co o '' , :-7.B.IPU. merely*; ed taking by the SUryivedits BJP, Cengressisationlaifs Only till Comnnnli 1971 bas ed..As: 'simply been appr Of ifOw n to a , , , ',2',,y . ; 1 4 2 2 -- ' '','', . 'nationalist discourse,laicalical strategy end. and it hasstarted as pergiven deciding,the up caste on the realitieS' unictimenion pe ... q'';:-.'ttlr,,,:arr,,5., '- ,..,- ,,- '. ,, r>..If . - , ,t,- ,,,..,:trc-,g P) r " $ ; currentlycited rules by the the waves preponderantly in UP.Finally, subaltern we have 'pohtii a rude shock. Nationajis, . tit that ' --,',,,.;t ,' '-'' ''' '' '"'-'1 ',,..,:', 4:, ..,..' r , :.-,:. '' A',191.14 .2.'. .., fOrwe discover,our Soctety. has The always unifying been hornogenod an alien!coce di .... h, -'-n*':.,- v'is, 5 5 ': , ,: . 5- ' ,1113;,' er , k 4; -,....:..,; , gleinventedbyCourse of nationalist the Congress, history and of then freedom gfrug. follow '. li,'.a,4 ?, ', `, ":, ,=r ,e , ','.:', ,..,n= W:---i` , ' ta.., ftq, '4 r';,',. ' '.z.:,.' - : ,. ',...,44, .-, Mere *oc lesstiniestnot In thegiVe samereality a complete way by picture of the India4 hi . BJ1os i . .. ' , ' 1, '. The Congress undoubtedly acCepted'tha)re hiscasteSingh:wards. tribe in who UP have, (Lodhs) ..-- heads theon theYadave; theand Other has MulaYarri antagonisedhand; -, '-,.. most powerful backward .. Singh'Mulayam- and : :' :i ,; '.. Ambeilkar'sCOonly create. uniform demand Not nationalist for freedomsideonce ideology its cif fold, all anti-British'sthigglèswhIchioiibut attributed-to them many people know that from Britishit had mamag the one a to the upper castes. The much-touted - :.. tit of, the SchedulecV.;Castes, Scheduled unable to r moved closer grand unt-' '' state' but because ' was not because he wantedFurther back in history, the emancipate members of the lower years of foreign rule had.be a 'free Indian Ilan Wahabi.sect, .0 cas ,'. 'a messiahinBackwardTribes a shambles. and of Castes theall theOther'Once lies ' .r. der the legendary :only foughtDeobandh,story ofthe theologicaischools British inspiring but Pan Islamic like Firangi leadership of Tint Mir: had not also' the Hirichrs'. TI'' sentiments in Mahal an . oppressed castes, he pre-Independence era, is not . si. hoarse over the mis4w1Preventionuseis now 'of crying the SC/ST. himself: ', ogy of nationalism of . subalternin 'Indian politics, history which either. First.cannot the be Congress, 'then the BJP.. . . has egg on its face. Caste atic! a very well-knol articulated inTheir ideo !I , ,. 42 *-*yYlus e,,fient;',141Ca';'AS.*:,4/:,1,'was' -1aii4iV:astiihigfiatataaioa:WithAhe7t1iih.:''AtrocitiesdentandingitkahOti7;',,:' Mt and being is;. -: terms of tried 'to *Pert ' '. `'!-': ..',',....:-attaitt to :0i society; :articulated by different a state, have pome to stay. The the western.paradigro,of natio without realising that it h various discourSgroups In acco .STs;:',haveposed to the SCs anC!.,'danCe.. with; their respective aims.' These : . :go ,:.:.,:caetes:'...:Mulayami.:..:/;keen,.:.;.,-:.iyith Thus competitioriof onee',,ple theirthe UP Yadays under, Means but the upiier `;,` . been .irl;!".OVOrliipped.at: Singh::. 'nicely' places not nation but also state:. had buta UniqueneSS Therefore; chaos willaccept be:our the factbrder that Traginentatioi is Own... an end in itself for our polity.:It is det. . .. unless pei not i , Lic,tdeyeri. their pout- . . our destinv. . .:-,=!.::.,: then it is our systeuj, PERSPECTIVE DELHI, WEDNESDAY, 30 JULY 1997 9 IN_divided mainly into two partsancient India society was saidequalityBuddha a man's ofpreached man. caste Lordis determinedabout Buddha the ere).lythe Brahmins Shudras. Veidyas (doctors),(priestsThe first and wereICshartlyas teach- main- the Savaran Hindus and Brahmindeedsbirth.by his "The couldactions and Shudra abe Brahmin andequated notwith with bywith good hadhis a andVaishyasworkedsoldiers). Raj/rutsshopkeepers). 1Cayasthasandin (kingsthe Maha)ans courts), warriorsThe (clerks second(traders whotheand In the last 50 years there has beenmajority obviousa tremendous of that India's the awakening Shudraspopulation. will And dominate in a democracy, the political where scene numbersin future, matterwrites AMITmost, itKUSHARI is quite of the Shudras among the Shudras who form the vast criticisecouldShudra".Butdeeds not could the completely caste evenbe equated system. Lord abolish Buddha withIn fact ora comprised farmers, cobblers, Awakening form,Lord Buddha:thoughbelieved in the caste in a divi-mild weavers, fishermen, butchers, CastesBackwardIndiamilkmen and the Scheduled ShudrasandClasses. the tiare theMies Scheduledkrtovm as hi today's 44 thatBuddhasions he of wasHinduonce made complainedsociety. to many to a him girlA Kshatriya disciple of Lord adoptedofShudras the Savaran andIslam a smalland Hindus Christianity. percentage laterA large percentage of the r: 9Prae ShudrafoundKshatriya.who was that introducedand the But girl's later mother theto him disciple was as aa her father a the .eughlycoups.IndianShudrathe minorities Pakistanis.Thecomprises among population belongwhom Bangladeshis06 per toofthe caw theseIndia of and e*4t groundcouldBuddha'smarriageKshatriya. renounce that heradvice He and hismotherfelt as wifedeceivedsought to whetheronwas the in Lorda this he }reftlackward cent,}abide=ant;ant Scheduled Classes and.Scheduled15 per and Castescentconstitute 19 ofper 15Muslims Tribes cent per 44 of7 and perthe mothercouldofShudra. thehim girlignore wasnot Lord was toa Shudra.dotheBuddha a Kshatriyaso fact since Hethatadvised thesaid, andher father iirahmIns,-avaran;ikits. Budhists Hindus. Ralputs, and Mahe(ans,Including )afro.The Shudras. therefore. form a Vtleanig thetant"the girl andfathees es you a Kshatriya." sidecan, istherefore, more impor- take heyibraced artcould makority Islam havelarge or incomprised number Christianity,modern of India. them60 If had not 41/ di.? . not completelynotindirectcaste equal denouncesystem. hint to men that He by the womenalso emphasising made were anLord Buddha, therefore, did hehatnatternat a cent politicaldemocracy.the most, ofShudras the scene it populationis where quitewill In dominate future.numbers obvious now. In ShudrasIndiaissuehighlightsmore onwhothat were the thedid anotherfather's treatedwomennot have lineage. important of like anyancient Thisthe he.emendousndence lastShudras 50 thereyears awakening and ofhas India'sthey been among haveinde- a Shudra,commented;ancienthuman Hindu Pashu.dignity law-maker,Dhole. Nailor rights. Ganwar, Mane. The Yeh sub ackwardan.alined wieldorgan the in Classesmore future.political than andpower a century Dallis they agoThe awakening of the 9_ toanimalsuneducatedhairs be thrashed).tarran and people,key women adhikari the Shudras. (drums. all are fit rith rs.-formersthe Theimparted birth andWestern of revolutionary great by the education social British lead. also Rajputsbornhoned out thatfrom of thethe the heed Brahminsarms of and God, shoul- were the aorallowed religious wear theto seekceremony sacred higher thread. like education Yajana When encebydinner, the of servantsthe guesthost. notwas inserved the pres- food savings.servant had no right over his Soown heartless and rigid were the bywherea modern law. human But wedemocratic rights should are notprotected IndiaforgetWe are fortunate to be bon in beration.wakening'ars,:celerated the But political thatIn thethe has lastprocessand been SO social wit-of their toThisandders, the the accordedthe Shudras ShudrasMahal:ins whothe from lowestfrom were thethe to status feel.bellybear thevicinitywereor haven higher not of allowedwould theclasses 'acted take to would comefireplace, so not in theythat thebe anintelligentlearn interest the Hindu Shudra to learn scriptures. childthe Vedas showed If an orThe Shudras had no right to thebeenand evilsnorms religious able of to ofcaste completelyancient reforms system India have wipe in that mod- notout social centShudraslessonsour of dark the pastwhofrompopulation andcomprise should and 66 learn per history. The hudrasothiRqossed shortwereamong oftreated a the Gonephenomenon. Shudrasas untouch-are the is days when the bySociety thethe Brahmins burdenswas so muchofof thatthesociety, higherdominated even especially classes.the wereclothespolluted not bybelow allowed their shadowstheir to navelcover -They butthe were allowed to wear boyseverelythe Upanishads,fell in punished. love with he Ifa would aSavaran Shudra be Hindus.equalityShudrasern India. Though dowith Even not thethe enjoy moderntoday Savaran social tausthe havetheirlongerwomen basic to be change50 oppressedrights. per cent their All Indiansshould ormindsets denied willno adIdes wereattempty inlittle ancient wasted human by the India withSeverantights who utmost or hadHindusdignity turestheyShudras werecreated started the by most God! believing lowly crea- thatThey were not allowed to sowereupper thats4t!' made parts tlieir whbila unholytoof crawl theirBrahmin shedoWs body.by thePMsad..?"/ They rad- did offence,wasKillingaliveHindu aafterwhile girl,majoia Shudra tying bekilling one, would him awu especially withHindu bea aminor burnt tree. attayThddentiofany ventandbarbaric thethe Constitution upperact on easteism classes the Shudras, of toIndia and coeunit pre. governmentbutnowegalitariandrastically this reserves lobsalone to social forprepare 49.5 isthe not order. Shudras per forenough. cent a India fully of eras.hudrasime has to now Theclaim come ancient their for scriptures due the men- evencleated.theenter protest. wellsThey temples reservedwere They orJon take were formaued thewater not higherto ken 47. Invitedhouses.couldnot only pollute U make a higher him. single-storeyed areThe Hindu Shudras Shudra to his house for thanvowa heinous killingconsidered killing a alms. aBrahmin Shudra. a Cowgreater was slaughterA Shudraconsideredoffence socialBiharberberism reformers and Madhya do occurlike Pradesh.Gautema In statesIn like ancient India religious and untouchability.frombeMore made vigorousthe tofilth cleanse effortsof casteism thewill countryhave and to 4 [Scene] THE BOMBAYRUSH

From "Mumbai," by SuketuMehta, in the Spring issue of Granta,a special issue devoted to India. Mehra, whogrew up in Bombay, now lives New York City. in

Bombay is a city withan identity crisis, a picked up, and city experiencing both some tiny space will be made a boom and a civic for your feet at the edgeof the open doorway. emergency. It's the biggest, fastest,richest city The rest is up in India; by the to you; you will probably haveto year 2020, it is predicted, Bom- hang on to the door framewith your fingertips, bay will be the largestcity in the world. It held taking care not 12 million people to lean out too far lestyou get at last countmore than decapitated by a pole placedclose to the Greeceand 38percent of the nation's taxes tracks. But consider whathas happened:your are paid by its citizens. Yet halfthe population fellow passengers, already is homeless. In the Bayview packed tighter than Bar of the Oberoi the law allows cattle tobepacked, their shirts Hotel you can order DornPerignon champagne. drenched with for 20,250 sweat in the badly ventilated rupees, more than one anda half compartment, having stood like this for times the average citizen's hours, annual income, and retain an empathy foryou, know that your this in a city where 40percent of the houses boss might yellat you or cut your are without safe drinking pay if you water. In a country miss this train, and will makespace for you where people still dieof starvation, Bombay where none exists. And boasts 150 diet clinics. at the moment of con- It's a city of glaringex- tact, they do not know if thehand that is tremes and awesome divisions. reaching for theirs belongs The manager of to a Hindu or a Bombay's suburban railway Muslim or a Christianor a Brahmin or an Un- system was recently asked whenthe system touchable, or whether would improve you were born in this to a point where it couldcarry city or arrived only thismorning, or whether its 5 million dailypassengers in comfort. "Not you live in Malabar Hill in my lifetime," he or Jogeshwari, answered. Certainly, ifyou whether you're from Bombayor New York. All commute into Bombay,you are made aware of they know is that you're the precise trying to get to the temperature of the human body;it city of gold, and that's curls around enough. Comeon you on all sides, adjusts itselfto board, they say. We'lladjust.. every curve of your own. A lover'sembrace was never so close. One morning I tookthe rush-hour trainto the suburb of Jogeshwari.There was a crush of

passengers, and I could get only halfwayinto the car. As thetrain gathered speed, I hung on to the top of theopen door. I feared 1 would be pushedout, but someone reassured me: "Don't worry, if they pushyou out they will also pullyou in." I recently spoketo a man 1 know who has seen firsthand the slow destructionof the so- cial fabric of the city.He is from Bhagalpur, in Bihar, site not only ofsome of the worst Hindu versus Muslimviolence in the nation but also of a famous incidentin 1980 in which the police blindeda group of criminals with knitting needles andacid. Thisman, more than most people Iknow, has seen humanity at its worst. I asked him if hefelt pessimistic about the humanrace. "Not at all," he replied."Look at the hands from the trains." [(you are late forwork in Bombay and reach the station justas the train is leaving the plat,: form, you can run up to the packedcompart- ments and find many handsunfolding outward from the train likepetals, reachingout to pull you on board. Asyou run alongside you will be 46 PAGE 1

Citation Rank(R) Database Mode 3/5/92 WASHPOST A31 R 1 OF 1 WP Page 3/5/92 Wash. Post A31 1992 WL 2201593

The Washington Post Copyright 1992 Thursday, March 5, 1992 A SECTION MTV Age Dawning In India; Satellites Bring In Uninvited Guests Steve Coll Washington Post Foreign Service College student Devasish Barua and his father, lawyer B.C. Barua, have been arguing volubly of late about the arrival in their middle-class South Delhi apartment of an uninvited, loud, charismatic foreign intruder. Music Television, or MTV, the New York-based, 24-hour popular music channel featuring lingerie-clad rock nymphets, screaming guitars and rap singers who wear enough gold chains to anchor a ship, has beamed down into India, land of timeless ragas and glorified virginity. What the Baruas disagree about is whether the new channel - which leaks into their television reception from a nearby satellite booster is a sign of progress or a harbinger of the end of civilization. "MTV is a nuisance for the family and a hazard for the youngsters," said the elder Barua, who has not yet managed to stop his son from watching rock and rap videos but has at least persuaded him to quit break dancing in front of the television. "We said, 'This will spoil your health and you will die, also.' "

The commotion in the Barua household is only one conflict among many generated by the rapid proliferation of satellite dishes and nascent cable television technology in India. MTV is the latest in a series of foreign networks to join a chaotic, burgeoning revolution in communications here that is changing the way previously xenophobic India sees the rest of the world. An estimated 400,000 Indian households now receive foreign programming by choice via satellite, up from a mere handful just two years ago. Others, like the Baruas, watch spillage from the satellite cable systems. The broadcasts generally reach apartments and houses on cables strung by unregulated cable operators who battle one another for territory slashing their rivals' lines, sabotaging satellites and ratting to the police. One New Delhi cable operator recently sent a circular to Copr.(C) West 1997 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Wor

......

47' WESTLAW 3/5/92 WASHPOST A31 PAGE S2 subscribers warning that a rival had tried to wreck his system by attaching an electrical current to the lines. "Two of our technicians were badly wounded," the cable operator reported, adding "with profound sorrow" that transmissions of satellite programming would be suspended until the battle with his rival operator was settled once and for all. The governments of India and Pakistan also have begun fighting over satellite television. India has accused its longtime foe of using World Bank funds to rent a satellite transponder for the purpose of beaming propaganda broadcasts into India. The government says Pakistan first seduced Indian viewers with South Asian music videos on its satellite channel, then began to slip in news footage stolen from foreign broadcasters and accompanied by anti-Indian propaganda.

Proponents of the technology say that while it may have some rough edges, it is on the whole good for India. They argue that satellite broadcasting will push India toward integration with the global economy, consolidate its young, outward-looking, middle-class culture and hasten the end of traditional political thinking, which preaches that India must guard itself at all cost against foreign influences, lest they lead to exploitation of the country by foreign powers. Rajiv Desai, spokesman in India for Hong-Kong based STAR-TV, a satellite company that beams MTV, the British Broadcasting Corp., sports, entertainment and other programming across Asia, said the advent of satellite broadcasts here marks "the dawning of a global consciousness" in India. The immediate effect, he said, will be to encourage demands among ordinary Indians for a government and economy that can deliver greater prosperity than the present, debt-bound socialist economy has been able to do. "A lot of people are going to say,'Hey, Singapore looks pretty good there [on the TV]. What am I doing in this rat hole?'" Desai said.

He said the impact will be especially strong on India's English-speaking, elite political class, which, he argued, has for years shielded its privileged status by espousing xenophobic socialist philosophy. "The English-speaking guy has always been the one who was the Fabian [socialist] jerk," Desai said. "Now, his children are going to say,'I want to go to the Mediterranean, I want fast cars.' This will open up the world. I think it's great." The Indian government is less impressed. "Our own social ethos, our cultural values we would not like them to be subverted," said Mahesh Prasad, the government's secretary of information and broadcasting. Satellite television, he said, is "giving [poor Copr.(C) West 1997 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Woz

48 ......

WESTLAW 3/5/92 WASHPOST A31 PAGE 3 people] dreams which cannot be fulfilled. It can create social tensions." Such concerns have led the government in the past to ban advertising of such items as jewelry and baby food on the state-run television network for fear the ads will make viewers overwrought with greed. But Prasad, the government's senior television regulator, acknowledged that satellites and cable television networks are spreading in Indian cities much faster than the government can keep up with them. Asked about the impact of MTV, for example, Prasad said he had not yet watched the network. "Things are happening by themselves, thick and fast," he said. The Congress Party-led government of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, which is trying to open India's economy with a package of free-market economic reforms, "does not wish to turn its back on the advantages of technology," Prasad added. But the government would like "to bring about some kind of orderliness" and is considering several regulatory proposals. In public statements, government officials suggest that whatever steps they take, they are inclined to bow to middle-class opinion, which seems to favor satellite television because of the variety of information and entertainment available from abroad. Even lawyer Barua, despite the fights with his son over rock and rap videos, welcomes the new technology. "Satellite TV is very good,

no doubt. There are so many programs you can get. . . . You can know what is going on all over the world." The only problem, Barua added, "is this MTV. This music, I don't think it is good for children." But Barua's son said his father is lagging behind the times. "Most of my friends, they watch," said Devasish Barua. "In every house, they have their MTV."

---- INDEX REFERENCES - --

NAMED PERSON: P.V. NARASIMHA RAO

ORGANIZATION: MUSIC TELEVISION; MTV

KEY WORDS: SUBJECTS: INDIA; TELEVISION; TEENAGERS (AGE 13-20); FOREIG: GOVERNMENTS; COMMERCIAL SATELLITES; COMMUNICATION REGULATI( AND LAW

STORY ORIGIN: NEW DELHI

NEWS CATEGORY: NEWS FOREIGN Copr.(C) West 1997 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Wor

IIIMINI111111111111 Page 20

1ST STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.

Copyright 1994 The Washington Post The Washington Post

February 18, 1994, Friday, Final Edition

SECTION: FIRST SECTION; PAGE A27

LENGTH: 1410 words

HEADLINE: MBA Plus MTV: India's Yuppies Lead a Revolution

SERIES: Occasional

BYLINE: Molly Moore, Washington Post Foreign Service

DATELINE: NEW DELHI

BODY: In a spartan office in one of the city's booming neighborhoods, five young, ambitious entrepreneurs are helping to shape India's future.

With pounding dance parties, high-tech laser shows and glitzy promotional extravaganzas, the recent business school graduates are taking advantage of economic reforms and Western-influenced consumerism that are revolutionizing job opportunities for India's newest generation of young professionals.

"We are riding the wave of a cultural revolution," said Samarjit Singh, 22, who has shunned his family business to help launch a pioneering marketing firm that has used innovative methods to promote Pepsi, Ray-Ban and a dozen other foreign and domestic companies. "I wouldn't have had the guts to try and do this five years ago. The opportunity didn't exist."

In a nation where the best and the brightest college graduates traditionally had two choices get a prized job in the government civil service or move out of India the upscale job market for the urban middle class is undergoing an unprecedented expansion. It has been driven by a government effort to radically overhaul India's socialist economy that has attracted scores of multinational corporations and privatized many of the country's stodgy government-run businesses.

Those dramatic changes, coupled with a sudden explosion in Western-inspired consumerism, are giving India's current class of college graduates the chance to earn more money, responsibility and power before they reach age 30 more than most of their middle-class parents earned in a lifetime.

"In the past, a boy studied engineering or medicine and went to America or a girl went into liberal arts, found a [government] service officer and got married. This was the middle-class dream," said Rajiv Desai, 44, who fled to the United States after graduation two decades ago but returned to open a successful public relations firm. "Today it is totally different."

Rishi Kumar, a 22-year-old political science student at a prestigious New 50 LEXIS. NEXIS LEXIS. NEX1S LEXIS. NDOS -R.A member of the Recd Elsevier plc group member of the Reed Elsevier plc poop ev....A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group Page 21 The Washington Post, February 18, 1994

Delhi college, plans to earn a business degree in the United States, but is quick to add: "I will come back to India for sure. India is openingup. The economy and the lifestyles are changing; the scope is widening for everybody. There is no limit to what I can do in India."

Economics major Amitav Virmani, 21, added, "There is a lot of money to be made here."

Those attitudes represent a major shift in the customary, pessimistic outlook of college graduates in this country of about 880 million, where competition for jobs is so fierce that each year 200,000 young people apply to takegovernment civil service examinations to fill fewer than 100 job openings.

Young educated Indians not only have more variety in the choice of jobs they can pursue, but now have the opportunity to help launch sophisticated businesses that rarely existed in the old India, such as marketing, public relations, high finance and telecommunications.

"In the early '80s, the question was,'Is there a job at all'?" said Vijay K. Thadani, director of India's largest chain of computer training schools, the National Institute of Information Technology. "Today it's taken for granted the job exists."

Although the Indian government has compiled no figures on thenew professional jobs resulting from the economic liberalization, business leaders say tens of thousands of new positions have been created. Thadani said 50,000 new jobs have opened in computer fields alone in the last several years. Job counselors say that for every prospective business manager in India today there are 10 to 12 potential job openings.

It is not known just how many new jobs are becoming available, but the enormous growth in opportunity is reflected in the explosion of computer training schools. A decade ago, fewer than two dozen computer training schools existed in India. Today, more than 200 are in business. The largest, Thadani's institute, has ballooned from one center in Bombay with 99 students in 1982 to 73 centers with 60,000 students nationwide.

The new breed of young professionals has discovered that the expanding job market is transforming middle-class India's traditional view of work from the obligatory drudgery for survival to a search for personal achievement.

"More and more people are discovering it's more important to enjoyyour work than just do your job," said Ritu Kaura, a 25-year-old senior management associate at Desai's public relations firm, Indian Public Affairs Network, which is associated with the U.S. public relations giant Hill and Knowlton.

Kaura, who often puts in 14-hour days for her clients, including MasterCard and Citibank, added, "My relatives always ask me,'Why do you work so hard?' It's difficult for them to understand it gives me satisfaction. It'sa challenge they haven't seen themselves."

Kaura is also part of the surge of young women entering the professional workplace in greater numbers than ever before. Thadani said the clientele of his firm's private computer training .courses has reversed from overwhelmingly male 51 LEXIS.NEXIS LEXIS-NEXIS LEXIS-NEXIS 1::Z A member of the Reed Elsevier ole crow, Aft...mi... roe risp ...... Page 22 The Washington Post, February 18, 1994

to about 54 percent female since 1982 when the company opened.

"For a single girl in India, a parent's biggest worry is her safety," said Thadani. "For girls, computers are a very safe career. Theyare dealing with decent, educated people."

But many Indian business leaders, teachers and others say they also have observed a dangerous downside to the explosion of money, power and prestige that so many youngsters are achieving at such a young age.

"These kids are driven," said Desai, who interviews many of the city's brightest graduates. "They want everything here, today, now, gimme."

Top graduates starting in entry-level positions earn salaries of about $ 3,000 a year a small amount by Western standards, but 10 times the average per capita income for India. Those who get coveted jobs with multinational firms paying dollar-based salaries earn far more and are often given houses,cars and credit cards as bonuses.

Kanika Marwah, 33, a career guidance counselor at Delhi Public School, said the quest for money begins in high school. "They come to me and say they want to be in a field that will make them rich. They all want to pursue an MBA andgo to work in a multinational company or an international bank. The 'I' has become the most important thing:'I need this,' I need that,' and 'I don't care how I get it.

Having received steady diets of Western consumerism via satellite television's MTV, mass-market advertising and American programs suchas "Dynasty," "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and "The Bold and the Beautiful," students concede their values may be skewed.

"My generation is very money-minded," said Sonali Kumar, a 21-year-old college history student.

Even with the increase in job variety, India because of the sheer size of its population remains one of the most fiercely competitive nations in the world. The lure of new jobs has only increased the pressureon youths already under tremendous family and social strains to be successful.

"Things are changing too fast," said Avedesh Sharma, 38,a neuropsychiatrist who has seen a marked increase in mental problems and drug and alcohol abuse among his younger patients. "There are so many pressures, and they are being pulled in all directions. Kids in college no longer just study: Theytry to work in a business, learn computers or accounting to help them get better jobs. They feel they have to do it because everybody else is doing it."

The competition to get an edge in the marketplace has fueled extraordinary growth in computer training schools. A decade ago fewer thantwo dozen computer training schools existed in India. Today, more than 200are in business. The largest, Thadani's institute, has ballooned fromone center in Bombay with 99 students in 1982 to 73 centers with 60,000 students India-wide. The majorityof students are pursuing the 18-month computer trainingprogram along with other full-time college studies, Thadani said. Aor 5 2 LEXIS- NEXIS LEXIS. NDUS LEXIS. NEXIS IRAmember of the Reed Elsevier plc group member of the Revd Elsevier plc group member of the Reed Elsevier plc group Page 23 The Washington Post, February 18, 1994

The dramatic changes in the white-collar workplace, thus far, have been limited primarily to India's urban centers. And even the educated, middle-class students benefiting from the revolution express caution about the future. "India is changing fast," said Mukul Krishna, 20, a third-year college science student. "But then it is still in its infancy stage. No one is really sure where all this will lead us."

GRAPHIC: PHOTO, RITU KAURA, 25, A PUBLIC RELATIONS EXECUTIVE, EPITOMIZES THE NEW ETHIC OF YOUNG PROFESSIONALS. MOLLY MOORE

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

COUNTRY: INDIA;

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1994

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Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company The New York Times

October 26, 1987, Monday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section A; Page 10, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1804 words

HEADLINE: On Ganges Plain, Modernity Is Straining Tradition

SERIES: ONE VILLAGE IN INDIA FIRST ARTICLE OF AN OCCASIONAL SERIES ABOUT TRANSITIONS IN RURAL LIFE IN INDIA

BYLINE: By STEVEN R. WEISMAN, Special to the New York Times

DATELINE: GURHA, India

BODY: Life in this village and its surrounding green farmlands unfolds along the main road, where babies are born in a rudimentary health center not far from where the dead are carried to cremation grounds.

In the heat of late afternoon, the buzz of flies and pungent scent of smoke from dung fires cast a drowsy spell. Village men gather in pools of shade by the side of the road to sip sugary, milky tea and exchange gossip and complaints.

This year, the main complaint centers on the drought, the worst in memory, which has left half the rice paddies barren and doubled the price of potatoes and other produce at nearby bazaars. At the same time, corruption is everywhere, and young high school graduates cannot find jobs.

"It is true we have some advantages here," said Moinuddin Ahmed, the 35-year-old village headman. "But the people are demanding more. They need help."

About 580 million people, or one-seventh of the world's population, live in India's 560,000 villages, where traditions are strained every day by the gravitational pull of the modern world. The changes are subtle but profound. Although no single village can be called typical, behind Gurha's pastoral facade are the stresses of village life everywhere. Lying 300 miles southeast of New Delhi in the populous plains of the Ganges River and its tributaries, this community of 700 families is a microcosm of the challenges of adjusting Indian traditions to modern realities and aspirations.

The road through Gurha, paved only a few years ago, has itself brought change, progress and fresh problems.

New tea and cloth shops have opened, and people now dodge an occasional motorcycle as well as ox carts. But crime has increased, in part because of desperation from the drought, Outsiders rob villagers of a bag of grain or other valuables at gunpoint, using the road to make a quick getaway at night.

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The Young Leave,

Breaking Family Ties

Moreover, family ties are breaking as children leave in search of work. At Janata Higher Secondary School, where students attend class under a banyan tree, several schoolboys said they wanted to move to cities to be near hospitals, running water and movie theaters.

"Many of our students have a craze and a lust for a higher standard of living which can never be satisfied," said Jagdev Singh, the school principal. He recalled his shock two years ago when the unemployed son of a teacher at the school was involved in a train robbery.

Family after family in Gurha is experiencing the strain of a nationwide problem in India, the lack of jobs for educated young people who no longer want to plow a field or toil on family farms.

"I will go anywhere for work, but I can't find anything," said Amar Prakash, a 22-year-old graduate of a technical college in a nearby town.

Caste divisions, a phenomenon thousands of years old, remain much as they always were. That was clear five years ago, when Mr. Ahmed, a Moslem, championed the lower castes against some of the bigger landowners and became headman.

On one level, his victory in a predominantly Hindu community illustrated a spirit of religious harmony often found in small villages, if not in larger towns and cities. But in Gurha and elsewhere, Moslems are also often seen as people whose ancestors were lower-caste Hindus.

Most of Gurha's families are from lower castes, and retain their traditional distinctions as bamboo workers, blacksmiths, laundry workers and the like.

'Nobody Can Force Me

To Work on His Land'

Life in Gurha began changing dramatically in 1952, when India abolished large landholdings. The old feudal families then ceded much of their land to families who had long cultivated it on contract, and these families came to dominate the village.

Nowadays, most caste members have abandoned their traditional occupations and work at farming their land or the land of others. Some children from lowest castes are also attending school and demanding their rights.

"We used to be pushed around," said Sukh Lal, a 45-year-old lower-caste sharecropper wearing a tightly wrapped loincloth. "Nobody can force me to work on his land."

Other old rhythms have been disrupted by technology, even as many traditions remain.

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Gurha's families still rise before dawn and hitch their oxen to plow nearby fields while the earth is soft from the dew. Their only sanitary facilities are the nearby fields. Women still cook over cow dung fires in mud hearths and afterward scour their pots with mud and ash. But under Government loans and grants, a few families have installed bio-gas generators, which use fresh cow dung fed into an underground chamber, producing gas to fire burners. Like two-thirds of India's villaages, Gurha now has electricity, although it is shut off for many hours of the day. Even so, 15 families have television sets.

Meanwhile, new fertilizers and seeds from a Government-subsidized cooperative store have made the land more productive. As elsewhere in the developing world, the better-off landlords have benefited, even if landless workers have not.

Chedda Lal, a balding landowner with stubbly gray whiskers, said he had mixed feelings about these changes.

A Withering

Of Solidarity Seen

"There is a new feeling of jealousy and envy," he said. "Nobody is around who can command the respect of all the villagers. Everybody is out for himself. The solidarity that used to prevail in Indian society is withering away."

The drought has inflicted special hardships, wiping out hopes for a good rice crop this year. The Government in New Delhi estimates that this region received half its normal rainfall this recent monsoon season.

The only families with crops are those living near irrigation canals built almost 40 years ago. Other villages have had to dig ditches and build roads for the Government for a dollar a day in cash or grain.

A mile from the center of Gurha, down a rutted and muddy road, lies a tiny cluster of mud huts known as Jorawar Khera, one of a dozen hamlets belonging to the village. Here, naked children play in the dust while adults complain of hunger in their families.

The men in this low-caste community say the wheat they harvested in May has almost run out, leaving enough for one meal a day of flat bread. Families also consume a leafy vegetable, harvested from ponds, that they cook in oil with a little salt.

People in Jorawar Khera complain that the roads in the surrounding low-lying areas are so bad that in the rainy season the hamlet becomes an island in a vast swamp. The richer landowners live close to canals and can afford the price, or the bribes, for irrigation.

"The rich people in Gurha have a vested interest in keeping us poor," said Raja Ram, a primary school teacher from the hamlet. "If we had irrigation, we could work our own fields and not have to serve the others."

Purna Masi, like many in Jorawar Khera, has had to look elsewhere for a livelihood. Leaving his family behind, he borrowed $4 for a train ticket to New owr 56 TM LEXISNEXIS LEXIS.NEXIS LIA1S.NEXIS the Rood Eiscvkt plc group 19,A mcmbcr of the Recd Eiseykr Pk Sn'uP 42.0mmb'r the 11°"1 El34'vkr plc e'"'"P 'Orncmb". Page 13 The New York Times, October 26, 1987

Delhi, where he stayed with a friend and for two months worked pulling a bicycle rickshaw.

"I worked until I came down with a fever," he said. Sick and lonely in a strange big city, he returned home.

"At least here, I know everybody," he explained, adding proudly that the first thing he did was repay friends' loans.

Little Drought Relief

Reaches the Village

In the faraway capital, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi says India is spending more than $2.6 billion this year on drought relief. But in Gurha little relief had come as of early October.

V.N. Sachan, the chief village development officer, oversees the main drought relief programs for the state government of Uttar Pradesh.

On a recent afternoon, he was sitting outside his office, playing cards with friends. Later in the month, Mr. Sachan said, the money would come to pay for construction of 1,100 feet of road, enough to employ 250 people for five or six days. He agreed this was insufficient for Gurha's needs but argued that "the drought has not been as severe as we initially thought."

That comment provoked murmured arguments from the others at the card table, followed by a discussion of the extent of fraud in Government programs.

Everyone agreed that under a separate public works program, in which the Government hires private contractors who then employ poor workers, most of the money is pocketed by the middlemen. "It's a golden opportunity for these fellows," Mr. Sachan said.

Indeed, to spend time in Gurha is to hear countless variations on the theme of corruption on the part of officials of one kind or another.

Villagers said that the police harass people to extract bribes, that some teachers take payoffs to allow students to cheat on their examinations, and that construction workers digging an irrigation canal were recently caught cheating by using mostly sand and no cement.

In another widely discussed case, the Government financed a dairy project a few years ago, subsidizing loans for cattle for low-caste farmers. But the farmers charged that when they sold their milk to the dairy cooperative, middlemen secretly adulterated it with water and refused to pay. As a result, the farmers' cattle loans went unpaid, and the program collapsed.

As always, there is another side to the story, this one told by Liqmal Ahmed, the village animal husbandry officer. He said the milk was never adulterated but was of poor quality because the cows were never fed properly. "If children here are undernourished, how can we expect cattle to be different?" he asked.

In the Jorawar Khera hamlet, resentment seemed focused on a nearby ravine,

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which was recently deepened by the Government to drain off the floodwaters. That well-intentioned act backfired, however, because now the ravine forms a wide river blocking access to grazing lands for cattle.

The theme of good intentions gone awry is another constant here. One case is the irrigation canals, credited with making some of the land more productive. Villagers say that the canals were never properly sealed, and that because Gurha has no drainage system, water seepage has turned many places into swamps. Water-logging has also drawn salt up from the lower depths of soil, ruining nearby wells and creating large sandy splotches that have spoiled once-productive fields.

Older villagers remember when Gurha used to be blessed with thick groves of mango trees. The groves are gone now, killed by soil salinization.

Mr. Ahmed, the headman, said his main priority now is to build new drainage systems to rescue farm fields and keep the village's dirt lanes from turning into rivers of mud.

"Everyone is always asking me to get this done," he said. "But what can I do by myself without help from the Government?"

GRAPHIC: Photos of a farmer, village and a road in Gurha (NYT/Steven R. Weisman); map of India showing location of Gurrha (NYT)

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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Copyright 1995 The Washington Post The Washington Post

May 24, 1995, Wednesday, Final Edition

SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A27

LENGTH: 1384 words

HEADLINE: Early To Wed; Still Common in Rural India, Child Weddings Highlight Clash Between Tradition and Today

BYLINE: John Ward Anderson, Washington Post Foreign Service

DATELINE: BALI, India

BODY: Sumitra Jogi cried at her wedding, but not for the usualreasons. Dressed in a pink smock, the bride -- an 11-month-old who is still breast-feeding was married to a 6-year-old boy in a secret, midnightceremony in this remote desert village.

As Sumitra's father smiled approvingly, the baby's mother recited her daughter's vows while cradling the sleepy infant in herarms. Then the groom, bedecked in a red-and-gold turban, clasped Sumitra's hand and, with her mother carrying her, led his bride 3 1/2 times around a sacred fire, their firststeps together as husband and wife.

Government officials and social activists estimate that hundreds and possibly thousands of such illegal child marriages were performed in India's western state of Rajasthan on May 2, which, according to the Hindu religion,was a particularly favorable date for matrimony. Like many of those children, Sumitra was married in a joint ceremony; she and her 12- and 16-year-old sisters were wed to three brothers, aged 6,14 and 17, from a nearby village.

"In rural Rajasthan, all the girls are married by age 14," said Ratankatyayani, an attorney and director of a social welfaregroup called the Mukti Dhara Sansthan. "These are poor, illiterate families, and they don'twant to keep their girls past their first menstrual cycle."

Experts say that child marriages are on the decline inmost urban areas, where families are more affluent and laws prohibiting weddingsof children under age 18 are easier to enforce. But in rural communities on the sidelines of India's free-market reforms and modernization efforts, childmarriages are still common.

Families cite social and economic reasons. Theyounger the bride, the smaller the dowry demanded, they say. They also believe that marryingoff a daughter early in life reduces the chance that her honor will be spoiledbefore she can be paired with a suitable husband.

According to the most recent government statistics, themean age of a bride AVIV LEX1SNEXIS LEXIS4XIS LEXISNEX1S -RA member of the Reed Elsevier plc group IRA member of the Reed Elsevier plc group .6z...A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group Page 32 The Washington Post, May 24, 1995 in Rajasthan is 16, and about 18 percent of girls betweenages 10 and 14 are married. In some rural districts, however, as manyas half the girls in the 10-to-14 age group are married, according to a 1991 study by the state's Department of Women and Child Development.

Social activists who work in the urban areas of Rajasthan said that regardless of when girls are married they do not move in with their husband and in-laws until age 16 or 17. The marriage, they said, is essentiallya binding social contract between two families, requiring that their children be mates for life. But, they said, the girl does not join her husband until aftera second ceremony, which is usually held years later.

There is intense disagreement among social workers about how to prevent child marriages and whether they are a serious problem or simply a misunderstood cultural phenomenon that has been sensationalized by the media.

Some say child marriages have a debilitating impact on young people, particularly girls, thrusting them into early motherhood and beginninga dangerous downward health spiral for them and their babies. Even though many of the young couples don't live together until age 16 or 17, they oftenare pulled out of school immediately after marriage and put to work full time, stunting their potential and depriving them of any control they may have had over their lives.

"The girls are afraid, and they don't know what a physical relationship entails," said Abha Sharma of the Rajasthan government's Project for Adolescent Girls. "They are so horrified and confused that when theycome home for a few days they are scared of going back to their in-laws."

Others say such criticism is short-sighted. "It's very convenient for the government to say it's bad and to pass laws against it, but have they come and engaged in dialogue to find out why it's happening? No," said Asha Dixit, director of a social action group called the Society for Women's Awakening. "They don't understand the problems, and they don't comeup with solutions."

Instead of alienating uneducated, tribal people with condemnation of a centuries-old tradition, Dixit and others prefer programs that attack what they see as the underlying causes of child marriages: the low status of women, poverty and illiteracy, which is as high as 95 percent among women in rural Rajasthan, according to some estimates.

"There is no child marriage in the urban areas or where there has been upward economic mobility," said Sharda Jain, an official of Sadan Research Center,an organization in Jaipur, the Rajasthani capital, that specializes in education issues. "The moment people are well-off, they don'tmarry off their children."

The debate among social workers and government officials doesn'tseem to concern the people of Bali and other rural Rajasthanis, who have been arranging marriages between children for generations.

"The marriages [of Sumitra's sisters] were fixed threeyears ago," said Lakshmi, grandmother of the three brides in this tiny village of handpumps and gas lanterns. After Sumitra was born, the parents of the two families agreed that since each had a third single child they would simply add another marriage 60 LEXIS NEXIS LEXIS NEX1S a. A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group -42 A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group .ICZ A member of the Reed Elsevier plc looms Page 33 The Washington Post, May 24, 1995

to the planned ceremony.

"If we do separate marriages, each marriage will become very expensive. But when you do it together, into the same family, you save money," the grandmother said.

"A daughter's marriage is a big problem," added Harigi Jogi, the girls' father, who said the triple wedding cost him the equivalent of $ 650 about 20 months of his family's wages. Much of the money went for the traditional wedding feast for all 150 residents of the village, a tiny farming hamlet about 150 miles southwest of New Delhi where Jogi's family has lived for nine generations.

Preparations continued throughout the day, as villagers erected colorful tents, tested a portable sound system that blared music from popular Hindi movies and cooked village fare in large brass pots. The brides' house was freshly painted with yellow, green and blue peacocks and lotus petals.

Elders from nearby communities lounged on rope beds in the shade and debated whether to allow outsiders, particularly a Western reporter, to attend the wedding. The family was particularly concerned that the ceremony might be stopped by teams of police and social workers who were roving around Rajasthan trying to stop child marriages.

Elders and the family denied that a baby was to be married, although children in the village continued to whisper about "the little one." It was unclear whether a third ceremony was planned until the very end, when Sumitra's mother approached the sacred fire and sat cross-legged next to the groom, revealing a tiny baby wrapped in the folds of her bright red sari.

Sumitra slept through most of the ceremony, while the groom's brother-in-law huddled behind him and coaxed him through the motions.

Ratankatyayani said Sumitra would probably remain at home until about age 8, when she would be sent to her in-laws' house, where her older sisters would act as her guardians. In such cases, according to experts, there is intense pressure for the young brides to begin sexual relations at very early ages.

Murti Jogi, Sumitra's 12-year-old sister, said a few hours before her wedding that she had not met her future husband, 14-year-old Ramesh. Nonetheless, both she and her older sister, Koeli, neither of whom has ever been to school, said they would begin living with their new husbands immediately.

Sixty miles away in a small town outside Jaipur, about a dozen women whowere married as children said they had no regrets because it was the only life they had known. However, they did not think the practice should be continued in modern India.

Asked their age at marriage, the women held their hands above the floor to show their heights. Only two said they could recall their weddings one remembered the sweets, the other the dancing.

"We all got married in our mother's arms," said Sundar, now about 65. "It's not as though anybody asked...us if we wanted to get married. Our parents just did it. . . . Now times have chahged, so you should wait until the girls are ready."

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Special correspondent Rama Lakshmi contributed to this report.

GRAPHIC: Photo, john ward anderson; Illustration, larry fogel, Two 16-year-olds, sitting at center, exchange wedding vows in rural western India, where child weddings are common despite laws against them. THE CHILD BRIDES OF INDIA While child marriages are on the decline in most urbanareas, they remain popular though illegal -- in rural communities. "It does affect your health because you take on more responsi-bility early in life cooking the food, getting the wood, working in the fields. It makes you very weak early in life." Kali Mangal, child bride now about 60 years old. In the western state of Rajasthan: MARRIED YOUNG *The mean age of a woman at marriage is 16 years. *About 18 percent of girls between ages 10 and 14 are married. *Girls as young as 8 are compelled to live with their husbands' families because extra hands are needed in the fields and because the girl's parents want to be relieved of the burden of raising a daughter they believe is no longer theirs. * CHILD MOTHERS Early marriage usually means early motherhood, which leads to higher birth and mortality rates and contributes to higher illiteracy rates. * Eighty percent of births are attended by untrained midwives and relatives. * The typical woman bears 4.8 children. * One in 10 children dies before the baby's first birthday. * Illiteracy is estimated to be as high as 95 percent for women. SOURCE: Indian government 18%

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: May 24, 1995

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Copyright 1994 The Washington Post The Washington Post

October 8, 1994, Saturday, Final Edition

SECTION: STYLE; PAGE Cl

LENGTH: 2023 words

HEADLINE: Changing India, Wedded to Tradition; Arranged Marriages Persist With '90s Twists

SERIES: Occasional

BYLINE: Molly Moore, Washington Post Foreign Service

DATELINE: NEW DELHI

BODY: For private detective Subhash Wadhawan, it began as an elementary pre-matrimonial investigation: A New Delhi family hired him to check the credentials of a New York hotel manager they'd chosen to marry their daughter through a classified advertisement in an Indian newspaper.

Wadhawan flew to New York, checked into the hotel and asked for the prospective groom. When the investigator answered the knock at his door a few minutes later, a smiling Indian bellboy stood before him. "You called for me, sir?"

"I was shocked," said the 51-year-old Sherlock Holmes of New Delhi's premarital investigative industry. "This boy told my client he was the senior manager. He wasn't even the assistant manager. He was a bellboy! His salary was peanuts, and his social status was nothing."

Welcome to Indian matchmaking, 1990s style. In a society that is becoming increasingly mobile, more urbanized and better educated, the centuries-old science of arranging marriages is undergoing a dramatic metamorphosis.

With more families migrating from the familiar social circles of ancestral villages to anonymous urban centers, classified ads have replaced parental networks, professional matchmakers have supplanted socially connected relatives, and detective agencies have overtaken village word-of-mouth to verify family a backgrounds.

Although the vast majority of Indian marriages continue to be arranged by parents, Westernized "love" marriages are on the rise. And even within the more prevalent arranged marriages, improving levels of education among the middle class and the unprecedented number of women entering the professional work force are giving young people more control over their matrimonial destinies than ever before.

"Indian society is in the midst of a social transition," Suman Jain of New 63 LEXIS- NBC'S' NalS NEXIS member of the Reed Elsevier plc group member of the Reed Elsevier plc group member of the Reed ELsevier plc group Page 37 The Washington Post, October 8, 1994

Delhi's Lakshmi Bai College wrote in a new study ofyoung women's attitudes about marriage. "With the spread of education and westernization of society, change is taking place in the family and in social customs. No institutionhas shown more change and strain than the system of marriage."

"My father and mother got married after meeting only once," said Rajesh Khanna, 31, who runs the New Delhi franchise of an internationalcompany. "A lot of my generation would laugh that off completely today. In urbanareas, things have changed. You're exposed to more people, you interact outside the family more freely. It enables us to judge for ourselves who would make a good life partner. Now we believe in 'semi-arranged' marriages."

That means parents still conduct the search for marriage candidates, andmost decisions are made after one stiff, formal meeting between theman and woman and their families. But today, in most middle-class families, the children do have final veto power over the choice and are allowed to date their futurespouses between the engagement and the wedding a development unheard of less than a generation ago and one that hasn't moved into the country's rural villages.

In Khanna's case, his parents and friends set up meetings with nearly 15 women before he met one he agreed to marry.

"I found in her a balance of everything I wanted education, family background, looks and personality," said Khanna, who decided tomarry 26-year-old Arti Sayal during their first meeting ata New Delhi coffee shop.

Love? "The attraction was there," said Khanna, adding matter-of-factly, "Ina semi-arranged marriage, there is no question of love."

That is perhaps the single greatest distinction between choosinga mate in India and selecting a spouse in Western societies:.Love andromance are not factors. And even the most successful middle-class, career-orientedyoung men and women say they would rather trust their parents than theirown judgment when it comes to sifting through marriage candidates. In the Lakshmi Bai College study, 82 percent of all female students surveyed said marriages arranged by parents with the consent of the daughter was their preferred mode of matrimony. Almost half opposed courtship before marriage.

"My parents are fussier than I am," said Ritu Chawla, 26, senior management associate at a New Delhi public relations firm who recently marrieda U.S.-educated financial consultant suggested by her parents. "I knew they would get a better boy than I could find."

The Impersonal Ads

"Match for 24-year-old Delhiite, fair complexion, Punjabi Khatri girl,post graduate (English) modern outlook with traditional values."

"Parents of extremely beautiful, very fair, homely, talented Hindu Khatri girl, 21, MA fine arts, invite correspondence from smart, highlyeducated officer or professional status businessman from highly placed family.Only cultured, respected, educated and well-placed families nricorrespond."

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The matrimonial advertisements that fill pages of the urban Sundaynewspapers offer a window into the changing demands of a new generation and their families. "The girl must be elegantly beautiful and fair," said Krishan Kumar Pathak, 50, one of India's best-known professional marriage counselors. "But now education comes first. They want an educated professional."

Pradeep Guha, advertising director for the Times of India, said the role of the ads is, in itself, a reflection of changing society. The number of ads which run by the thousands every week-- has doubled in the past decade.

"The more cosmopolitan the society gets, the more impersonal it gets," said Guha. "Newspapers have replaced the intermediary aunt and the intermediary pundit [family priest]."

The matrimonial advertisements in India's big-city dailies are a far-distant cousin of the "personals" carried by U.S. newspapers. In India, the advertisement is not the beginning of a potential romance but the starting point of a business and family merger. For an Indian couple, practical considerations are paramount.

"Before, the girl or boy was found within the family and you knew the social background," said Subhash Wadhawan, who has seen pre-matrimonial investigations explode from a handful of cases 15 years ago to about half of his detective agency's business today. "Now in metropolitan cities you don't know who is who. Nobody wants to take chance. Once you. are married in India, it's very difficult to get a divorce."

His investigations focus primarily on family, social and financial backgrounds. Frequently he accompanies his clients on their initial visit with a prospective spouse. Usually the two families have met through advertisements and know nothing more about each other than the cryptic printed descriptions.

That initial meeting invariably determines whether a marriage will take place. Wadhawan said his client families usually have such an emotional investment in making a good impression, they are fearful of tough questions about family finances and backgrounds.

That's where Wadhawan steps in, posing as an interested uncle accompanying the family on its search. "I can afford to put the penetrating questions to them," he said. But it's not the answers that give him his most valuable insights. It's his trip to the bathroom. "You can read lot abouta family by visiting their toilet," he said.

Make Me a Match

Somewhere between the impersonal lines of a classified ad and the snooping of detectives are the urban families fed up with the time-consuming task of combing through hundreds of replies and checking family backgrounds.

That's when professional matchmakers like Krishan Kumar Pathak enter the picture. "They've been through the bazaar shopping around," he said. "Adscause via I:441lb( LEXIS.NEXI5 LEXIS.NEXIS aA member of the Reed Elsevier plc group -e

Pathak, 50, will not only provide pictures of potential brides and grooms, but videotapes as well. It saves time -- and humiliation: "The girl doesn't even know she's been rejected."

He and his wife, Neelam, also make family visits to check the appearance, personality and background of each candidate. "After meeting the girl, we meet with the boy's mother to see her temperament," said Pathak. "The main wars will take place between the wife and the mother-in-law. We make sure they are compatible." He also advises parents and their children on how to behave during the formal interview meetings between families.

"If a girl is outgoing and talks a lot, that is a minus point," said Pathak. "Boys want Indian girls to be shy like a cow. I tell the parents, from a business point of view, tell the girl if she wants to get married to keep her mouth reasonably shut -- but not completely shut; otherwise the boy will reject her because he says she's deaf and dumb."

'Less Dangerous This Way'

"I was brought up to be a virgin, to marry who your parents want," said Vinita Dhoundiyal, an outgoing 27-year-old college lecturer. "But when I was 18, I told my parents I wanted to choose my husband myself. I resisted all of this."

Like many of her generation, Dhoundiyal is torn between the lure of modern, Western ideals and the pull of Indian tradition and culture.

When her mother placed advertisements in the newspapers for a match, Dhoundiyal tore up the replies. She refused to meet men recommended by her relatives. But on a sweltering night in July, she married a man her mother found through a newspaper advertisement.

Her friends who shared her passion for feminist literature and modern thinking "see me as somebody who didn't have the courage to stick it out; they see me as somebody who compromised," said Dhoundiyal.

Eager to find a husband on her own, perhaps even find a man she loved, Dhoundiyal was fettered by a cultural stigma that considers dating and even the most innocent premarital contact with men unacceptable.

And family pressures to consent to an arranged marriage were immense. "They say, 'You're 27, you're ancient. You're not that good-looking. You don't know how to cook.' Everything is wrong with you. You're fighting a losing battle."

Finally she agreed to meet several men selected by her family. In the end, she said, "I was a bit of a coward.... It's less dangerous this way."

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The meetings in her family living room with the prospective grooms and their families felt forced and uncomfortable. "It wasso humiliating," said Dhoundiyal. "The things they valued were all the things I wasn't: I'm not domestic, I have outside interests. Bridegrooms were looking for the opposite of me."

She spotted their disappointment the minute they walked in the door. "They'd see my mother pretty, glowing, the ideal kind of Indian woman. Then they'd see me and I could see the letdown in their eyes."

She agreed to marry the third candidate she met, 33-year-old Amitabh Bhatnagar, because in the few minutes their families allowed them to chat in private -- he expressed strong encouragement for her studies, career and intellectual pursuits.

They lived in different towns and never dated before they were married five months later. A few weeks before her wedding, Dhoundiyal confided, "I don't have a sense of who he is he's not even totally a friend yet."

The two were married in a lavish traditional Hindi wedding ceremony, and now Dhoundiyal leads a double life. In New Delhi she exemplifies the modern Indian career woman in outlook, attitude and dress. But on weekends, as the train draws closer to Lucknow, where she visits her husband's family, Dhoundiyal pulls a veil over her face and slips rows of bangles on her arms, rings on her toes and bracelets on her ankles the accouterments of the proper Indian bride -- and kisses the feet of her in-laws when she enters their home.

"I don't feel a conflict," she said. "They are supportive of my job. This is my way of reassuring them I'm not going to break up the family."

She paused. "I didn't marry for love. I married the family."

GRAPHIC: PHOTO, MATCHMAKER KRISHAN KUMAR PATHAK (WITH WIFE NEELAM): "THE MAIN WARS WILL TAKE PLACE BETWEEN THE WIFE AND THE MOTHER-IN-LAW. WE MAKE SURE THEY ARE COMPATIBLE.", MOLLY MOORE

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

COUNTRY: INDIA;

LOAD-DATE: October 8, 1994

67

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1ST STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.

Copyright 1994 The Washington Post The Washington Post

August 2, 1994, Tuesday, Final Edition

SECTION: STYLE; PAGE Fl

LENGTH: 1667 words

HEADLINE: India's Lewd Awakening; MTV & the Film Industry Are Putting Sexy Lyrics on Everyone's Lips

SERIES: Occasional

BYLINE: Molly Moore, Washington Post Foreign Service

DATELINE: NEW DELHI

BODY: I have blue eyes,

What shall I do?

I have red lips,

What shall I do?

Sexy, sexy ..

People call me sexy.

From a Hindi film song

All of India is in an uproar over sex.

Sex in film songs, that is.

Mothers of young children are angry. Women's organizations are outraged. Moviemakers are up in arms. The prime minister is fuming. The government censor board is wringing its collective hands. And-the music shop salesmen are making a killing.

"My sales have doubled because of these vulgar songs," boasted 25-year-old Dharmendra Mehra, who runs Welcome Audio-Video in one of New Delhi's busiest shopping districts. His hottest seller is a cassette of the best of the lewd and crude called "With the Lover."

The culture that brought the world the Kamasutra and the film industry that can't seem to make a movie that doesn't include a rape scene have become obsessed by the wave of gyrating hips, pelvic thrusts, steamy kisses and bawdy .6 LEX1S-NEXIS LEXIS-NDOS LEXIS.NEXIS member of the Reed Elsevier plc group IRAmember of the Reed ELsevicr plc !poop Amember of the Rccd Elsevier plc group Page 26 The Washington Post, August 2, 1994

lyrics that has swept through its movie and music productions in recent months. The emotional controversy over the surge of vulgarity in the entertainment business is India's latest episode of cultural angst as it struggles toopen its economy and its society to greater Western influences while trying to preserve its own traditions and social mores.

"Our society is going through a massive transitional phase," said Ranjana Kumari, director of New Delhi's Center for Social Research. "Things are changing too suddenly, and we're not prepared."

Certainly nothing prepared India for the clash of East meeting West in the revolution that has exploded on India's silver screens and pop radio stations in the last year. In a country where it's taboo for men and women to touch in public, now preschool kids are prancing around their houses singing the shocking (to Indian sensibilities) "Sexy, sexy" song.

It all started with MTV, which one Delhi newspaper columnist recently compared to "termites eating away at our own traditional values." MTV was first beamed to India via the Hong Kong satellite channel STAR-TV more than three years ago. And its arrival changed the face of entertainment here.,

MTV put visuals to American music, which had long been popular among India's middle class and younger generation. But its greatest impact was spreading Western music and attitudes beyond the big cities of Bombay and New Delhi to small towns across the country, where savvy television shop owners began buying cheap satellite dishes and stringing cable wires to village huts for a few rupees a month.

Also, for the first time in modern Indian entertainment history, audiences had an alternative to indigenous film productions and the staid government-controlled television network Doordarshan, snidely referred to by one television critic as "the last upholder of middle-class morality" in India. Even in the poorest of the poor slums, neighbors began pooling their rupees to rent televisions and began watching cable movies rather than going to theaters.

If the conservative politicians and pundits viewed MTV as a termite eating away at Indian values, a nervous Bollywood the world's biggest film industry, which churns out more than 1,000 flicks a year saw MTV eating away at its market and its profits. So Bollywood, whose show tunes dominate the music industry charts, decided to fight back.

Filmmaker Subhash Ghai's first blow was a knockout punch that transformed the movie industry almost overnight.

"The Villain," released last year, starred the country's top actor and actress. Like all Hindi movies, it included dance scenes set to music. But one dance scene was unlike anything that had ever made it past the government censor boards and onto the silver screen.

In a song that scaled the pop charts, the leading lady is asked, "What's beneath the blouse?" The camera skips over her demurely veiled face and focuses suggestively on the choli stretched tight across her ample, heaving bosom as she replies, coyly, "In the choli is my heart, and this heart I will give to my lover." 63 LEXIS-NEXIS LEXIS-NEXIS LEXISND(IS .e,;_A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group .E.?._ A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group A member of the Reed F.11vier plc group Page 27 The Washington Post, August 2, 1994

Those two lines packed the theaters. Those two lines resulted in record music sales. Those two lines changed the Indian movie industry. "Choli" was still on the charts when the so-called "Sexy, sexy" hit the streets with a disco beat that repeated the word "sexy" more than 100 times. Then came the movie "Raja Babu" and the refrain "Drag your cot next to mine." And "Vijaypath" ("The Road to Victory"), with its double-entendre play on a cricket match and sex: "First ball broke my bangles, slipped my skirt, very strong his ball was, with full speed." Followed by "Andaaz" ("Style"), with the heroine crooning, "I am a goods train, give me a push." All of which were accompanied by never-before-used camera shots of once-private body parts.

India went ballistic. Every cab driver in Bombay was singing "Sexy, sexy." The radios played "Choli" ad nauseam. Conservative politicians and women's organizations were furious. Lawyers sued movie studios in an effort to shut down what they considered vulgar films. About 150 members of the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stormed a theater in Bombay a few months ago, throwing black ink on the screen, ripping up marquees and chasing patrons out.

In a parliamentary debate on the shocking trends, both ruling and opposition party members joined in raucous chants of "Shame! Shame! Shame!" during a grilling of the senior minister who oversees the government film censor board.

It all may sound pretty tame by Western standards, but the scenes and the songs are lascivious by Indian norms. Previously, sex was portrayed behind veils of verbal and visual illusion, leaving the rest to the imagination. (Even the required rape scene in most Hindi movies didn't show the act. The camera cut from the menacing leer of the villain to the sobbing face of the victim, leaving out the body contact.)

"I had one dirty song, and I never meant to encourage vulgarity," said a now repentant Ghai. "But it became a precedent. It was like a fashion. Anything that's a hit, the rest of the producers try to copy and imitate it."

Across India, the response has been thunderous.

Subhadra Gupta, 34-year-old steel company executive and mother of two children, watched what she considered an appalling transformation in her 4-year-old son, Varun.

"My son has forgotten all the nursery rhymes he learned," said a distraught Gupta. "He used to come home from preschool and sing 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.' Now you tell him to recite a nursery rhyme and he makes a face, says, 'No, no'... and starts singing 'Choli' and 'Sexy, sexy.'

"I am scared that in a year, when he is ready to go to school, during the school interview if they ask him to sing a song he might just start off with these film songs, and they will chuck him out," said Gupta.

Leaders of women's organizations charge that the new trend is even more denigrating to women than the violence and stereotypes to which actresses are normally subjected in Indian films.

"Since the advent of STAR-TV and MTV into India, women have been portrayed 70 LEXIS. NEX1S LEXIS. NEX1S LINS. NEXIS monbcr of the Reed Elsevier plc group 42,0 member of the Reed Elsevier plc group -R.A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group Page 28 The Washington Post, August 2, 1994 more and more as a commodity," said Ranjana Kumari. "It's a symptom of a growing market economy where everything, everybody has become a commodity." The ire is not limited to mothers and women's organizations. More and more studies are being published indicating that crimes against women and "Eve-teasing," a euphemism for sexual harassment, are increasing significantly throughout India, particularly in urban areas. And many people say much of the blame falls on Bollywood, where not only sex, but violence, is commanding greater chunks of footage. "Mainstream cinema is being shamelessly imbued with innuendo and vulgarity, which is threatening to strike at the very core of our culture," wrote Shashi Ranjan, president of the conservative BJP, in letters of protest to the government censor board and the Indian Motion Picture Producers' Association.

Even Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao has gotten into the act, recently telling a meeting of state information and cinematography ministers, "Self-regulation is the best antidote, but in case it fails to work, we will certainly have to fall back on other measures."

Most moviemakers interpret "other measures" to mean tougher censorship.

Mahesh Bhatt, one of Bollywood's most successful filmmakers, said India's approach to the entire issue is full of contradictions. India says it wants an open market, yet it wants to censor what Michael Jackson does onstage, he lamented. And as for criticizing sexuality on the screen, he harked back to India's far less inhibited cultural past: "Every temple in India has images of the worst imaginable sex postures."

Although Indian films are technically subjected to review by a government censor board, members of the movie industry often sit on the board. Critics also complain that the board's guidelines are subjective and its members less than diligent.

Subhash Ghai, who made "The Villain" and is a member of the board, asked, "We need censors, but who's going to be the censor?

"At the board they say,'Look, what are the guidelines? What is aesthetic? What's vulgar?' " he said of his colleagues. "One member is an intellectual, the other is a social worker with limited education. They're paid $1 a day. They come watch some movies and sleep for a few hours in the afternoon."

And even if the censor board deletes a scene or a song, local theaters routinely splice the banned footage back into the film. The government is now considering creating a special police force to raid theaters and arrest owners and distributors who are showing censored bites.

But Ghai and others say there are no easy solutions.

"The problem is constantly arising because of confusion in outlook and belief," he said. "In belief, people want Indian. In outlook, they want West."

Washington Post foreign correspondent John Ward Anderson contributed to this article from Bombay. 71 LEXIS.NEXIS LEXIS.NEXIS ALEXIS-NEXI _a A member of the Rccd Elsevier plc group A member of the Rccd Elsevier plcWSW, -42A member of the Rccd Elsevier plc i) .

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