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| India-Pakistan |
| On India |
| 2009-02-24 |
| Jules Crittenden An older post, but timely. Here’s the thing about India. When people talk about the mysterious east in mystic tones, it’s usually about yogis and inner navel-gazing truths and the Kama Sutra, that kind of thing. Hindus and Jains and Sikhs and Sufis and Shiites, along with Christians, Jews and tribal animists. All pretty exotic and mysterious. Greater mysteries and contrasts are much easier to find, lying around in plain view, significantly less than navel-deep. The subcontinent is one of the most beautiful and terrible places on Earth. Quick semi-informed, impressionistic tour. (My credentials, which are superficial, include a couple of weeks in Delhi and Indian-held Kashmir and a couple of weeks in Lahore, Islamabad and Pakistani-held Azad Kashmir in India’s estranged sibling nation as a reporter, a job that offers quick, intensive studies. Also, three years as a boy in Dacca and various parts of Bangladesh, when it was still known as East Pakistan; a fair amount of reading; and many, many years in the company of the fine people of the great South Asian diaspora, from Thailand to the Middle East to the United States, at various social levels. For our purposes we’ll consider India and Pakistan part of the same thing, though different things, as there are as many similiarities in these conjoined nations as there are important political, cultural and social differences.) A Lonely Planet edition a few years ago compared public sanitation conditions in Pakistan to London in the 16th century. This is more or less true. A lot of things about India and Pakistan are in the 16th century, from sanitation to the social order and social customs, and it’s a good place to go if you want to see what life was like was like then. Large parts of the subcontinent, in fact, are probably better described as being in the Middle Ages or maybe even pharoanic times. It is a place where 21st century technology, such as cell phones and computers, butts right up against timeless industries such as blacksmithing, basketweaving, woodcarving and painstaking stone-chiselling of everyday goods and equipment, in hole-in-the-wall workshops that make the notion of “cottage industry” sound grand. India has a space program, and India and Pakistan both have nukes, of course. In both places, you can still see animal and human dray labor, and in India, the domestically produced autos, when you get under the hood, look like they were hammered out in one of those hole-in-the-wall shops, which parts of any older model Ambassador sedan probably were. India is a country where abject poverty is an industry. First thing that happens when you get off the plane, you get mobbed by professional beggars, who are very adept at making nuisances of themselves until you pay them off. A former British Raj policeman who was a family friend told of busting in on someone who was crippling a prospective beggar back in the 1940s. I don’t know whether that still goes on, but a lot of other dark sides persist, according to news report, so I don’t know why that one shouldn’t. In the space of two weeks, my accommodations ranged from the $400-a-night five-star Oberoi in Delhi … we figured the company could swing a couple of nice nights for us as we had been living rough and had been shot at … to a $5 a night inn in a Himalayan resort town which had both electrical and plumbing fixtures, but neither worked, so I berated them down to $2.50, and I know we were still paying more than anyone else in the place. During that brief time, I witnessed two violent canings by businessmen running public nuisances off their premises and no fewer than eight people relieving themselves in plain view. I don’t mean peeing, I didn’t count that. In India the myth is that cows wander the street because they are holy and no one can interfere with their whims. There is probably some truth to that, but there and in Pakistan, the fact is that barnyard animals of all kinds and mangy curs go where they will. Travelling across country, I noticed that the mud-walled and thatched villages of my Bengali youth were present in the Punjab and elsewhere, and that, much like the previous 1,000 years, not much had changed in my absence. It’s noteworthy that while the subcontinent in home to more than 120 languages, it also has broadly unifying elements, and I recognized Bengali words from my youth in the conversation of Urdu and Hindi speakers. Not such a surprise, I suppose, when you consider that the English “borough” and German “burg” is linguistically related to the Indian “pore” and Thai “buri.” . . . Stepping away from the ancient animosities, the people of the subcontinent are truly delightful. Their art, ancient and modern, is intricate, astonishing, often breathtaking. Some people think Bollywood productions are a joke. Much like American B flicks. But if you’ve seen Channel [V], you may have seen some remarkable, highly sophisticated fusions of western and eastern art and music. Indians and Paks are highly industrious and clever people. When graced with education, they can be brilliant, often far outperforming first-world scholars. In the Middle East, if you need to get something done, and you want it done well, you engage an Indian or a Pak for the job, and he will energetically and creatively pursue your goal. Which is why, in addition to cost factors, many, many tech and finance firms have gone to India for support services. The same is often true in the United States, as well, where the medical and high-tech fields, as well as scientific research fields are heavily loaded with Indians and Paks. They are also among the shrewdest businessmen in the world, vying historically with the Chinese in Asia as both economic cogs and powerhouses. As a result, much like the Chinese, they have often been resented and even hated in the nations to which they have spread. I don’t know how the predicted ascendancy of India is going to play out over the coming decades. I do know that I welcome it as something that may bring those vast swaths of medieval India into the 19th, 20th or even the 21st century, while India’s ideals of democracy and multicultural unity if not perfect in execution are world-class values, as well as free enterprise, as India attempts to break away from the trappings of socialism, imperialism and feudalism. We could do a lot worse for partners in the 21st century, and looking at the predicted rise of the authoritarian People’s Republic China, we may well do worse. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #1 D *** NG IT, INDIA > WE HAVE AIRCRAFT CARRIER PLANES, THUS OF COURSE WE HAVE NO AIRCRAFT CARRIER! Uh, uh - EUREKA??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-02-24 17:38 |