India for a Billion Reasons

INDI A

FOR A BILLION REASONS

© Wisdom Tree

Illustrations by Sudhir Tailang

First published 2010

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ISBN: 978-81-8328-143-0

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I N D I A

for

A BILLION REASONS

Editor

wisdom

tree           A MIT DASGUPTA

Contents

Introduction.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... viii

The Sum of Its Parts.............................................................................................................................................................................................................                1

Pulse and Impulse: Rhythmic Journeys Through the Dances of India........................................................................................................................... 13

Art from India......................................................................................................................................................................................................................         33

The Living Crafts of India: Unbroken Continuities......................................................................................................................................................... 45

Why Hollywood is Romancing Bollywood....................................................................................................................................................................... 59

Contemporary Indian Literature......................................................................................................................................................................................... 73

Curried Away........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 87

State of Indian Sports: A Glass Half Empty or Half Full................................................................................................................................................ 113

The Indian Polity................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 133

India’s Economic Tryst with Destiny................................................................................................................................................................................. 147

The Press in India................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 161

The Ascent to Modernity................................................................................................................................................................................................... 175

What India Means to Me................................................................................................................................................................................................... 195

Glossary................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 203

Photograph Credits.............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 205

Introduction

R      ecent years have seen a dramatic surge of interest in India, driven primarily by the prediction that by 2040, India would become the

third largest economy after USA and China. While across the globe, major economies struggled with low growth rates and continued predictions of sluggish economic performance, the Indian economy defied all expectations and consistently clocked 8 per cent growth with

credible forecasts that a 10 per cent growth rate was well within reach. Indian companies moved on to make acquisitions of Western companies and bit by bit, the image of India underwent a dramatic and positive change. Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat and his hugely popular TV series, among others, fuelled this new-found interest in India.

I say ‘new-found’ because India has always been of interest in several countries and among several people. However, such interest has usually fallen at two ends of the spectrum; at one level, India has essentially been seen as a visually brilliant and exotic destination, of maharajas and camels, of elusive tigers and dancing tribal girls, of great street cuisine and pristine beaches, of temples, architecture and history, of ancient philosophy and of ayurveda, yoga and meditation. Crudely put, a bit of Hermann Hesse and Jim Corbett and Rudyard Kipling and Max

Mueller and colonial experiences were all juxtaposed to conjure up a heady collage of an exotic, mystical and mysterious land and her people, understanding whom would take centuries; that in itself was captivating.

Briefly, this kind of widespread and prevalent interest in India was essentially ‘touristy’ and led to the publication of several, indeed

(Pages vi – vii) Bhandasar Temple, Bikaner — India’s temples are exemplary

of her elaborate and decorative architecture.

In the Independence Day celebrations at Mysore, children sit together to

form India’s national flag. With a majority of Indian population consisting of

the young, they are the force that would wheel India’s future.

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thousands of books, on this ‘image’ of India; these have all been,                             The positive growth trends in the Indian economy have led by and large, photographically and visually captivating. But then,                 to the current new-found interest in India. Many of the younger India — the land and her people — is truly a visual marvel and a                         generation of the twenty million non-resident Indians, especially photographer’s delight. These touristy coffee table books are superbly             from the US and who are highly skilled, are returning to India to produced and have played a remarkable role in capturing exotic India                 make their fortune. This is a unique departure from yesteryears, as a viable and desirable tourist destination.                                   when India was, in fact, grappling with the serious problem of brain

drain as the young and educated moved on, primarily to the US,

There’s absolutely nothing wrong in this kind of a                        for higher education and better jobs. Today, they are looking at presentation of India, even if it is necessarily partial. It attracted               India as an opportunity. This is coupled with several non-Indian exchange students and backpackers, many of whom decided to                         professionals, across the globe, who are also relocating to India either take a gap year, crisscrossing India, before embarking on the next                   to work for multinational companies opening up offices here or for stage of their adult life. These were all young people, who wished to                  Indian companies that have stakes abroad. At the same time, there experience a culture quite different from their own. Many came back,                 are several who are puzzled at the phenomenon of a new India and year after year, and developed a sort of lifelong love affair with India               wonder what the implications are for the old India that they loved. because that was exactly what India offered — a kind of steamy and

passionate relationship, which would end in peace and solitude only                          This is a completely new target group for whom tailor-made much, much later when India entered your soul.                                    books simply do not exist. Mind you, the skilled Indians who are

now returning to India came from middle class Indian families and

Ignoring India was never an available choice: either you                 had left India over thirty-five or forty years ago in pursuance of hated being in India or you succumbed to her charms — warts and                        higher studies; most would have come back to marry and returned all; the so-called in-between, the shades of grey, simply did not exist.              with their brides immediately thereafter; their children would I have met many of these ‘youngsters’, now grey haired and middle                     invariably have been born and brought up abroad and by now, aged, and they still enjoy the passion that is India. Some married                    would be around twenty to twenty-five years of age. Visits to India Indians, others gave their children Indian names but all of them                     would have been annual and ritualistic and would revolve around recall how that very first encounter has never left them. They are all                  aging parents; they would have travelled around India briefly and Indophiles — or friends and lovers of India! Coffee table books have,                 cautiously but more often, as a formality or nostalgia. To return and therefore, played an important role in ‘selling’ India and this needs to              relocate in India would throw up innumerable questions, especially be acknowledged and respected.                                                for their children who would wonder whether their parents were

going through some kind of serious midlife crisis to leave behind

At the other end of the spectrum lay a vast amount of very                    what they would have assiduously built over the last thirty years or valuable and serious scholastic interest in India’s history, polity,               so and even if it wasn’t a luxurious and expensive lifestyle, it at least economy, linguistics, literature, music, philosophy and culture.                 provided comfort in the familiar. This led to the creation of India studies and Indology centres in

several prestigious universities all over the world. However, the                           For the North American, European, Japanese and other subject area and the target group resulted in a set of different type of                professionals who have started relocating to India, there are a publications; these were scholastic and academic in nature and quite                different set of questions. Some might have visited as backpackers different from the genre of coffee table books and played their own                   earlier but the life of a backpacker is quite different from that of distinctive role in fostering an interest in India.                               a high paid executive in IT or in automobile or pharmaceutical

People dressed as mythological characters at a trade fair at Pragati Maidan, New

Delhi. A blend of traditional and the modern is an accepted way of Indian life.

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Introduction | XIII

companies or in the hotel and hospitality industry. More importantly,               distinctive stamp. This is going to be the new India; in other words, their families would have umpteen questions about an alien land that                 new India is how young India would look at the ancient or old India. they would need to call ‘home’ for at least the next two – three years.                  Young India would innovate; they would be entrepreneurial; they

would introduce the contemporary into the classical; they would

For each of the above categories, India is largely an unknown               constantly experiment. That is what defines the ‘youth’ and that is entity and this, indeed, opens up the possibilities of an entirely new                what the young would do with India and in so doing, a new India set of books to cater to their requirements. Such books cannot simply                 would emerge. be touristic in style and content. This does not mean that the current

available touristy coffee table books have no more takers or that they                        So, how do we do a book that captures this and yet, remains are now rendered irrelevant; far from it. Yet, it needs to be recognised               in the coffee table book format? that there is a new-found gap. And, it is this gap that the present

book seeks to address. What is this new India, who are her voices? Is                            The venture began by looking at a series of macro issues that the new India dramatically different from the old and known India,                   concerned India’s young (especially those living abroad), which at the

same time, were also preoccupations with those who were proposing or are there similarities? What is this India and how should she be

to relocate to India. We wished for these macro issues to be as varied portrayed?

as possible while, at the same time, capture the core and the essence

of what made India, India. This is not as simple as it sounds and yet,

This is the predominant and distinctly unique objective

when we embarked on the journey, it was not as difficult as it might behind this book: it aims to fill the gap that currently exists in the

have been made out to be! Such is India! vast repertoire of books on India.

Having identified the subject areas which, at least, needed

to cover the arts, cuisine, the media, the polity, the economy and

science and technology, we needed to find authors. It was quite easy

It is said that while India is a young nation, she is an                     to reach out immediately to established and universally read scholars ancient civilisation. This is principally because, while the rest of                on each of the chapters. But, somehow, that appeared to contradict the developed countries are facing an acute aging problem, the                      the very purpose of finding ‘fresh’ and ‘new’ ways of seeing. And so, age profile in India is incrementally getting younger. According                    we looked around and dug deep. And that is how we put together, to the 1991 Census, people in the age group fifteen to thirty-five                      what I honestly believe, is a unique volume of extraordinary essays years constituted around one-third of the population and currently,                by extraordinary minds which captures the essence of an emerging they account for around two-thirds of the population! This is an                     India, an India which will challenge thought, expression, innovation, unbelievable statistic as the figure of two-thirds of one billion people              ideas, the future and our lives. This collection of essays is a tribute to is more than the population of several countries put together! This,                 young and creative thinking. in itself, has generated a huge interest in India.

We begin, as we must, with the land and her people —

A necessary corollary of this statistic is that the young                   diverse, plural and distinct. A young, erudite travel writer, Indians would look at India quite differently from the way their                     Atri Bhattacharaya, who has dreams of becoming the next Michael parents and their grandparents perceived and portrayed her; the                    Palin of Monty Python fame, dared to travel this complex terrain. young Indians would do things differently, their interests would be                 To say that I had some expectations of what Atri might capture in different and their very approach to matters would have their own                    his article is quite untrue; indeed, I had none! The canvas was so

Taj Mahal, Agra — Indian youth with their confidence would

have the new India of their own interpretation.

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vast that I thought it best to simply ‘wait and see’. It was Atri’s young                 Kanjilal, the man with a gift of ‘the word’, introduces us to Indian mind and, possibly, his exuberant Bengali bravado that did the trick!                 literature. Apart from films and books, what seems to have captured

imagination is Indian cuisine and there is a chapter with a number of

The next set of chapters really had to do with ‘fears’. Was                  you-can-try-it-at-home type of recipes. Indian culture, as people knew it, going to die? What, indeed, was

going to happen to Indian music and dance and art and the crafts?                                We move on from there to what many might call a lesser Were the ‘young’ going to ‘westernise’ it? I’ve always thought these                  known activity in India — sports! There was a time when hockey ‘fears’ to be grossly exaggerated and unfounded, principally because                and India were synonymous; not anymore. Today, Indians suffer the lives of Indians are so closely intertwined with their culture.                   from cricket fever and all our sports icons are cricket players. Young Cultures die because they cease to grow or to evolve; they become                      Bhajji for breakfast almost sounds like a menu item! All this is likely static. This is not the case with Indian culture because its continuity                to change with our totally unexpected performance at the recent is so deeply rooted in the tradition of change, which is the core of                     Beijing Olympics. Harpal Singh Bedi, sports correspondent for

around thirty years, recounts India’s successes and failures. How Indian philosophy: I am ever changing and yet, constant.

many know of India’s success in snooker or in chess, for instance?

Anita Ratnam, the trained artiste in classical Indian dance,

What Indians are fiercely proud of is her steadfast adherence who is now experimenting with interpretations and storytelling

to democracy, especially in a neighbourhood where democracy through the medium of contemporary dance has written the

has had a highly mixed and often negative reception. This is seen brilliant chapter on Indian classical dance and music. Quite frankly,

by many outsiders as a USP of India: democracy is here to stay. I could not have thought of a better qualified person to write this

Rohan Mukherjee, a student at Princeton University, has written chapter.                                                                    the comprehensive chapter on Indian polity. This is immediately

followed by Tarun Basu’s chapter on the Indian press, because one of

Indian contemporary art is a recent discovery by the                        the fundamental prerequisites of a genuine democracy is a genuinely Western world and thus, at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Anjum Katyal,                   free press; Tarun goes into both the print and the visual media, as who has been writing on contemporary Indian art for over thirty                       well as, the English and regional language press. years, has written the chapter that takes us on a journey through the

world of art as she ‘explains’ and contextualises artists, so that the                          Bibek Debroy takes over from there with his wonderful differences in their genre may be better understood.                               chapter on the Indian economy. It is only Bibek, who can put on

his teaching hat with such ease and nonchalance and hammer out

Along with Indian music and dance, it is Indian crafts that                  an article which simplifies the most complex of issues. Bibek draws are seen as capturing traditional India. It is the sound of India’s                    attention to the 8–9 per cent growth in the Indian economy and at villages and their pulsating lifebeat that one can hear through these                 the same time, he draws attention to the need to recall that growth crafts and Ritu Sethi, who is one of the known authorities on the                       and development are simply not the same thing. From Bibek, we subject, has written a truly comprehensive chapter on the living crafts               move on to L. K. Sharma and a chapter on modern India, through of India.                                                                    the eyes of science, technology and innovation is placed before the

Contemporary Indian culture is best captured through                     readers. Sharma has written extensively on the subject and this Indian cinema, particularly Bollywood, and contemporary Indian                    chapter will long be remembered for the eye-opener that it is. writing. Meenakshi Sheddy who has written extensively on Indian

cinema takes us through a most enjoyable journey and Pratik                                  As a subject, India is so vast and so inviting that no book

Sun Temple, Konark. As modern India arrays forth, her history,

culture and heritage would be her mentors.

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can ever be complete. The enemy of the good is the perfect and this                   in India. I would also like to say that this can be done if we decide could turn out to be an unending exercise and so, we decided to draw                  to do it together. Gone are the days when we could sit on foreign the line. We see this book as an aperitif; it will spawn many others.                 shores and say, "It is not my job —