Thoughts on Grand Indian Malady

Earlier this year, there was a season when practically everyone from Mia Farrow in her New York Condo to Soha Ali Khan in her flight attendant suit had an opinion on Beijing Olympics. During this, rather busy period, Sharon Stone, who generally knows how to enjoy her money, in one inexplicable weak moment - as if because of a naughty butterfly flapping its wicked wings in Jamshedpur – instead of flashing her jouly smile and walking away, stopped and opened her mouth before a few waiting journalists to utter what would become history.

This is what escaped from her hapless mouth:

"Of course. You know, it was very interesting because at first I am not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans, because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else, and so I have been very concerned about how to think and what to do about that because I don't like that". "Then I have been concerned about, oh, how shall we deal with the Olympics? Because they are not being nice to the Dalai Lama, who is a good friend of mine."And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened and I thought, 'Is that karma, when you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?''

Sharon stone is an actress past her prime. Her position in Hollywood as a sexy seductress has been long since coveted. She has little reputation for her social insights. In fact she is remembered for a different type of insight. In short, she was a woman that the world never took seriously. But yet, as soon as she uttered those words, the response was swift.

Western media went on an over drive, printing her words in block quotes as headlines. People around the world amused themselves at her expense. Parodies abound, the fun was instantaneous. Within twenty four hours YouTube went berserk with angry Chinese who posted their video responses. Chinese government called a press conference and in essence scoffed at her. Dior, her famed sponsor, dropped her from their Asian campaign. She apologised: unasked, unconditionally. No one wanted to dismiss her as a stupid woman. All of this was in May 2008.

Three months later, this weekend, speaking on an Indian television show run on primetime, Shabana Azmi, a nominated Member of Indian Parliament and a respected actress (I am told) , in a pre-prepared, recorded interview accused the Indian polity of being a hypocritical democracy, a shame to secularism. She alleged that India discriminated against her Muslim subjects. All because someone refused her a flat in Mumbai.

Shabana Azmi , curiously was born in Independent India in a region not disputed. Her father, a famous writer and lyricist in Bollywood Mumbai(!) came from Uttar Pradesh which has, as far I know not seen a dispute over sovereignty or allegiance to the Indian republic. Shabana went to St Xavier's College Mumbai, and FTII Pune. Both it could be argued from a point of Indian history as Hindu strongholds. She has won many national awards. Further, one time or the other Shabana has been on various committees and boards of the Indian government, including the censorship board. She has represented India on international forums and Film festivals. Most important of all, in recognition of their talent and contribution, various Indian governments had conferred upon Shabana and her father and her husband (!) one of the highest civilian awards of the nation. This as you can imagine is only a snapshot of her association with India as an Indian over the last 58 years.

This enviable and illustrious history is undone by a nation because someone in some corner of the country has discriminated against her. His prejudice is instantly transferred on to that of the nation. A democracy has all of a sudden become unsecular, fascist! What Shabana Azmi did not see herself as all these years, she has transformed into instantly. A Muslim. Rest is of no significance. Her entire identity and being is reduced to a religious label in a post-modern world. In the history of the Islam in all the lands where it is/was practice/d there has never been a woman or never likely to be, with a greater freedom to achieve what she has, yet, all of that suddenly doesn't matter because someone said no to her. This is as far as a mind primed in Muslim theology can get- back to itself.

She is a Muslim and there can be no explanation beyond this. Therefore, the world, with all its glories and blemishes is to be understood only through Muslim eyes. Outside this, there can be no view, no theory, no world.

This has to be made public; her pain has to be shared with the nation on prime time television. Mind you, the words are not of an uneducated, biased, mechanic in Hyderabad; this is an educated, liberated, experienced, socially conscientious mind speaking to the masses. With no intent of offence but only analysis, this is - to use her own label, a mind of a Muslim. --After years of human civilization there is no process or no procedure to be followed. If someone stares at you, you gorge his eyes out; if someone misbehaves, you stone him to death; if someone steals, you chop his hands off; if someone says no to you, you go on national television to cry foul. Peace be upon him but not on the world which is out to get you. This is exactly what Naipaul had long back called the religion of narcissism, and a German friend here calls more of an affliction than a religion.

But the purpose of the post is not Islam. My interest is in what I call the grand Indian dynamic. Let's consider the response vis a vis Sharon Stone episode.

But there has been no response. There are no regrets expressed, no apologies solicited, and no calls for resignation. The media is oblivious, ignorant. I have keenly followed the issue on technorati and google blogs. Save for one or two negligible expressions of emotional outbursts, there have been no reactions. It is, as if the event never happened. A shallow mind might be quick to point out the comparison of the examples are mismatched; that Sharon stone was insensitive during a tragic time. I have used it only as a popular example. The purpose is to emphasise the value of identity and not of similarity. A couple other latest but less known examples would be of Germany disapproving a book on Kafka and Serbia withdrawing another book . Just yesterday a Top Policeman in UK accused the Metropolitan Police Department of discrimination . Not the entire nation mind you. He did not go and cry his heart out in front of the media. He went to a tribunal. And this is the first news item in UK.

That is elsewhere. And this is India. In India, one can casually a throw an allegation at her most sanctum sanctorum and get away with it . It is okay.

Consider these:

Sania Mirza, an upcoming tennis player is threatened by men of her own religion for reasons singularly religious. In turn she conveys her distress to the nation as a -threat - should such problems persist she shall not represent the country. But no Shabana Azmi wants to come forward to talk about any religion.

Taslima Nasreen, a Bangladeshi writer is attacked by men of her own religion in various cities in India. The government of India is held responsible for her safety and security. No Shabana Azmi comes forward to talk about any religion.

City after Indian city has been targeted by bomb attacks for reasons inexplicable except that of zealous religious fundamentalism. All the newspapers, all the television channels, all the blogs express anger, disbelief and concerns of lack of security etc, but no one and certainly no Shabana Azmi comes forward to talk about any religion. It is never the religion; it is always the goon, the illiterate, the fundamentalist, the terrorist. As if they all are exotic entities with independent existence that dropped by from a distant planet.

But a Shabana Azmi would choose to talk of religion because she did not get a flat in Mumbai.
And therefore, naturally, India is undemocratic and intolerant. A Nation is held accountable for a tennis player, a writer for matters of concern of one religion. In other words a nation is held ransom by a religion. In India this is all right. It is borne in silence. This is the Indian notion of secularism, the Indian Idea of democracy.

These are only examples and religion is just handy tool to study; Indian mind is far more complicated and layered to be assessed by a single tool. Indian life to be honest is difficult to read. It is an effort. This is essentially because even a casual question on India ricochets from one end to another- a religious enquiry, before you can realise, would have turned political or a contemporary question would have in no time lead you to antiquity hidden in layers of mindless tradition. It is because of this reason however modern an Indian seems or sounds, his is a mind burdened by the weight of his own history. It is deep buried within him and yet so distant and inaccessible. Caught in between so many things, his modern mind takes refuge in Russian literature or Pink Floyd. What can be seen now and here on the surface is what India has internalised for centuries. A habit has been turned into an addiction to tradition to culture to identity to malady. Many Indians call it greatness.

This greatness is an idea. But India is a land of free floating ideas. You can find one anywhere.

Beliefs erase and erode over time, but it is a gradual process. And these are replaced by another set of beliefs of no consequence. It is an abstraction passed on through centuries without any active enquiry. It can be seen in all spheres of life; and all through: from politics, sports, entertainment, literature et al. This is what binds Indians – recycling their own absurdities from time to time.

Consider the other religion Hinduism which is replete with every possible abstraction a human mind is capable of. The last one of such abstractions came after the industrial revolution. It is a story of Bengali Man called Narendra. He is now referred as a divine soul Swami Vivekanda. You can notice the fading photograph of his handsome face in small town sweetshops. There are schools, public parks and organisations dedicated to his name. Yet, after a long and tiring day, all a Hindu can remember about this divine sage – is that he swam a few miles of an ocean and he represented India in a conference in Chicago in 1891, where, he was applauded and sent home. (That was just America bemused by a funnily dressed Indian speaking English in late 19th century). For a few years Hindus obsessed after him, worshipped him, after which his divinity was forgotten. This story is just around 100 years old, the more farther you go the more fantastic they become.

On the other side of the spectrum are the so called modern Liberal Indians without any apparatus to evaluate their history or identity making every effort to assimilate someone else’s history and covet others identity as their own.

Here is a question to a contestant in a beauty pageant in Mumbai

Have you heard of marital rape?
Err uhhm (bit confused)

How shall you respond if you are subjected to marital rape?

I will scream. ( after few secs of thinking)

I would say the girl had loads of commonsense, and her answer was apt. But they will not let her proceed onto the next round, because she is wrong! She is not intelligent enough.The term has been chosen from a glossary of a liberal western text or a women magazine in an airport, it has no plank to hang it by, no meaning in India. It is expected to elicit a textbook answer, which, if not received shall mean the failure of the candidate. This is how India appraises its candidates in all the competitions including academics and examinations. A set of questions and answers. Rights and wrongs.

Men and women who have come out of such a system find the life outside in a big world with its immoral rights and flexible wrongs without any ready answers extremely uncomfortable. Some even disconcerting. For some others it is a shock. Some run back into the familiarity of old ideas. Some start looking out for answers, and once convinced of having found the correct answer, they start imagining the questions.

Regard this:

A few women meet for a coffee in a local Barista. They agree how distressing it is to change their names after marriage. They all don’t like it. Since it involves women like themselves they unanimously decide it is feminism. They will apply all the answers- all the rights and all the wrongs they had learnt and reaffirm that it is indeed feminism. Just like those Hindus who believed that Vivekananda was divine, they have neither the means to evaluate their conclusions nor have inclination to find its relevance to the population of the nation. Like Shabana Azmi, they simply project their thoughts onto a nation as that of a nation. Their idea of its relavance or its connotations in the world is nil. A misunderstanding is invented and turned into imagined activism. It is another caste system. Now they will have to find a population for their grievance, so they endlessly write about this, as liberal, as lofty. With no tool to assess the impact or change, they go nowhere. For Mother India this is not at all new so it endures them and lets them be. A few years later, when capitalism has uplifted a few more Indian women, having done nothing on their own, they would move onto a different notion sitting in another cafe.

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A communist party of India believes nuclear treaty with America is harmful for the nation. But it refuses to explain to the very nation why or how the treaty is potentially harmful. It doesn't wish to engage in a debate, and declines any suggestion of a discussion. A belief that it held without evidence is transformed into an opinion and a political stance.

With such a stance politicians meet around their New Delhi residences and party offices. Shots of cream and ivory coloured ambassador cars are shown to get in and out of residences in the leafy suburbs of Delhi. For the average Indian voter this is all surreal, as if watching a bollywood movie after which he will walk back into his real life. Nevertheless, they all watch, not because of their interest in politics but because of their stake in the markets. A day later, the communist party of India withdraws support and the government is called in for a No Confidence Motion. It is that easy. Now a different dynamic commences, if the motion is carried the government survives, else the nation is subjected to another general election worth billions of rupees. Even if there was a new election little changes, players are altered here and there, roles are shifted. And the whole cycle repeats. This in India is politics – like feminism above - a system of unverifiable personal beliefs.

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In Mangalore I watched a Indian blockbuster they called Chak De. Apparently it was a huge hit and had revived a nation’s idea of pride and patriotism. It was lauded by all Indians of all class and customs- from Bay Area to Southall to Chandni Chowk as a very sensible and intelligent portrayal of Indianess. Chak De was even adopted as the slogan of the sporting teams representing the nation.

And the story of this great movie is this: An Indian hockey captain, a Muslim, is accused of treason by the nation for shaking hands with an opponent after having missed a crucial penalty stroke. The entire country of one billion falls into the trap of its own misunderstanding. It comes natural. Painful shots of being called a traitor are emphasised in rapidly edited montage of national newspaper headlines alternated with slow moving shots of the crestfallen, betrayed actor with a screaming Sufi music playing in the background. He vanishes. Eight years later he resurfaces all of a sudden and trains a motley team of girls into an unlikely junior championship victory. He becomes an instant hero. He is redeemed. All is forgiven and forgotten. After eight long years, suddenly everyone agrees that he is or was not a traitor. Thus the story ends.

If you look at it, it is not all that a new story to India. With minor alterations it could be a - a story of Rama or Pandavas or Mohammed who all vanish into oblivion, accused or cheated of this or that and after many years return to glory. It has been rehashed and remade for the new, intelligent, liberated generation which welcomes it as progressive. There is no sense of period or perspective. The story happened. It could have been 1911 or 2007. In India such absurd stories are passed on for intelligent cinema.

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Like anywhere in the world, any question of intelligence is inevitably related to that of identity. But Indian identity, from bits of what we have seen is a simile of its own, for its insurmountable complexity and intrigue. It is fluid and elusive. It is in its belongingness and its absurdity. The state government of Kerala, a southern state in India half of whose population can easily find a Sharjah in the Middle East than a Chandigarh in northern India wanted to recognise the achievement of Abhinav Bindra, a chap from Chandigarh who had won a gold medal for the country in the recently concluded Olympics. So The State of Kerala decided to confer its own gold medal on an Olympic gold medal winner. This is the Indian idea of belongingness.

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Indian idea of intelligence is perhaps most special in that it is compounded by its own ignorance. Of the world and itself. To Indians Intelligence is not a faculty of judgement but of information. The more one knows, the more intelligent he is. Thousands of university students in Bangalore and Delhi pursue Quizzing. It is a game of collecting information and remembering it. But there is no interest in anything that involves judgement. Some even speak of it is as a career. An Indian can tell you a remote trivia about American History but he doesn’t have an opinion on say, Kashmir. It takes many a years into his third decade in his life to realise that Trivial Pursuit is game of 16-18 year olds.

Such notion of intelligence is best seen on Indian blogosphere, where the most intelligent of the nation, apparently hang about. It is here, you can dissect out their idea of intelligence and their confusion about their identity. This confusion is a direct result of the synthesis of the past and the future floating and ricocheting in the Indian present .

For an Indian a generation back, he was nothing more than what he did or where he came from?

What do you do?

Or where are you from?

These were the second and third Indian questions in a new introduction. The rest of the talk revolved around this and called itself a conversation. These days the Indian identity has moved on from the concept of vocation to a label:

We are feminists. An young Indian will declare blindly. Consider my new feminist friend Anindita : She writes here as delicately, as elegantly any rubbish can ever be written. The muddled thoughts flow from one big word to another - art, civilization, activism, feminism et al to eventually arrive at this conclusion - Women should be encouraged to write. Else the civilization is not complete.

The article cant bear itself out. There is no commitment to any meaning. It could be a subhashitaa (well intent couplet) from 4000 BC. An intense personal wish, with no endemic idea, no identified collective need , with no independent validity, no feedback loop is disseminated as activism of the nation, for the nation. In modern parlance it is similar to a bollywood song. It has no past, no future. It happens and any sense , if at all, has to be found only within it. Outisde of it , there is no sense. In India, this is the understanding of civilization and feminism : A personal idea constructed around a publishing house.

Indian web is full of such muddled up mediocre minds. An Indian in Calcutta will befriend an Indian in Pennsylvania over their blogs, because they believe they are feminists. A mutual interest in a movement and its understanding from two different contexts of the globe is the basis of their friendship. It is theoretical. They reaffirm their beliefs by linking to each other and exchanging links of feminist articles which are written in another context in another part of the world. Their idea of identity is in their concordance - a sense of sharing of a word and its agreed meaning. Without this word, they are strangers.

After such personal agitations and imagined activisms comes favourites.

We all are our favourite authors or our favourite movies.

An Indian blogger in Delhi will exchange thoughts with an Indian blogger in Hyderabad on the French poet Rimbaud. And without any perspective or judgement on his life they talk about Rimbaud as if he was a local Kalidas about whom they have no clue. They both insist on impeccable English grammar without which they can’t comprehend each other if speaking their respective tongues. Two days later both of them shall be seen talking about the Turkish poet Cavafy. Next week it is someone fresh say, Darwish. What Indians of the past did to gods for centuries, Indians of now are doing it to poets and writers. It comes natural.

Their identities lie in their relentless assimilation of the exotic and irrelevant interests which has no meaning to their lives. It is a self imposed struggle against oneself. If someone challenges them, they will respond by distilling their beings and projecting it as an abstraction - poetry is universal which is the new version of God is in everyone. Others typically engage in why and why not arguments? Some others respond by getting into details- rhyme, meter etc. After all these charade they will return to eat their Dhal Chawal Aloo Sabjis. To them these are not interests or pursuits of men, these are the men themselves. To them like their ancestors before, it is hard to distinguish a myth from a reality, an interest from an identity.

This, imagined, self-imposed strife, is the modern Indian idea of intelligence.

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The concept of Literature is more interesting. There is no shared lineage or history of national literature. In fact the very idea of those are at a distant safety. I personally believe it is absurd for a nation as big and as diverse as India to think of National Literature. There was some promise of vernacular literature, which never took off in the 20th century. Mostly because it was perpetually cursed by the Indian way of looking which was always religious and mythical, until 20th century when it turned mostly political and reformatory - to address social stigmas and such issues. It was focussed and limited. Barring a few works from Kerala, it could not transcend to reach out for anything. Except for ancient sanskrit dramas and the stories, there is nothing autonomous and worth enriching to be found there. The novel in India is less than hundred years old. There has been an odd voice here and there. There is no experimentation or innovation. For the mind primed in religious tomes, it tries to get back to them through the novel; stories about large families, grandeur, weddings, and other rubblish when India was importing wheat from USA. So all that remains of an never existent Indian novel now is, what was left in india all these centuries: a formula, fakery and lies. Earlier it was written by brahmins, now by journalists in Delhi and Mumbai. Naturally therefore, all that literature implies for an modern young Indian is a potpourri of exotic favourites. The one who has read the most distant and the most obscure is the most respected. It is a rule to be followed and not a judgement.

Committees are formed to discuss writing. A communion gathers on a Sunday evening on a terrace in Delhi or a living room in Hyderabad. They read out for each other - sonnets imagined in cubicles, villanelles written for the sake of writing villanelles, short stories without any perspective or relevance. Someone might correct a transitive verb or a wrong tense. As politely and as vaguely as they are naturally given to. They commend and critique each other. Samosas and pakoras are passed around. They discuss - form, characterization structure etc of a Murakami writing about 60s Japan or a Winterson writing about lesbianism in Manchester.
In the next meeting they will consider the works of a Jhumpa Lahiri living in LA or a Kiran Desai hiding in a Himalayan cottage who has written about them - their lives, how all of them think, feel and behave. They would admire a character, the prose, the craft. Some might not. It doesn't matter.

End of it all they go home feeling intelligent and sublime. This is the ritual. This is the Indian idea of reading books, of literature. Just like a few hundred years ago when Indians used to gather in a temple and read together Hanuman Chaleesa which had no meaning to their lives but the communion gave them strength and consolation to forget their own insignificance in the world. It is another rehash.

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For a nation that has internalised the myth of a cycle, understandably it is difficult to distinguish what is past and what is future, more so when you cant see yourself which way you are looking. This is the fundamental tragedy of India. Sixty years after existence, better of her citizens - from Shabana Azmi to Sania Mirza to Anindita Sengupta haven’t been able to grasp the concept of the state.

There are comical understandings of words like marginalised, civilization and literature. The idea of growth both in its consciousness and activity is zilch. Amidst all the celebrated vibrancy and diversity there is this underrunning monotony. India’s new found status is only that of one facet - economic. A market of one billion must account for something in a post-modern world. Apart from economic, rest is drowned in a huge static muddled pool. As a friend who had visited India recently for the first time observed - there is no independent thought. Contrary to what you might be told, this is no renaissance Italy or Industrial Britain.

Simply because :Nothing is learnt, therefore nothing is applied.

My interest to investigate India arises from my need to understand my own position and history in the world. It is understandable to be dismissive or indifferent. It is easy to get lost in the marvels of the post modern world. But such a life , however grand it may be, I know shall eventually amount to nothing. I know I am an Indian and there is little sense in disowning that. But I had to know so much of myself that is not Indian, despite being an Indian. This is my motivation, because somewhere in there must lie my own identity. In this aspect, the last twelve years have been fruitful . This quest has found me many answers to questions I have long pondered over. I have been able to explain aspects inexplicable a few years back. I do realise that, in a sense it is brutal to be so honest , so antagonistic , so negative but I need the perspective to evaluate without bias - the world and myself. To see it and see it right. Nothing for me as a human is more important.

Getting back to Shabana Azmi : I hadnt seen much of her, but having seen her two interviews I dont have much to say of her. As a 20 year old brit so eloquently described her on youtube: she is a great lol. As per her comments, at the worst, a couple of months later, if she manages to rattle a few , a group of totally aimless Hindu youth would pelt a few stones at her portico window and the country would be in uproar. Young reporters would start another wave of screaming and howling into the microphone. Indian bloggers from all over the world would exchange thoughts on the meaning of tolerance and secularism in India. Page 3 celebrities - models, one time novelists, university professors rooted in 60s with no idea of Indian history or perspective would discuss in an air conditioned studio in New Delhi on a Sunday evening, screaming over each other.

Give the country a week more and everything shall be forgotten. Business resumes as usual. Bloggers move on to booker lists and movie reviews. And soon the entire country would start looking forward for the Australian cricket team to land.

Further update on Mrs Azmi: Here is a latest forward. A sort of reluctant defensive Indian version of an explanative apology from Mrs Azmi. Hiding behind the self proclaiemd label of moderate muslim, she conflates it all typically like an Indian, bringing past history and other issues like Dalits to Female infanticide. Such a shame she calls herself a social activist who fights against discrimination. So who wants to be in the choir?