TIMES LITERARY CARNIVAL - AT MEHBOOB STUDIO, BANDRA WEST, MUMBAI
Manu Joseph in his following Letter from India published by The New York Times, missed a very important discussion point on 'Idea of India' during the panel debate. Why the idea of India should be discussed at all. It shows the insecurity and lack of confidence by the intellectuals that they have to discuss the subject, as if they are discussing the changing weather.Dasgupta, a Bongo, had to bring in Bengal to claim that though everybody is under the impression that the phrase was coined by Sunil Khilnani who wrote a volumunous book with the title: Idea of India, the word was used originally by Bengal's tallest philosopher and scholar, Rabindranath Tagore. It was left to a Bandra-based interlocutor from the audience to correct him, that originally it was Lord Macaulay who used the term 'Idea of India' that he proceeded to formulate and impose on the colony-- with quite an great amount of success by Colonial standards. Some would say, that it is the Macaulay's doing that India is lost and that it is still debating what is the Idea of India.The debate cannot be completed in a sense, as India is still a truncated state and by excluding its extended boundaries and people that are Indians by origin, an imposed idea of India to conform to some transient authority, formal or intellectual or ideological cannot be given the stamp of finality.
Manu Joseph further left out the account of a very heated debate between Dasgupta and MJ Akbar on the subject of Pakistan and Muslims. Swapan Dasgupta, always carrying the communal baggage on his shoulder, did not miss the chance to needle MJ Akbar on Jinnah and Pakistan. Akbar gave a very detailed account of how Muslim politics had developed in the subcontinent and how the Indian Muslims have been reduced to a 'Minority'. In strict terms of the word, they were always a minority, even when they ruled the entire subcontinent; just like the Brahmin minority that is now ruling. It is the loss of empowerment that has now projected Indian Muslims as a minority. And that can change. A more authentic and durable idea of India will have to wait till then.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>
---
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/
.
So it was not surprising that a public debate in Mumbai on the grave subject “The Idea of India” would feature speakers from elsewhere, including Delhi, of course. And that such a debate would have the quality of a rare spectacle in Mumbai, as if it were a road accident. Nearly 500 people turned out Sunday for the event, part of The Times of India’s inaugural “Literary Carnival.”
On stage were M.J. Akbar and Swapan Dasgupta, two leading journalists; Jerry Rao, an entrepreneur and popular commentator; and Patrick French, the British historian, biographer of V.S. Naipaul and author of “India: A Portrait.”
In no time, the panelists were defending the fact that they were discussing “The Idea of India” in an alleged foreign language, English. Mr. French tried not to smile.
“Does it create a divide?” Mr. Rao asked about the fact that public discourse in India is largely conducted in English. “If I include a Wodehousian joke in my writing, am I alienated” from Indian realities? “No,” he said, because Indians are accustomed to English as the dominant medium of explanation.
“India is ruled in English,” Mr. Akbar said, “but we laugh and cry in Hindi, Tamil and other languages.” That is why, he said, while the English-language news media constitute the national mainstream, the country does not have a single television soap opera in English,
“because the mother-in-law does not speak in English.”
“But we do speak English better than the English,” Mr. Akbar later said, pointing to Mr. French, who looked amused and achieved an ambiguous smile.
Mr. Dasgupta, the moderator, asked if the idea of India was defined by people in Delhi. It is the sort of question that always warms the hearts of Indians who are not from North India, especially people in Mumbai and South Indians like Mr. Rao, who said, “‘Delhi’ is an adjective used to mean India from the point of view of North India.”
South Indians have been historically saddled with what North Indians think are matters of national importance. As Mr. Rao noted, people in the South are far less obsessed with Pakistan, Kashmir or India’s role in Afghanistan. But then there are also benefits in being far from Delhi. As Mr. French said, South Indians “have been able to get on with their lives. They are not caught up in North Indian politics.”
A complex Indian emotion that surfaced in the debate is fear of the foreigner, which sometimes masquerades as righteous rage against the white man, his swagger and his corporations. That fear has been manipulated at various points in India’s history by politicians, businessmen, nationalists afflicted by a sense of inferiority and socialist eggheads, who together ensured that India would open its economy to the world very late in its life and continue to impede further reforms.
It is a complex fear, because the average Indian is not sure whether he is afraid anymore, even though a certain type of politician and intellectual tells him he should be. The fear is topical, as the Indian government’s move to allow in foreign retailers has created such a political storm that the decision has been put on hold. The anti-corruption champion Anna Hazare, who is among those ancient ideologues of whom India has so many thanks to medical advancements, has even invoked the ghost of the East India Company, which colonized India once upon a time.
None of the speakers had any doubt that the arrival of foreign retail chains would benefit Indians through competition and job creation, and that the fear of foreign corporations was a comically anachronistic sentiment. Mr. French said, with a straight face, referring to the Tata Group, “I come from a country where the largest industrial employer is an Indian company.”
It appears that the foreigner Indians are least worried about now is the Pakistani. And it was somehow inevitable that the speakers would explain The Idea of India through The Idea of Pakistan.
Always the opportunistic reporter, Mr. Akbar found a way to connect the topic of debate with the day’s top story — the death of the Hindi film star Dev Anand, who had migrated from Pakistan to India in the early 1940s.
“He took the decision of choosing the idea of India over the emerging idea of Pakistan,” Mr. Akbar said.
At the time of Mr. Anand’s arrival, the idea of India was that it would be a secular state, at least in theory, and the idea of Pakistan was that it would have an Islamic identity. Both these ideas were forced on the people of the two nations by the men who created them.
In the world and time that Mr. Anand left, both nations have survived because, Mr. Akbar said, “The idea of India is stronger than the Indian, and the idea of Pakistan is weaker than the Pakistani.”
When the discussion came to an end, neither the speakers nor the audience claimed to understand exactly what the idea of India is. But everybody agreed that, whatever it is, it is a good idea.
Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “Serious Men.”
Manu Joseph in his following Letter from India published by The New York Times, missed a very important discussion point on 'Idea of India' during the panel debate. Why the idea of India should be discussed at all. It shows the insecurity and lack of confidence by the intellectuals that they have to discuss the subject, as if they are discussing the changing weather.Dasgupta, a Bongo, had to bring in Bengal to claim that though everybody is under the impression that the phrase was coined by Sunil Khilnani who wrote a volumunous book with the title: Idea of India, the word was used originally by Bengal's tallest philosopher and scholar, Rabindranath Tagore. It was left to a Bandra-based interlocutor from the audience to correct him, that originally it was Lord Macaulay who used the term 'Idea of India' that he proceeded to formulate and impose on the colony-- with quite an great amount of success by Colonial standards. Some would say, that it is the Macaulay's doing that India is lost and that it is still debating what is the Idea of India.The debate cannot be completed in a sense, as India is still a truncated state and by excluding its extended boundaries and people that are Indians by origin, an imposed idea of India to conform to some transient authority, formal or intellectual or ideological cannot be given the stamp of finality.
Manu Joseph further left out the account of a very heated debate between Dasgupta and MJ Akbar on the subject of Pakistan and Muslims. Swapan Dasgupta, always carrying the communal baggage on his shoulder, did not miss the chance to needle MJ Akbar on Jinnah and Pakistan. Akbar gave a very detailed account of how Muslim politics had developed in the subcontinent and how the Indian Muslims have been reduced to a 'Minority'. In strict terms of the word, they were always a minority, even when they ruled the entire subcontinent; just like the Brahmin minority that is now ruling. It is the loss of empowerment that has now projected Indian Muslims as a minority. And that can change. A more authentic and durable idea of India will have to wait till then.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>
---
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/
.Letter from India
India, an Evolving Idea
By MANU JOSEPH
Published: December 7, 2011
MUMBAI — When people in Delhi stand holding their drinks and talk, it would appear that they have solutions to all of India’s problems, and sometimes the problems of the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well. And when people in Mumbai stand holding their drinks, an old complaint in Delhi goes, their banter is frivolous, politically naïve and unfit to be published in the editorial pages of any newspaper.
So it was not surprising that a public debate in Mumbai on the grave subject “The Idea of India” would feature speakers from elsewhere, including Delhi, of course. And that such a debate would have the quality of a rare spectacle in Mumbai, as if it were a road accident. Nearly 500 people turned out Sunday for the event, part of The Times of India’s inaugural “Literary Carnival.”
On stage were M.J. Akbar and Swapan Dasgupta, two leading journalists; Jerry Rao, an entrepreneur and popular commentator; and Patrick French, the British historian, biographer of V.S. Naipaul and author of “India: A Portrait.”
In no time, the panelists were defending the fact that they were discussing “The Idea of India” in an alleged foreign language, English. Mr. French tried not to smile.
“Does it create a divide?” Mr. Rao asked about the fact that public discourse in India is largely conducted in English. “If I include a Wodehousian joke in my writing, am I alienated” from Indian realities? “No,” he said, because Indians are accustomed to English as the dominant medium of explanation.
“India is ruled in English,” Mr. Akbar said, “but we laugh and cry in Hindi, Tamil and other languages.” That is why, he said, while the English-language news media constitute the national mainstream, the country does not have a single television soap opera in English,
“because the mother-in-law does not speak in English.”
“But we do speak English better than the English,” Mr. Akbar later said, pointing to Mr. French, who looked amused and achieved an ambiguous smile.
Mr. Dasgupta, the moderator, asked if the idea of India was defined by people in Delhi. It is the sort of question that always warms the hearts of Indians who are not from North India, especially people in Mumbai and South Indians like Mr. Rao, who said, “‘Delhi’ is an adjective used to mean India from the point of view of North India.”
South Indians have been historically saddled with what North Indians think are matters of national importance. As Mr. Rao noted, people in the South are far less obsessed with Pakistan, Kashmir or India’s role in Afghanistan. But then there are also benefits in being far from Delhi. As Mr. French said, South Indians “have been able to get on with their lives. They are not caught up in North Indian politics.”
A complex Indian emotion that surfaced in the debate is fear of the foreigner, which sometimes masquerades as righteous rage against the white man, his swagger and his corporations. That fear has been manipulated at various points in India’s history by politicians, businessmen, nationalists afflicted by a sense of inferiority and socialist eggheads, who together ensured that India would open its economy to the world very late in its life and continue to impede further reforms.
It is a complex fear, because the average Indian is not sure whether he is afraid anymore, even though a certain type of politician and intellectual tells him he should be. The fear is topical, as the Indian government’s move to allow in foreign retailers has created such a political storm that the decision has been put on hold. The anti-corruption champion Anna Hazare, who is among those ancient ideologues of whom India has so many thanks to medical advancements, has even invoked the ghost of the East India Company, which colonized India once upon a time.
None of the speakers had any doubt that the arrival of foreign retail chains would benefit Indians through competition and job creation, and that the fear of foreign corporations was a comically anachronistic sentiment. Mr. French said, with a straight face, referring to the Tata Group, “I come from a country where the largest industrial employer is an Indian company.”
It appears that the foreigner Indians are least worried about now is the Pakistani. And it was somehow inevitable that the speakers would explain The Idea of India through The Idea of Pakistan.
Always the opportunistic reporter, Mr. Akbar found a way to connect the topic of debate with the day’s top story — the death of the Hindi film star Dev Anand, who had migrated from Pakistan to India in the early 1940s.
“He took the decision of choosing the idea of India over the emerging idea of Pakistan,” Mr. Akbar said.
At the time of Mr. Anand’s arrival, the idea of India was that it would be a secular state, at least in theory, and the idea of Pakistan was that it would have an Islamic identity. Both these ideas were forced on the people of the two nations by the men who created them.
In the world and time that Mr. Anand left, both nations have survived because, Mr. Akbar said, “The idea of India is stronger than the Indian, and the idea of Pakistan is weaker than the Pakistani.”
When the discussion came to an end, neither the speakers nor the audience claimed to understand exactly what the idea of India is. But everybody agreed that, whatever it is, it is a good idea.
Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “Serious Men.”
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