Sep 26, 2005 01:04 PM
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(Updated Sep 26, 2005 01:06 PM)
India is it a unified nation bonded by strong ties of commonality and law or is it a motley collection of diverse people living under the collective disguise of a nationality. This is a question which has been baffling experts and the masses at large ever since the midnight of our independence. Cynics were quick to point out that we won’t be able to retain our collective identity for too long and there would be internecine civil wars and bitter acrimony amongst the diversities and we should soon be divided into small countries each having their own strands and ways of life to bind them as a uniform nation. But did we prove all of them wrong by not just surviving but also gaining strength and marching slowly but surely towards the path of social-economic and political prosperity.
Churchill once commented rather acridly, “India is merely a geographical expression. It is no more a single country than the equator.” On the other hand Pundit Nehru talks about the fact that India is held together “by strong but invisible threads. About her there is the elusive quality of a legend of long ago; some enchantment seems to have held her mind. She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive.” Well that’s India for all of us, a bundle of contradictions and complexities and it’s not a mean task to even attempt to talk about India and try to comment about the internal dynamics and forces at work.It is this gargantuan task that Shashi Tharoor attempts to do in his book India: From Midnight to Millennium, as he takes us on the journey of India through that historical midnight which brought upon us all the gift of independence to the stroke of the midnight which heralded the new millennium.
Shashi comes across as a man of many words and he is someone who has seen India from both an Indian’s perspective and from a distance as a NRI who can comment with ease about the state of affairs. His long stints outside the country not withstanding his love for the motherland are still very much intact and it is this love that germinates the seeds of hope and optimism when he talks about the nation and its tryst with the goals that we had set upon ourselves when we became independent.
He talks brilliantly and very effectively about the problems facing India today and the challenges it has as it goes forward. He narrates the tale of rampant bureaucratic corruption and the blatant criminalization of politics and he feels these are the two most sinister evils plaguing and impeding the march of India towards being a confident and powerful nation. He also talks about how the lawbreakers find the route to becoming lawmakers the easiest and the most lucrative one. He blasts the Nehruvian brand of socialism and the permit quota raj which brought about redtapism, nepotism and hijacking of the entire machinery by some powerful men for their own personal and vested interests.
Through his essays he talks about issues like the policy of reservations for the scheduled castes and tribes, emergency rule of Indira Gandhi, corruption during the days of Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian democracy and a plethora of other topics. He feels that the imposition of partition was easily one of the darkest phases for Indian democracy. It is to the credit of Indian democracy that despite of all odds it keeps demonstrating its resilience and strength by making a comeback from the wreckage and emerging stronger each time. He pays tribute to the architect of the Indian constitution Babasaab Ambedkar for restoring democracy back to the nascent nation.
He is very critical to the pseudo secularism brand of politics being practiced by the Congress party. He urges “the pseudo-secularism that has made the state hostage to the most obscurantist religious figures among the minorities” should stop and he feels that the state should rise above petty considerations of vote bank politics and practice equality for all in spirit and tone. He feels the evils of communal tensions are the direct outcome of narrow minded politics germinating in the minds of men who keep vested interests and think on partisan lines.
Talking about Indira Gandhi he has strong words both in support for her and against her. He feels her act of imposing emergency was one of the saddest moments for Indian democracy and made all the Indians staying outside India held their heads in shame as they had a tough time answering the barrage of hostile questions from people of other nationalities. He also feels that the Punjab problem was largely a creation of her skewed up policies and her covert support and funding to the fundamentalist and secessionist section of the society.
He lambastes the ideas and policies of Nehru which stemmed from his anglophile and says the ghosts of some of these policies are still plaguing India. He feels Nehru’s ideas of socialism had outlived their utility and were archaic, he also feels that his extreme love for anything British meant that he was often blind to other good things outside the boundaries of Britain.
Despite of all his ramblings and bickering about the state of affairs and problems facing India today he is very optimistic of the future. He feels that democracy is the true vehicle of expression for all the divergent voices inside India. He feels that the success of the Indian democracy is a tribute to its resilience and feels that the success of democracy is one lesson that the entire world would do well to learn from us. He also lauds the rich heritage and history of inventions, discoveries and achievements that we have had. He feels that no other country in the world has been able to achieve so much despite of such Himalayan challenges that it faced.
I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in knowing a little bit about India from the perspective of a man whose only problem sometimes is that he knows just a little too much about India and issues concerning it, well only if that really was a problem. At times Tharoor's deformation professionelle shows up as evasion, diplomatic evasion, in naming easy-to-guess names. He tries to evade some issues like a true diplomat rather then confronting them upfront. At times the journalist in him takes over, pushing the writer and dreamer in him to backstage. But at once the book comes across as a compelling journalistic insight weaved in the language of a fiction writer. Anecdotes from his childhood days along with his imaginations as a dreamer all combine together to make this one a delightful read.
Questions
Why do you think more often then not the best books on Indian history has been written by non Indians?
Is democracy the best system for us for we would have been better off under a presidential system like the USA?
What do you think is the single most important thing that needs to be changed about India to make it a better place to live in?
For those who have read this book, what to you were the salient feature and the common thread that ran across the entire book?
Watch out for my next review on one of the foremost writers Roald Dahl and his collection of short stories
