[Reader-list] re: Indian Personality Complex

[Radha Khan]

Full Text (1229   words)        
Copyright Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Sep/Oct 2004

Indian Personality Complex

Being Indian: The Truth About Why the 21st Century Will Be India's

By Pavan K. Varma

325 pages, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2004

Publishing a book on "India Shining" just before Indian voters slap the
slogan out of power is, at the very least, unfortunate timing. In May,
the electorate rejected a complacent Indian government led by the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), despite a massive state advertising
campaign claiming the government economic policies made India "shine."
But bad timing is less worrisome than self-delusion. Pavan K. Varma's
new book, Being Indian: The Truth About Why the 21st Century Will Be
India's, reveals how portions of India's elite have begun to confuse
their own optimism with the nation's more complex reality.

The shine is real enough: The Indian economy is surging, growing by more
than twice what Indian economists once dismissed as the "Hindu rate of
growth" of 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) per year. But the
glow only reaches roughly one third of the population, perhaps
explaining why the BJP won only one third of the votes in the general
elections. And numbers-whether growth indicators or statistics about the
booming information technology (IT) industry-hardly tell the whole story
of India's success. Varma recounts a comment by Robert Blackwill, then
the U.S. ambassador to India. "Human resources and intellectual capital
are India's greatest asset," gushed Black-will upon leaving New Delhi in
2003. "As a nation, you have great DNA." Varma takes it upon himself to
unravel that Indian genome. He concludes that the "Indian personality"
is utterly practical, indifferent to human suffering, naturally amoral,
and power-obsessed: A nation of people whose "feet are firmly on the
ground, and their eyes fixed on the balance sheet."

A successful diplomat who translated former Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee's poems while serving as ambassador to Cyprus, Varma now heads
the Nehru Centre, a London cultural-exchange club run by the Indian
government. But diplomacy is only his day job. Varma has authored books
on a range of subjects, from a well-received analysis of the Indian
middle class to a biography of 19th-century Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib. In
his latest work, Varma wants to "attempt a new and dramatically
different inquiry into what it is to be an Indian."

Varma begins his bestselling book with factoids about the success of
India's IT sector and economic growth, but this exercise fails to
impress. Yes, outsourcing is a genuine Indian success story, but a
nation must do more than answer complaints from British Airways
passengers to conquer the world. A serious book needs serious evidence
that the 21st century can be India's just as the 20th century belonged
to the United States-that India will become arbiter of destinies across
the globe; that the Mumbai stock exchange will replace New York's as the
index of international markets; or that Indian generals will lead
battles to eliminate rogue states from Asia and Africa and Latin
America.

Curiously, much of the book reads like a litany of what is wrong with
India, often with an undertone of subdued merriment. The chapter called
"Power: The Unexpected Triumph of Democracy" comprises several stories
about Indians' weakness for unsubtle flattery and status worship.
Sources include Varma's own observations, classical Indian treatises on
statecraft, and the timeless Bhagavad-Gita story about Lord Krishna's
use of deception to slay his enemy's guru. Varma attributes Indian
Americans' growing involvement in U.S. politics to an increasing
material prosperity that triggers a genetic urge for "status and
recognition." Yet the author fails to explain how these traits will help
India master the 21st century, unless Varma's implicit contention is
that such virtues (or lack of them) are necessary for success in an
immoral century.
	
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Other evidence for Varma's thesis is similarly weak. The text is
littered with hit-and-miss quotations from predictable authors, such as
Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and V.S. Naipaul, as well as from
fashionable names like Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, and Henry
Kissinger, all of whom he rebukes for ignoring India. Varma finds
journalism more nourishing for his argument. His copious references to
opinion pieces and editorials lead to pat generalizations, such as the
suggestion that globalization, through modern communications, is the
glue of India. Bollywood, Varma believes, "has been the single biggest
integrating factor in the evolution of the pan-Indian persona."

India's emerging economic strength certainly merits analysis. GDP grew
by 8.2 percent in the 2003-04 financial year. But it does not justify
breathlessness. The creation of the modern Indian economy has been a
laborious process that began during the 1950s under Nehru's visionary
leadership. He established the Indian Institutes of Technology and the
Indian Institutes of Management that created generations of
entrepreneurs responsible for today's stunning statistics. The economic
reforms that began in the 1980s took time to gain traction. India is,
after all, the world's largest democracy. Competitor China has the
advantage (some would argue a temporary one) of being run by dictators
who do not have to taste the bitterness of electoral defeat.

Indeed, India's success stems from the nation's refusal to take
shortcuts, including an unwillingness to sacrifice its past in the face
of modernity's onslaught. In a compelling passage on the mathematics of
astrology, Varma asserts that Indians see no contradiction between
mythological elements of their past and scientific elements of their
present. Millions consult the Bhrigu Samhita, a treatise written in
Vedic times some 3,000 years ago, that "claims to have an infinite
number of records of people and events in their lives," from which "45
million horoscopes can be permuted." The West has outdistanced other
civilizations in science and technology during the last three
centuries-the true reason for its economic, military, and political
dominance. Although the West derided Indian traditions such as the
ayurvedic system of medicine, Varma says Indians never considered their
culture, dance, music, or ethics primitive, even during the worst days
of colonial subjugation. And, he adds, they are now asserting their
heritage in other fields as well.

Thus, an Indian technology geek can cheekily assert that, because India
gave the world the zero, Indians are natural leaders in computers. An
Indian musician can take the ragas of classical music and transform them
into a Broadway musical, as did the popular composer A.R. Rahman with
his hit Bombay Dreams. And Indian publishers ensure black ink for their
bottom lines with exotic foreign editions of the ancient Indian sex
manual the Kama Sutra. (Incidentally, Varma is currently working on a
book about "the wisdom" of the Kama Sutra.)

This dynamic provides the most interesting and viable answer to Varma's
inquiry on how Indian identity will lead the country toward a glorious
future. The United States created the future because it had no past.
India, conversely, has placed a calling card on the doorstep of history
precisely because it can easily link the glory of its past to the story
of its future. "A potential global power must understand what makes its
people tick," Varma concludes. "This book would have served its purpose
if it contributes to that end." That is the book that Varma wanted to
write. He still should.
[Sidebar]       
Outsourcing is a genuine Indian success story, but a nation must do more
than answer complaints from British Airways passengers to conquer the
world.   

[Author Affiliation]    
M.J. Akbar is editor in chief of the daily newspaper The Asian Age,
based in New Delhi.