Being Indian Read online

  The first requirement of any attempt at reappraisal is honesty. A nation which calls a trader ‘mahajan’ or great soul, which pervasively worships Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, and exalts the pursuit of material well-being, artha, as a principal goal of life, is also widely regarded as spiritual and ‘other-worldly’. In what manner, then, are we spiritual, and what role does this much vaunted spirituality play in our lives? A country with so much diversity—ethnic, cultural and linguistic—has nevertheless managed to remain united. Is this due to the oneness of an Indian ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, or is the growing sense of pan-Indianness the result of something less exalted, and more congruent with our real selves?

  These questions need to be answered calmly. They have not been posed to provoke criticism or invite appreciation. They are value-neutral, meant only to compel reappraisal. The answers that we propose constitute a significant premise of this book, and can be beneficially summed up here. Indians are extraordinarily sensitive to the calculus of power. They consider the pursuit of power a legitimate end in itself, and display great astuteness in adjusting to, and discovering, the focus of power. They respect the powerful, and will happily cooperate or collude with them for personal gain. In the game of power they take to factionalism and intrigue like a fish takes to water. Those who renounce the lure of power are worshipped, not because their example is capable of emulation, but in sheer awe at their ability to transcend the irresistible.

  In spite of recent changes, which we shall discuss later, Indians are exceptionally hierarchical in outlook, bending more than might be thought to be required before those who are perceived to be ‘superior’, and dismissive or contemptuous of those accepted as ‘inferior’. Understandably, notions of self-esteem and personal image, in conformity with perceived ‘status’, are of great consequence to them. They are not democratic by instinct or temperament. Democracy has survived and flourished in India because it was very quickly seen to be one of the most effective systems for upward mobility, and for the acquisition of personal power and wealth.

  Indians have never been, and will never be, ‘other-worldly’. They hanker for the material goods that this world has to offer, and look up to the wealthy. They pursue profit more tenaciously than most. They make shrewd traders and resourceful, even ingenious, entrepreneurs. Their feet are firmly on the ground, and their eyes fixed on the balance sheet. As in the case of temporal power, they are concerned more with the successful result, and less with the means. Their spiritualism, although lofty in its metaphysics, is in religious practice mostly a means to harness divine support for power and pelf. It does help, however, to weather periods of adversity, and thus reinforces resilience. Most Indians are ‘other-worldly’ only in their indifference to anything in the external milieu that is not of direct benefit to their immediate and personal world.

  This complete self-absorption is truly in evidence in their remarkable tolerance of inequity, filth and human suffering. They are a pragmatic people, naturally amoral in their outlook. There is no notion of ultimate sin in Hinduism. Any action is justified in certain contexts, and gods are routinely bribed. Corruption has grown endemically because it is not really considered wrong, so long as it yields the desired result. If discovered, it provokes great moral outrage, in inverse proportion to the degree to which it is accepted. The concept of morality, and of high-minded principle, is dear to Indians as a theoretical construct, but largely ignored in real life as impractical.

  ‘Modernity’, in the Nehruvian or Western sense of being able to react to issues ‘rationally’, without prejudice or subjectivity, is a professed goal for many educated Indians, but in reality only a garb to hide the continued hold of tradition; and modernity and tradition continue to coexist within them in ways which are truly unique. Finally, Hindus are not so much non-violent as they are practical in understanding the limits of violence. They are willing to eschew violence for the more important goal of ensuring survival. They are hesitant to be violent against a superior force, preferring coexistence to suicidal annihilation. Their historical ‘tolerance’ of other religions, especially those backed by superior military strength, is understandable in this context. Incidents of communal violence do occur in India, but contrary to what is often projected, they are not the norm. In general, Indians are opposed to violence if it creates a degree of instability or disorder that threatens the social system. However, in a controlled milieu, such as the enforcement of caste hierarchy or purity, when violence has social sanction or is backed by numerical strength, they can be as violent as any other race.

  The above is a description of some dominant traits, not a comprehensive enumeration. Every rule has exceptions. The human personality allows for infinite nuances, and character can always have specific variations. Nor is this portrayal intended to be a critique. Undoubtedly, it is at variance with our conventional self-image. But nations are not good or bad, or strong or weak, in accordance with some absolute moral yardstick. A depiction is not uncharitable merely because it does not conform to a preconceived notion of what we think we are, or would like to be. On the contrary, the real strength and resilience of a nation is often due to precisely those traits that are a derogation from the romanticized perception it has of itself. Equally, no one trait can be seen in isolation. The rampant corruption in India would appear to be negative in an absolute sense. But perhaps if Indians did not set so much store by material wealth, they would not be such resourceful entrepreneurs; if they were less pragmatic and more ‘other-worldly’, and were less concerned with success at any cost, they would also be less corrupt.

  The essential truth is that the personality of a people is complex and interconnected. It cannot be dissected in preferred segments. In fact, this book will make the argument that some so-called ‘uncomplimentary’ Indian attributes may have helped India in the past. For instance, if Indians actually thought parliamentary democracy to be a magic wand to create an egalitarian society (as some Anglicized members of the Constituent Assembly genuinely believed), they might have been disillusioned far too quickly, and could have followed much of the developing world in opting for more totalitarian systems. This unlikely political transplant from Britain survived its fledgling probation precisely because most Indians perceived it to be, in practical terms, a welcome and effective means for personal aggrandizement—a fortuitous occurrence indeed, for over time the butterfly looks all set to escape its flawed chrysalis. The intrinsic attraction of a quick ticket to personal power gave an increasing number of influential Indians (and their camp followers) the incentive to participate in the democratic process. The inherent fear of uncontrolled instability prevented the established polity, for all its flaws, from being violently overthrown. The amoral respect for profit, and for the material rewards life can offer, kept a trading class solvent, and nurtured entrepreneurship, even in such alien and hostile locales as Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso in Africa, where the only department store is owned by an Indian who arrived penniless but a few years ago. The propensity to compromise and coexist when survival is at stake, rather than heroically fight and die to the last man, allowed Hindu culture and civilization to outlive (and even be enriched by) the relentless conquests of proselytizing invaders.

  This book will also touch upon three new developments that are likely significantly to influence Indians in the coming years. The first is the emergence of a new pan-Indianness. The civilizational unity of India has been much written about, and not without reason. But such writings have been largely an attempt to identify continuities of culture in a people separated, at the micro level, by fairly impenetrable diversities. History, culture and tradition had forged an identity recognizable as Indian, with definitive elements of a common psyche, but the sum of this unity did not as yet have an all-Indian personality. An Indian in Varanasi and an Indian in Trichur may have read the same text in Sanskrit, or celebrated the same festivals, but they knew very little about each other, and shared very little in terms of a common exp
osure to the overarching Indian experience. This has changed gradually in the decades after 1947, and more dramatically in recent years.

  A second development is the slow but perceptible erosion of social hierarchies, earlier considered sacrosanct. Indians continue to be very conscious of hierarchy, and the influence of caste loyalties is still pervasive, but the formerly quiescent downtrodden, at the lowest end of the social spectrum, are restive as never before. Their aspirations to have a bigger piece of the national pie can no longer be suppressed or camouflaged. Democratic politics may not have been intended by the elite to have such undesirable consequences, but incremental political empowerment and economic trickle-down has by now fuelled ambitions and aspirations in more Indians than in any period of their history. How will these newly empowered, upwardly mobile Indians transform India in the twenty-first century? What will be the energy unleashed when social certainties, centuries old, are interrogated in actual practice, and not only in the rhetoric of politicians? Will the structures of the past, and the attitudes they breed, be overturned by the iconoclastic fervour of the newly resurgent? Or, will they emulate their erstwhile ‘oppressors’, seeking merely a bigger piece of the pie, not a change of recipe?

  A third factor is the emergence of India as a world power in information technology. It may sound paradoxical for a country with the largest number of illiterates in the world, but education has always been valued by the Indian elite, and in particular the Brahmins, as a means of perpetuating their supremacy. Not surprisingly, after Independence, the ruling class invested consistently in the creation of institutes of higher learning, even while paying lip service to the greater need of primary education. Over five decades, this duplicity had the predictable result of giving India one of the world’s largest pools of technically proficient manpower, and some very good training institutes in engineering, medicine and computer sciences. The right educational degree, like a career in politics, is now recognized as a passport to fast-track upward mobility. The involvement of young Indians in the infotech revolution must be seen in this context. Indian software professionals are in demand globally. Software exports from India have come to be compared to what oil exports have meant to the Arab world. India is being labelled a call centre superpower. Over 40 per cent of the world’s 500 largest corporations now do some of their back office processing in India. Will this rising curve last? Do Indians somehow have a natural talent in this field? How many of them are participating in, or benefitting from, this ‘revolution’? Will the innovative example of the new Indian millionaires in Silicon Valley be replicated? Or will most Indians be willing to remain software coolies? Above all, how will this trend influence the image of Indians overseas? In Cyprus, for instance, maids and servants come from Sri Lanka and the Philippines; software experts come from India. Will Indians change in response to this global expectation? And in what ways will they still remain the same?

  Societies change, but there are limits to change. Certain traits, which are the products of centuries of conditioning, do not easily change, and it is these that provide the distinctive cultural labels of a people. Others can be diluted or modified. Some new ones can, perhaps, be added, but they are mostly scaffolding on a largely unalterable edifice. It is this combination of (mostly) the old, and something of the new, that people carry as their cultural baggage in the journey towards the future.

  For Francis Fukuyama, author of the best-selling The End of History and the Last Man, the future has already arrived with the end of the Cold War and the triumph of Western capitalism. But even if the universality of his assumption is accepted, history will continue to be made by how ancient cultures like India reach that destination. The manner and degree in which Indians differ from the Americans, or from the Japanese, the Chinese or the Germans, will be of critical importance in an increasingly interconnected world. Fukuyama himself concedes this in his later, and far more perceptive work, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. The ability of nations to create social and economic prosperity will depend, he argues, on their culture. Culture is ‘inherited ethical habit’, a compound of images, habits, and social opinions that are arational, and ‘incapable of being systematized into universal laws’.4 The functioning of societies is conditioned by ‘certain premodern cultural habits’. There can be no immutable economic law applicable uniformly to all peoples, because, as Fukuyama points out, economics itself is rooted in social life, and cannot be comprehended in isolation from the broader issue of how modern societies structure themselves.5 On this premise, Fukuyama concluded that only societies with a high degree of social trust, which he defines as a community’s mutually shared norms of what they hold to be honest and cooperative practices,6 will be able to create the flexible, large-scale business organizations that are needed to compete in the new global economy.

  Fukuyama observes American society, and the failure of Americans to perceive their own society accurately. He also offers observations on the societies of China, France, Italy, South Korea, Japan and Germany. He did not study India. Nor has Samuel P. Huntington in his much-debated The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Like Fukuyama, Huntington argues that culture and cultural identity are crucial to most people’s identities. In the post-Cold War world, he asserts, the most important distinctions among peoples are cultural, and not political, economic or ideological; and ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs and institutions are the attributes by which people define themselves.7 The differences in the political and economic development of civilizations are, Huntington suggests, ascribable to their cultures.8 Attacking the ‘universalist pretensions’ of the West, he warns of an impending clash with other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China, that could pose a grave threat to world peace.

  Huntington’s generalizations about peoples and civilizations are well researched, if occasionally just that. But what is of significance to us is his confession that discussions of his thesis ‘exposed me to all the major civilizations except Hinduism’ (emphasis mine). Is there a reason why both Fukuyama and Huntington, in arguing theses that purport to encompass the globe, have omitted India from their research? Perhaps Indians are a sui generis people. They cannot be colour-coded for convenience into white, black or yellow. They do not belong to the Christian world. They cannot be included in the Islamic. Hindus, who constitute the overwhelming majority in India, live (in such large numbers) only in India and the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal. They cannot be so easily fitted into a mould. They are not post-communist, nor are they pre-democratic. They are not theocrats, nor are they irreligious. They are too many to be ignored, but somehow too different to be included in convenient generalizations. Moreover, for all their complexity, they are not entirely unfamiliar. They practise parliamentary democracy, and their elites can often speak very good English.

  But as we have argued in the very beginning, it may no longer be in anybody’s interest to ignore or blur over what Indians are really about, and where they are likely to take India in the twenty-first century. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber linked the growth of capitalism in Western Europe to the frugality, thrift and materialism of the early Puritans. Do Indians too have a USP, and if so, what is it? Fukuyama’s great virtue of social trust may be deficient in Indian society, but does that mean Indians will never be able to create a viable capitalist future for themselves? Will their natural amorality consign their society to terminal corruption, or will their materialistic pragmatism ensure sustainable economic growth in spite of this vice? Will their propensity to focus on ends (giving little thought to means) mire them in unproductive shortcuts, or will this very ‘weakness’ strengthen, too, the ability to win, whatever the hurdles?

  Will their excessive love for the perks of power fatally debase their political institutions or will this susceptibility foster also the accommodation and restraint necessary for the polity to survive? Will they regress towards sectarian extremism, or wil
l common sense and their aversion to disorder reinforce the practicality of coexistence? Will some of their leaders contrive to threaten the secular fabric of the country, or will they realize that successful politics in India has no option but to transcend religious lines? Will regional sensitivities increase, resulting in the balkanization of India, or will the growing sense of pan-Indianness prevail? Will the desire of the Indian elite to see their country as a global power fan military adventurism, or will the inherent Indian traits of compromise and self-preservation make for a responsible nuclear nation? Finally, will recent successes in information technology enduringly transform the self-image of Indians, or will the ‘dream’ last only until the next global recession?

  These are also some of the questions this book will seek to answer. Not all the answers can be categorical, or unquestionable. But they will perhaps show pointers to the likely destiny of India, on the basis of who Indians really are. Six years before the end of the last millennium, Henry Kissinger predicted that the twenty-first century will be dominated by at least six major powers—the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan, China ‘and probably India’.9 (emphasis mine) Will this note of uncertainty always define the future of India? Perhaps not, but quite clearly any serious assessment of her future needs to go beyond a mechanical tally of visible assets and obvious liabilities, to an analysis of the Indian personality and the culture that created it.

  Only such an approach can give outsiders appropriate insights into the strengths and weaknesses of India, and help them interact with Indians in more effective ways. Most importantly, it could help the Indian leadership to formulate policies that are congruent with the Indian psyche. Policies based on false assumptions about the character and traits of a people are likely to be subverted in practice, and fail to achieve desired national goals. A basic mistake by early policy makers in India was to assume an underlying idealism in the people, a commitment to some larger ‘public good’. Lawmakers sought to construct, and act upon, a transcendent set of desired goals, without focusing on the intricate web of narrow personal interests that actually motivate Indian society. The result is one of the world’s largest corpuses of high-minded laws, and one of its poorest records of implementation. A more honest self-estimation would have directed policy making to laws that rewarded ingenuity rather than equity, resourcefulness rather than compassion, profit rather than welfare, and the private rather than the public sector. For instance, it is only now being somewhat understood that measures for distributive justice in India tend to be successfully defeated by the haves and wastefully underutilized by the have-nots. Given the nature of Indians, only an increase in the size of the pie can genuinely hope to benefit the millions who are poor.