07-09-2006, 06:12 PM
Looking for clouds on India's horizon.<b>(Book review)</b>
The Evening Standard (London, England); 6/5/2006
Byline: NIRPAL DHALIWAL
Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond by Pankaj Mishra (Picador, [pounds sterling]16.99)
ECONOMIC liberalisation has brought hundreds of millions of Indians an affluence they never had before; but because "the India of caste and poverty is never far away" Pankaj Mishra considers this partial progress to be morally empty.
<b>This lopsided view frames Temptations of the West,</b> his reflection on modernity in the subcontinent.
In 1947, India's overwhelmingly illiterate population lived mostly in a state of pre-industrial subsistence. Nonetheless, Mishra denounces India that "with all its inherited advantages" has <b>"failed to create a democratic and egalitarian society". </b> <i>(Commies' operative word - egalitarian)</i>
<b>This assertion is absurd</b>. It is a miracle that a billion-strong developing nation sustains the institutions for electoral representation. <b>Compared with other developing states India's achievement is staggering: it has never ossified into despotism nor disintegrated into anarchy - despite its fault lines of religion, caste, ethnicity and language. </b>
<b>Mishra gives this feat no credit. </b>
The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that steered the nation away from chaos while achieving growth and self-sufficiency is dismissed as producing "a sterile stability with no end but itself ". That the country has performed its democratic high-wire act for six decades testifies to the astuteness of its leaders, but Mishra disregards Indira Gandhi as "a not particularly sensitive or intelligent woman".
<b>Unlike the millions of Indians taking a stake in their country, Mishra doesn't want to believe in the nation. </b>
Meeting ordinary Indians at election time, he laments that "it was hard not to feel the strength of the hopes and desires of the people".
<b>He despises the new Indian middle class for being "nationalistic",</b> despite the fact that their energy, optimism and engagement with the world is driving India's boom.
<b>Mishra lacks moral and intellectual clarity.</b> <b>Pakistan flooded Kashmir with armed jihadists itching for holy war, but India is blamed for having "forced Kashmiri Muslims into a full-scale insurgency"</b>, though Indian Muslims "have an advantage denied to most Muslims [including Pakistanis!] in the world: they can participate in regular elections".
<b>It is morally untenable for a democracy to cede territory to a despotic state brimming with fundamentalists, but that is what Mishra thinks India should do.</b> Posing as a progressive, human liberty actually means little to him.
<b>Contemplating backwardness and repression in Pakistan, he responds with feeble relativism:</b> "I wanted them to have as much freedom as I had - but doubted whether the kind of life I lived was what these people longed for".
Observing multicultural London - where he lives - Mishra regards the hard-won rights that underpin it as merely "bland, middleclass tolerance".
In the 2004 elections, India voted in Italian-born Catholic Sonia Gandhi as prime minister; she then handed the office to Manmohan Singh, who, as a Sikh, belongs to a tiny religious minority. <b>These events destroy Mishra's argument that "fascistic" Hindu bigots dominate India</b>.
And, rather than reverse liberalisation, they were elected with a mandate to continue it.
<b>Such facts undermine the book's relevance, as does Mishra's silence on India's changing role in the world. </b>
Projected to soon become the world's third-largest economy, India is a nuclear power forging close ties with America, the global hyperpower. Mishra sees this enthusiasm for the US as just "seeking approval", ignoring the profound symmetry between the nations: two huge democracies committed to globalisation and the fight against fundamentalism. <b>The Indo-US relationship could define the 21st century, but is absent from Mishra's thoughts. </b>
<b>Being Indian, by Pavan K Varma, gives a more balanced and comprehensive view of modern India, while Suketu Mehta's Maximum City captures the grit and sassiness of its emerging culture. Both deal with the harsh realities of India, without wallowing in the thoughtless pessimism clouding Mishra's work. </b>
<i>COPYRIGHT 2006 Solo Syndication Limited</i>
The Evening Standard (London, England); 6/5/2006
Byline: NIRPAL DHALIWAL
Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond by Pankaj Mishra (Picador, [pounds sterling]16.99)
ECONOMIC liberalisation has brought hundreds of millions of Indians an affluence they never had before; but because "the India of caste and poverty is never far away" Pankaj Mishra considers this partial progress to be morally empty.
<b>This lopsided view frames Temptations of the West,</b> his reflection on modernity in the subcontinent.
In 1947, India's overwhelmingly illiterate population lived mostly in a state of pre-industrial subsistence. Nonetheless, Mishra denounces India that "with all its inherited advantages" has <b>"failed to create a democratic and egalitarian society". </b> <i>(Commies' operative word - egalitarian)</i>
<b>This assertion is absurd</b>. It is a miracle that a billion-strong developing nation sustains the institutions for electoral representation. <b>Compared with other developing states India's achievement is staggering: it has never ossified into despotism nor disintegrated into anarchy - despite its fault lines of religion, caste, ethnicity and language. </b>
<b>Mishra gives this feat no credit. </b>
The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that steered the nation away from chaos while achieving growth and self-sufficiency is dismissed as producing "a sterile stability with no end but itself ". That the country has performed its democratic high-wire act for six decades testifies to the astuteness of its leaders, but Mishra disregards Indira Gandhi as "a not particularly sensitive or intelligent woman".
<b>Unlike the millions of Indians taking a stake in their country, Mishra doesn't want to believe in the nation. </b>
Meeting ordinary Indians at election time, he laments that "it was hard not to feel the strength of the hopes and desires of the people".
<b>He despises the new Indian middle class for being "nationalistic",</b> despite the fact that their energy, optimism and engagement with the world is driving India's boom.
<b>Mishra lacks moral and intellectual clarity.</b> <b>Pakistan flooded Kashmir with armed jihadists itching for holy war, but India is blamed for having "forced Kashmiri Muslims into a full-scale insurgency"</b>, though Indian Muslims "have an advantage denied to most Muslims [including Pakistanis!] in the world: they can participate in regular elections".
<b>It is morally untenable for a democracy to cede territory to a despotic state brimming with fundamentalists, but that is what Mishra thinks India should do.</b> Posing as a progressive, human liberty actually means little to him.
<b>Contemplating backwardness and repression in Pakistan, he responds with feeble relativism:</b> "I wanted them to have as much freedom as I had - but doubted whether the kind of life I lived was what these people longed for".
Observing multicultural London - where he lives - Mishra regards the hard-won rights that underpin it as merely "bland, middleclass tolerance".
In the 2004 elections, India voted in Italian-born Catholic Sonia Gandhi as prime minister; she then handed the office to Manmohan Singh, who, as a Sikh, belongs to a tiny religious minority. <b>These events destroy Mishra's argument that "fascistic" Hindu bigots dominate India</b>.
And, rather than reverse liberalisation, they were elected with a mandate to continue it.
<b>Such facts undermine the book's relevance, as does Mishra's silence on India's changing role in the world. </b>
Projected to soon become the world's third-largest economy, India is a nuclear power forging close ties with America, the global hyperpower. Mishra sees this enthusiasm for the US as just "seeking approval", ignoring the profound symmetry between the nations: two huge democracies committed to globalisation and the fight against fundamentalism. <b>The Indo-US relationship could define the 21st century, but is absent from Mishra's thoughts. </b>
<b>Being Indian, by Pavan K Varma, gives a more balanced and comprehensive view of modern India, while Suketu Mehta's Maximum City captures the grit and sassiness of its emerging culture. Both deal with the harsh realities of India, without wallowing in the thoughtless pessimism clouding Mishra's work. </b>
<i>COPYRIGHT 2006 Solo Syndication Limited</i>