India — A Portrait by Patrick French; Penguin Books; Price: Rs.699; 435 pp
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The socially beneficial outcome of the publishing revolution of the past two decades is a harvest of post-independence India history narratives. For almost half a century after the Union Jack was pulled down from the ramparts of Delhi’s Red Fort on August 15, 1947, the academic tradition was to end all history books with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948. This tradition was driven mainly by government monopoly of the textbooks publishing industry, with the Nehruvian socialist establishment less than enthused about having the spotlight beamed upon its acts of omission and commission which rapidly dissipated the opportunities of political freedom.
Nevertheless the first of the ‘India biographies’ which blew the lid off post-1947 India’s sputtering national development effort was V.S. Naipaul’s Area of Darkness (1964) — a no-holds-barred searing account of the iniquities that Nehruvian socialism, central planning, and the neta-babu driven licence-permit-quota regime had begun to visit upon the people.
After that there was a long interregnum until Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi — the History of the World’s Largest Democracy (2007), undoubtedly the most authoritative and objective history of independent India, was published to rave reviews. This was followed by several memoirs-cum-contemporary histories including Rajmohan Gandhi’s Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire (2007) and journalist B.G. Verghese’s First Draft: Witness to the Making of Modern India (2010) — all favourably reviewed in EducationWorld. Now to this list add India — A Portrait by Patrick French, less a history and more an anthropological study of contemporary India.
Despite his relative youth, French, who is reportedly a son-in-law of the nation, is an old India hand having written several subcontinent centred biographies and histories including Younghusband: the Last Great Imperial Adventurer (1994); Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division (2006); Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land (2004), and most famously The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul (2008), a global best-seller which brilliantly captures the Noble Prize-winning author’s dedication to his craft, his idiosyncrasies and defining mean streak. Now in this book under review, French portrays the state of the nation in which the establishment and ruling classes have begun to entertain delusions of grandeur, completely ignoring the creeping rot festering at the bottom of the country’s iniquitous socio-economic pyramid.
The chief virtue of this “intimate biography of 1.2 billion people” is that it has seen through the conspiracies of several mutually supportive families, clans and cabals countrywide manipulating and perverting Indian democracy to perpetuate their rule. In a particularly illuminating chapter titled ‘Family Politics’, French hired a computer geek to analyse published data relating to the backgrounds of the 15th Lok Sabha members to illustrate the “shocking result” that “every MP in the Lok Sabha under the age of 30 had in effect inherited a seat and more than two-thirds of the 66 MPs aged 40 or under were HMPs (hereditary MPs)”. Quite obviously these HMPs born into privilege and accustomed to exercising a plethora of discretionary powers in the style of the maharajahs of pre-independence India, are unlikely to legislate the radical reforms which the country needs to usher in a new egalitarian order.
Just how great a failure is the Republic of India is detailed in the second part of this insightful biography of the nation. Titled ‘Lakshmi: Wealth’, the four chapters in this section lay bare the gross economic disparities in the inegalitarian society fashioned by the under-qualified dynasties and families which have rigged the system under the shining façade of the world’s largest democracy. The outcome is a spreading Maoist/anarchist movement described in the chapter ‘A Dismal Prospect’ and coterminous rise of a new fabulously rich crony capitalist elite typified by Sunil Mittal (Bharti Airtel) and the Ambani business dynasties. Another fallout is an uncaring and callous middle class exploiting cheap labour, as recounted in the story of a bonded labourer in a Mysore quarry made to work while chained to a post for seven years with nobody to intercede for him.
According to French, it’s not as though the dynasties, HMPs and other beneficiaries of nepotism rather than merit are getting away with it. Part III of the book highlights the ‘Outcastes’ Revenge’ exemplified by the Dalit revolt in the country’s most populous state (Uttar Pradesh) and elsewhere, and the reactionary excesses born out of the suffering of Dr. Ambedkar and millions of Dalits cruelly humiliated by Indian society.
Nepotism and corruption have also resulted in the rise of the country’s new criminal class: the police. Notorious for corruption, third degree and extortion, the country’s 18 million-strong police force answerable to state governments, is ill-trained and almost completely job illiterate. The pathetic inadequacy of the UP police is brought to the fore in detailed coverage of the Aarushi murder case in Part III of this perspicacious analysis of contemporary Indian society, whose injustices are made bearable only by the ‘Solace of Religion’ and the idiosyncrasies of its lunatic fringe, writes French.
Yet like all compassionate and well-intentioned historians and commentators, French fails to underline the most self-evident solution to the myriad maladies besetting the nation — “education, education, education” in the magic mantra prescribed by former British prime minister Tony Blair. The cleverest stratagem of post-independence India’s self-serving and self-perpetuating establishment has been to divide the education system into private and public, with the former reserved for their progeny and the dumbed-down latter system for the great mass of the poor.
Burdened with slapdash, obsolete syllabuses, chronic teacher absenteeism, bare-minimum decrepit infrastructure and abysmal learning outcomes besides few vocational education alternatives, the public education system has ensured that the children of the poor majority, forced by poverty into government schools, add to the vast pool of hewers of wood and drawers of water to serve the political dynasties, HMPs, members of the establishment and the cleverly networked and comprehensively amoral new middle class of shining India. The great fault of the nation’s languishing majority (and social reformers) is not in their stars, but in themselves for not insisting upon high quality education for all. For this persistent failure they are — and will remain — underlings.
Dilip Thakore
Ambedkar’s spiritual evolution
Ambedkar and Buddhism by Sangharakshita; Motilal Banarsidass Publishers; Price: Rs.150; 181 pp
Universally revered for his advocacy of justice and equality for Indian society’s traditionally oppressed lower castes and for framing the Indian Constitution, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s crowning achievement was his role in reviving Buddhism in the land of its birth, from where it had almost completely disappeared over the centuries, says this inspiring book. Disillusioned with the in-built, immutable hierarchies of Hinduism, Ambedkar along with tens of thousands of his followers converted to Buddhism in 1956, following which, vast numbers the world over have found solace in the doctrines of the Enlightened One.
Ambedkar and Buddhism provides a fascinating account of the gradual evolution of Ambedkar’s religious thinking which eventually culminated in his momentous decision to convert to Buddhism. The author, a well-known British Buddhist monk, speaks from years of experience of working among Buddhists in India and abroad, and from his own personal interaction with Ambedkar before and after the latter’s conversion. The narrative succinctly presents Ambedkar’s enlightened critique of Brahminical Hinduism, and narrates how he came to the conclusion that Buddhism was the best religious doctrine not only for oppressed Dalits but for other Indians as well — indeed, for humankind.
The book charts this rightly venerated social reformer and constitutional lawyer’s emergence as a leader committed to the emancipation of Dalits from the historical tyranny and abuse of the dominant castes, legitimised by Brahmin-interpreted Hindu scriptures.
Sangharakshita narrates milestone events in Ambedkar’s personal life when he was repeatedly humiliated for his low-caste origins despite his enviable educational qualifications and the important public positions he occupied, driving him to the conclusion that emancipation of Dalits and other oppressed castes was impossible within the framework of Brahminical Hinduism. He details Ambedkar’s initial, pre-conversion campaigns against upper caste persecution which prompted him to challenge bans on entry of Dalits into Hindu temples, their access to public tanks, his public burning of the Manusmriti — the Bible of Brahminism — which legitimised the permanent degradation of the Dalits and Shudras; and his consistent, unremitting opposition to the upper caste Hindu leadership of the Congress party. In 1935 at a Depressed Classes Conference, Ambedkar famously declared that although he had been born a Hindu, he did not intend to die as one.
Sangharakshita traces Ambedkar’s spiritual regeneration in the post-1947 phase, after he resigned from Nehru’s cabinet in 1951 because of the government’s apathy towards Dalits, and Nehru’s insufficient support to the Hindu Code Bill (drafted by Ambedkar) which posited radical reform of Hindu personal law. Ambedkar’s resignation from the cabinet in which he had served as law minister for four years marked the end of his political career. But according to the author, it was a blessing in disguise for it enabled him to devote more time to his spiritual growth and development.
In 1951 Ambedkar compiled the Buddha Upasana Patha, a collection of Buddhist devotional texts. In 1954, he paid two visits to Burma, following which he founded the Bharatiya Bauddha Mahasabha, or the Indian Buddhist Society, and announced that henceforth he would devote himself to propagating Buddhism countrywide. A year later, in 1956, came the big moment when together with 400,000 men and women, mostly from his own Mahar caste, Ambedkar recited the tri sarana (three refuges) and the pancha shila (five precepts) and formally embraced Buddhism at Nagpur, in what was probably the largest mass conversion event in world history. This instantly provi-ded the converted a new identity and sense of self-worth and pride.
Ambedkar’s stirring and uplifting story is a must-read for everyone concerned about the struggle for social justice in India, as well as for those seeking meaningful spirituality. It definitely deserves to reach more than a narrow English-language readership and needs to be translated into major regional languages.
Yoginder Sikand