MAGAZINE COLUMN
The Indian Century
by Seth Rogovoy(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., May 10, 1997 ) -- With India celebrating the 50th anniversary of its liberation from British rule this year, we can expect to be hearing and reading a lot about this fascinating nation, which if some pundits are correct, may emerge as the world's preeminent superpower in the 21st century.
National Geographic
The cover story of the May issue of the trusty old National Geographic is devoted to India. You can rely on the Geographic, as one has come to expect, for brightly exotic photography, illuminating maps and charts, and reader-friendly text that entertains and educates.The pertinent facts are stated right up front: India boasts a billion people, one-sixth of the planet's population, in an area one-third the size of the U.S. More than a thousand languages and dialects are spoken there, and with more than 20 major political parties, India holds the title as the world's largest democracy.
That democracy, of course, is constantly being put to the test by cultural and economic pressures, as well as environmental degradation, natural disasters, war, religious strife and domestic politics. In the cover story, "India: Fifty Years of Independence," Geoffrey C. Ward writes, "....[F]ew countries have routinely paid a higher tariff than India has; from the moment it attained its independence, each advance in one area has seemed dogged by retreat somewhere else."
Ward, who spent part of his childhood in India, intersperses memories of what it was like in the '50s with the challenges India faces today. It is a nation of vast contrasts. It boasts one of the 10 largest emerging markets in the world, with an annual national growth rate of six percent. Rich in minerals and with an expanding high-tech industry, India has a middle-class as big as the entire population of the U.S. On the other hand, there are 350 million Indians living below the official poverty line. A strongly secular state with a deeply ingrained strain of Marxism, India is the setting for both dynamic capital investment and ancient religious struggles. It is at once perhaps the most ancient and most modern of civilizations.
Granta
If the National Geographic's coverage provides a nice, superficial gloss on where India has been and where it is headed, Granta's spring issue, entirely devoted to that nation's golden jubilee, gets you as close as possible inside India without your actually going there. This is accomplished by turning over the pages of the British quarterly almost entirely to Indians themselves, and letting them tell about their country through reportage, essays and short fiction.Among the highlights of this 288-page volume -- really a book -- about India are Urvashi Butalia's memoir, "Blood." One of the tragedies of India -- and apparently one of its defining moments -- was the vast population transfer that resulted from the political partition of the nation into Muslim Pakistan and nominally secular India that followed shortly after independence. This cleavage went to the very heart of the Indian soul -- much like our own Civil War -- and it perennially resurfaces in eruptions of violence like a festering wound, as Butalia recounts so vividly.
The city of Bombay may well be the perfect symbol of India's internal contradictions, as outlined in Suketu Mehta's "Mumbai." As Mehta, who grew up in Bombay -- now officially konwn as Mumbai -- explains, Bombay is simultaneously the richest and poorest city in India and perhaps the world (indeed, by the year 2020 it will be the world's largest city). It boasts the highest real estate prices on the globe and nearly 40 percent of India's taxes are paid by its residents, yet nearly half the population is homeless. Mehta's particular focus is on the Shiv Sena, the Hindu nationalist movement responsible for the massacre of hundreds of Muslims and the cultural intimidation of countless others.
Also heard from is the venerable R.K. Narayan, the most widely-read Indian author writing in English, whose "Kabir Street" is excerpted from the sequel to his novel "The World of Nagaraj." The eloquent opening paragraph immediately establishes the dilemma facing this middle-class businessman: "Nagaraj had begun to have doubts about his standing in his ancestral home, 14 Kabir Street. He was the titular head of the family, his wife, Sita, being the real ruler of the empire extending from the street to the lichen-covered backyard wall with a door opening on to the sands of the River Sarayu."
It is the volume's final story, however, that suggests the shape of things to come in Indian literature. "Things Can Change In a Day," an excerpt from Arundhati Roy's first novel, "The God of Small Things," introduces a writer of Joycean scope. With an unforgettable cast of characters, a gripping narrative and a Proustian gift for making sensory stimuli palpable, Roy's every sentence brings to life the conflicts and struggles at the heart of the contemporary Indian soul.
As Granta editor Ian Jack -- who has himself lived in India -- points out in his marvelous introduction, some time in the next 40 years India will surpass China as the most populous nation in the world. That fact, combined with India's dynamic economy, open political system and engaged world outlook -- as well as its enormous, nuclear- equipped armed forces -- is worth thinking about, and reading about.
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In the May issue of Harper's Magazine, in "Toward an End to Blackness," Jim Sleeper makes the argument that racism has not grown stronger, but our sense of national identity has grown weaker. As a result, well-intentioned efforts at integration are stymied by a lack of a defining culture around and into which both blacks and whites can integrate.Think campus activism is dead? Think again. "UMass Student Movement" by Dickie Wallace in the May issue of Z Magazine recounts a week- long student protest at the state university's campus in Amherst earlier this year. The student demands centered around support for ALANA, an umbrella organization advocating for Africans, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans. In the aftermath of the protest, according to Wallace, student groups from throughout the Five College community are now working together in common cause.
For the essence of stupid, totally market-driven magazine publishing, check out the premiere issue of Maxim, a new men's magazine. The spring issue features such no-brainer features as how to buy lingerie for the lady in your life and a "six-step guide to getting what want from the woman you love." Here's my own tip: don't let her see you with a copy of this magazine.
[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on May 10, 1997. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1997. All rights reserved.]
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
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