Step Across This Line Part 6

"Imagine There's No Heaven"

A LETTER TO THE SIX BILLIONTH WORLD CITIZEN.

[Written for a UN-backed anthology of such letters]

Dear little Six Billionth Living Person, As the newest member of a notoriously inquisitive species, you'll probably soon be asking the two sixty-four-thousand-dollar questions with which the other 5,999,999,999 of us have been wrestling for some time: How did we get here? And, now that we are here, how shall we live?

Oddly-as if six billion of us weren't enough to be going on with-it will almost certainly be suggested to you that the answer to the question of origins requires you to believe in the existence of a further, invisible, ineffable Being "somewhere up there," an omnipotent creator whom we poor limited creatures are unable even to perceive, much less to understand. That is, you will be strongly encouraged to imagine a heaven, with at least one G.o.d in residence. This sky-G.o.d, it's said, made the universe by churning its matter in a giant pot. Or, he danced. Or, he vomited Creation out of himself. Or, he simply called it into being, and lo, it Was. In some of the more interesting creation stories, the single mighty sky-G.o.d is subdivided into many lesser forces-junior deities, avatars, gigantic metamorphic "ancestors" whose adventures create the landscape, or the whimsical, wanton, meddling, cruel pantheons of the great polytheisms, whose wild doings will convince you that the real engine of creation was l.u.s.t: for infinite power, for too easily broken human bodies, for clouds of glory. But it's only fair to add that there are also stories which offer the message that the primary creative impulse was, and is, love.

Many of these stories will strike you as extremely beautiful, and therefore seductive. Unfortunately, however, you will not be required to make a purely literary response to them. Only the stories of "dead" religions can be appreciated for their beauty. Living religions require much more of you. So you will be told that belief in "your" stories, and adherence to the rituals of wors.h.i.+p that have grown up around them, must become a vital part of your life in the crowded world. They will be called the heart of your culture, even of your individual ident.i.ty. It is possible that they may at some point come to feel inescapable, not in the way that the truth is inescapable but in the way that a jail is. They may at some point cease to feel like the texts in which human beings have tried to solve a great mystery and feel, instead, like the pretexts for other, properly anointed human beings to order you around. And it's true that human history is full of the public oppression wrought by the charioteers of the G.o.ds. In the opinion of religious people, however, the private comfort that religion brings more than compensates for the evil done in its name.

As human knowledge has grown, it has also become plain that every religious story ever told about how we got here is quite simply wrong. This, finally, is what all religions have in common. They didn't get it right. There was no celestial churning, no maker's dance, no vomiting of galaxies, no snake or kangaroo ancestors, no Valhalla, no Olympus, no six-day conjuring trick followed by a day of rest. Wrong, wrong, wrong. But here's something genuinely odd. The wrongness of the sacred tales hasn't lessened the zeal of the devout in the least. If anything, the sheer out-of-step zaniness of religion leads the religious to insist ever more stridently on the importance of blind faith.

As a result of this faith, by the way, it has proved impossible, in many parts of the world, to prevent the human race's numbers from swelling alarmingly. Blame the overcrowded planet at least partly on the misguidedness of the race's spiritual guides. In your own lifetime, you may well witness the arrival of the nine billionth world citizen. If you're Indian (and there's a one in six chance that you are) you will be alive when, thanks to the failure of family-planning schemes in that poor, G.o.d-ridden land, its population surges past China's. And if too many people are being born as a result, in part, of religious strictures against birth control, then too many people are also dying because religious culture, by refusing to face the facts of human s.e.xuality, also refuses to fight against the spread of s.e.xually transmitted diseases.

There are those who say that the great wars of the new century will once again be wars of religion, jihads and crusades, as they were in the Middle Ages. I don't believe them, or not in the way they mean it. Take a look at the Muslim world, or rather the Islamist Islamist world, to use the word coined to describe Islam's present-day "political arm." The divisions between its great powers (Afghanistan versus Iran versus Iraq versus Saudi Arabia versus Syria versus Egypt) are what strike you most forcefully. There's very little resembling a common purpose. Even after the non-Islamic NATO fought a war for the Muslim Kosovar Albanians, the Muslim world was slow in coming forward with much-needed humanitarian aid. world, to use the word coined to describe Islam's present-day "political arm." The divisions between its great powers (Afghanistan versus Iran versus Iraq versus Saudi Arabia versus Syria versus Egypt) are what strike you most forcefully. There's very little resembling a common purpose. Even after the non-Islamic NATO fought a war for the Muslim Kosovar Albanians, the Muslim world was slow in coming forward with much-needed humanitarian aid.

The real wars of religion are the wars religions unleash against ordinary citizens within their "spheres of influence." They are wars of the G.o.dly against the largely defenseless-American fundamentalists against pro-choice doctors, Iranian mullahs against their country's Jewish minority, the Taliban against the people of Afghanistan, Hindu fundamentalists in Bombay against that city's increasingly fearful Muslims.

The victors in that war must not be the closed-minded, marching into battle with, as ever, G.o.d on their side. To choose unbelief is to choose mind over dogma, to trust in our humanity instead of all these dangerous divinities. So, how did we get here? Don't look for the answer in storybooks. Imperfect human knowledge may be a b.u.mpy, potholed street, but it's the only road to wisdom worth taking. Virgil, who believed that the apiarist Aristaeus could spontaneously generate new bees from the rotting carca.s.s of a cow, was closer to a truth about origins than all the revered old books.

The ancient wisdoms are modern nonsenses. Live in your own time, use what we know, and as you grow up, perhaps the human race will finally grow up with you and put aside childish things.

As the song says, "It's easy if you try."

As for morality, the second great question-how to live? What is right action, and what wrong?-it comes down to your willingness to think for yourself. Only you can decide if you want to be handed down the law by priests, and accept that good and evil are somehow external to ourselves. To my mind religion, even at its most sophisticated, essentially infantilizes our ethical selves by setting infallible moral Arbiters and irredeemably immoral Tempters above us; the eternal parents, good and bad, light and dark, of the supernatural realm.

How, then, are we to make ethical choices without a divine rule-book or judge? Is unbelief just the first step on the long slide into the brain-death of cultural relativism, according to which many unbearable things-female circ.u.mcision, to name just one-can be excused on culturally specific grounds, and the universality of human rights, too, can be ignored? (This last piece of moral unmaking finds supporters in some of the world's most authoritarian regimes and also, unnervingly, on the op-ed pages of The Daily Telegraph. The Daily Telegraph.) Well, no, it isn't, but the reasons for saying so aren't clear-cut. Only hard-line ideology is clear-cut. Freedom, which is the word I use for the secular-ethical position, is inevitably fuzzier. Yes, freedom is that s.p.a.ce in which contradiction can reign, it is a never-ending debate. It is not in itself the answer to the question of morals but the conversation about that question.

And it is much more than mere relativism, because it is not merely a never-ending talk-shop, but a place in which choices are made, values defined and defended. Intellectual freedom, in European history, has mostly meant freedom from the restraints of the Church, not the State. This is the battle Voltaire was fighting, and it's also what all six billion of us could do for ourselves, the revolution in which each of us could play our small, six-billionth part: once and for all we could refuse to allow priests, and the fictions on whose behalf they claim to speak, to be the policemen of our liberties and behavior. Once and for all we could put the stories back into the books, put the books back on the shelves, and see the world undogmatized and plain.

Imagine there's no heaven, my dear Six Billionth, and at once the sky's the limit.

July 1997

"Damme, This Is the Oriental.

Scene for You!"

I once gave a reading to university students in Delhi, and when I'd finished a young woman put up her hand. "Mr. Rushdie, I read through your novel Midnight's Children, Midnight's Children," she said. "It is a very long book, but never mind, I read it through. The question I want to ask is this: fundamentally, what's your point?"

Before I could attempt an answer, she spoke again. "Oh, I know what you're going to say. You're going to say that the whole effort-from cover to cover-that is the point of the exercise. Isn't that what you were going to say?"

"Something like that, perhaps . . ." I got out.

She snorted. "It won't do."

"Please," I begged, "do I have to have just one point?"

"Fundamentally," she said, with impressive firmness, "yes."

Contemporary Indian literature remains largely unknown in the United States, in spite of its considerable present-day energy and diversity. The few writers that have made an impression (R. K. Narayan, Vikram Seth) are inevitably read in a kind of literary isolation: texts without context. Some writers of Indian descent (V. S. Naipaul, Bharati Mukherjee) reject the ethnic label of "Indian writers," perhaps in an effort to place themselves in other, better-understood literary contexts. Mukherjee sees herself nowadays as an American writer, while Naipaul would perhaps prefer to be read as an artist from nowhere and everywhere. Indians (and, since the part.i.tion of the subcontinent almost fifty years ago, one should also say Pakistanis) have long been migrants, seeking their fortunes in Africa, Australia, Britain, the Caribbean, and America, and this diaspora has produced many writers who lay claim to an excess of roots; writers like the Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali, whose verses look toward Srinagar from Amherst, Ma.s.sachusetts, by way of other catastrophes: what else besides G.o.d disappears at the altar?O Kashmir, Armenia once vanished. Words are nothing,just rumors-like roses-to embellish a slaughter.

How, then, to make any simple, summarizing statement-"fundamentally, what's your point?"-about so multiform a literature, hailing from that huge crowd of a country (close to a billion people at the last count), that vast, metamorphic, continent-sized culture that feels, to Indians and visitors alike, like a non-stop a.s.sault on the senses, the emotions, the imagination, and the spirit? Put India in the Atlantic Ocean and it would reach from Europe to America; put India and China together and you've got almost half the population of the world.

These days, new Indian writers seem to emerge every few weeks. Their work is as polymorphous as the place, and readers who care about the vitality of literature will find at least some of these voices saying something they want to hear. The approaching fiftieth anniversary of Indian independence is a useful pretext for a survey of half a century of post-liberation writing. For many months now, I have been reading my way through this literature, and my Delhi interrogator may be pleased to hear that the experience has indeed led me to a single-unexpected, and profoundly ironic-conclusion.

This is it: the prose writing-both fiction and non-fiction-created in this period by Indian writers working in English is proving to be a more interesting body of work than most of what has been produced in the sixteen "official languages" of India, the so-called vernacular languages, during the same time.

It is a large claim, though it may be an easy one for Western readers to accept; if most of India's English-language writers are still largely unknown in the West, the problem is far greater in the case of the vernacular literatures. Of India's nonEnglish language authors, perhaps only the name of the n.o.bel Prizewinning Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore would be recognized, and even his work, though still popular in Latin America, is pretty much a closed book elsewhere.

However, it is a claim that runs counter to almost all the received critical wisdom within India itself. *16 *16 It is also not a claim that I ever expected to make. It is also not a claim that I ever expected to make.

Admittedly, I did my reading only in English, and there has long been a genuine problem of translation in India-not only into English but between the vernacular languages-and it is possible that good writers have been ill served by their translators' inadequacies. Nowadays, however, such bodies as the Indian Sahitya Akademi and UNESCO, as well as Indian publishers themselves, have been putting substantial resources into the creation of better translations, and the problem, while not eradicated, is certainly much diminished.

I should add that I exclude poetry from my thesis. The rich poetic traditions of India continue to flourish in many languages; the English-language poets, with a few distinguished exceptions-Arun Kolatkar, A. K. Ramanujan, Jayanta Mahapatra, Dom Moraes-do not match the quality of their counterparts in prose.

Ironically, the century before Independence contains many vernacular-language writers who would merit a place in any anthology: Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Rabindranath Tagore, Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, Mirza Ghalib, Bibhutibhushan Banerjee (the author of Pather Panchali, Pather Panchali, on which Satyajit Ray based his celebrated Apu Trilogy of films), and Premchand, the prolific (and therefore rather variable) Hindi author of, among many others, the famous novel of rural life on which Satyajit Ray based his celebrated Apu Trilogy of films), and Premchand, the prolific (and therefore rather variable) Hindi author of, among many others, the famous novel of rural life G.o.daan, G.o.daan, or or The Gift of a Cow. The Gift of a Cow.

This is not to say that there aren't excellent writers to be found outside English. The leading figures include Mahasveta Devi (Bengali), O. V. Vijayan (Malayalam), Nirmal Verma (Hindi), U. R. Ananthamurthy (Kannada), Suresh Jos.h.i.+ (Gujarati), Amrita Pritam (Punjabi), Qurratulain Haider (Urdu), and Ismat Chughtai (Urdu). But these artists are scattered across many languages; it's the concentration of new talent in English that has created the phenomenon, the "boom." For my money, the finest Indian writer available in translation-a greater writer than most of the English-language ones-is Saadat Hasan Manto, an immensely popular Urdu writer of low-life fictions, sometimes scorned by conservative critics for his choice of characters and milieus, much as Virginia Woolf sn.o.bbishly disparaged the fictional universe of James Joyce's Ulysses. Ulysses. Manto's masterpiece is perhaps the short story "Toba Tek Singh," a parable of the Part.i.tion of India, in which a lunatic asylum near the new frontier decides that the lunatics, too, must be part.i.tioned: Indian lunatics to India, Pakistani lunatics to the new country of Pakistan. But everything is unclear: the exact location of the frontier, and of the places of origin of the insane persons, too. The lunacies in the asylum become, in this savagely funny story, a perfect metaphor for the greater insanity of history. Manto's masterpiece is perhaps the short story "Toba Tek Singh," a parable of the Part.i.tion of India, in which a lunatic asylum near the new frontier decides that the lunatics, too, must be part.i.tioned: Indian lunatics to India, Pakistani lunatics to the new country of Pakistan. But everything is unclear: the exact location of the frontier, and of the places of origin of the insane persons, too. The lunacies in the asylum become, in this savagely funny story, a perfect metaphor for the greater insanity of history.

For some Indian critics, English-language Indian writing will never be more than a post-colonial anomaly, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d child of Empire, sired on India by the departing British; its continuing use of the old colonial tongue is seen as a fatal flaw that renders it forever inauthentic. "Indo-Anglian" literature evokes, in these critics, the kind of prejudiced reaction shown by some Indians toward the country's community of "Anglo-Indians"-that is, Eurasians.

Fifty years ago Jawaharlal Nehru delivered, in English, the great "freedom at midnight" speech that marked the moment of independence: At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."

Since that indisputably Anglophone oration, the role of English itself has often been disputed in India. Attempts in India's continental shelf of languages to coin medical, scientific, technological, and everyday neologisms to replace the commonly used English words sometimes succeeded, but more often comically failed. And when the Marxist government of the state of Bengal announced in the mid-1980s that the supposedly elitist, colonialist teaching of English would be discontinued in government-run primary schools, many on the Left denounced the decision itself as elitist, as it would deprive the ma.s.ses of the many economic and social advantages of speaking the world's language; only the affluent private-school elite would henceforth have that privilege. A well-known Calcutta graffito complained, "My son won't learn English. Your son won't learn English. But Jyoti Basu [the Chief Minister] will send his son abroad to learn English." One man's ghetto of privilege is another's road to freedom.

Like the Greek G.o.d Dionysus, who was dismembered and afterward rea.s.sembled-and who, according to the myths, was one of India's earliest conquerors-Indian writing in English has been called "twice-born" (by the critic Meenaks.h.i.+ Mukherjee) to suggest its double parentage. While I am, I must admit, attracted by the Dionysian resonances of this supposedly double birth, it seems to me to rest on the false premise that English, having arrived from outside India, is and must necessarily remain an alien there. But my own mother-tongue, Urdu, the camp-argot of the country's earlier Muslim conquerors, was also an immigrant language, forged out of a blend between the conquerors' imported tongue and the local languages they encountered. However, it became a naturalized subcontinental language long ago; and by now that has happened to English, too. English has become an Indian language. Its colonial origins mean that, like Urdu and unlike all other Indian languages, it has no regional base; but in all other ways, it has emphatically come to stay.

(In many parts of South India, people will prefer to converse with visiting North Indians in English rather than Hindi, which feels, ironically, more like a colonial language to speakers of Tamil, Kannada, or Malayalam than does English, which has acquired, in the South, an aura of lingua franca cultural neutrality. The new Silicon Valleystyle boom in computer technology that is transforming the economies of Bangalore and Madras has made English, in those cities, an even more important language than before.) Indian English is not "English" English, to be sure, any more than Irish or American or Caribbean English is. And it is a part of the achievement of English-language Indian writers to have found literary voices as distinctively Indian, and also as suitable for any and all of the purposes of art, as those other Englishes forged in Ireland, Africa, the West Indies, and the United States.

However, Indian critical a.s.saults on this new literature continue to be made from time to time. Its pract.i.tioners are denigrated for being too upper-middle-cla.s.s; for lacking diversity in their choice of themes and techniques; for being less popular in India than outside India; for possessing inflated reputations on account of the international power of the English language, and of the ability of Western critics and publishers to impose their cultural standards on the East; for living, in many cases, outside India; for being deracinated to the point that their work lacks the spiritual dimension essential for a "true" understanding of the soul of India; for being insufficiently grounded in the ancient literary traditions of India; for being the literary equivalent of MTV culture, of globalizing Coca-Colonization; even, I'm sorry to report, for suffering from a condition that one waspish recent commentator, Pankaj Mishra, calls "Rushdie-itis . . . [a] condition that has claimed Rushdie himself in his later works."

It is interesting that so few of these criticisms are literary in the pure sense of the word. For the most part they do not deal with language, voice, psychological or social insight, imagination, or talent. Rather, they are about cla.s.s, power, and belief. There is a whiff of political correctness about them: the ironical proposition that India's best writing since Independence may have been done in the language of the departed imperialists is simply too much for some folks to bear. It ought not to be true, and so must not be permitted to be true. (That many of the attacks on English-language Indian writing are made in English by writers who are themselves members of the college-educated, English-speaking elite is a further irony.) Let us quickly concede what must be conceded. It is true that most of these writers come from the educated cla.s.ses of India; but in a country still bedeviled by high illiteracy levels, how could it be otherwise? It does not follow, however-unless one holds to a rigid, cla.s.s-war view of the world-that writers with the privilege of a good education will automatically write novels that seek only to portray the lives of the bourgeoisie. It is true that there tends to be a bias toward metropolitan and cosmopolitan fiction, but there has been, during this half century, a genuine attempt to encompa.s.s as many Indian realities as possible, rural as well as urban, sacred as well as profane. This is also, let us remember, a young literature. It is still pus.h.i.+ng out the frontiers of the possible.

The point about the power of the English language, and of the Western publis.h.i.+ng and critical fraternities, also contains some truth. Perhaps it does seem, to some "home" commentators, that a canon is being foisted on them from outside. The perspective from the West is rather different. Here, what seems to be the case is that Western publishers and critics have been growing gradually more and more excited by the voices emerging from India; in England at least, British writers are often chastised by reviewers for their lack of Indian-style ambition and verve. It feels as if the East is imposing itself on the West, rather than the other way around.

And, yes, English is the most powerful medium of communication in the world; should we not then rejoice at these artists' mastery of it, and at their growing influence? To criticize writers for their success at "breaking out" is no more than parochialism (and parochialism is perhaps the main vice of the vernacular literatures). One important dimension of literature is that it is a means of holding a conversation with the world. These writers are ensuring that India or, rather, Indian voices (for they are too good to fall into the trap of writing nationalistically nationalistically) will henceforth be confident, indispensable partic.i.p.ants in that literary conversation.

Granted, many of these writers do have homes outside India. Henry James, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Mavis Gallant, James Baldwin, Graham Greene, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, Muriel Spark were or are wanderers, too. Muriel Spark, accepting the British Literature Prize for a lifetime's achievement in March 1997, went so far as to say that travel to other countries was essential for all writers. Literature has little or nothing to do with a writer's home address.

The question of religious faith, both as a subject and as an approach to a subject, is clearly important when we speak of a country as bursting with devotions as India; but it is surely excessive to use it, as does one leading academic, the redoubtable Professor C. D. Narasimhaiah, as a touchstone, so that Mulk Raj Anand is praised for his "daring" merely because, as a leftist writer, he allows a character to be moved by deep faith, while Arun Kolatkar's poetry is denigrated for "throwing away tradition and creating a vacuum," and so "losing relevance," because in Jejuri, Jejuri, a cycle of poems about a visit to a temple town, he skeptically likens the stone G.o.ds in the temples to the stones on the hillsides nearby ("and every other stone / is G.o.d or his cousin"). In fact, many of the writers I admire have profound knowledge of the "soul of India"; many have deeply spiritual concerns, while others are radically secular, but the need to engage with, to make a reckoning with, India's religious self is everywhere to be found. a cycle of poems about a visit to a temple town, he skeptically likens the stone G.o.ds in the temples to the stones on the hillsides nearby ("and every other stone / is G.o.d or his cousin"). In fact, many of the writers I admire have profound knowledge of the "soul of India"; many have deeply spiritual concerns, while others are radically secular, but the need to engage with, to make a reckoning with, India's religious self is everywhere to be found.

The cheapening of artistic response implied by the allegations of deracination and Westernization is notably absent from these writers' work. As to the claims of excessive Rushdie-itis, I can't deny that I used on occasion to feel something of the sort myself. However, it was a short-lived virus. Those whom it affected soon shook it off and found their own true voices. And these days more or less everyone seems immune to the disease.

At any rate, there is not, need not be, should not be, an adversarial relations.h.i.+p between English-language literature and the other literatures of India. In my own case, and I suspect in the case of every Indian writer in English, knowing and loving the Indian languages in which I was raised has remained of vital personal and artistic importance. As an individual, I know that Hindi-Urdu, the "Hindustani" of North India, remains an essential aspect of my sense of self; as a writer, I have been partly formed by the presence, in my head, of that other music, the rhythms, patterns, and habits of thought and metaphor of my Indian tongues.

Whatever language we write in, we drink from the same well. India, that inexhaustible horn of plenty, nourishes us all.

The first Indian novel in English was a dud. Rajmohan's Wife Rajmohan's Wife (1864) is a poor melodramatic thing. The writer, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, reverted to Bengali and immediately achieved great renown. For seventy years or so there was no English-language fiction of any quality. It was the generation of Independence, "midnight's parents," one might call them, who were the true architects of this new tradition. (Jawaharlal Nehru himself was a fine writer; his autobiography and letters are important, influential works. And his niece, Nayantara Sahgal, whose early memoir (1864) is a poor melodramatic thing. The writer, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, reverted to Bengali and immediately achieved great renown. For seventy years or so there was no English-language fiction of any quality. It was the generation of Independence, "midnight's parents," one might call them, who were the true architects of this new tradition. (Jawaharlal Nehru himself was a fine writer; his autobiography and letters are important, influential works. And his niece, Nayantara Sahgal, whose early memoir Prison and Chocolate Cake Prison and Chocolate Cake contains perhaps the finest evocation of the heady time of Independence, went on to become a major novelist.) contains perhaps the finest evocation of the heady time of Independence, went on to become a major novelist.) In that generation, Mulk Raj Anand was influenced by both Joyce and Marx but most of all, perhaps, by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. He is best known for social-realist works like the novel Coolie, Coolie, a study of working-cla.s.s life reminiscent of post-war Italian neo-realist cinema (De Sica's a study of working-cla.s.s life reminiscent of post-war Italian neo-realist cinema (De Sica's Bicycle Thief, Bicycle Thief, Rossellini's Rossellini's Open City Open City). Raja Rao, a scholarly Sanskritist, wrote determinedly of the need to make an Indian English for himself, but even his much-praised portrait of village life, Kanthapura, Kanthapura, now seems dated, its approach at once grandiloquent and archaic. The centenarian autobiographer Nirad C. Chaudhuri has been, throughout his long life, an erudite, contrary, and mischievous presence. His view, if I may paraphrase and summarize it, is that India has no culture of its own, and that whatever we now call Indian culture was brought in from outside by the successive waves of conquerors. This view, polemically and brilliantly expressed, has not endeared him to many of his fellow-Indians. That he has always swum so strongly against the current has not, however, prevented now seems dated, its approach at once grandiloquent and archaic. The centenarian autobiographer Nirad C. Chaudhuri has been, throughout his long life, an erudite, contrary, and mischievous presence. His view, if I may paraphrase and summarize it, is that India has no culture of its own, and that whatever we now call Indian culture was brought in from outside by the successive waves of conquerors. This view, polemically and brilliantly expressed, has not endeared him to many of his fellow-Indians. That he has always swum so strongly against the current has not, however, prevented The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian from being recognized as the masterpiece it is. from being recognized as the masterpiece it is.

The most significant writers of this first generation, R. K. Narayan and G. V. Desani, have had opposite careers. Narayan's books fill a good-sized shelf; Desani is the author of a single work of fiction, All About H. Hatterr, All About H. Hatterr, and that singleton volume is already fifty years old. Desani is almost unknown, while R. K. Narayan is, of course, a figure of world stature, for his creation of the imaginary town of Malgudi, so lovingly made that it has become more vividly real to us than most real places. (But Narayan's realism is leavened by touches of legend; the river Sarayu, on whose sh.o.r.es the town sits, is one of the great rivers of Hindu mythology. It is as if William Faulkner had set his Yoknapatawpha County on the banks of the Styx.) and that singleton volume is already fifty years old. Desani is almost unknown, while R. K. Narayan is, of course, a figure of world stature, for his creation of the imaginary town of Malgudi, so lovingly made that it has become more vividly real to us than most real places. (But Narayan's realism is leavened by touches of legend; the river Sarayu, on whose sh.o.r.es the town sits, is one of the great rivers of Hindu mythology. It is as if William Faulkner had set his Yoknapatawpha County on the banks of the Styx.) Narayan shows us, over and over again, the quarrel between traditional, static India, on the one hand, and modernity and progress, on the other; represented, in many of his stories and novels, by a confrontation between a "wimp" and a "bully"-The Painter of Signs and his aggressive beloved with her birth control campaign; The Vendor of Sweets and the emanc.i.p.ated American daughter-in-law with the absurd "novel writing machine"; the mild-mannered printer and the extrovert taxidermist in The Man-Eater of Malgudi. The Man-Eater of Malgudi. In his gentle, lightly funny art, he goes to the heart of the Indian condition and, beyond it, into the human condition itself. In his gentle, lightly funny art, he goes to the heart of the Indian condition and, beyond it, into the human condition itself.

The writer I have placed alongside Narayan, G. V. Desani, has fallen so far from favor that the extraordinary All About H. Hatterr All About H. Hatterr is presently out of print everywhere, even in India. Milan Kundera once said that all modern literature descends from either Richardson's is presently out of print everywhere, even in India. Milan Kundera once said that all modern literature descends from either Richardson's Clarissa Clarissa or Sterne's or Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Tristram Shandy, and if Narayan is India's Richardson then Desani is his Shandean other. and if Narayan is India's Richardson then Desani is his Shandean other. Hatterr Hatterr's dazzling, puzzling, leaping prose is the first genuine effort to go beyond the Englishness of the English language. His central figure, "fifty-fifty of the species," the half-breed as unabashed anti-hero, leaps and capers behind the work of many of his successors: The earth was blotto with the growth of willow, peach, mango-blossom, and flower. Every ugly thing, and smell, was in incognito, as fragrance and freshness. Being p.r.o.ne, this typical spring-time dash and activity, played an exulting phantasmagoria-note on the inner-man. Medically speaking, the happy circ.u.mstances vibrated my ductless glands, and fused me into a wibble-wobble Whoa, Jamieson! Whoa, Jamieson! fillip-and-flair to fillip-and-flair to live, live! live, live!

Or, again: The incidents take place in India. I was exceedingly hard-up of cash: actually, in debts. And, it is amazing, how, out in the Orient, the shortage of cash gets mixed up with romance and females somehow! In this England, they say, if a fellah is broke, females, as matter of course, forsake. Stands to reason. Whereas, out in the East, they attach themselves! Damme, this is the Oriental scene for you!

This is "babu-English," the semi-literate, half-learned English of the bazaars, trans.m.u.ted by erudition, highbrow monkeying around, and the impish magic of Desani's unique phrasing and rhythm, into an entirely new kind of literary voice. Hard to imagine I. Allan Sealy's more recent, Eurasian comic-epic The Trotter-Nama, The Trotter-Nama, an enormous tome full of interpolations, exclamations, resumptions, encomiums, and catastrophes, without Desani. My own writing, too, learned a trick or two from him. an enormous tome full of interpolations, exclamations, resumptions, encomiums, and catastrophes, without Desani. My own writing, too, learned a trick or two from him.

Ved Mehta is well known both for his astute commentaries on the Indian scene and for his several distinguished volumes of autobiography. The first of these is the most moving: Vedi, Vedi, a memoir of a blind boyhood that describes cruelties and kindnesses with equal dispa.s.sion and great affect. (More recently, Firdaus Kanga, in his autobiographical fiction a memoir of a blind boyhood that describes cruelties and kindnesses with equal dispa.s.sion and great affect. (More recently, Firdaus Kanga, in his autobiographical fiction Trying to Grow, Trying to Grow, has also transcended physical affliction with high style and comic brio.) has also transcended physical affliction with high style and comic brio.) Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, author of the Booker Prizewinning Heat and Dust Heat and Dust (afterward made into a Merchant-Ivory movie), is a renowned master of the short-story form. As a writer, she is sometimes under-rated in India because, I think, the voice of the rootless intellectual (so quintessentially her voice) is such an unfamiliar one in that country where people's self-definitions are so rooted in their regional ident.i.ties. (afterward made into a Merchant-Ivory movie), is a renowned master of the short-story form. As a writer, she is sometimes under-rated in India because, I think, the voice of the rootless intellectual (so quintessentially her voice) is such an unfamiliar one in that country where people's self-definitions are so rooted in their regional ident.i.ties.

That Ruth Jhabvala has a second career as an award-winning screenwriter is well known. But not many people realize that India's greatest film director, the late Satyajit Ray, was also an accomplished author of short stories. His father edited a famous Bengali children's magazine, Sandesh, Sandesh, and Ray's biting little fables are made more potent by their childlike charm. and Ray's biting little fables are made more potent by their childlike charm.

Anita Desai, one of India's major living authors, merits comparison with Jane Austen. In novels such as Clear Light of Day Clear Light of Day-written in a clear, light English full of subtle atmospherics-she displays both her exceptional skill at social portraiture and an unsparing, Austen-like mordancy of insight into human motivations. In Custody, In Custody, perhaps her best novel to date, finely uses English to depict the decay of another language, Urdu, and the high literary culture that lived in it. Here the poet, the last, boozing, decrepit custodian of the dying tradition, is (in a reversal of Narayan) the "bully"; and the novel's central character, the poet's young admirer Deven, is the "wimp." The dying past, the old world, Desai tells us, can be as much of a burden as the awkward, sometimes wrongheaded present. perhaps her best novel to date, finely uses English to depict the decay of another language, Urdu, and the high literary culture that lived in it. Here the poet, the last, boozing, decrepit custodian of the dying tradition, is (in a reversal of Narayan) the "bully"; and the novel's central character, the poet's young admirer Deven, is the "wimp." The dying past, the old world, Desai tells us, can be as much of a burden as the awkward, sometimes wrongheaded present.

Though V. S. Naipaul approaches India as an outsider, his engagement with it has been so intense that no account of its modern literature would be complete without him. His three non-fiction books on India, An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization, An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization, and and India: A Million Mutinies Now, India: A Million Mutinies Now, are key texts, and not only because of the hackles they have raised. Many Indian critics have taken issue with the harshness of his responses. Some have fair-mindedly conceded that he does attack things worth attacking. "I'm anti-Naipaul when I visit the West," one leading South Indian novelist told me, "but I'm often pro-Naipaul back home." are key texts, and not only because of the hackles they have raised. Many Indian critics have taken issue with the harshness of his responses. Some have fair-mindedly conceded that he does attack things worth attacking. "I'm anti-Naipaul when I visit the West," one leading South Indian novelist told me, "but I'm often pro-Naipaul back home."

Some of Naipaul's targets, like-this is from A Wounded Civilization A Wounded Civilization-the intermediate-technology inst.i.tute that invents "reaping boots" (with blades attached) for Indian peasants to use to harvest grain, merit the full weight of his scorn. At other times he appears merely supercilious. India, his migrant ancestors' lost paradise, cannot stop disappointing him. By the third volume of the series, however, he seems more cheerful about the country's condition. He speaks approvingly of the emergence of "a central will, a central intellect, a national idea," and disarmingly, even movingly, confesses to the atavistic edginess of mood in which he had made his first trip almost thirty years earlier: "The India of my fantasy and heart was something lost and irrecoverable. . . . On that first journey, I was a fearful traveler."

In An Area of Darkness, An Area of Darkness, Naipaul's comments on Indian writers elicit in this reader a characteristic mixture of agreement and dissent. When he writes, Naipaul's comments on Indian writers elicit in this reader a characteristic mixture of agreement and dissent. When he writes, The feeling is widespread that, whatever English might have done for Tolstoy, it can never do justice to the Indian "language" writers. This is possible; what I read of them in translation did not encourage me to read more. Premchand . . . turned out to be a minor fabulist. . . . Other writers quickly fatigued me with their a.s.sertions that poverty was sad, that death was sad . . . many of the "modern" short stories were only refurbished folk tales, then he is expressing, in his emphatic, unafraid way, what I have also felt. (Though I think more highly of Premchand than he.) When he goes on to say, The novel is part of that Western concern with the condition of men, a response to the here and now. In India thoughtful men have preferred to turn their backs on the here and now and to satisfy what President Radhakrishnan calls "the basic human hunger for the unseen." It is not a good qualification for the writing and reading of novels, then I can go only some of the way with him. It is true that many learned Indians go in for a sonorously impenetrable form of critico-mysticism. I once heard an Indian writer of some renown, and much interest in India's ancient wisdoms, expounding his theory of what one might call Motionism. "Consider Water," he advised us. "Water without Motion is-what? Is a lake. Very well. Now, Water plus Motion is-what? Is a river. You see? The Water is still the same Water. Only Motion has been added. By the same token," he continued, making a breathtaking intellectual leap, "Language is Silence, to which Motion has been added."

(A fine Indian poet, who was sitting beside me in the great man's audience, murmured in my ear: "Bowel without Motion is-what? Is constipation! Bowel plus Motion is-what? Is s.h.i.+t!") I agree with Naipaul that mysticism is bad for novelists. But in the India I know, for every obfuscating Motionist, there is a debunking Bowelist whispering in one's ear. For every unworldly seeker for the ancient wisdoms of the East, there is a clear-eyed witness responding to the here and now in precisely that fas.h.i.+on which Naipaul inaccurately calls uniquely Western. And when Naipaul concludes by saying that in the aftermath of the "abortive" Indo-British encounter, India is little more than a very Naipaulian community of mimic men-that the country's artistic life has stagnated, "the creative urge" has "failed"; that "s.h.i.+va has ceased to dance"-then I fear we part company altogether. An Area of Darkness An Area of Darkness was written as long ago as 1964, a mere seventeen years after Independence, and a little early for an obituary notice. The growing quality of Indian writing in English may yet change his mind. was written as long ago as 1964, a mere seventeen years after Independence, and a little early for an obituary notice. The growing quality of Indian writing in English may yet change his mind.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the flow of that good writing has become a flood. Bapsi Sidhwa is technically Pakistani, but literature has no need of Part.i.tions, particularly as Sidhwa's novel Cracking India Cracking India is one of the finest responses to the horror of the division of the subcontinent. Gita Mehta's is one of the finest responses to the horror of the division of the subcontinent. Gita Mehta's A River Sutra A River Sutra is an important attempt by a thoroughly modern Indian to make her reckoning with the Hindu culture from which she emerged. Padma Perera, Anjana Appachana ( is an important attempt by a thoroughly modern Indian to make her reckoning with the Hindu culture from which she emerged. Padma Perera, Anjana Appachana (Listening Now), and Githa Hariharan, less well known than Sidhwa and Mehta, confirm the quality of contemporary writing by Indian women.

A number of different styles of work are evolving: the Stendhalian realism of a writer like Rohinton Mistry, the author of two acclaimed novels, Such a Long Journey Such a Long Journey and and A Fine Balance, A Fine Balance, and of a collection of stories, and of a collection of stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag; Tales from Firozsha Baag; the equally naturalistic but lighter, more readily charming prose of Vikram Seth (there is, admittedly, a kind of perversity in invoking lightness in the context of a book boasting as much sheer avoirdupois as the equally naturalistic but lighter, more readily charming prose of Vikram Seth (there is, admittedly, a kind of perversity in invoking lightness in the context of a book boasting as much sheer avoirdupois as A Suitable Boy A Suitable Boy); the elegant social observation of Upamanyu Chatterjee (English, August), the more flamboyant manner of Vikram Chandra (Love and Longing in Bombay). Amitav Ghosh's most impressive achievement to date is the non-fiction study of India and Egypt In an Antique Land. In an Antique Land. It may be that his greatest strength will turn out to be as an essayist of this sort. Sara Suleri, whose memoir It may be that his greatest strength will turn out to be as an essayist of this sort. Sara Suleri, whose memoir Meatless Days Meatless Days is, like Bapsi Sidhwa's is, like Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India, Cracking India, a visitor from across the Pakistani frontier, is a non-fiction writer of immense originality and grace. And Amit Chaudhuri's languorous, elliptic, beautiful prose is impressively impossible to place in any category at all. a visitor from across the Pakistani frontier, is a non-fiction writer of immense originality and grace. And Amit Chaudhuri's languorous, elliptic, beautiful prose is impressively impossible to place in any category at all.

Most encouragingly, yet another talented generation has begun to emerge. The Keralan writer Arundhati Roy has arrived to the accompaniment of a loud fanfare. Her novel, The G.o.d of Small Things, The G.o.d of Small Things, is full of ambition and sparkle, and written in a highly wrought and utterly personal style. Equally impressive are the debuts of two other first novelists. Ardas.h.i.+r Vakil's is full of ambition and sparkle, and written in a highly wrought and utterly personal style. Equally impressive are the debuts of two other first novelists. Ardas.h.i.+r Vakil's Beach Boy Beach Boy and Kiran Desai's and Kiran Desai's Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard are, in their very unalike ways, highly original books. The Vakil book, a tale of growing up near Juhu Beach, Bombay, is sharp, funny, and fast; the Kiran Desai, a Calvino-esque fable of a misfit boy who climbs a tree and becomes a sort of petty guru, is lush and intensely imagined. Kiran Desai is the daughter of Anita: her arrival establishes the first dynasty of modern Indian fiction. But she is very much her own writer, and welcome proof that India's encounter with the English language, far from proving abortive, continues to give birth to new children, endowed with lavish gifts. are, in their very unalike ways, highly original books. The Vakil book, a tale of growing up near Juhu Beach, Bombay, is sharp, funny, and fast; the Kiran Desai, a Calvino-esque fable of a misfit boy who climbs a tree and becomes a sort of petty guru, is lush and intensely imagined. Kiran Desai is the daughter of Anita: her arrival establishes the first dynasty of modern Indian fiction. But she is very much her own writer, and welcome proof that India's encounter with the English language, far from proving abortive, continues to give birth to new children, endowed with lavish gifts.

The map of the world, in the standard Mercator projection, is not kind to India, making it look substantially smaller than, say, Greenland. On the map of world literature, too, India has been undersized for too long. Fifty years after India's independence, however, that age of obscurity is coming to an end. India's writers have torn up the old map and are busily drawing their own.

March 1997

India's Fiftieth Anniversary

[Originally commissioned and published by Time Time magazine magazine]

There are really only two ways of arriving at your fiftieth birthday. You can (1) do it defiantly-by thumbing your nose at Father Time, throwing the mother of all parties, and announcing your intention of growing old disgracefully; or, (2) you can deal with it grumpily-by pretending it isn't happening, hiding your head under the pillows, and wis.h.i.+ng the day would just go away. On the occasion of my own recently completed half century, my inclinations led me unequivocally down route 1. Now it's India's turn; but though the fiftieth anniversary of the end of British rule is being loudly trumpeted around the world, India herself, while not entirely ignoring the event, is reacting with a halfhearted, shoulder-shrugging sourness, a certain category 2 lack of celebratory spirit that has raised many international observers' eyebrows. You get the feeling the lady wishes she had lied about her age.

Indians have always been less susceptible to anniversary-itis than Westerners. The annual Republic Day (January 26) parades, popular with visitors to India largely on account of the partic.i.p.ation of glamorously caparisoned elephants, have been mostly ignored by the locals. Independence Day itself (August 15) is also traditionally a lackl.u.s.ter affair. Ten years ago, on the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Raj, I was at the Red Fort in Delhi, filming the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's speech to a crus.h.i.+ngly indifferent nation. The audience was so unimpressed, in fact, that very large numbers of people simply walked away while Rajiv was still speaking.

The Indian governing elite has long been wary about sanctioning public resources for mere display. It is believed that the public would disapprove of money wasted on, for example, fireworks displays, when it could be used for much-needed irrigation schemes. Against this, one could argue that the Indian public's estimation of their leaders has fallen so low, because of recent corruption scandals and endemic inter-party bickering, that it's hard to see how a little fun would make things worse. And there aren't actually any special proposals for worthy new schemes on the table.

One could, therefore, wish for a touch more subcontinental hoopla as the big five-oh comes around. In India, such plans as have been unveiled range from the conventionally tedious (members of the Indian National a.s.sembly will listen to recordings of speeches by the founders of the nation, Gandhi and Nehru), to the shoestring amateur dramatics of "restaging" the pa.s.sing of the 1942 Quit India Resolution in Bombay, to the plainly bizarre-viz., the apparently serious proposal that the anniversary be marked by erecting a statue of Gandhiji (clad, no doubt, only in his legendary loincloth) in Antarctica. in Antarctica. And in Pakistan-after all, it's Pakistan's fiftieth anniversary, too-even less is promised; according to the Pakistani High Commission in London, the Nawaz Sharif government has decided to "celebrate humbly." Pakistani politicians are not noted for their humility, so this is, in its way, something of a first. And in Pakistan-after all, it's Pakistan's fiftieth anniversary, too-even less is promised; according to the Pakistani High Commission in London, the Nawaz Sharif government has decided to "celebrate humbly." Pakistani politicians are not noted for their humility, so this is, in its way, something of a first.

Fifty years ago, Mr. Nehru, taking office as India's first prime minister, described Independence as the moment ". . . when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance." The explanation for the nation's present unwillingness to throw its Nehru topi Nehru topi in the air lies in the subsequent battering administered by history to that newly liberated soul. If, in August 1947, many Indians had idealistic hopes of a great new beginning, then August 1997 is suffused by the sense of an ending. Another age is ending: the first age, one might say, of the history of post-colonial India. It has not been the promised golden age of freedom. The prevailing mood is one of disenchantment. Private citizens and public commentators alike readily provide a long, convincing list of reasons for this disenchantment, starting with the dark side of Independence itself; that is, of course, Part.i.tion. The decision to carve a Muslim homeland, Pakistan, out of the body of subcontinental India led to b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.sacres in which over a million Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims lost their lives. Part.i.tion has poisoned the subsequent history of relations between the two newborn states ever since. Why on earth would anyone want to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of one of the century's great tragedies? in the air lies in the subsequent battering administered by history to that newly liberated soul. If, in August 1947, many Indians had idealistic hopes of a great new beginning, then August 1997 is suffused by the sense of an ending. Another age is ending: the first age, one might say, of the history of post-colonial India. It has not been the promised golden age of freedom. The prevailing mood is one of disenchantment. Private citizens and public commentators alike readily provide a long, convincing list of reasons for this disenchantment, starting with the dark side of Independence itself; that is, of course, Part.i.tion. The decision to carve a Muslim homeland, Pakistan, out of the body of subcontinental India led to b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.sacres in which over a million Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims lost their lives. Part.i.tion has poisoned the subsequent history of relations between the two newborn states ever since. Why on earth would anyone want to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of one of the century's great tragedies?

Like many secularist Indians, I would argue that Part.i.tion was an avoidable mistake, the result not of historical inevitability or the true will of the people but of political antagonisms-between Gandhi and M. A. Jinnah, between the Congress and the Muslim League-which gradually turned Mr. Jinnah, originally a strong opponent of the idea of a separate Muslim state, into its most ardent advocate and eventual founder. (Of course, the divide-and-rule tactics of the British did nothing to help.) My own family, like so many of Muslim origin, was cut in half by Part.i.tion. My parents opted to stay in Bombay, and so did my two uncles and their families, but my aunts and their families went to West Pakistan, as it was called until 1971, when East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh. We were lucky, escaping the worst of the bloodletting, but our lives were defined and shaped by the frontier separating us. Who would celebrate the descent of the Iron Curtain, the building of the Berlin Wall?

The period after Part.i.tion gives rise to a further, familiar litany of woes. The nation's great social ills have not been cured. Mrs. Indira Gandhi's famous slogan, Garibi Hatao, Garibi Hatao, "Remove Poverty," was an empty promise; India's poor are as poor as ever, and more numerous than ever, thanks in part to her son Sanjay's hated forcible-sterilization campaign during Mrs. G.'s mid-1970s period of dictatorial "emergency rule," which set back other efforts at birth control by more than a generation. Illiteracy, child labor, infant mortality, the privations imposed by casteism on those of lower or no caste, all these great questions remain unanswered. (The placing of a garland of shoes, an old Indian insult, around the neck of a statue of the Dalit or Untouchable leader Dr. Ambedkar recently led to days of rioting in Bombay.) "Remove Poverty," was an empty promise; India's poor are as poor as ever, and more numerous than ever, thanks in part to her son Sanjay's hated forcible-sterilization campaign during Mrs. G.'s mid-1970s period of dictatorial "emergency rule," which set back other efforts at birth control by more than a generation. Illiteracy, child labor, infant mortality, the privations imposed by casteism on those of lower or no caste, all these great questions remain unanswered. (The placing of a garland of shoes, an old Indian insult, around the neck of a statue of the Dalit or Untouchable leader Dr. Ambedkar recently led to days of rioting in Bombay.) Ancient violence takes on new forms. The practice of burning brides for their dowries is on the increase. There is terrifying evidence that ritual child sacrifice is being practiced by some followers of the cult of the G.o.ddess Kali. Communal violence erupts regularly. Terrorists advocating a separate Sikh state plant bombs in the Punjab, and terrorists advocating Kashmiri separatism abduct tourists in the beautiful Valley. Large-scale bloodshed has been seen in Meerut, in a.s.sam, and in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, after the destruction by Hindu nationalists of the Babri Masjid, a mosque believed by some to stand on the birthplace of the Hindu deity Lord Ram.

My hometown, Bombay, for a long time believed itself immune to the worst of India's communal evils; a series of explosions in 1993 destroyed that myth, giving proof that the idealisms, the innocence, of the first post-Independence age had been blown away, perhaps forever-and doing so in the heart of that great metropolis which contains all that is best and worst in the new, modernizing India, all that is most dynamically innovative and most hopelessly impoverished, most internationally minded and most narrowly sectarian.

And then there's corruption. In my novel The Moor's Last Sigh, The Moor's Last Sigh, a character offers his definitions of modern Indian democracy ("one man one bribe") and of what he calls the Indian theory of relativity ("everything is for relatives"). Like most things written about India, this looks like an exaggeration but is actually an understatement. The scale of public corruption is now almost comically great. From the Maruti scandal of the 1970s (huge sums of public money disappeared from a "people's car" project headed by Sanjay Gandhi) to the Bofors scandal of the 1980s (huge sums of public money went astray from an international arms deal that besmirched the reputation of Rajiv Gandhi) to the 1990s attempts to fix the movements of the Indian stock market by using, naturally, huge sums of public money, things have been going from bad to worse. Dozens of leading political figures, including the last Congress prime minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao, are under investigation for corruption. And then there is Laloo Prasad Yadav, chief minister of the state of Bihar (one of the poorest parts of India), who has been charged with involvement in Bihar's so-called Fodder Scam, a swindle involving the diversion of, yes, huge sums of public money to support the rearing over many years of great herds of wholly fict.i.tious cattle. More than $150 million is alleged to have vanished in a scheme that even the immortal Chichikov, anti-hero of Gogol's great scam-novel a character offers his definitions of modern Indian democracy ("one man one bribe") and of what he calls the Indian theory of relativity ("everything is for relatives"). Like most things written about India, this looks like an exaggeration but is actually an understatement. The scale of public corruption is now almost comically great. From the Maruti scandal of the 1970s (huge sums of public money disappeared from a "people's car" project headed by Sanjay Gandhi) to the Bofors scandal of the 1980s (huge sums of public money went astray from an international arms deal that besmirched the reputation of Rajiv Gandhi) to the 1990s attempts to fix the movements of the Indian stock market by using, naturally, huge sums of public money, things have been going from bad to worse. Dozens of leading political figures, including the last Congress prime minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao, are under investigation for corruption. And then there is Laloo Prasad Yadav, chief minister of the state of Bihar (one of the poorest parts of India), who has been charged with involvement in Bihar's so-called Fodder Scam, a swindle involving the diversion of, yes, huge sums of public money to support the rearing over many years of great herds of wholly fict.i.tious cattle. More than $150 million is alleged to have vanished in a scheme that even the immortal Chichikov, anti-hero of Gogol's great scam-novel Dead Souls, Dead Souls, could never have invented. could never have invented.

It would be easy to continue in this vein. There is the rise of extremist Hindu nationalism, the decay of the Civil Service on which Indian democracy has depended for so long, and the tendency of the coalition supporting the minority Indian government of Prime Minister I. K. Gujral to fragment. Bits of it have been breaking off with distressing frequency-the Yadav faction has gone, and the Southern DMK party has also threatened to leave the coalition-and the government survives only because n.o.body really wants a general election; n.o.body, that is, except the militant Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the largest single party in Parliament, presently excluded from power but likely to win even more seats next time around, and thus be harder to gang up against. And, if you're old-fas.h.i.+oned, you can complain about the effect of MTV culture on Indian youth, and if you're a sports fan you can lament India's lack of world-cla.s.s athletes.

And yet I do feel like celebrating. The news is not all bad. (For example, the election of India's first Untouchable president, Mr. Kocheril Raman Narayanan, will perhaps result in an a.s.sault on the worst excesses of casteism.) Above all, however, I want to extol the virtues of the most important thing that came into being on that midnight fifty years ago, the thing which has survived all that history could throw at it: that is, the so-called idea of India. I have spent much of my adult life thinking and writing about this idea. At the time of the last bout of anniversary-itis, in 1987, I traveled all over India asking ordinary Indians what they thought the idea was, and whether they found it to be a valuable one. Remarkably, given India's size and diversity, and Indians' strong regional loyalties, everyone I spoke to was entirely comfortable with the term "India," entirely certain that they understood it and "belonged to" it; and yet, when one examined the matter more closely, one saw that their definitions differed radically, as did their ideas of what "belonging" might entail.

And that multiplicity, finally, was the point. In the modern age, we have come to understand our own selves as composites, often contradictory, even internally incompatible. We have understood that each of us is many different people. Our younger selves differ from our older selves; we can be bold in the company of our lovers and timorous before our employers, principled when we instruct our children and corrupt when offered some secret temptation; we are serious and frivolous, loud and quiet, aggressive and easily abashed. The nineteenth-century concept of the integrated self has been replaced by this jostling crowd of "I" 's. And yet, unless we are damaged, or deranged, we usually have a relatively clear sense of who we are. who we are. I agree with my many selves to call all of them "me." This is the best way to grasp the idea of India. India has taken the modern view of the self and enlarged it to encompa.s.s almost one billion souls. The selfhood of India is so capacious, so elastic, that it manages to accommodate one billion kinds of difference. It agrees with its billion selves to call all of them "Indian." This is a notion far more original than the old pluralist ideas of "melting pot" or "cultural mosaic." It works because the individual sees his own nature writ large in the nature of the state. This is why individual Indians feel so comfortable about the strength of the national idea, why it's so easy to "belong" to it, in spite of all the turbulence, the corruption, the tawdriness, the disappointment of fifty overwhelming years. I ag