Travelling in a country the size and complexity of India is like stepping into high surfing rollers. One find oneself buffeted by all sorts of sensations and experiences, and one suspects that there are many things going on out there that are impacting on one’s life, without much idea of what they are.
This is particularly so in the time of change that is today’s world. Having lived through thirty years of China’s opening up and reform, somebody like me is in a position to gauge from memory of China’s economic transformation exactly at what stage India is now. One has read the GDP figures, only a notch of growth down below China’s, in the newspapers but once in India one can actually smell the growing prosperity. Just by looking around – at the infrastructure and building work on the outskirts of towns, at the sort of shopping malls sprouting in city suburbs, at the new brands of cars on the roads, as well as the IT savvy of everybody around – one can sense more or less exactly how far behind India is from China in economic terms. I would say nine years, ten years, maximum fifteen years, and India seems to be moving faster and catching up quicker. This is palpable change. And good to see.
What is not so good to see is the impact of events happening outside the country, which are also influencing people’s thoughts, and without their necessarily being aware of it, the course of their lives.
This is of course not unique to India. We live in a global world now. Proverbial butterfly wings are fluttering in overdrive affecting every corner of the planet. Looking in the papers this week at the pictures of violent riots in Cairo I recognized the streets where only nine months ago I wandered bearded and carefree, in a surge of confidence about the new novel I was researching. I did not know then what difficulties I would have selling it because of seismic changes in the publishing industry – nor that the Titian sunset I was watching from a dhow on the Nile was at least partly the result of an exploding volcano in Iceland. I naturally had no idea whatsoever what sort of political earthquake would occur in Egypt itself before a year went by, and nor did the people living there.
In India, the effect of those outside forces are palpable, for those whose job it is to handle foreign relations nightmarish. As my wife and I dazzled ourselves with palaces, moving from Jaipur to Delhi to Agra and back, apparently fancy free tourists, the ominous back story of India was never far behind, hitting us every time our taxis came up to a hotel and beretted, caped police opened bonnet and boot, and every time we went into the lobby and were X-rayed and searched, and every time we heard the same conversation – in snatches of dialogues in Jaipur between Indian intellectuals to packed halls of the literary festival, in the ruminations of a retired Indian diplomat friend in the recesses of New Delhi’s Gymkhana Club, in the lecture topics pinned on the walls of the Indian International Club, in the editorials of every newspaper we read. It could be summed up by a single word: Pakistan!
The intensification of security into every aspect of life is a direct result of the attacks on the Taj and Oberoi hotels in Mumbai the year before last, but it seemed to me that it is the deterioration within Pakistan itself, the creeping Islamic fundamentalism, the paralysis of Pakistan’s leaders to resist it, that is draining the Indian people of hope and fuelling a growing paranoia. The assassination of a liberal governor in the Punjab has scared everybody, especially because the Pakistan Government failed to condemn the crime, scared of religious backlash if they did. People are asking themselves: how, in this situation, can conflict be avoided? With nuclear weapons in each country’s arsenals how can a Mahabharata-like war of extermination be diverted? What new terrorism is being planned? And what alternative does India have except to resist? The burden was always the same. “If there is another incident,” (such seems to be the quaint Anglicised Indian word for catastrophe or atrocity) “then, dash it, we will have to bally respond, chin to chin and toe to toe, and no quarter.”
India's National Day Parade
Our visit happened to coincide with India’s National Day.
Watching the parade on the television in our hotel room, there was something heroic about the columns of red coated lancers, yellow tunic-ed Camel Corps, fantastically whiskered, arm swinging Rajputs, frowning gold turbaned Sikhs and intense young men in leather caps on tanks – all individuals, roll-called like celebrity footballers at a match : Captain Rajsinder Singh of the 7th Tank Brigade, Sergeant Moti Rao of the 3rd Rocket Troop, Major Jamil Bahadur of the Mahratta Cavalry on his horse Ashoka. Names like these rolled off the announcer’s tongue, accompanied by stern close ups of knit brows and firm jaws. And, to me at least, it was all so wonderfully human. These flesh and blood Indian soldiers were worlds away from their robotic equivalents in Tiananmen Square. These were not superhuman emblems of State power. They were sweaty, straining individuals. In English terms: ordinary squaddies.
They marched down the Mall from the Vice Regal Palace to India Gate, chests heaving, eyes wet with emotion as they swung their right turn salutes to their President. Inevitably, with all those Nineteenth Century uniforms, a person of a historical bent like me was naturally thinking back to the Raj. I am sure I felt just as emotional as many Indians watching this. After all, the show in its outward form, was as English from the snapped salutes to the bark of officer on parade as my son, Alexander’s graduation ceremony from Sandhurst last year! Furthermore, when observing these warriors in their ranks, I was aware of a long unbroken tradition dating back to the sepoy army of John Company in the 1840s. And I have an even closer, personal link. During the Second World War, my father, who was a Gunner stationed in India and attached for a while to the Sikhs, would have seen, perhaps participated in, just such a ceremony.
Watching the passion and loyalty brimming in the features of each trooper passing in front of the President, my sense of identification deepened. I remembered that men of my father’s generation had marched off to war in a state of idealism. In that era of conflicting political ideology, British soldiers were Socialists to a man: my father would often tell me that when Mahatma Ghandi was being escorted to prison by the British Army, he and his fellow officers, stationed along the roadblocks, would stand at full attention as the car containing the Mahatma passed by, giving him the full , boot-crashing salute usually reserved for the Viceroy because they revered this enemy of theirs who preached and practiced peace. The army were not deflected from their duty, but in their hearts they supported Indian Nationalism, because they thought it was fair and good. These were the men who later voted out Churchill for a welfare state utopia in the khaki election of 1945.
Now my own son is in the British army. In one year or two years, when he’s completed his helicopter training, he will be following in his grandfather’s footsteps, probably to serve in the same Sub Continent if the present situation worsens and the Taleban have their way. And that fills me with pride, because he is my son – but it also makes me immeasurably sad. This is a new world. The 57 years of peace and security that I’ve taken for granted for most of my life now seems stretched and brittle, past its sell by date. Not that my generation deserves much sympathy: we baby-boomers probably had the easiest ride in the history of humanity – but it’s our children who will face whatever apocalypse comes.
This week Egypt is in the spotlight. A battle is going on which, whatever the outcome, will shape the Middle East for the rest of our lives, and even though it looks as if the reviled Mubarak will go, the outcome is still in the balance. Egypt is on the cusp of disaster and hope. It could go either way – for the country, for the Middle East Process, for the stability of the world.
National Day in the Lodi Gardens
I found little optimism in India about its future relations with its neighbours. Pakistan is a sore on the brain. It is highly suspicious of its fellow Asian giant louring over the Himalayas and sending probing ships from its naval base in Myanmar. Nevertheless, the extent of mistrust between China and India surprised me. I had hoped that the recent Wen Jiabao visit to New Delhi might have cleared the air for greater cooperation – but not according to any of the Indians I talked to, who seem to believe, to a man, that there was nothing behind the high sounding words. The mistrust lies too deep now. Here is the negative slant that the Times of India put on what was actually a very carefully balanced debate between Isabel Hilton and my wife, Hong Ying, on China at the Jaipur Literary Festival http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/Superior-mindset-of-Chinese-is-worrisome/articleshow/7363547.cms and here is an article written by an Indian China expert Jayadeva Ranade http://www.dnaindia.com/world/analysis_when-hu-played-sumo-with-obama_1501523, on what the Indians see as an unchanged situation after the summit in America. The prejudice and fear is restrained, but it is there. Similar suspicions seep out of China’s State controlled media, and this in turn conditions the thinking of both populations.
I can’t help but be sympathetic to the Indians. The atmosphere in Beijing, where we live, is very different today from what it was a few years ago – and it is not for the better. The strutting nationalist sentiment which has been growing since many Chinese were disappointed by the world’s response to their Olympics has now become more prevalent following the West’s disgrace during the Global Economic Crisis. For those foreigners doing business here, protectionism, corruption and the tighter demands for technology to be handed over can sometimes be uncomfortable, and I find even old friends within the Chinese Government are paying lip service to the new chauvinism, or at least not contesting the hotheads. The chip has become arrogance and it will be decades before the tensions of China’s sudden rise onto a world stage subside again
So I’m no more than SANGUINE about the prospects in 2011, but at least the spirituality and passion I found in India has restored my batteries and inclined me to at least have some hope – if not about the world situation which will blunder on as ever, but about a shared humanity, and a growing understanding that it is the small things in life that we must value most.
In Beijing tonight the sky is clear but it is freezing cold. Every few minutes the air is rocked by an explosion, as somebody or other lets off a cracker or a firework. It is like the sound of battle. The sky at midnight on Feb 2 (Chine new Year) was little different to the tracery of rockets and flares I watched from a similar balcony on June 4th 1989 – but today the explosions are not destructive. They are actually an expression of hope. Those responsible may be the nouveau riche of today squandering their money in cordite, but the tradition is old and respectable: the demons of the past are being driven away so we can look forwards to a better future. At least symbolically. But that is a start.
My best wishes to everybody for a happy Year of the Rabbit.
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