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| Sunday, May 16, 2004 |
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| Sunday, May 16, 2004 |
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Being Indian
By engaging with this eternal question, Pavan Varma has stepped into the rare hall of fame presided over by such luminaries as Vivekananda, Tilak, Sri Aurobindo, Gandhi and Nehru. While his predecessors sought answers within the philosophical, civilisational frame, Varma’s effort is guided by more contemporary trends in social sciences. Following the methodology of "thick description" recommended by Clifford Geetz, a well-known anthropologist, Varma brings together a wealth of information through a strange amalgam of "inference with anecdote" and "deduction with personal experience" (page 16). Conscious of both history and his own position in contemporary history, he negotiates his way out, displaying tact and restraint of a typical career diplomat. Poring over the vast intellectual resources available to him, he often comes up with statements one can neither totally afford to agree, nor disagree with. For instance, the self-contradictory nature of the Indian reality or identity has never been in serious doubt. Historicising this notion, Varma sees nothing contemporaneous in this "culture of ambivalence," for he traces it all to sources as diverse as the Arthshastra, Mahabharata, Upanishadas, and folk tales, et al. By the same logic, one wouldn’t really like to question his understanding of classic Indian obsession with class, hierarchy, trappings of power and wealth. It does not take a specialist to proclaim that such an obsession is a spin-off of our caste system, a legacy of our feudal past that has pulverised our present as well. Varma’s real contribution is that he has been able to find a new context, not new meanings, for some of the ideas we have almost grown up with. That we Indians are a power-worshipping nation of self-demeaning sycophants is borne out by our daily, work-a-day experiences. That Indians have always had an obsession with icons of power and wealth (technology being the latest fad) is also not drastically radical. But it does take Varma to ground all these ideas into social/political/cultural practices of our "functioning democracy," and in our search for a new economic order and technological transformation. The overall impression this book creates is that the more India changes, the more it appears to be the same. Questioning the popular, rather mythical self-image of Indians as idealists, dharma-driven, non-violent, otherworldly people, he does manage to put in place a more realistic and less flattering image of Indians as pragmatic, corrupt, amoral and violent people, grounded in empirical facts. But the flatness of his conclusions rattles and jars as much as do the stereotypes he is trying to escape. Writing with a sense of inwardness, even passionate involvement, Varma often manages to sweep the reader off his feet by his awesome reading. It is another matter that high seriousness of his self-posturing does unsettle the reader, occasionally, especially when he assumes the tone of a professional sociologist, which he is not. On such occasions, the book does begin to resemble a well-dressed, well-groomed gentleman who has nowhere to go. Otherwise, it makes for a demanding, even a compelling read. |
WHAT
does it mean to be an Indian? This question is
bound to haunt and intrigue all thinking Indians at one point or the
other. More so now when Indianness is no longer a matter of consensus
and has become truly problematic. Crisis of the nation-state, endemic
institutional collapse, growing corruption of money and power, economic
and political dominance of the Hindu majority, fast-changing caste and
class equations, and the rise of coalition politics both at the Centre
and the state have put a big question mark over the stable notion of
Indian identity. It is up against this background that Pavan K. Varma’s
latest book, Being Indian, must be seen and read.
