INDIA

man. My first impression was that some catastrophe had taken place,
and that the slums were refugee camps for the shambling survivors. I
learned, months later, that they were survivors, of course, those slumdwellers:
the catastrophes that had driven them to the slums from their
villages were poverty, famine and bloodshed. And five thousand new
survivors arrived in the city every week, week after week, year after year.
As the kilometers wound past, as the hundreds of people in those slums
became thousands and tens of thousands, my spirit writhed. I felt it at
all; it is a lacerating guilt, that first confrontation with the wretched of the
earth. Then the smolders of shame and guilt flamed into anger, became
fist-tightening rage at the unfairness of it: What kind of a government,
I thought, what kind of a system allows suffering like this? But the slums
went on kilometer after kilometer, relieved only by the awful contrast of
the thriving businesses and crumbling, moss covered apartment buildings.
A kind of wonder possessed me. I began to look beyond the immensity of
the slum societies and to see the people who lived within them. A woman
stopped to brush forward the black stain psalm of her hair. Another
bathed her children with water from a copper dish. A man led three goats
with red ribbons tied to the collars at their throats. Another man shaved
himself at a cracked mirror. Children played everywhere. Men carried
water in bucks. Men made repairs to one of the huts. And everywhere that
I looked, people smiled and laughed. I looked at the people then, and I
saw how busy they were-how much industry and energy described their
lives. Occasional sudden glimpses inside the huts revealed the astonishing
cleanliness of that poverty. The spotless floors and glistening metal pots in
neat, tapering towels. And then, last, what should’ve been first, I saw how
beautiful they were: the women wrapped in crimson, blue and gold; the
women walking barefoot through the tangled shabbiness of the slum with
patient, ethereal grace, the white toothed, almond eyed handsomeness of
the men; and the affectionate camaraderie of the fine limbed children,
older ones playing with younger ones, many of them supporting baby
brothers and sisters on their slender hips. And half an hour after the bus
ride began, I smiled for the first time...” ”…I love Bombay. To my eyes, the
city was beautiful. It was wild and exciting. Buildings that were British
Raj-romantic stood side to side with modern, mirrored business towers.
I heard music from every ship and passing taxi. The colors were vibrant.
The fragrances were dizzyingly delicious. And there were more smiles in
the eyes on those crowded streets than in any other place I’d ever known.
Above all else, Bombay is free-exhilaratingly free. I saw that liberated
unconstrained spirit wherever I looked and I found myself responding to
it with the whole of my heart. Even the flare of shame I’d felt when I first
saw the slums and the street beggars dissolved in the understanding that
they were free, those men and women. No one banished the slum-dwellers.
Painful as their lives were, they were free to live them in the same gardens
and avenues as the rich and powerful. The city was free. I loved it.”
When friends ask me for a good reason to visit India, I give them over
a billion: the people. Every visit to India offers an alternative viewpoint
on the personal ambition and material priorities of the western world.
This book is a tribute to the eternal spirit of India and its people, their
democratic temperament, generous hospitality, disarming openness,
tolerance and inclusiveness, and the amazing ways by which these
differences and diversity are accommodated and celebrated.
I am grateful and deeply indebted to the authors of the books I used
for my research. Their deep knowledge has granted me precious input
regarding the way of life, the religion and the culture of India – in fact
the completion of this book would have been impossible without their
contribution.
ABOUT THE COUNTRY
The Republic of India officially known as ‘Bharat’, is referred to in the
Indian scriptures as ‘Bharatvarsha’, and its inhabitants are known as
‘Bhartiya’, meaning the descendants of Bharata, the king who ruled the
whole of India.
The ancient civilization of India evolved in a sub-continent bounded
on the north by the world’s largest mountain range – the chain of the
Himalayas which separates India from the rest of Asia and the world.
The basin of the Indus is divided by that of the Ganges by the desert
of Rajasthan. South is the Vindhya mountain range that separates
Hindustan from the peninsula of Deccan. From Kashmir in the north to
Cape Comorin in the south, the sub-continent is about 2000 miles long.
The north, the south, the east and the west, all are distinctively different.
The barrier of the Himalayas was at no time an insuperable one and at all
periods both settlers and traders have found their way over the high and
desolate passes into India, while Indians have carried their commerce
and culture beyond their frontiers by the same route. The “silk road”, as
it is known, saw the movement of thousands of people carrying India’s
products to the east. The importance of the mountains to India is that
they are the source of her two great rivers, Indus and the Ganges. Water
has always played a sacred role in the Indian life, and the waters of the
Indus river system were to become the cradle of North India’s culture.
Submersion into water symbolizes total rebirth as it means the dissolving
of all forms, the cleansing from sin.
Of the two river systems, that of the Indus had the earliest civilization
and gave its name to India. The Indians knew this river as Sindhu
(in Sanskrit it means ‘like an ocean’), and the Persians, who found
difficulty in pronouncing the initial “S”, called it Hindu and the country,
Hindustan. From the Persians the word passed to the Greeks who
invaded northwestern India under Alexander the Great in 326 BC. They
designated the inhabitants of the banks of the Indus River as Indoos,
hence, the whole of India became known by the name of the river. Over
the years, India has witnessed the rise and fall of many empires and
invasions by people of various races and cultures. There was conquest,
but one in which the foreign invaders adapted, changed and became
Indian.
About 1500 BC, powerful nomadic warriors known as Aryans
appeared in northern India. The warriors were from Central Asia,
but managed to bypass the Himalayas by finding lower passes in the
mountains, such as the Khyber Pass in Pakistan. They conquered the
Dravidians of Central India and imposed their social structure. Although
the Aryans were a conquering people when they first spread into India,
the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with indigenous cultures,
and the war-religion of the Aryans, still preserved in parts of the Rig
Veda, slowly became more ritualized and more meditative. By 200 BC,
this process of mixing and transforming was more or less complete and
the culture we call «Indian» was fully formed. From 550-528 BC, the
Persians conquered part of India. The Arab Muslims began invading as
early as 712 AD. But the main Muslin invasion was from the Turks who
conquered the biggest part of India, except the South where the Tamil
developed their great civilization.
In the 15 th Century AD the Mongols invaded India. From the 15th
century the Europeans arrived: namely, The Dutch, English, French,
Danish and Portuguese. The “spice route” to India was one of the most
influential commercial activities in history and directly affected the
course of world events. Christopher Columbus’ desire to find an Atlantic
sea route to the East Indies led him to the discovery of America. The
British East India Company, formed in 1600 to compete with the Dutch
spice trade, resulted in the colonization of the Indian subcontinent.
Politically the British ruled India for most of the 19 th century and the
first half of the 20 th century, until the country’s independence in 1947.
There is a strong imprint of British philosophy and culture in India.
There are phases of Indian history which are bright, but there are also
phases which are dull and dark. India’s subjugation by foreign imperial
powers deeply marked the country. According to some historians, at the
time India was conquered by western colonial powers it was one of the
wealthiest nations in the world. References to India’s cultures are found
in the Bible and in ancient Greek, Roman and Chinese literature. Yet,
from its myriad upheavals, a vibrant, diverse and thoroughly modern
nation has emerged, as enduring as it is dynamic and increasingly
well-equipped to meet the challenges of the future. India is the largest
democracy on earth, with one billion three hundred million people
with, freedom, equality and the rule of law as fundamental principles.
It has emerged as the largest middle class in the world history after
two hundred years of poverty. It is still overwhelmingly rural, and its
economy is predominantly agricultural, but it has become self sufficient
in food and has already embarked on a new life of economical stability
and development. Now India is a leading player in the world. The use
of computers and cellular phones has become so common that they are
even found on roadside rickshawalas. There is Bollywood challenging
Hollywood. Still, there is a paradoxical contrast. On the one hand,
India has advanced in nuclear power and space technology, but on
the other, millions are still living in the clusters of shanty towns. But
things are changing. It’s been only 60 years since the British left India.
The number of millionaires in India has crossed the one million mark,
while 40 Indians are included in the 2010 Forbes list as multibillionaires.
Contrary to the expectations, India’s millionaires are concentrated more
in the rural areas than in urban centers. The extremely wealthy and the
unimaginably poor live almost side-by-side, sharing the same common
landscape. The cultural co existence of these classes for a lifetime is an
unexplainable miracle. In any case, Indian culture would be entirely
different without the fundamental impact of Hinduism, that is not only
a religion, but also a philosophy and a way of life.
The Caste System: A very important part of India’s social structure,
difficult for us to understand, is the ancient hierarchical caste system
which arose during the Vedic period, when Hindu-influenced law, or
Dharma, was created to regulate society. India has been living with this
dharma for three millennia. It is this that shapes its people’s logic and
behavior. Hindus believe that a person is born into one of four castes.
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