India (Frommer's, 4th Edition) - Keith Bain [20]
Bill Clinton once said: “India remains a battleground for every single conflict the world has to win.” Certainly India copes with huge problems—massive corruption, joblessness, judicial bottlenecks with few convictions and delays of up to 20 years for delivering justice, AIDS, acute water shortages, poverty, disease, environmental degradation, unbearable overcrowding in metropolitan cities, crises of governance, sectarian violence, and terrorism. India adds one Australia to itself every year—18 million people. The rural poor (who form the majority) see children as an economic resource, the only security net for old age, and high child-mortality rates necessitate the need for more than one, or two. Apart from India’s huge natural growth rate, an estimated two million poor Bangladeshis slip into India every year in search of work.
But this is a country of remarkable stamina. As Manmohan Singh has stated, “Our real strength has always been our willingness to live and let live.” Home to scores of languages, cuisines, landscapes, and cultures, India is a giant. But she will move at her own pace. She is not an Asian tiger. She is more like a stately Indian elephant. No one can whip or crack her into a run. If you try, the stubborn elephant will dig in her heels and refuse to budge. No power on earth can then force her to move. But equally so, she cannot be stopped once she’s on the move. And with the slow but fundamental shift from silent acceptance of karma to the belief that one can—and should—give shape to destiny, she is most certainly on the move. There is no point arguing whether this is good or bad. It is good and bad. And it is many things in between.
After all, this is India.
Impressions
Who is an authentic Indian and who isn’t? Is India Indian? Does it matter? Let’s just say we’re an ancient people learning to live in a recent nation . . .
—Arundhati Roy, The Algebra of Injustice
2 India Past to Present
by Nigel Worden
History professor specializing in the Indian Ocean region
No visitor to India can fail to be overwhelmed by the combination of a bustling, modernizing nation and an ancient but omnipresent past. India’s history is everywhere, in its temples and mosques, forts and palaces, tombs and monuments, but it has only recently become a single country, which makes its history a complex one. Successions of kingdoms and empires have controlled parts of the subcontinent, but none unified the whole—even the British Raj’s “Jewel in the Crown of the Empire” excluded large swaths of territory ruled by independent princes. Thus the accounts of history vary, and competing versions have often been the cause of bitter conflict. Given the tensions between Hindus and Muslims in South Asia, it is hardly surprising that the Islamic era in particular is highly controversial. Were the Muslims invaders and pillagers of an ancient Indian tradition, as Hindu nationalist historians claim? Or were they Indians who created a distinctive culture of architecture, painting, and literature by blending indigenous forms with Islamic influences? Is the Taj Mahal a uniquely Indian masterpiece, or a symbol of the Islamic oppressor? As is usually the case with history, it all depends on where you are, and to whom you’re talking.
ANCIENT INDIA Historical accounts of India usually begin with the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley, a sophisticated agricultural and urban society that flourished from 3000 to 1700 B.C. (about the same time as the earliest Egyptian civilization); although many of its sites are now located in latter-day Pakistan, you can view Harappan artifacts in places like the National Museum in New Delhi. Not much is known about the people, not least because their writing system has yet to be deciphered, but their active trade with the civilizations of the Euphrates (contemporary Iran and Iraq) show that northern India had links from very early on with the rest of Asia.
A more recognizably and distinctive “Indian” culture developed from around 1500 B.C. in the northern part