Being Indian by Pavan Varma

Author:Pavan Varma
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448106950
Publisher: Arrow

Chapter Five

PAN-INDIANNESS

Violence and the Power of Accommodation

THE GREAT LINGARAJA temple in the east coast city of Bhubaneswar was built in the eleventh century and is among the most striking temples in the state of Orissa. Its pinnacle soars to a height of 55 metres and can be seen for miles around, a reminder of the past that can never be erased from the Indian landscape. Pious worshippers throng the temple, which is enclosed by gates on three sides, and closed to non-Hindus. But just outside, across the road, and part of a definitely less imposing structure, is something new—one among many new symbols of a new India—that seems to have emerged almost unnoticed from the crevices of the old. It is uncaring of its lack of pedigree, confident of its right to be, and open to anyone who has the ability to pay: the Nikhar Ladies Beauty Parlour.

On the other side of the country, close to Aurangabad, is the small town of Khuldabad. Here lies the tomb of Aurangzeb, the last great Mughal emperor, who died in the eighteenth century, and ruled an empire stretching over most of India. Aurangzeb was a devout Muslim. In keeping with Islamic injunctions he lived a simple life, and had decreed that the expense on his tomb should not exceed Rs 14 and 12 annas, the amount earned from the sale of caps he sewed and the calligraphy he wrote. His mazaar is within a mosque, a place of pilgrimage for believers. But almost overshadowing its entrance is an incongruity: an ISD (International Subscriber Dialling) and STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialling) booth, announcing its services in eye-catching black and yellow. Notwithstanding its cheap prefab looks, the booth has the swagger of the present; assured of its functional need, indifferent to the concerns of the past. A stone’s throw away a huge billboard for a popular drink shouts: ‘I WANT MY THUNDER!’

A new India has emerged in the last fifty years. It does not deny the past, nor is it immune to its influence. But it is more a product of the challenges of the present, and the opportunities of the future. When Winston Churchill said that India is merely a ‘geographical expression . . . no more a single country than the equator’, he was being both simplistic and arrogant. But to give him the benefit of doubt, he was probably reacting, like so many of his compatriots, to the bewildering diversity of India, a nation of many languages and ethnicities, deeply divided by insular fealties. It is possible that Churchill was not interested in looking beyond the surface, for it is always useful for a colonizing power to suggest that the colonized never had an identity to begin with. But India has a civilizational unity and many British scholars could have told Churchill that. A people who have evolved in the same crucible for thousands of years are bound to develop certain unifying traits, a tapestry of common beliefs, cultural similarities, shared outlooks and an overlapping of identities.

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