more on that

I want to add a little to what I started in my last post:

India is often called by foreigners the "land of extremes" or "land of contrasts" or something like that. This is true. Whatever superlative you hurl at it, the opposite is almost always certain to be equally true. This is part of why India confounds so many people, eludes definition, accurate description, comprehension.

It is ironic that I referred to "old Mississippi" when talking about how unjust India is. It is ironic because the huge revolt against American racism and segregation drew very heavily on direct action precedents set right here in India and on the wisdom gained, the lessons learned during India's struggle for independence. Having said that, it is further ironic to encounter the old lunch counter style bigotry of the Old South right back in Old Delhi.

The fact is that India is a world of contradictions, almost as if the polar opposite attraction of things were the only thing that could keep a country this incredibly large and diverse together. While India has one of the oldest and most calcified systems of class oppression on the planet, it also has one of the richest histories and cultures of religious, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, tolerance, and democratic precedents. How can this be? I don't know, but it is true. The place that gave us both Buddhism and Gandhian non-violence now forms the more formidable half of one of the world's most volatile nuclear stand-offs.

There is such incredible cruelty and callousness here, but then everywhere also there is kindness and generosity of a depth and sincerity that I had only glimpsed before coming here. This country's deeply rooted social injustice provided the fertile ground for American corporations to devastate the lives of Bhopal's poorest. And yet when I marched with them to Delhi I couldn't believe the warmth and support offered by so many along the way, even by the police. You wouldn't get five miles with a group like that walking while chanting and singing down the highway in the U.S., much less halfway across the country. Perhaps mostly because of the extent to which India's current identity draws upon its heroic struggle against tyrannical British rule, there is a different sort of respect here for social justice activism, for people standing up to power. And that's a good thing, because there is plenty to stand up to.

Can you imagine what Bush would say if you sat in front of the White House and launched a hunger strike against the War in Iraq? Well, first of all, you would just get peppersprayed and dragged away within five minutes, but let's just pretend this was when we still had the Bill of Rights -- if the message ever got to him that an anti-war activist was starving on the royal sidewalk, he'd probably say something like "hunger strike? that's good right?" Here things like that mean something very different. Basically, hunger striking against someone is like calling them British occupiers, just like referring to Guantanamo as a concentration camp is like calling Bush a Nazi. (This is a little bit of a tangent, but another piece of political vocabulary that enjoys a different weight here in India is self-immolation. It's not so unusual to read a headline like, "Member of Parliament, disappointed with Congress Party, sets himself on fire". I wouldn't mind reading that headline in the U.S. now and then -- "Tom DeLay, angered by gay marriage ruling, goes up in a ball of flames on Senate floor.")

I should also mention that the last paragraph of my last post was based on the experience one has in Paharganj, Delhi, and I kind of wrote it in a way that might be understood only by people who have spent time there, of whom there are almost none among the people who read this blog. Paharganj is an old drugged-out, chaotic area of Delhi where you go for really cheap hotels, and in all fairness it is pretty hellish. On top of having almost every awful quality of a total all-out slum, it's touristy on top of that, so you have to deal with all these silly faux-hippies who taken a look around India (but where? and did they not see anything?) and decided it would appropriate not to bathe or wash their hair for three weeks, perhaps in solidarity with... actually no one. I blame them for the aggressive bands of men following me, poking me, trying to sell me little drums that seem to have no particular connection to Indian music. Paharganj is filled with thick smoke, dust, the smell of baked piss, and then while dodging large ungulates and reckless motorcycles and autorickshaws, you have to constantly be fending off all kinds of slimy characters who, no matter how many times they've seen you, no matter how sick and dehydrated you are, won't stop trying to sell you every silly thing you could imagine, like big plastic lawn chairs, for instance -- just the perfect additional item for my travels. I could carry it on my head. I always thought what I was missing in my Indian travels was a big, white, plastic lawn chair to tug through the narrow doorways on the trains and buses. Then the fake sadhus, fortune tellers, you name it -- fake everything. After spending so much time in a place like that (many weeks) -- or in any place -- it comes as a particular insult to be refused entry to a casual restaurant for tea with a friend. Anyway, my last post's little tirade was aimed squarely (if not obviously) at Paharganj, a place unique within India.

Most of all, I just wanted to clarify that I have great and deep affection for India, an affection that far outweighs my undeniable disappointment and anger with many things that I see here. That's all. I do love India. And it's also not at all my place to sit here and say what "India" is or is not -- India is far, far to wide and deep for that.