The Brit in me

Britain is in the news for many reasons – leading the G8, the EU, winning the Olympics bid, beating Australia in cricket. The fact that the horrible terrorist attacks took place in London only reminded the whole world that the small island once ruled the world and retains a bit of the power from those days even now. When the Indian PM was given a honorary doctorate by his alma mater in Oxford, it made me think – there is a Brit in everyone of us, Indians!

Amongst those peoples who had the least difficulty reconciling to the reality of the British rule, Indians were probably the first. The Indian middle ages prepared them well for it. Because during that time, the nation had a lot of foreign rulers – the Mughals who ruled most of India themselves were of Iranian origin, some Tamil kingdoms had Marathi rulers, the largely Islamic states of Sind and Kashmir had Hindu Maharajahs.

In fact the British were the last foreign rulers of India and not the first. The difference was that they managed to annex the whole of India which by then was only a concept and not a real nation; and the wealth was for the first time being moved out of the country! And it was that point that hurt the people. The plundered wealth had to stay inside the country! That way the king’s nationality did not matter.

The point is the Indians were very tolerant and infact, welcomed all foreign influences. It can be argued that any intolerance to differences was cultivated by the British during their rule as a political strategy. Meanwhile leaving a very strong British influence on the cultures of the sub-continent.

It was English that actually gave meaning to the country of India – no other language could be the unifying language as it would be somebody’s mother-tongue and advantageous to those people. (Let us all have a common handicap of learning a foreign language – that is acceptable!). It was the British who gave the Indians the concepts that has defined our nation-hood in modern times.

Ironically, English has only become more important to Indians only since Independence. What started as a ‘language of convenience’ amongst the first subjects of the British Raj, to get along with the British and each other then became ‘the language of education’ for the subsequent generations. Till then, educated people needed the proverbs, verses, couplets from the vernacular literature even if they spoke to a foreign audience. But, engineering, science and law needed English – it would take too much effort to restart the learning in your own language.

Now, English is ‘the style language’ for most of India’s urban youth and has hijacked day-to-day conversations. Soon, it will become the mother-tongue for a significant section of our people as many mothers nowadays can actually be found talking to their infants in English (which they learnt in evening classes) to encourage the child to learn English!

As one economist had argued, out-sourcing is justice in a perverted manner. The British had forced the Indians to be something close to them so that they can get work done by us. Now, Indians have actually become quite good at being someone else that they are taking their jobs too. (Call centre employees who cultivate an American accent are just the extreme!)

Today, Indians might say whatever they want to but there is a bit of the British left in everyone of us. Be you a Hindu nationalist, a Bodo militant or a Tamil fanatic!

Looking Good – Out of India

After debating with myself for over a month, I had finally decided to start a blog primarily because I was feeling bored and I felt I had lots to stay. Ironically, since the night I started my blog, I have been keeping busy with something or the other and even more surprisingly, am out of things to say.

Probably the reason I was bored in the first month of holidays was because I felt a bit alien back in my own home. Two years in Singapore had altered a part of me so fundamentally, that I felt for the first time like a NRI (Non-Resident Indian; more a social class of foreign returnees who find India difficult). Understandably I was very ashamed considering that I used to find NRI attitude irritable.

Probably the circumstances had something to do with it – firstly, the road outside our house was so badly dug-up. (Chennai roads are periodically dug-up to hurry the wear and tear process. The excuse given is sometimes to do with water pipes, optic-fibre cables, sewage, etc but one suspects it is to just keep the labourers occupied with something so that they dont lose touch!) The pollution resulting from it was the worst I have experienced (Sound pollution from irritated commuters, So much dust that cleaning the house was pointless and every morning you would feel like you are waking up in a dilapidated uninhabited house). Contrast with no pollution in Singapore.

The ground-water was positively toxic and salty that I feel that commercial extraction of minerals might be lucrative. And the official drinking water supply was being suspended for our block alone due to repair works. The fact that there was an official drinking water supply for others is something to take heart from. Chennai is the largest city in a rain-shadow region in the world and the acute water shortage is not stopping anyone from upgrading their plots to five storey structures. But, I was to be content with water that was bought of tankers once in a while. Contrast with 24-hour good water everywhere in Singapore.

Then, the power-cuts! Every single day exactly at noon and once when we were about to go to sleep! And the Electricity Board would come and replace a fuse after about 3 hours. Everyday! It took them one week to realize that the same fuse was being replaced every day and that meant there was a loading problem in that area. And the day they decided to correct the source, there was no power the whole day. Contrast with no power cuts in Singapore. And their constant feed-back and evaluation system for any aspect of the city’s running.

No vehicle, unreliable public transportation, a bad computer and a pretty bad internet connection. I was sulking for a week or so sitting in the house watching news channels (no movies or sports on TV as the city administration had removed cable operators from the equation as they were charging exhorbitant rates). But, too much sulking and the content of the news channels got to me.

India was looking good! Surprisingly, I came to the conclusion not when the Sensex (India’s premier stock market index) hit 7000 one day, 7100 the next day, 7200 the day after and stayed there with realistic predictions suggesting 20000 in a few years! Not when I saw the Thomas Friedman interview when he said, “If India was a stock, I would buy it!” But, when I saw a documentary on the plight of slum dwellers in Mumbai! It showed some of the people at the absolute bottom of the Indian society. But, even when you saw the tragic content, the silver lining was pretty clear. These people were fighting their way up – through education, through innovative living and enterprise.

For a change, instead of buckling under the horrors of their life, they were showing a resolve to carry on and a will to succeed, a fire so fierce only people as desperate as them could have. Indians so well known for their lethargy and fatalism were now mixing their well known tenacity with this fire.

Made me think – how does lack of electricity for a few hours, or no cable TV compare with the challenges that so many others face just for modest gain. The labourers who work in the hot sun without even foot-wear to restore the water supply to my building as I was complaining! The rick-shaw driver’s son who studied in street lights to get entrance into India’s premier engineering institution – to achieve the same, I had to take special coaching for two years under extremely comfortable settings! The NRI attitude vanished.

It almost feels like it was India’s good fortune that we took our sweet time to wake up to the modern world and realize that we are so far behind. We should use this opportunity to learn from the mistakes of those who are ahead of us and avoid making them – inequity, long term softening of society, over-consumption, etc.