Leaving India by Minal Hajratwala; Tranquebar; Price: Rs.595; 430 pp
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Despite the exalted rhetoric and clichés about India shining, one can’t help feeling that the steady fulfillment of the prophecy of Winston Churchill (1874-1965) — imperial Britain’s great World War II prime minister — that if granted freedom from British rule, “India will fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages” as huge corruption scams batter 21st century India, arouses sentiments of schadenfreude among the estimated 19-30 million people of the great Indian diaspora.
Even though Indian immigrants live as less than first class citizens of their host nations, in terms of material comforts the thrifty and industrious communities of the diaspora are spared the poverty and deprivations still suffered by a vast majority of citizens in India for whom adequate food, clothing, shelter, and minimally acceptable quality education and healthcare are mirages. Therefore deep down most Indian migrants count their blessings that they got out of the subcontinent while they could.
In this engrossing history of her family, Minal Hajratwala — Stanford graduate and currently San Francisco-based writer, poet and gay rights activist — traces her genealogy and charts the biographies of the family and descendants of her great-grandfather Motiram Narsey who, driven by adverse economic circumstances emigrated from Navsari (Gujarat) to the Fiji Islands in 1909, to start a tailoring business there. Even as he grew his business into “one of the largest department stores in the South Pacific isles”, over the next half century, he also “made it possible for two of his brothers, their children, and all of their descendants to exit India”. “…though we trace our roots to a tiny region in northwestern India, only one of my thirty-six cousins lives there today,” writes the author in this compelling narrative of the challenges that her parents, uncles and cousins encountered in far-flung territories of the British empire and finally in the USA, where she experienced true personal freedom and fulfillment as a bisexual and gay rights activist.
If Leaving India had been a mere linear biography of a family and how its members bound together by the cultural heritage of Gujarat formed a mutually supportive group which enabled all of Motiram’s descendants to carve out comfortable, even if not entirely successful lives, it would have been an obscure chronicle of limited interest to people beyond the penumbra of the Narsey family and the Khatri clans of Navsari. But the chief merit of this book is that it blends the history of the Indian diaspora with incisive analyses of the impact of momentous political decisions made in Westminster (London), Suva (Fiji), New Delhi, Pretoria and Washington D.C upon the lives and destinies of Motiram Narsey’s descendants.
For instance, the abolition of the slave trade throughout the British Empire in 1834 created a demand for indentured Indian labour in the colonies. Therefore some people from Gujarat had signed up to work in the sugar plantations of Fiji. And by the turn of the 20th century, the population of Indians in these south sea islands had grown sufficiently to create a demand for tailors and jewellers from Gujarat prompting Motiram Narsey to follow in the wake of a caste kinsman who had set up a tailoring business in Suva in 1908.
Meanwhile taking advantage of Queen Victoria’s famous proclamation on the occasion of the transfer of power from the British East India Company to the Crown in 1857 which offered “equal and impartial protection of the law” to her Indian subjects throughout the British empire, Ganda Kapitan, the author’s great-grand uncle travelled to Durban, South Africa in 1905 at the time when Mahatma Gandhi was developing his doctrines of satyagraha and ahimsa and fighting for the rights of Indians in that country.
Certainly in this reviewer’s mind, the author’s sweeping family history and self-realisation as a feminist and gay rights activist whom the liberal climate of the US has unshackled from patriarchy and obsolete social traditions, has raised the troubling question of why it is so difficult for Indians to rise out of poverty in their own country given their propensity for thrift and enterprise. The countries to which Hajratwala’s ancestors emigrated are — or were — capitalist societies which encourage business initiative and create conducive ecosystems for private enterprise to flourish. Subliminally they appreciate that the success of entrepreneurs benefits society through creation of employment, taxpaying enterprises and individuals and throughput of goods and services which keep prices stable and the general populace happy, healthy and productive.
But even in 21st century Indian society with the minds of the general populace scrambled by nonsense Marxist economics and resentment, all attempts of citizens with potential to rise out of poverty and build new lives and enterprises are doggedly resisted, especially by the country’s 18 million-strong neta-babu (politician-bureaucracy) conspiracy whose dog-in-the-manger mindsets cannot accept the idea that letting millions of businesses bloom countrywide is in the national interest. Even today, 20 years after the much hyped liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy, it takes over 180 days to complete the paperwork and red tape to start a new business in India according to the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index which ranks India 134th among 183 countries assessed. And even this underestimated duration is subject to an entrepreneur paying ‘speed money’ (aka bribes) which are shamelessly demanded at every stage.
The conspicuous lack of a social science research culture in post-independence India’s universities has erased the huge contribution that brave and adventurous Indian traders and businessmen have made towards the economic growth and development of several countries worldwide including Fiji, South Africa, Mauritius, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago and latterly the US, Britain and Canada. A major contribution of Leaving India to social science research is its revealing insight into the huge potential and capability of Indian entrepreneurs to build business and industry in the face of heavy odds and transform the history of nations.
Except in India where they are cabined, cribbed and confined by the law’s delay, the contumely of the neta-babu nexus and the insolence of office. One can’t help sharing — even if momentarily — this perspicacious author’s sentiment that she did well to leave India.
Dilip Thakore
Hindutva strategy exposé
Hindutva and Dalits — Perspectives for Understanding Communal Praxis; Editor: Anand Teltumbde; Samya, Kolkata; Price: Rs.500; 312 pp
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The rise of right-wing revivalist hindutva ideology as a political force in recent decades is a major challenge to India’s ideals of democracy, secularism and social justice. Rooted as it is in Brahminical supremacism, hindutva, as numerous scholars and activists have warned, is as much a danger to the historical victims of Hinduism — Dalits, adivasis and other backward caste groups arbitrarily included under the rubric of ‘Hinduism’ — as it is to non-Muslims such as Christians, and Muslims. In the circumstances, why large numbers of Dalits, adivasis and OBCs, who have been oppressed by upper caste Hindus for centuries, support the RSS/VHP hindutva agenda is a conundrum. This incisive book provides some answers even as it propagates resistance to hindutva, not simply on the basis of the threat it poses to secularism and religious minorities, but also because of the enormous challenge it poses to the emancipation of the historically humiliated untouchables and their quest for liberation.
Among the most enlightening and perceptive of the dozen essays included in this timely publication is social activist Anand Teltumbde’s contribution based on the four varnas, the inherently discriminatory hierarchy sanctified by orthodox interpretations of Hindu scriptures. That’s why, argues Teltumbde, hindutva forces never speak of the annihilation but of the unity of castes, knowing full-well that the varna system which places Dalits as the lowest in the hierarchy, is written immutably in stone.
In his essay, Shamsul Islam, professor of political science at Delhi University, highlights the commitment of hindutva forces to a sternly Brahminical ideology and political programme as represented by the Manusmriti, the Bible of Brahminism. He adduces ample evidence to substantiate the argument that hindutva ideologues have no respect for the Indian Constitution’s commitment to social justice and democracy. Hindutva tenets, argues Shamsul Islam, consistently eulogise the Manusmriti, which prescribes “slavery” of the lower castes to serve Brahmins, as per the will of God. Despite this, Dalit leaders are increasingly being co-opted by hindutva champions to do their dirty work, warns Sandeep Pendse, a well-known Mumbai-based activist.
In the deadly pogrom of 2002 in Gujarat, Dalits and adivasis were in the forefront of the riot, pillage and worse against Muslims. The socio-economic implications of this alliance are explained by Mumbai-based activist Ram Puniyani in his essay. According to him, using Dalits against Muslims is hindutva’s strategy, deflecting Dalit attention from their own struggles for social emancipation.
The alarming reality of Dalits and Dalit-dominated movements and groups being co-opted by hindutva forces is also the subject of Prakash Louis’ essay. Louis cites the case of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) forming a government in Uttar Pradesh with the BJP, which it had long condemned as a Manuvadi or Manusmriti-driven party. While conceding that the alliance which led to a Dalit woman becoming chief minister for the first time in Indian history, may have provided a powerful symbol of empowerment to the Dalits, Louis warns that the controversial alliance may have actually strengthened the Manuvadi forces and their fascist agenda premised on Dalit oppression.
The Dalit movement has experienced a similar metamorphosis in Tamil Nadu, comments V. Geetha in her paper which examines the complex interaction between Dalits, the Dravidian movement and hindutva forces down south. Geetha notes that the Dravidian self-respect movement has, in recent years, done a complete turnabout in its attitude to hindutva ideology despite its raison d‘etre being to counter Brahminical supremacy. Dalits in Tamil Nadu continue to suffer various forms of degradation, especially at the hands of OBCs who are the backbone of Dravidian parties. Moreover, the Dravidian movement has also failed to provide a radical counter-cultural alternative to Hinduism, to which upwardly mobile OBCs still cling despite the professed atheism and rationalism of the original Dravidian movement.
This useful, informative book should not be missed by anyone concerned with the Dalit movement. It clearly indicates that it’s not religious minorities alone, but all oppressed castes/classes that hindutva is targeting to force their subordination.
Yoginder Sikand