Shut up amid the cackle.

India's Unending Journey (Mark Tully )

India's Unending Journey is Mark Tully's latest among his other works on India. A BBC Journalist, and also, a product of India's British Raj upbringing, Mark Tully has explored India's search for balance and moderation in all aspects from the fast emerging Global India to the more personal and charged area of sex.

The author's experiences from childhood to his adult life are used as examples in various contexts. But all the same, the author has maintained a precarious balance and has not allowed the book to slip away into self confessional autobiographical mode. The references to his life end as just that, references and do not stretch beyond a certain point.

The book begins in Puri, one of India's many temple towns and celebrations of a festival there. This sets the mood for the book, a rambling, introspective style which shifts effortlessly from India to Britain to Ireland in various chapters. Even though the shifting is effortless and smooth, the transition will be noticed in the stark comparisons used by the author to emphasise the oppression and repression which is rampant in both, unchecked liberalism as well as fettered constriction. The ancient Indian culture of debates, discussions and openness, especially in terms of religion, wherein the author observes, that no one truth is treated as the absolute truth, is brought out well in all the chapters, but again, the author guards himself from using too eulogising a tone. The Indian tendency of not swerving towards any extreme, in the past, and which sadly, is taken as a weakness in today's globalised Indian society, is the underlying point that the author probably wishes to score with this work.

One of the chapters also touches the delicate issue of Hindu nationalism which has reared an ugly head in India in the past decade. How this fervor goes against the very essence of India as a peace loving culture since many many millenia, is one of the best points illustrated in this book. India is applauded, as being able to sustain herself even now in the face of so many emerging religious passions, but the loss of that all-encompassing moderation and balance is bemoaned, though not directly.

Though the tone of the book and some of the content may seem superficially so, the book is not an Ode to India of the present. It illustrates some good things, and in the same vein, some bad things about India and Indians in comparison to the West, and how aimlessly aping the West is not going to serve any purpose. One brilliant fact which the author conveys is that global and material progress is not the panacea for all ills and the Indian economy is not actually going places with its burgeoning Gurgaon skyscrapers.Until cycle rickshaw pullers like Budh Ram (a case study in the book) get two square meals a day, India can never really shine.

The narrative ends in Varanasi, another of the temple towns of India, and once again, the author returns to the issue of religious tolerance. Varanasi's Hanuman temple bomb blasts are a backdrop this time, and the author has interviewed the religious heads of both volatile communities. Both sides are more motivated toward pouring oil on troubled waters, exhibiting extreme self restraint instead of any provocative actions....and the author once more, in closing, makes his point clear that the only way India can go ahead is by reviving its pluralist tolerance and steering clear of direction-less rigidity.

At times, the narrative tends to get a little slow moving and drab due to the innumerable examples used. In the fear of appearing opinionated, the author sometimes appears a little unconvincing and muddled, especially in the chapters concerning religion. It looks like the author has taken the application of moderation a little to far, and this might leave the reader a little confused about what exactly is the point being made.

All in all, a good read, and a good book for an evening debate. Also, a good source for people wishing to know about the good points that Indians have and need to appreciate in themselves, and where to draw the line during these times of change. Most importantly, a good guide to realising that the search for balance is, after all, a never ending journey, which India undertook years ago, and that this journey is in danger of termination, by India's own people, now.

posted by Anupama. @ 11:28 am