Soul of India
By Tom Plate
Professor at University of California, Los Angeles
Director of Asia Pacific Media Network
NEW DELHI _ If you want to understand as much as possible about India in a single day, maybe the best way to go is to take the slow bus to Agra. And by slow, I mean slow as in the speed of a backlash of taffy.
There are no fast buses to Agra because the road more resembles a war-zone in which countless people seem to be fleeing somewhere for their life. Someday _ yes, some day _ the new highway will be up and running, but who knows how long that will take? It sometimes seems as if India goes out of its way to be inefficient.
Most people go to Agra to get to the justly famed and fabulous Taj Mahal. From New Delhi that’s about a four-hour trip. The journey itself is worth at least as much as the destination. India itself is too great to rush through even if that were remotely possible.
India is often touted as the next slam-dunk superpower, after emerging China and of course, the established United States. The big build-up mainly comes from the Western media, especially in the U.S. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have imagined India as a kind of balancing-superpower to China should the latter get too feisty, aggressive or in any way profoundly obstreperous to U.S interests.
With more than a billion people (half of which are under the age of 25) and a tremendous science and technology base (the legacy of its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru), India might not be a bad bet to make it. But it has a long way to go _ perhaps much longer than Western hype or India’s own best hopes would suggest.
Travel the road to Agra and you see what’s out there in the real world of ancient India. You leave the fancy hotels and well-kept tourist sites in the nation’s capital and discover reality.
Reality is the caravan of camels pulling new and used electronics equipment up the road to a distribution center. There are about five tired-looking camels, each with a driver and a cart behind with goods to deliver. The tourist bus doesn’t seem to bother the camels _ indeed, nothing seems to.
A mommy-monkey hops across an open square with her baby clutching for her life on her back. It wins the cute-award for the whole trip. Going in the other direction, much more slowly, is a white cow. He crosses the square at his own good speed as the midday crowd makes way, ultimately deciding to park himself between a parked white Honda and green Acura.
This all takes place on a road through the state of Uttar Pradesh, This is where the metropolis of Agra and its famed monument the Taj Mahal are located. The state sports something close to 170 million residents. This is approximately equal to the entire population of Pakistan _ the nuclear-armed Islamic state to the northwest with which India is often at odds on big issues.
The good people of Uttar Pradesh struggle on with one of the country’s lowest per-capita incomes. People, from children to grandparents, do what they have to do to survive. They beg for money, recycle anything that can possibly be recycled and scrape up what they can while hoping and praying for tomorrow. It is a kaleidoscopic scene beyond any fictionalizing, but to Western eyes it might seem most like a memorable page or two from Emile Zola or Victor Hugo.
At the end of the journey north lay the city of Agra and its main jewel, the Taj Mahal, a white architectural apparition arising in the middle of 110 degree heat and a miasmatic tableau of tourists and locals.
Even if the camels and monkeys and cows and people of Uttar Pradesh had decided to take the day off and not provide one of the great tumultuous insights into the real India today, the delight of the destination would have justified the journey. But it is the people who make a culture and a nation, along with their animal helpers, their democratic constitution and their anti-colonial spirit. Despite all the backbreaking poverty and corrupt or hilariously inefficient bureaucracies along with everything else, India still has a shot at becoming that superpower.
``Notwithstanding the poverty,’’ commented a professional American social worker traveling with me, ``you don’t get the sense of defeat. After all, the people will do almost anything for a rupee. They want, badly.’’
Even so, it’s not so easy to become a superpower. China is not there yet and still could implode before it happens. America is there but it still might fall off its high horse if it keeps making wrong big-time decisions. India is far from there and whatever its realistic chances, superpower-status is anything but a slam-dunk.
That’s one reason why the soul of India that you see in Uttar Pradesh won’t give up.