“The Brown Parrot” – Guest Post by Pankaj Saksena

>>>>>”The literary establishment of India is guided by the leftist intellectuals. All over the world, the Communists have always infiltrated the institutions in order to influence the public opinion. Giving these institutions a neutral veneer, they sell Communist propaganda without letting the masses know the truth behind it. ”

“… Gramsci posits a strategic distinction, between a War of Position and a War of ManÅ“uvre; the war of position is intellectual, a culture war in which the anti-capitalist politicians (communist leaders) seek to have the dominant voice in the mass media, the mass organisations, and the schools, in order to increase class consciousness, teach revolutionary theory and analysis, and to inspire revolutionary organisation. On winning the intellectual war of position, communist leaders then would have, the political power, supported by the mass populace, to begin the war of manÅ“uvre — the armed insurrection against capitalism.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony)

Amitav Ghosh wrote the “Sea of Poppies” which was nominated along with Adigas novel. The literary content , the language etc was far superior to Adigas novel. Ghosh highlighted on the sins of the Raj about how Opium trade was used to make money and how India and even China ( Hong Kong) was exploited. This was precisely why this novel was turned down for a Booker as it exposed the cunningness of the Brits. Indians must start a rival to Booker awards in India or overseas and give prizes to novels like Amitav Ghosh , and Vikram Seth whose Suitable Boy was great in intellectual content.

Now Adigas novel is to be made a movie , another Slumdog Millionaire. Why not make a movie on “Sea of Poppies”. What has happened to W Bengal which produced men like Ray, Sen etc. Can’t they make a movie on ‘Sea of poppies”

This award giving strategy to people like Adiga and Oscars is for display and divide as they cannot rule directly now.

I read White Tiger and was appalled by the abysmal low standards of language and intellectual depth.

I would rather spend time cooking in my pressure cooker good food than write some rubbish to get a Booker.

A great review !!

Seems like the parrots in the Coop are in a competition – Who squawks the most and the loudest ?!!

Great review Pankaj. Interesting that you had to seek Naipaul’s help in buttressing your review – Naipaul, a foreigner of Indian origin educated at Oxford and who writes in a foreign language and knows nothing about Indian rural life? But then Naipaul is outspoken, a trenchant & petulant critic as well. What your review again highlights for the umpteenth time is the intellectual bankruptcy in the Hindu world.

Koenraad Elst captures this in his seminal book “Decolonising the Hindu mind” The absence of think-tanks & genuine research based scholarship are galling since it leaves the field open for “others” to frame the context of Hindu civilisation.

However, thanks to technology, am seeing quality writers like you emerge and be read. The question however really is, what is being done about the lack of intellectual capital? Rajiv Malhotra has written a fair bit on this issue of how “sepoys” in academia have hogged the limelight while bemoaning the lack of intellectual horsepower.

@ Sanjay Anandaram
Thanks for appreciating the review. I am lucky that people like you are commenting on my article.
‘bout Naipaul, yes he is a foreign born writer, who does not live in India and does not write in any Indian language. I don’t even think he knows any Indian language very well.
But it is not the point. Except his latest book, ‘Magic Seeds’ Naipaul hasn’t written fiction ‘bout India. His trilogy on India comprises three books of non-fiction, travel writing. You can write about another country and civilization while writing non-fiction. In Science it doesn’t matter at all what country you belong to and what place you are writing about. In humanities, it matters more but not that much. Many historians write about nations other than their own. And that is no handicap.
But it is completely different with literature. In fiction, drama and poetry if you don’t know the language very well, I would even say if the language in which you are writing isn’t your mother tongue, you will never succeed in creating something original. This is what Naipaul says. This is what the true story is. No great literature in the world was created in a borrowed language. Take the example of Russian. French was more popular in Russia than English is in India now. I mean, all the great Russian writers like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Turgenev, Chekhov had a great command over French and in the society in which they lived, it was more common to speak French than Russian. Yet they created the entire body of literature in Russian.
French literature is other great example, though the French never valued any other language more than their own, except perhaps Latin.
In India, in Hindi literature the wonders were all in Hindi like Amritlal Nagar, Chatursen Shastri and Vrindavan Lal Verma. Bankim Chandra and his contemporaries like Sharat Chandra knew fluent English and Hindi, yet they chose to write in Bangla.
Same is the case with any other great literature in the world and there is no exception to that rule, as far as I know. The rule applies to individual writers too. Take Naipaul. He never knew Hindi in his childhood. Pidgin Trinidadian English was his mother tongue. So it was natural that he wrote in English. But even here there is something remarkable. The entire body of Naipaul’s works consists of writings ‘bout countries and cultures other than England. So even when he adopted England as his home and adopted British English as his language, he never tried to write ‘bout England itself. In his own words, ‘No one after Dickens has explored London. London remains a Dickens’ city.’
Same is the case with the other great writer Joseph Conrad. Pole by birth, he adopted England as his home, but he never wrote ‘bout English society at great length. His subject of research and writing – just like Naipaul – was other third world countries which were struggling for identities, just like him.
There are many great historians like Will Durant, Arnold Toynbee and Winston Churchill who wrote ‘bout other nations than their own. In modern times, the ratio is increasing. So John Man writes ‘bout China. Tim Flannery writes ‘bout New Guinea and Americas. But there is no such parallel case in literature. [That, if you don’t count ‘Indian English literature’ as literature really.]

Literature and language are so intertwined in each other and so mutually fulfilling, that you cannot separate them. I used to be in literature a lot, until the classics were exhausted. I remember reading Tosltoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Flaubert, Dickens, Maupassant, Twain and many many more. While I accidently read some of the modern Indian novels, like the White Tiger, I cannot help noticing that they are not anchored in any place. I cannot help to feel that they lack horribly as compared to the great classics. They are free of geography! Just change the names and places and you could locate the novel bloody anywhere in the world! In a novel like the White Tiger, there is nothing indigenous. Where are the names of local trees? Local plants? And hell! Local grasses? Where is the description of local bugs? The chirpings of local birds? Where is the description of the flair of local dress? Where is the semi-tropical climate of India described? Where are the slangs which would be incomprehensible to anyone outside the culture about which the novel is about?
In literal sense, books like these are free of cultural moorings. They are floating free, anonymously in the free space.
And this is not entirely the fault of Indian writers. It cannot happen until it is done in the local language. Poetry especially, catches what science cannot, what is not reachable by the rational minds either in science or in humanities. It reads between words. It studies a local dialect and specializes in the unique combination of a thousand variables a language can offer and expresses its peculiar and unique features. If you switch the language, the only thing which is special in literature and makes it different from science and history, disappears.
If Adiga had attempted at pure history or journalism it would be entirely okay, but attempting literature is absurd for a person in his place.
Many in India are writing in English. Arun Shourie. Ravi Shanker Kapoor. Sita Ram Goel and Ram Swarup also wrote in English. But their discipline is pure history or journalism and so non-fiction. That’s why they are doing great. But please notice that none of them have ever attempted anything in fiction or literature except Sita Ram Goel and all the six books of fiction which Sita Ram Goel wrote, were in Hindi.
Regarding Naipaul, his subject is history and his observations are about its effect on the current society. For that, he is entirely eligible. What he comments upon is the sense of history, the impact of religion, and the search for identity. All of these fall into hardcore subjects which can be studied regardless of which language you study them in.
And yes, he has traveled in India for quite some time, and even more than that he has contemplated over India for long. India figures in every of his work, consciously or sub-consciously. India has been his journey and not only a destination.
Moreover, there is none like Naipaul when it comes to insights. His writing has matured for sure over the years, but you can see his insights, his hallmark, right from the very beginning of his career, in the Mystic Masseur, The Suffrage of Elvira and the Middle Passage. When he talks ‘bout India, he has a greater canvas in his mind to draw upon his insights and conclusions. He knows and feels the history of Islam and its impact on India. He feels the intellectual depravity, the Hindu society had to bear under Islam’s brunt. That doesn’t just come from having knowledge of India. That comes from an understanding of religion in general and Islam in particular. That comes from a detached and aloof view of world, which makes Naipaul special. In his own words again, ‘The World is what it is’. This is the guideline of Naipaul and that makes him eligible to comment upon India.
Adiga and others have nothing in common with him. Not even remotely.
At last I would like to quote something which will illustrate the point… again from Naipaul:
“Fiction works best in a confined moral and cultural are, where the rules are generally known; and in that confined area it deals best with things – emotions, impulses, moral anxieties – that would be unseizable or incomplete in other literary forms.
The experience I had had was particular to me. To do a novel about it, it would have been necessary to create someone like myself, someone of my ancestry and background, and to work out some business which would have taken this person to India. It would have been necessary more or less to duplicate the original experience, and it would have added nothing. Tolstoy used fiction to bring the siege of Sebastopol closer, to give it an added reality. I feel that if I had attempted a novel about India, and mounted all that apparatus of invention, I would have been falsifying precious experience. The value of the experience lay in its particularity. I had to render it as faithfully as I could.”
This intellectual honesty is what makes Naipaul unique and one of his kind. Naipaul’s body of work consists of a different discipline of literature and he is the only student of that discipline on the globe.
Now is not the time to create fiction in India. First it is necessary to arouse the sense of history in its citizens. Literature will follow. So for now we need Arun Shouries, Sita Ram Goels, Ram Swarups, Shankar Sharans… and not Adigas or Roys.

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Sorry for being too verbose, but I guess that’s me. I guess this makes for another article 😉

Adiga seems to keep insisting (in his interview on bookbrowse.com) that it is pure fiction !

@ Sanjay

>>>>My intention in referring to Naipaul was to show the fact that there apparently isn’t an Indian writer who could be quoted in support of your thesis! Intellectual bankruptcy?<<<<<<

Oh, yes! I am sorry! I got it now! Generally Naipaul is blamed for being a foreigner and so I gave the explanation. But I am sorry, I couldn’t understand what did you mean here by intellectual bankruptcy?

’bout writing in English I do not say there is no feeling in Indian writing in English. I am not saying it is completely devoid of it. What I meant that it can never reach the heights of great literatures in the world. That particular amount of artificiality will always remain.

Haven’t read Amitav Ghosh deeply so can’t say anything ’bout him. R K Narayan never really dwelt upon serious issues. His works are sweet and innocent, day to day expression of life. They don’t go deep into history or religion or something like that, but its not the aim. But even in Narayan you can always feel that while writing, he is conscious that he is writing in a language other than his mother tongue. There is always a subconscious attempt to explain things which are local and maybe incomprehensible to foreigners. This is what makes it different from a literature written in mother tongue. In fact when Naipaul uses the phrase, ‘Indian writing is being created at such a remove’, he refers to the same writers you have mentioned, though I haven’t read all of them so can’t give a general statement. I would again quote Naipaul’s lines which are more relevant here:

“Fiction works best in a confined moral and cultural area, where the rules are generally known; and in that confined area it deals best with things – emotions, impulses, moral anxieties – that would be unseizable or incomplete in other literary forms.”

The moral and cultural area are not confined in Narayan. There is an effort to explain local things to foreigners, albeit subtle and subconscious.

Literature is a means to convey some feeling, some expression. It is not an end in itself and that’s why it cannot be separated from its vehicle, language.

Its true than UK or Russia never experienced colonialism like we did, but the 19th century Russian society was more French than we could ever be British. You can get that taste from the very writers which we are talking about here, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. So in a sense they experienced great foreign influence and even distortion.

I am not saying the condition is same, but there seems to be a similarity. Balzac of course is a different case.

And, yes its sad that reading is not a culture in India yet but as you say there is a ray of hope and that ray is expanding. I hope in future it becomes broad daylight.

P.S. Please gimme the links to the sites and publications which you say your friends have launched.

The conflict that seems to be a part of our modern writers –whether to see India through western perspectives or an Indian one–seems to reflect that larger conflict in Indian society with regard self-identity and development. Is the way forward merely an exercise in imitating western patterns of development and self-identity (i.e. falling into secular progressive and socialist categories) or do we have some indigenous knowledge of how better to do it.

We don’t have these discussions in India precisely because there is no place to have them. Most universities in India seem very focused on teaching subject specific courses. And even the humanities are taught with a focus of covering the subject and passing exams as opposed to getting students to pose interesting questions.

One of the most interesting statements made by Elst in his book “Decolonizing the Hindu Mind” was his statement that Hindus and even Hindu groups like the RSS regularly borrow the enemies’ glasses to view themselves. Instead of questioning the validity of the categories that western scholars regularly place Hindus in, we assume those categories are accurate and then try to defend those categories.

I almost entirely agree and have thoroughly enjoyed the analysis, including the quotes by Naipaul. The only point of contention is regarding your views on Nirad Chaudhari. I wanted to ask you if you are making these comments after thoroughly reading his works?

Yes, he was overly critical of Indians (especially the Bengali Hindus) but then most of us deserve to be criticized for our intellectual slavery and impotence as your post have pointed out. In fact, reading Nirad Chaudhuri truly makes your blood boil, but in a very different way. He was dangerously honest and incisive when it came to analyze the Hindu mind. Appeasement to anyone (yes, including the “minorities”) was never in his mind. Unless we carefully read and understand him, I do not think we can ever get out of this intellectual slavery.

PS – In case you think I’m just just another secular guy off the street, let me state beforehand that I’m appreciating Chaudhuri after having read books from Shourie to Sita Ram Goel, Frawley to Gautier. But, I think Nirad Chaudhuri is a cut above.

Pankaj,

I’m an Indian Catholic with Leftist views and I haven’t read Adiga’s book (Please note) and I do appreciate and agree with the ‘essence’ of your well-written post.

But that said, I would like to point out certain pit-falls as I see it, of your post. If a writer is propagating Christian/Islamic ideologies, I really doubt whether s/he can also propagate the ‘secular’ ideologies with the same lines. S/he should align her/himself either with Religious (Christian/Islamic) views or with Secular (derived from Communism/Marxism/Socialism or any combination of them) views.

So, when you say Adiga is just arranging ‘facts’ to support so called ‘secularism’, and if you really have a case there (since I haven’t read the book, I can’t comment on it.) how can you say that he is supporting Christian/Islam cause as well? I would observe that you’ve diluted your case by bringing in unnecessary dimensions to the picture. There might be authors whose works were intended to do the latter and you might be angry against them. If the Indian literary world is penetrated by Secularists, how can they support any religious views – let it be Hinduism, Christianity or Islam?

I agree with you on one case, there is a renewed interest in downplaying certain belief system by certain authors. They give unnecessary focus to the wrong-doings of one system while turning a blind eye towards others. But when you’re analyzing them, I would say, you should have separated both the parties – authors supporting Religious views and authors supporting Secular views. When you combine them for scrutiny, it actually weakens your case against them.

@Rick: Your comments have a lot of merit and I’m sure Pankaj will try to address them. As far my 2cents goes, it has to do with the concept of “asymmetric secularism”. Briefly it means that the laws only apply to some people.

Ideally, secular would mean not religious, but in reality of our country, they are used interchangeably to satisfy political goals. For example, you have religious leaders calling them “secular Hindus” (Agnivesh), “secular Christian” (John Dayal) or “secular Muslims” (Bollywood gangs of Javed Akhtar, etc). I hate to bring personal religion into this, but since you yourself said that you are a Catholic Christian, you may have heard of the Catholic Secular Forum (http://www.thecsf.org/home.html). Well, then let me ask you this – if a “Catholic forum” can be used to promote secular agenda, where is Pankaj wrong in saying that writers use “secularism” to promote their religious agenda? There are numerous examples like this.

But you don’t have to answer this because I’ve already answered it in the first line: certain laws are applicable to certain people only, not everyone.

PS – If you are hearing this for the first time, I can suggest that you read “A secular agenda” by Arun Shourie to know more.

Hare Krishna

Now this has to some extent controlled religion in extreme form as only poverty raises religion as a hoary issue. A well fed and taken care homosapien , if religious , would not indulge in such violent and heathenistic bonhomies.

Unfortunately this has not happened. I would not like to go in details as to why this has not happened as it would take a thesis to do this. There is a geopolitical dimension to this. You can call it chutney of hangover of bad colonial habits of the West ( or North).

This arranegment looks better to read than the previous post. I leave the decision to readers.

Hare Rama Hare Krishna

I read your review of The White Tiger with great interest. I’m no admirer of the book myself. It’s crudely written, the narrator’s voice does not come through authentically and the structure is highly contrived. I agree with your review upto the point where you say that the author is so far removed from Indian realities that he’s not really qualified to make the judgemental statements that he does. But I do disagree with you on a number of other points.

I felt that you unnecessarily dragged in the whole secular/hindu/other religions debate. Adiga may have been criticizing a certain social structure – the caste system. But let’s face it, the caste system is peculiar to India and that makes it a ‘hindu’ concept. But that doesn’t make him a critic of Hinduism and neither does it make him a supporter of Islam or anything else. He’s quite justifiably angry about the caste system.

You also say “Communism accounted for more than twenty million deaths in USSR, sixty‐five million in China, one million in Vietnam, two million in North Korea, two million in Cambodia, one million in Eastern Europe, 1.7 million in Africa, one and a half million in Afghanistan and millions of others.15 And all this in less than seventy years! Does Indian caste system in its history of more than five thousand years, has anything even remotely comparable to equal this record?” I think that can answered quite simply – no records were kept. People continue to be killed because of their caste even today. So its easy to imagine that in the centuries long history of the caste system a sizeable number were killed. Of course, in the absence of any concrete figures, we can only speculate. So while that does not mean that millions were killed, it also doesn’t mean that they weren’t killed.

Also, you seem to feel that Indian history can be neatly divided into three phases – the purely Indian period, the Islamic period and the Colonial period. This is a highly simplistic and erroneous categorisation. Indian history is far more complex than that. For instance, unlike what Naipaul says there is no such thing as ‘purely Indian’. Or rather, all of India’s past is purely Indian. The reason for that is that India’s history has always beens shaped by groups of people who came from outside. India, we must remember, is not a simple cultural or religious construct. It’s a geographical construct, as we learnt in school, hemmed in my the Himalayas in the North and by the sea in the south. In fact, India was not even a single political entity before 1947. There were always a dozen or more kingdoms, each quite independent. They just happened to be a part of India, just like Albania and Macedonia are a part of the Balkans or Finland and Norway are part of Scandinavia. So it’s also wrong to talk about ‘India’ being subjugated by others throughout history, because India as a single country didn’t exist. Sindh was invaded, as was the Delhi Sultanate, but not India. ‘Hindustan’ and ‘Bharat’ were only convenient geographical nomenclatures.

I’m sorry to have gone off track. I had a lot more to say, but I don’t have much time.

“Of course, in the absence of any concrete figures, we can only speculate. So while that does not mean that millions were killed, it also doesn’t mean that they weren’t killed.”

And here I thought that it’s facts that are supposed to support opinions/viewpoints/theory, and not the other way round. *head-slap*
Reminds me of my Physics lab experiments in college where due to faulty equipment that gave incorrect readings, we drew the curves first according to theory and then modified the actual measurements to fit that curve, because, well, the measurements have to fit the theory. I forgot that those experiments in lab were a tutorial for life. Thanks Pooja, for correcting me.

@ K. Harapriya

>>>>>One of the most interesting statements made by Elst in his book “Decolonizing the Hindu Mind” was his statement that Hindus and even Hindu groups like the RSS regularly borrow the enemies’ glasses to view themselves.<<<<<

Yes it is. This is why there is no debate in India ’bout the important issues. There is just hue and cry and a sham ’bout debates and discussions. Everyone has slogans, but nobody comes up with facts. And this is true of the entire political spectrum from left to right.

This point has been brilliantly elaborated and analyzed by Ravi Shanker Kapoor in his book “More Equal than Others: A Study of Indian Left”.

He says that in India there is no right. What we take as right in India is actually Leftist by thinking.

Yours

Pankaj

@ LK Kandpal

Oh please! Intellectual it may be a little bit, but feast? Seriously!!!

But thanks anyways! 🙂

@ Pooja

On your first objection, you allege that he is ‘justifiably angry ‘bout caste system’ but then you don’t explain it. It would good if you support your statement with some facts.

About the body count of caste system, I am afraid its not possible that some system commits horrible atrocities for a long period of time and it gets unnoticed entirely. So if caste system really resulted in a lot of casualties, where is the record?

One would argue that records were not kept and that Hinduism and Brahmins hid the record. If you care to analyze history a little bit, you will realize that it is not possible to hide genocides and crimes against humanity even when an all powerful and centralized organization like The Vatican is working to hide them. Christianity did a lot of crimes during the middle ages. It didn’t go unrecorded. So even if something had happened in India due to caste system, it wouldn’t have gone unrecorded. In India hiding a crime would have been harder as the polity was not so centralized. In fact, your own interpretation of India as a palimpsest and a conglomeration of many nationalities testifies against your claim that caste system accounted for a lot of atrocities.

Moreover, when crimes against humanities are committed, when genocides and holocausts are perpetrated on a segment of humanity they are not done randomly. There is an ideology which supports it; a law system which justifies the persecution of the dissenters; a manual which instructs how to kill the rebels without weighing your conscience. Hence, there was the Bible and the canons, the Quran and the Shariat, Das Capital and the writings of Lenin and Mao. Can you find any parallel system in Hinduism? A system which orders the persecution of the so-called ‘lower castes’? Again, a little more facts would do good.

Moving on to your next claim, ‘India is not a country’, it would be good if you read, David Frawley’s, ‘The Myth of Aryan Invasion of India’. It very well explains the theory which was made up by the British colonialists and is being carried over by their successors like Romila Thapar and R S Sharma. A theory which maintains the myth that India was never a country and Hinduism is also an import in India. The theory implies that what if Islam and Christianity came to India and conquered it, if Hinduism itself was an import. ‘Eminent Historians’ also explains how this view got entrenched in modern Indian psyche.

@Pankaj: You practically gave it all away in your first line, that you’ve only read two of his works, and *guessed* that they could be representative. The autobiography was merely his first, and in someway a so-called hit – somewhat like a *hit* Bollywood movie- high on ishq-visq-pyar-wyaar, low on intellectuality. After reading it, most Indians started howling and stopped reading him, albeit praising his “literary genius” (no disrespect to you 🙂 E.g. some people after watching Devdas said something like the novel was Sarat Chandra’s “greatest” or representative works – but they were wrong. It was one of Sarat Chandra’s earliest and comparatively, mediocre. Same here.

A good starting point to understand Nirad Chaudhuri (NC) would be … say, Wiki. If you want to know the real NC, please read “Hinduism: A Religion to Live by” written 30 yrs later. He was one of the earliest proponents of modern Hindutva, earliest critic of Nehru-Gandhi, at a time when these words of “Hindutva” were unimaginable in the Indian intellectual realm. He was probably the only Indian of his time who could write in a *purely sanskritized language* devoid of any *foreign* words.

I won’t say much on his literary genius, so let me cut to the chase – the quality of a pudding lies in it’s taste. I was most impressed by his philosophical insight into “history, religion, culture, sociology” – areas you thought were beyond his reach. Scholars can argue to the end if Samuel Huntington is right or even if he had the authority to write “Clash of civilizations” but the *fact* is that whatever Huntington had predicted in ’91 came true today. Similarly, the current intellectual slavery that you see today was *literally* predicted by NC decades back, ignored by Indians then (and now) because they thought he had no qualification for that. So, in effect these slumdog effects or “brown parrot effects” that you see today is actually a prediction that came true. He was way ahead of his time, when he predicted the current intellectual bankruptcy of our “cultural capital” (Bengal) at a time when it was rumored “what Bengal thinks today, India will think tomorrow”. The rest are subjective shades of gray – great for endless arguments.

Bottomline – I think you’ve seriously misunderstood a genius on Indian history and society, partly misled by Naipaul’s view (whom I respect too). And when you mention Nirad Chaudhuri’s name along with someone like Arundhati, leaves me utterly confused.

Hare Krishna

The statistics of people killed in post 30 , refering to the statistics given by the author of Brown Parrot excludes major events like WW1 and WW2. 50-60 million people were killed by this “Vinasha Kale Viparithe Buddhi”
( When the mind runks amuck , destruction starts says the Gita).

Then the wars in Europe over the years has killed so many. Some records are kept in Europe. Extremely cruel killings, beheading etc right from Dark Ages to 1945, end of WW11.

Then indigenous races have been anhilated in many places. Red Indians in North America. The Aboriginals of Australia live in inferiority complex. Only recently they said sorry for this. About South America , I will have to give you a course work for 2 years as Masters degree for the liquidation of Mayas and Incas. The Romas are still fighting to get recognised in Europe. The list goes on.

Now coming to India. I was in a remote place in TamiNadu , where I was feeding Hare Krishna prasadam. I went to narrow street in a village called Adi Dravidar Sanga. I talked to the people there and most of the seniors said that their ancestors are more than 2000-3000 yrs old. They still maintain their customs and their progenies go to school singing all the rustic songs in Tamil, which was Greek to me. But I enjoyed it. Then I have travelled to many places in India and one thing which was striking is the tribal and indigenous population is quite significant in number and practice compared to South America and minsicule aboriginals in Australia. I do not have experience of Africa, which is great area to study.

Well if they had been anhilated as post 16 says , then why is their population so large in number. Then there are the tribals in Chattisgarh who are Ramnamis, which is tribal tradition going back to centuries.

Yes , my interpetations of India is as follows.

India had the maximum arable land in the world. Seven rivers plus the Saraswathi ,must have irrigated the land all over very well. The Indo gangetic plain is the most fertile plain in the world. Even now, with mismanagement , it is the very fertile. Agriculture , the first culture of homosapiens , the finest and best culture in the world must have been the greatest vocation in India. To distribute land and maintain harmony, this social order must have been introduced as the rule , ruled , proletariat, trading skills, and knowledge imparting skills. One thing one must remember , there was no industrial revolution. Of course , there were forge welding of Iron pillar a feat considered unique in those days , but must have been considered as equal to archery.

But the entire society of India revolved around agriculture. Even now India has the highest percentage of farmers . Almost 60% . Can any counrty beat this? Please do not bring mechanisation here and butress this statistics. Mechanisation is good if it is not in the hands of corporations , who have caused havoc to the cooperatives in India. Just see the statistics of suicide due to anhilation of the first and finest culture agriculture from simple fertile land loving homosapiens. All over the world fertile land is sinking due to soil salinity, global warming and in India , they want to build car factories on pristine fertile agricultural land. I am not against cars , but my stay in India has showed me that India has plenty of wasteland to locate such industries.

I am not joking, India if they manage the farms well and nurture them well can export food to the world and if 60% of Indias population get money thru exports of agricultural products, you will not have farm hands migrating to slums.

With all the problems, India still has the worlds highest indigenous population. Just maintain agriculture well for the farms hands and export, earn money for the 60% and then you see , how glorious India will be.

Bit busy for now. Have to work hard for prasadam, will post when I have time.

Hare Rama, Hare Krishna.

@Kaffir – The lessons learnt in classrooms do ready us for life, no? 🙂
Anyway, what I meant was that in the absence of any solid numbers, it’s difficult, and indeed foolish, to make absolute statements in either case. Sorry if THAT didn’t come through.

@ Pankaj – This is getting very interesting. I feel like I should first read all your entries on the subject and then come back here. But would love to carry this discussion forward.

The subaltern of Adiga speaks in White Tiger.

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/Kiss+my+arse!

Kiss my arse! (British & Australian taboo!) also Kiss my ass! (American & Australian Taboo)

something that you say in order to tell someone that you will not do what they want you to He asked for money, and I told him he could kiss my arse.

Fresh air.

http://www.richardcrasta.com/impressingthewhites.htm

In the novel ” Impressing the Whites” Crasta gives tips “How to win a Booker”

http://www.richardcrasta.com/impressingthewhites.htm

This is a great post.

Dear Sir,
It is a tragedy that we make something of nothing. Booker Prize winning books are a BIG “Y**********************N”. Remeber we won the Miss. World and the Miss. Universe Titles! Well the reson was the western cosmetic industry wanted to enter India. Make the Indians win it sponsor the program,keep the paid media well drunk/feted and you have it!!
It is only the rave party goers and the slobs who go to the Bar and the “Mallers” who read (I should say Talk) these books. Not the real readers who enjoy books.
The conversation will normally go like this:
Hi da whats happening. Have you read AA’s white tiger- it is so cool!
I do not know what cool is do with it? Yeah yaar yesterday I met “x” in the pub night and x was talking so much about this book which he bought yesterday. The way he spoke about the book excited me and I went and bought the book just before coming here. I can let you borrow it (Meaning- hey I am not going to read this rubbish I will dump it on you.
Booker winners especially Indian is for an agenda and one of the numbers of the agenda is “Running India and Hinduism down” and especially by an Indian.
Does anybody read Arundhathi now a days. Who remembers Kamala Das after her conversion to Islam.
This will also die out shortly. Let us not ignore it but make a spoof and ridicule everytime someone talks about Booker winners and you will see that it will die a natural death and nobody in their right minds will dare to talk about Booker winners in a short while.
It is because WE give importance that Booker gives prizes to third rate writers.
vck