The Inevitable Return....and the December Season...
For some unfathomable reason, in the last 4 days, the topic of returning to India for good has figured in my blog, office conversations, Hindu magazine reading and late-night conversations with Sivasankari ..and not once did I initiate it. Some didn't know it would happen. Those who knew, didn't know when. Those who knew when, didn't quite understand why. As for the person who was supposed to know everything, he didn't have a clue how....
Anyway, shifting tracks, I came across this fantastic piece of writing by the historian/cricket historian Ramachandra Guha in the latest Outlook. In a humorous yet caustic critique of the NRI homecoming season in December, Ram Guha takes the liberty to launch broadsides at several sections - the deep-rooted racism in the Indian society, the fawning hosts, the high-and-mighty "visitors", radicals both left and right of centre.. He even affectionately terms these ppl as "The Family Show Off", "Non-Resident Religious Radical(NRRR)", "Non-Religious Political Radical(NRPR)"...
A few selections from this piece ( http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20071217&fname=Col+Ramachandra+Guha+%28F%29&sid=1&pn=1)
"Like Dussehra and Diwali, it is a winter festival, but unlike them the gods it honours are living beings, who appear before us in flesh and blood instead of being frozen into stone. This relatively new addition to our lives is called NRI puja. It takes place in December, a time when thousands of Non-Resident Indians briefly become Resident Non-Indians. As a middle-class, English-speaking South Indian, I am always part of these festivities myself. For half my family serve as deities; the other half as worshippers....."
"The NRRR tells you that the only way to build a strong, self-reliant nation is to marry Faith with State. Like exiles everywhere, he yearns for the restoration of a pure, uncontaminated, national culture, which in his rendering can only mean a Hindu culture......"
"the NRPR are located chiefly in the American academy, as students and professors. They are fervently against 'lpg': liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. This, despite being beneficiaries of L, P, and G themselves. Some NRPR offer socialist Cuba as an alternate economic model; some others, the Gandhian ideal of the self-sufficient village economy. Where the nrrrs support a political party, namely the BJP, the NRPR are more prone to support, and influence, those social movements which share their distaste for the state, the market, the establishment; for, it seems, everything - and - everyone - but -themselves...."
"Both kinds of radicals are hypocritical. Living under a Constitution that separates Church from State, the religious radical yet wishes to convert India into a Hindu Pakistan. Living in an open, free society that encourages innovation and enterprise, the political radical yet wants to refashion India into a Burma writ large, into an isolated, autarkic autocracy that shall pass itself off as a socialist utopia....."
.....................................................................................................................
I have long been a fan of Ram Guha, but this article totally blew me away, for I could instantly map quite a few ppl into these divisions. Despite these observations not taking me completely by surprise, the articulation was as perfect as it could get and left me smiling. And the icing on the cake was the realization that the more liberal I thought I was becoming, the more radical I was getting. The more conservative I was turning into.
I knew exactly which category I was starting to fall into.... and my lone point of concern is .....Should I be concerned by this??
Will I ever know what is right and what will be left?
Anyway, shifting tracks, I came across this fantastic piece of writing by the historian/cricket historian Ramachandra Guha in the latest Outlook. In a humorous yet caustic critique of the NRI homecoming season in December, Ram Guha takes the liberty to launch broadsides at several sections - the deep-rooted racism in the Indian society, the fawning hosts, the high-and-mighty "visitors", radicals both left and right of centre.. He even affectionately terms these ppl as "The Family Show Off", "Non-Resident Religious Radical(NRRR)", "Non-Religious Political Radical(NRPR)"...
A few selections from this piece ( http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20071217&fname=Col+Ramachandra+Guha+%28F%29&sid=1&pn=1)
"Like Dussehra and Diwali, it is a winter festival, but unlike them the gods it honours are living beings, who appear before us in flesh and blood instead of being frozen into stone. This relatively new addition to our lives is called NRI puja. It takes place in December, a time when thousands of Non-Resident Indians briefly become Resident Non-Indians. As a middle-class, English-speaking South Indian, I am always part of these festivities myself. For half my family serve as deities; the other half as worshippers....."
"The NRRR tells you that the only way to build a strong, self-reliant nation is to marry Faith with State. Like exiles everywhere, he yearns for the restoration of a pure, uncontaminated, national culture, which in his rendering can only mean a Hindu culture......"
"the NRPR are located chiefly in the American academy, as students and professors. They are fervently against 'lpg': liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. This, despite being beneficiaries of L, P, and G themselves. Some NRPR offer socialist Cuba as an alternate economic model; some others, the Gandhian ideal of the self-sufficient village economy. Where the nrrrs support a political party, namely the BJP, the NRPR are more prone to support, and influence, those social movements which share their distaste for the state, the market, the establishment; for, it seems, everything - and - everyone - but -themselves...."
"Both kinds of radicals are hypocritical. Living under a Constitution that separates Church from State, the religious radical yet wishes to convert India into a Hindu Pakistan. Living in an open, free society that encourages innovation and enterprise, the political radical yet wants to refashion India into a Burma writ large, into an isolated, autarkic autocracy that shall pass itself off as a socialist utopia....."
.....................................................................................................................
I have long been a fan of Ram Guha, but this article totally blew me away, for I could instantly map quite a few ppl into these divisions. Despite these observations not taking me completely by surprise, the articulation was as perfect as it could get and left me smiling. And the icing on the cake was the realization that the more liberal I thought I was becoming, the more radical I was getting. The more conservative I was turning into.
I knew exactly which category I was starting to fall into.... and my lone point of concern is .....Should I be concerned by this??
Will I ever know what is right and what will be left?
posted by ranga | 4:49 PM
7 Comments:
This comment has been removed by the author.
interesting post da...many ppl do fall into guha's categories...vs naipauls writings are NRRR (even though he lives in trinidad).tariq ali is NRPR (though he is a pakistani living in england)
i have come up with two categories of indians (in some ways applicable to most ppl living away from their homeland, but pronounced in indians):those who are disillusioned with the system and struggle to "beat" it...this is all of us before we came to the US.for the second category of people, the idea of india becomes an abstraction...they lose touch with ground realities and indulge in sentimentality and intellectual masturbation...like guhas categories.
the tragedy of india is that there are too little of the third kind...people who are visionaries and also action oriented...
hey just read the article, and would like to quote some more interesting lines from it to expand the discussion..
Both kinds of radicalism stem from a deep sense of alienation. The Hindu professional might live in suburban America but he shall never be of it. His neighbours can't pronounce his name, have never heard of his place of origin, don't warm to his music and are uncomprehending of his religion. Back home, however, there are people who both understand him and need him. So he writes cheques to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, thus to preserve the essence of a culture too elevated for his narrow-minded neighbours to appreciate.
The university radical, for his part, also finds himself pyschologically out of place in America. His fellow dons all know their Marx, but in the wider society the ruling deity is Mammon. The only hope is to take succour in oppositional movements within India. When George Bush's America is so ferociously devoted to consumer capitalism, thank God for the desi leftists, who so heroically keep out the market and keep flickering the fading light of socialism. The Mother Country to the rescue, again.
Both kinds of radicals are hypocritical. Living under a Constitution that separates Church from State, the religious radical yet wishes to convert India into a Hindu Pakistan. Living in an open, free society that encourages innovation and enterprise, the political radical yet wants to refashion India into a Burma writ large, into an isolated, autarkic autocracy that shall pass itself off as a socialist utopia.
Folks can get most of the article from your blog itself :P
i did not read the complete article, just the excerpts u posted, cos i am eager to post my comments :)... as u know i largely belong to non-religious political radical, though i do have some affinity for hindu philosophy... so though i do agree on guha's claim about hipocrisy, i do not agree about his claim that the NRPR would support a govt like burma's. infact he is exactly wrong. it is infact the NRPR people across the globe that are pressuring their govts to cut-off support to Burmese regime. Yes, the NRPR people probably do support the more simple lifestyle of the burmese people, but not under a dictatorial control. In is infact the opposite. The NRRR people support a more stringent, non-tolerant coporate loving modi-style govt.
The fact is that the NRPR people are still working on figuring the solutions out, and solutions come as you grow, that is why it sounds hypocritical tht we live one way and preach the other... but its a step by step process. And the thing is that the NRPR people have very consisively identified the core problems of society... and are struggling to work towards solutions, that is why u see them recycle, consume less, sacrifice their brilliant careers to serve the society and ultimately practice what they preach.
Moreover, Guha is wrong in sayng that civil liberties are a result of L,P,G. No, they are a result of grassroots movements of the likes of gandhi and MLK.
So my conclusion is that right now, both the groups sound hypocritical. But the Non-resident religious radical group does firmly believes that they are morally right and unwilling to accept the real problems of society and change. On the other hand, the NRPR people accept the prevalent problems of society, their own hypocrisy, and are struggling to change themselves and the world around them. So in future, the NRPR people have the potential to change themselves and the world, but the NRRR people will still hang on to their narrow minded beliefs and never change.
Saw this post a couple of days back.
A lot has been said about visiting NRIs. I tend to look at them with coldness. Their life, their choice.
India and me will welcome you with open arms if and when you return.
There was a reply posted to this article on Outlook, not sure if u got a chance to look @ it.
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