[Assam] From Outlook India/ Pankaj Mishra

[Chan Mahanta]

Superman Never Returns

India can go ape-or it can learn to talk to itself and the world

PANKAJ MISHRA
For some years now, the English press has treated us to such 
headlines as 'India, the Next Superpower', 'India's Global Takeover', 
or 'Bollywood Fever Sweeps the West'. This enthusiasm has even 
infected American and European policymakers and journalists who, 
increasingly wary of China, seem to be hoping for a likeable Asian 
counterweight to the inscrutable Middle Empire.

For much of its 60 years of existence, India appeared in the Western 
press as a land of maharajahs, beggars and deluded socialists. 
Abruptly now, Time, Newsweek and Foreign Affairs hail India as a 
'roaring capitalist success story', hoping that the country will be 
the US's new 'strategic partner'.

Plainly, the American business and foreign policy establishments have 
no choice but to seek new markets and allies in an uncertain 
post-9/11 world. As always, their geopolitical calculations are 
marked by wishful thinking. Faced with imminent decline, great powers 
like the US become particularly prone to ideological illusion. But 
why should we-a big but largely poor country with a superpower 
complex-deny our own reality?

It is tempting to bask in the glory of a 'rising' India-indeed there 
is much money to be made out of peddling that image. But most writers 
and intellectuals know that the truth about a place as big and 
diverse as India is always multi-faceted. Hoping to provide some 
nuance to recent discussions on India, I recently published an 
article in the American press. I pointed out a few obvious facts: the 
poor state of public health and primary education, the high 
unemployment rate, the minuscule proportion of Indians working in IT 
and business processing industries (1.3 million out of a labour force 
of 400 million), the deep agrarian crisis, and the rise of militant 
Communism in some of the poorest parts of India.

No sooner had the article been published than responses began to 
flood in. Many aid and NGO workers working to alleviate rural 
poverty, disease and illiteracy wrote to express their gratitude that 
I had acknowledged at least some of the problems they confront every 
day. Other messages conveyed, mostly politely, their disagreement 
with my implicit belief that India-and China-have to make their model 
of economic growth both politically and environmentally sustainable.

But most people who wrote angrily accused me of bringing shame upon 
India by washing her dirty linen in public. Not surprisingly, these 
letters were either from Indians in America, who long for the India 
they left behind to become a superpower, on a par with the country in 
which they presently live, or from the generation and class of 
Indians who have benefited from India's integration into the global 
economy. These globalised Indians evidently wish to identify 
themselves with Indian achievements and American power; they seemed 
convinced that I am a deluded socialist and anti-globalisation 
activist, in addition to being a dedicated hater of Hindus and India.

I have grown accustomed to such outbursts. But they still puzzle me, 
partly because I think of myself as part of the generation of Indians 
privileged by globalisation. India, where I have spent most of my 
life, is not only a perennially complex and enriching subject for me; 
it also gives me a place in the world and I feel bound to the country 
in many ways, not all of which are expressible. The Indian 
nation-state may be only 60 years old but there is an even longer and 
more continuous entity: the Indian civilisation to which belong most 
of my heroes, the Buddha, Ashoka, Gandhi and Tagore.

The breathtaking originality and sophistication of these thinkers and 
activists long convinced me that the country in which they flourished 
has something more profound to offer to the world than its ability to 
imitate the consumer societies of the West.Imbued with this 
confidence, I am startled by the insecure and anxious nationalism I 
often find among many well-educated Indians: a self-esteem that is 
evidently so fragile that it can be undermined by a single dissenting 
article in the New York Times. It becomes imperative then to examine 
this expectation of Indian greatness, and the role assigned in it to 
writers and intellectuals.

At almost every level this nationalism seems to stem from a desire to 
achieve the kind of full-spectrum dominance the United States enjoyed 
in the second half of the 20th century, when American presidents 
shaped world events, American CEOs as well as Hollywood stars became 
global celebrities, and the American neo-liberal ideology of 
capitalism appeared the terminus of history.

History, however, has moved on. Its military bogged down in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, its international credibility shattered, and its economy 
massively indebted to China, the United States is struggling to hold 
on to its pre-eminent status. Challenges to neo-liberalism arise 
within its own Latin American neighbourhood. The increasing 
self-confidence of China, the independence of the EU, the 
intransigence of Russia, and the open disdain of Iran, Venezuela and 
North Korea, show plainly the limits of American power and ideology.

The strong recent challenges to America tell us that we have entered 
a multi-polar world which no single economic and cultural power can 
dominate. In other words: though there is much to admire in India's 
recent economic growth, and the growing prominence of Indian 
businessmen abroad, it is simply unrealistic to expect that Nandan 
Nilekani will be the new Bill Gates, or Karan Johar the next Steven 
Spielberg. (Even Shilpa Shetty will never be as famous for being 
famous as Paris Hilton.)

Indian influence over a multi-polar world is unlikely to be as great 
as the one the US or UK knew. And though playing junior partner to 
the American corporate and political elite may be what some 
globalised Indians and Indian-Americans desire, it won't much help 
India reckon with its own great problems of poverty and inequality. 
Nor will it help India deal with the biggest challenges that almost 
every major developing country faces today: how to accommodate ethnic 
and religious minorities within nation-states; how to make democracy 
more representative, and free of special-interest groups; how to 
shape an equitable and environmentally sustainable model of economic 
growth.

Happily, few countries seem more intellectually equipped than India. 
Travelling in China recently I met many academics and writers who 
confessed to me their envy of such Indian thinkers as Ashis Nandy, 
Arundhati Roy and Amartya Sen who could eloquently criticise the 
status quo in world politics and economy and outline a new vision of 
human possibility. Indeed, the global Indian intelligentsia 
comprising of writers, economists, historians, sociologists and 
political theorists is as much, if not more, impressive than the much 
written-about 'pool' of Indian scientists and engineers.

And the Chinese are right to admire it. Though tested by political 
and economic instability on a massive scale, the political temper of 
India's intellectual class has remained largely liberal and 
tolerant-an admirable fact given that a relatively brief and limited 
experience of terrorism and immigration has swung large sections of 
the intelligentsia in western Europe and America to the Right. But 
how much do the Indians readying themselves for a global takeover 
value their artists and intellectuals?

The easy temptation, of course, is to enlist writers in 
English-rather, their publishing advances-in the parade of Indian 
achievers in the West.Self-congratulation in the English-language 
media matches well the sarkari view of the uses of art and the 
intellect. A newspaper article on the Frankfurt Book Fair last year 
spoke of how Indian diplomats plan to use India's internationally 
famous artists and intellectuals in a 'qualitatively new emphasis on 
the projection of India's soft power'. A cultural bureaucrat was 
quoted as saying, "There is a need to leverage this strength to 
reinforce the strategic foreign policy objectives of the government."

The jargon sounds impressive. But it hides a genuine confusion about 
the relation between the state and the life of the mind. Those of us 
who are awestruck by American realpolitik rhetoric about combining 
'soft' with 'hard' power may find it useful to remember that hardly 
any respectable American writers have ever lent themselves to the 
strategic objectives of their government. The lasting monuments of 
American culture-whether those created by Saul Bellow or by Bob 
Dylan-emerged not so much as a celebration of American power as from 
a tradition of self-critical reflection.

Sixty years after independence, India engenders a rich intellectual 
and artistic life; the fact rightly calls for celebration. But it's 
still important to remind ourselves how writers and intellectuals 
would best serve the cause of India's greatness: by speaking frankly 
about the new historic tasks and responsibilities that await the 
country, and by dispelling fantasies and delusions that lie in her 
path.




(Mishra's most recent book is Temptations of the West: How to be 
Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond)