iconographic distortions do not take away from his humanity. His lips are full, his cheeks round, and he has a double chin. His senses haven’t atrophied (the Buddha tried and rejected the ascetic way); he is at peace with the senses. The possession of the senses is part of his serenity, part of his wholeness, and the very basis of the continuing appeal of this image after two thousand years. It isn’t nonattachment like this that the letter-writer proposes, but something quite different, more Western: stoicism, resignation, with more than a touch of bitterness: a consumer’s lament.
‘ “Why do you blame the country for everything? It has been good enough for four hundred millions,” Jagan said, remembering the heritage of
Ramayana
and
Bhagavad Gita
and all the trials and sufferings he had undergone to win independence.’
This outburst is from
The Vendor of Sweets
. And for too long this self-satisfaction – expressed in varying ways, and most usually in meaningless exhortations to return to the true religion, and laments for Gandhianism: mechanical turns of the prayer wheel – has passed in India for thought. But Gandhianism has had its great day; and the simple assertion of Indian antiquity won’t do now. The heritage is there, and will always be India’s; but it can be seen now to belong to the past, to be part of the classical world. And the heritage has oppressed: Hinduism hasn’t been good enough for the millions. It has exposed us to a thousand years of defeat and stagnation. It has given men no idea of a contract with other men, no idea of the state. It has enslaved one quarter of the population and always left the whole fragmented and vulnerable. Its philosophy of withdrawal has diminished men intellectually and not equipped them to respond to challenge; it has stifled growth. So that again and again in India history has repeated itself: vulnerability, defeat, withdrawal. And there are not four hundred millions now, but something nearer seven hundred.
The unregarded millions have multiplied and now, flooding into the cities, cannot be denied. The illegal hutments in which they live are knocked down; but they rise again, a daily tide wrack on the margin of cities and beside the railway lines and the industrial highways. It was this new nearness of the millions, this unknown India on the move, together with the triviality of Indian thought on most subjects – the intellectual deficiencies of the archaic civilization finally revealed during this Emergency, India stalled, unable to see its way ahead, to absorb and render creative the changes it has at last generated – it was this great uncertainty, this sense of elemental movement from below, and an almost superstitious dread of thisland of impressive, unfinished ruins, that made the professional man say in Delhi: ‘It’s terrible to see your life’s work turning to ashes.’ And his wife said, ‘For the middle classes, for people who live like us, it’s all over. We have a sense of doom.’
PART TWO
A New Claim on the Land
3. The Skyscrapers and the Chawls
1
I T IS SAID that every day 1500 more people, about 350 families, arrive in Bombay to live. They come mainly from the countryside and they have very little; and in Bombay there isn’t room for them. There is hardly room for the people already there. The older apartment blocks are full; the new skyscrapers are full; the small, low huts of the squatters’ settlements on the airport road are packed tightly together. Bombay shows its overcrowding. It is built on an island, and its development has been haphazard. Outside the defence area at the southern tip of the island, open spaces are few; cramped living quarters and the heat drive people out into such public areas as exist, usually the streets; so that to be in Bombay is always to be in a crowd. By day the streets are clogged; at night the pavements are full of sleepers.
From late afternoon until dinnertime, on the ground floor of the
‘ “Why do you blame the country for everything? It has been good enough for four hundred millions,” Jagan said, remembering the heritage of
Ramayana
and
Bhagavad Gita
and all the trials and sufferings he had undergone to win independence.’
This outburst is from
The Vendor of Sweets
. And for too long this self-satisfaction – expressed in varying ways, and most usually in meaningless exhortations to return to the true religion, and laments for Gandhianism: mechanical turns of the prayer wheel – has passed in India for thought. But Gandhianism has had its great day; and the simple assertion of Indian antiquity won’t do now. The heritage is there, and will always be India’s; but it can be seen now to belong to the past, to be part of the classical world. And the heritage has oppressed: Hinduism hasn’t been good enough for the millions. It has exposed us to a thousand years of defeat and stagnation. It has given men no idea of a contract with other men, no idea of the state. It has enslaved one quarter of the population and always left the whole fragmented and vulnerable. Its philosophy of withdrawal has diminished men intellectually and not equipped them to respond to challenge; it has stifled growth. So that again and again in India history has repeated itself: vulnerability, defeat, withdrawal. And there are not four hundred millions now, but something nearer seven hundred.
The unregarded millions have multiplied and now, flooding into the cities, cannot be denied. The illegal hutments in which they live are knocked down; but they rise again, a daily tide wrack on the margin of cities and beside the railway lines and the industrial highways. It was this new nearness of the millions, this unknown India on the move, together with the triviality of Indian thought on most subjects – the intellectual deficiencies of the archaic civilization finally revealed during this Emergency, India stalled, unable to see its way ahead, to absorb and render creative the changes it has at last generated – it was this great uncertainty, this sense of elemental movement from below, and an almost superstitious dread of thisland of impressive, unfinished ruins, that made the professional man say in Delhi: ‘It’s terrible to see your life’s work turning to ashes.’ And his wife said, ‘For the middle classes, for people who live like us, it’s all over. We have a sense of doom.’
PART TWO
A New Claim on the Land
3. The Skyscrapers and the Chawls
1
I T IS SAID that every day 1500 more people, about 350 families, arrive in Bombay to live. They come mainly from the countryside and they have very little; and in Bombay there isn’t room for them. There is hardly room for the people already there. The older apartment blocks are full; the new skyscrapers are full; the small, low huts of the squatters’ settlements on the airport road are packed tightly together. Bombay shows its overcrowding. It is built on an island, and its development has been haphazard. Outside the defence area at the southern tip of the island, open spaces are few; cramped living quarters and the heat drive people out into such public areas as exist, usually the streets; so that to be in Bombay is always to be in a crowd. By day the streets are clogged; at night the pavements are full of sleepers.
From late afternoon until dinnertime, on the ground floor of the
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