NCCSAS Blog

            There I was, winding my way through the narrow lanes of the Medina in Tangier, searching for the right storeowner to bargain with for a few packs of Moroccan mint tea. Seemingly all at once, five street vendors surrounded me, trying to get me to buy their (unwanted) wares. At first, you try to be polite. “No, I don’t want that, thanks.” But that just makes you a pushover. So what did I do? I figured if they thought we didn’t share a common language (they were trying to hustle me in English), they might just give up. So I tersely said something along the lines of, “No, I don’t want that,” in Hindi and hoped for the best. I figured, of all the languages I knew, they’d be the least likely to understand that one. And normally, I was right. But on this particular occasion I got the following:

“Naheen chahiye! Naheen chahiye! KUCH KUCH HOTA HAI!!! SHAHRUKH KHAN!!!”

 

            I had underestimated India’s soft power. Joseph Nye, who visited Duke for a lecture recently, is largely responsible for the development of soft power theory, which utilizes culture and values in a nation’s foreign policy in addition to the traditional tools of military engagement, brute force, economic sanctions, etc. Much is made today of the rise of China and how it rescued the world economy from the brink, but I doubt whether, had I said, “I don’t want that,” in Chinese, I would have heard:

 

“CHAIRMAN MAO!!! GREAT WALL!!! CULTURAL REVOLUTION!!!”

 

            Don’t get me wrong – I’m sure most Moroccans know at least something about China. But through the vehicle of Bollywood and dance, India has made itself infinitely more accessible. We might also include Pakistan in this argument, as there is an increasing amount of cooperation between Pakistani and Indian actors and musicians, although Bollywood is still firmly entrenched in Indian culture. India has managed to tap into world consciousness in a way that China seems to eschew at the moment – through the culturally beloved. From America to Morocco, we all know of Bollywood, Gandhi, and bhangra. And it doesn’t hurt that India has the more friendly façade of a liberal democracy compared with China’s more authoritarian, top-down Politburo. In short, India knows how to market itself well. China may be able to buy the world off, but India can capture its heart. This is an exaggeration, of course, but I can’t help but think that India is be doing itself a huge favor by exporting its national culture as opposed to ominous economic threats. I can’t say that I’m fascinated by Bollywood movies themselves, but their global implication for India has yet to be fully seen.

 

            Ironically, however, the Indian government hasn’t exactly made such great use of this cultural capital. Rarely do we see India taking the bull by the horns in the way that China has done with North Korea, or even Brazil with the Middle East (you can disagree with the outcomes, but you can’t say that these countries lacked initiative). Not even an Olympiad or a World Cup to speak of for Bharat Ma! Personally, if I had one word to describe Indian foreign policy, it would be “reactive.” We in the US are constantly trying to analyze the Indian “response” (read: “reaction”) to climate change, to the economic crisis, to our latest overtures in Pakistan. The last time India may have been a truly global player on the foreign policy stage was during the Cold War, when the US and Russia were vying for Indira Gandhi’s attention. The Cold War!? I mean, let’s think about that for a second. Because, for a nation that has been tapped along with China to be one of the “next big things,” that is…well it’s a damn long time. Even in its own sphere of influence, India keeps a relatively quiet profile. This can be a strategically beneficial choice at times, but, as with the Myanmar debacle a few years back, it can also come across as indicative of a  lack of moral fiber.

 

            So there’s the conundrum: all the resources, but none of the initiative. For my part, I’d love to see India become more assertive in foreign affairs. Given that China seems to be diametrically opposed to nearly any effort we undertake, I think India could be a useful voice of compromise and moderation. Meet me halfway, anyone? Also, I tend to view India as America’s cultural ally of sorts, if only because both are in certain ways liberal democratic products of British colonialism. There’s a level of trust America shares with India that will take years, if not decades, to build with China. The trick, however, is for India to resist the belligerent nationalism that has tarnished China’s rise, for it is this very characteristic that has made America so mistrustful of the Asian powerhouse. If China is the aggressor, the India is the (Pak aside) pacifist. Okay, okay, so there was that one time when India joined Club Nuke uninvited. But, hey, we got over that little hiccup because, gosh darn it, we like those Indians! However, joining the America-China tango as merely one more self-interested superpower will destroy the American goodwill India can use to propel it to that very same position. This is all my opinion, of course, but I don’t think I’m the only one who’s voicing something along these lines. So it’ll be interesting to see exactly what kind of path, if any, India chooses to blaze when it comes to international relations during the next few years. On the one hand, America has a frightening amount at stake which depends on India’s cooperation, but, on the other, we do all love a good wild card.

The Race Question

“So…are there race issues in India?”

A professor of mine was asked this question in a class on contemporary South Asia that I took two semesters ago. I don’t really remember her answer, because I immediately thought “Oh Lord – there aren’t nearly enough instructional hours in the semester to adequately address this topic.” But here I am, trying to do it in a blog entry. Hey, I never said I wasn’t a hypocrite!

So why would I choose to write my first entry about this particular issue? Simply put, race is the 500 pound gorilla in the room when discussing South Asia. Or at least it’s one of them. You know, those things that everyone implicitly deals with but never openly talks about? Caste, Hindu-Muslim riots, poverty – these are the favorite Western discourse topics for India and elsewhere in South Asia. But it has always seemed to me that we have (falsely) assumed that race and racism come up solely in our own civilization, as “Our problems are not your problems!” has become everyone’s favorite cultural relativist answer these days.

Part of the problem, I think, is that there admittedly is no perfect word for “race” in Hindi, or any other Indic language (although please leave a comment and correct me if I’m wrong on this point). You can talk about your jaati, but that refers more to your historical caste group than anything else. I suppose the closest we can come is varn ka rang, which literally means the color of your skin. But, again, there exists considerable color differentiation among people we in America would consider of the same race. I’m sure there’s also some word out there that denotes “ancestry,” but even that doesn’t completely capture what we mean when we use the term “race.” Heck, even we aren’t too sure ourselves, sometimes. So, if I’ve ever heard of anything in the way of racism being discussed in Hindi, people have invariably used the English word. Perhaps this is why people are so reluctant to tackle how race manifests itself in India – from the start, you are already forced to rely on foreign (i.e. Western) terminology.

I have no doubt that that race, as we understand it, does not necessarily appear in exactly the same form as it does in the West. But the fact remains that it (and its sister concept, ethnicity) do matter in India. Let’s start a few thousand years ago with the commonly cited theory of the Aryans invading the subcontinent and pushing the Dravidians southward. Not only does this establish the linguistic divide between North and South, but many argue that the value placed on fair skin began around this time. It’s unknown exactly what the Aryans looked like (same with the Dravidians, if we go along with the theory), but most assume they were probably lighter skinned than the Dravidians and hailed from…the Caucasus? Europe? Who knows, really? This is all based on North Indian languages being distantly related to those spoken in Europe today. Dravidian languages in the South, however, bear no relation to North Indian languages other than the expected lexical borrowings. Important to note is that, in many popular (although by no means universally accepted) renderings of Indian history, the Aryans are portrayed as the ones who populated the ranks of the upper caste Brahmins – that is, the caste that has historically enjoyed the most social capital.

Switching gears a bit, to the British-endorsed, victorious, fair-skinned, holier-than-thou Aryan stereotype we can safely add the basic fact that, the longer you stay out working in the fields, the darker your skin will become. Given the temperatures in many parts of the subcontinent, you can think of the outdoors as tanning bed on crack. There’s a reason that many Indians today will say, “Don’t go outside! There’s too much dhoop (sunlight)!” But, back to my point, a very large part of South Asia remains agricultural, and farming remains a steadfast way of life. So, what exactly does having darker skin mean in this context? It means you stay out in the fields longer. It means you do more manual labor. It means you can’t hire your own help to do the work. It means, oftentimes, that you’re less well off than the fair-skinned family up the road that owns its land, has other people tend to it, and consequently spends a greater amount of time indoors. There’s nothing all that scientific here, just the reality that the color of your skin (as well as a slew of other variables) can, to a certain extent, be a function of your socioeconomic status in rural South Asia. Given that, for over two centuries, the people at the top of the social ladder were the uber-white Brits probably didn’t help matters that much.

Here we seem to have at least some of the historical and economic reasons behind the preference for fairer skin in India. Bridal advertisements often specifically request a girl who is gori (fair-skinned), and the skin lightening industry in South Asia is worth an amount that probably could have financed the US bailout. Let’s not even get started on how the lion’s share of Bollywood film stars currently employed would chromatically fit better in MY family photo album than in most Indians’ – this is particularly so with the actresses, perhaps reflecting the intersection of sexism and color preference. Regardless, the basic message here is rather obvious: Fairer is more beautiful, more attractive, and more successful.

It is through this paradigm that I’ve been told in India that, “America will never reach its full potential as long as it has the blacks and Hispanics.” Then there’s the lovely adjective chinky, which I’ve heard employed in no small frequency to refer to people with East Asian features. No, I’m not making this up. I mean, what do I say to these people – that the Jim Crow era just called and wants its drama back? While I’m sure these ideas were spread in no small part by colonial zealots, I’ve met too many individuals in South Asia who cannot stop pointing to the British boogeyman and saying, “It’s all because of them! They started all this!” Not only is this borderline neocolonialist, but it doesn’t solve the basic problem – you’re perpetuating it!

Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of people I met in South Asia who despised racism in all its forms – in fact, I would say these people made up the majority of my acquaintances. The NGO where I worked in New Delhi employed people of African, Anglo, Indian (North and South), and East Asian descent. In many ways, it reminded me of being in America. The India of today is an indisputably multiethnic nation. Even if we dispute ethnic differences between North and South, hundreds of thousands of international refugees and migrants now call many of India’s urban centers home because of the nation’s relative stability and tolerance. This is something Indians should take great pride in, just as I take pride in my own country when it is viewed in this light. Yet the clear preference for fairer skin among many sectors of the Indian populace (notably among younger girls) is disturbing, and ultimately cheapens the ideals of equality and inclusiveness set out at India’s independence.

And there are encouraging signs, too. As racial discourse makes its way into the subcontinent, many are questioning the current state of affairs (please see the NDTV clip I’ve provided the link for below). Dark-skinned actors landing major roles are no longer considered a liability. The South, long known for its “darker” people, has experienced a technological boom that has in many ways surpassed the development seen in the North. Finally, the hip-hop movement originating in African-American culture has found a highly receptive audience in many members of India’s urban youth. So, are there racial issues in India? You bet. But, in the best sense of the phrase, nothing lasts forever. The subcontinent is many things, but static is not one of them.

NDTV clip discussing racism against Indians from the northeastern states (i.e. those who frequently have more East Asian physical features): http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=1116912

He's like the John Henry of India!

An Indian villager burrowed for 14 years with a hammer and chisel to cut a tunnel through a mountain so that his neighbours could reach nearby fields and he could park his truck outside his home.

Ramchandra Das, 53, who lives in eastern Bihar state, carved a 10m-long, 4m-wide tunnel through the hill range from his village of Kewati. Das took up the Herculean task after villagers found the 7km trek over the mountain increasingly arduous.

When the authorities refused to help to cut the journey time, Das began carving his way through the earth in the direction of the nearest big town, Atri. The job became more pressing when Das became the first man to own a truck in the village and was unable to drive it to his home.

"I could not park my truck near my house since the mountain blocked my path," he told Reuters. Das said he was also afraid of bandits stealing his truck. "I had to leave my truck miles away, so I decided to do something about it myself," Das said by telephone.

Local villagers, who previously had to trek around the mountain, are now using the tunnel to get to work.

Das was inspired by another Bihari villager, Dasharath Manjhi, who cut a 120m-long, 10m-wide and 8m-high passage so that villagers could reach a local hospital.

Manjhi's labour, which lasted 22 years, began after his wife died when she was unable to get to the hospital. He was feted by the Delhi government for his work and died two years ago.

Indra Sinha, who was Booker-nominated for his book on the Bhopal disaster, explains why the gas leak that killed 20,000 people 25 years ago – and continues to create health problems for countless more – is still a national scandal

Bhopal: 25 Years of Poison -- The Guardian