HVK Archives: Imaginary homelands
Imaginary homelands - India Today
Swapan Dasgupta
()
28 July 1997
Title: Imaginary homelands
Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: India Today
Date: July 28, 1997
Shashi Tharoor's new book straddles a grey area between a nice read and a
minor work
It may sound excessively cruel. but there are strong indications that the
50th anniversary of Indian Independence is essentially a publishing event.
The number of anthologies, commissioned and uncommissioned, histories and
other celebrations of the subcontinent are quite impressive, though given
India's poor prospects as the emerging star of the developing world, there
is every likelihood that many of these volumes will soon find place in the
remaindered section of bookshops.
Shashi Tharoor's India straddles a grey area between a nice read and an
eminently forgettable contribution. In the twilight zone between good
journalism and indifferent scholarship, Tharoor has an advantage which few
of those in India can boast: detachment. He has not lived in India since
he left St Stephen's college in 19 7 5, though like most "Never
Relinquished India" NRIS, he has devotedly spent his annual furlough in the
mother country. As such, the work resounds with concerns that seem
pressing from a distance and abounds with references from the New York Times.
Tharoor is a self-confessed liberal of the Nehruvian variety who sees India
as an aggregation of divergent minorities held together, in Jawaharlal
Nehru's words, by " strong but invisible threads".
That India has a quasi-mystical quality about it- "To be Indian is to be
part of an elusive dream we all share, a dream that fills our minds with
sounds, words, flavours from many sources that we cannot easily identify".
This nebulousness is reinforced by the writer's personal Hinduism, which is
abstract, all-embracing and thoroughly Brahminical (not in the narrow caste
sense of the term). As such, he is alarmed by what he sees as attempts to
bring Indian nationalism down to earth. It was a similar fear that gripped
Indian liberals like Tej Bahadur Sapru and Mohammed All Jinnah in the 1920s.
Like most NRI liberals, Tharoor is alarmed by the rise of the BJP. He
singles out this Hindu "chauvinist" for much of India's recent problems. As
a statement of his personal political preferences, that is fine. The only
problem is that the Hindu nationalism he is singling out for opprobrium is
one that is more visible in the flip side of the NRI liberal than in India.
Tharoor is alarmed by a dogmatic, semitic Hinduism which loves Ram and
Hanuman more than the Upanishads. He prefers a more cultural Hindu
identity Ironically, so does the BJP. Curiously, Tharoor is not even aware
of it.
But then, Tharoor is not really addressing Indian issues. His engagement
is with the conflicting visions of an imagined India in the diaspora. The
book is an intervention in the ongoing fight between the overseas Indian
Manhattan liberals and the overseas friends of the BJP. That is why,
Tharoor's India is sometimes more romantic than it actually is and more
disagreeable than citizens experience it to be. In looking for a title, he
should have borrowed from Salman Rushdie-Imaginary Homelands.
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