Chapter 1-

THE WORLD'S KNOWLEDGE OF INDIA SINCE 1947

IN theory the knowledge should be full as well as accurate. There are in India today a larger number of foreign observers of all kinds than were ever present in the country. Of these, the first group is comprised of the correspond- ents of Western newspapers and broadcasting organiza- tions. After them come an immense number of experts concerned with most kinds of human activity. Some of them feel that though they are doing their duty by their country they are not doing much good to India. But there is nothing which frightens the present Indian ruling class more than the idea of doing anything without the advice and help of White experts. So we have them, and they range from the specialists who advise us about taxation and contraception, to those who build our dams and steel plants. Even a Japanese gardener was brought over to convert a public park, which was being grossly neglected by the Delhi Municipality, into a Japanese garden; why. the Japanese himself could not understand. All these men come by a good deal of information, and they sometimes publish it or at all events spread it by word of mouth.

Among all these foreign experts, one species has a very special status in contemporary India. It is that of the economists. As I wrote about them in my book on Eng- land: There is no other country in the world in which the tribe of pundits called economists are held in greater honour. Perhaps they are the only pundits who are at all honoured by us now. So India has become an El Dorado for every kind of economist from every part of the world."

THE CONTINENT OF CIRCE

In the next row stand another set of knowledge-seekers, the diplomats. The conscientious among them, and those from North America and Europe are very much so, put in much solid work, a very heavy part of which is collec- tion of information. They draw up reports and send them regularly to their foreign offices, which seem to have ex- tensive cellars to mature them. They show a marvellous industry in this research, and the labour they undergo sim- ply to make newspaper clippings appals a man like me who has never kept a note of anything in his life.

Even the novelists on India have become purveyors of sociological data. Many foreigners who are interested in our life but will devote neither the time nor the effort needed to gain any worthwhile knowledge of it read these novels. The novelists, too, conscious of the demand, and keen to meet it, go about the country notebook in hand, collect local colour and turns of speech, record snatches of conversation with special reference to such slips in English as lend themselves to caricature, and then three- quarters in ponderous solemnity, and a quarter in cold- blooded pelf-seeking malice, they turn out works which are no more fiction than blue-books are fables. In fact, at times they are documented with such apparent solidity that they may even be laid as evidence before the com- mittees for foreign aid.

All these men taken together supply a very impressive amount of information about today's India, and if the value of any kind of knowledge was to be determined solely by its volume the outside world should be well in- formed about us. Yet the unexpected truth is that it knows even less about what really exists and is happening in India than it does about the countries behind the so- called Iron Curtain.

In saying this I mean no reflexion whatever on the foreign observers, especially the newspaper correspond- ents. They are as a rule intelligent men, trained to observe rapidly and accurately. Though most often in India they have no other means of getting acquainted with the life of the people than visual observation, and that, too, limit- ed to small sections, yet I have been surprised to find how frequently they arrive at notions which are remarkably close to the truth. Certainly, they see and understand more than the Anglicized ruling class. Perhaps that is be- hind the clamour that is raised from time to time against them, and also behind the extraordinary demand which has been put forward that foreign newspapers should be compelled to employ Indian journalists, and not corres- pondents of their own nationality, to report on India. But they have to work under great difficulties, deployed in depth, which impede observation, obscure interpretation, and also prevent the publication of such accurate and im- partial information as can be obtained. All this necessarily

vitiates what is published about India and reduces its value. Even so I would make concessions for the correspond- ents, but none at all for the novelists and the writers of what nowadays is called 'reportage' and 'travelogue'- what words! There is nothing which can be said in ex- ter-uation of their works. As a rule, they contribute neither to knowledge nor to literature. To take the novels, it would surprise the Western readers who go to them that they are hardly ever read by Indians. The main reason is that they ring false. The foreign novelists know virtually nothing about India and perhaps care still less. They come to India in search of out-of-the-way material which might help them to appear original. The result is counterfeit Indian literary curios.

Unfortunately, even those Indians who write novels about themselves in English try to do no better. They take their cue from the foreign dabblers with India. They them- selves are not very well posted about their own country, and most of their information is raw material gathered ad hoc. They belong to the Anglicized upper middle- class, which is out of touch with the life of the people and even of the poor middle-class. Moreover, just to acquire the desire to write novels in English they have to de- Indianize themselves substantially. 

Over and above, in order to be novelists in English, these Indian writers are faced by a problem of writing for tackling which they have neither the knowledge nor the strength of mind. The life, the mind, and the behaviour of Indians are so strange for the people of the West that if these are described in ordinary English the books would be unintelligible to English-speaking readers, and unacceptable to British or American pub- lishers. Most Indian writers solve this problem, not by choosing a genuine Indian subject and creating an adequ- ate Western idiom to express it, but buy selecting wholly artificial themes which the Western world takes to be Indian, and by dealing with them in the manner of con- temporary Western writers. To put it briefly, they try to see their country and society in the way Englishmen or Americans do and write about India in the jargon of the same masters. The result is an inefficient imitation of the novels about India written by Western novelists. India is far too big a subject for such frippery.

Even those who write "travelogues' or 'reportage' have adopted this curious manner. They write as if they were Western journalists. The more advanced of them even go so far as to imitate the worst American and British journalistic antics, in imitating which these Indians show themselves, not simply as the harlequins the Western writers of this type are, but as dancing monkeys. Their antics and grimaces, which they regard as their airs and graces, prompt me to quote Ben Jonson and Edith Sitwell to say that they out-dance the Babioun".

I shall now pass on to consider the special difficulties facing the Western journalists or writers. The very first of these is the compulsion or rather coercion of Indo- British and Indo-American friendship, which is not only seriously curtailing the freedom to discuss Indian subjects, but actually coming in the way of such a basic inquiry as how much of this friendship exists or for that matter is even possible. The official representatives of the British and American Governments are the watchdogs of this friendship, and extremely nervous and yappy dogs they are, more like Pekinese in a boudoir than mastiffs in the farmer's yard. They try to brief and influence correspond- ents and get very angry if the latter show more independ- ence than is considered safe in the light of policy.

Any foreign journalist who shows unwelcome curiosity. or any writer, Indian or foreign, who is capable of detach- ment soon runs into trouble. This has been the case with some correspondents I know, and in regard to the diffi- culty, in reality the impossibility, of securing publication for views not in agreement with the policies of the Great Powers, I shall give an instance which concerns me.

In 1957 I wrote an article in which I tried to describe the real state of the political relations between the United States and Britain on the one hand, and, on the other, the countries of Asia which had become independent after the war, and in it I also implied that the entire policy of econo- mic aid to these countries was wrong. One important English journal and one well-known American magazine to which I offered it rejected it outright. But one Ameri- can journal, noted for the openness of its editorial policy and for its seriousness and influence, read it with enthu- siasm. The article was accepted provisionally, and I re- wrote it twice at the request of the editorial staff. In the end, however, just before the expected date of publication, the journal found itself unable to publish it, though very handsomely I was paid the full honorarium. The reason for the final rejection was, however, extremely unconvinc- ing to me. It could have been given as soon as the article was first received. So I could attribute it only to an after- thought or some adventitious difficulty, perhaps connected with the timidity shown towards India.

This timidity is reckoned on se confidently in India and has become so normal that the sudden outburst of anger in the Western Press over the Indian action over Goa at first shocked everybody here. 

Compared with the Press, the British and American publishers are still relatively free from fear. Even so I have heard of an instance in which a very well-known firm of English publishers backed out of an agreement with a novelist on getting a report from its Indian branch that the book was likely to be regarded as anti-Indian in India. I also know of attempts at political censorship by British publishers of books on India.

I think that this timidity will harm everybody concern- ed, and India even more than Great Britain or the United States. Still, if one were to consider only the immediate interests of policy and not its long-term results, it has to be admitted that the abject fear that the West displays in respect of everything said or published about contempor- ary India and the other newly emancipated countries, is fully justified. Public opinion in all these countries is ab- surdly sensitive on this score, and even the highest in these countries and the highest more than anyone else-are hurt and annoyed by the publication of anything short of fulsome praise. Any candid statement, or even a tactful assertion of one's national interests is misinterpreted, and leads to unpleasant consequences which no Western states- man is quite willing to face. This was shown quite plainly when the question of Great Britain's entry into the Euro- pean Common Market was being discussed.

I shall recall one or two recent incidents to illustrate this. One of these arose out of a B.B.C. commentary on Ceylonese politics after the assassination of Mr Bandara- naike. Though it was both realistic and sensible, Mr Macmillan himself had to express his regrets to the Cey- lonese Government and the B.B.C. had to apologize. At the same time, the correspondent was informed that all this constituted no reflexion on his professional compet- ence, which could only mean that the regret was expedient.

Mr Herter, the former American Secretary of State, be- came involved in another incident which was equally characteristic. When he said that his Department had no direct knowledge of the Indo-Chinese border and his country no direct interest in the dispute over it, I felt pleased. I thought that for once the modern practice of everybody meddling in everybody else's affairs, and there- by manufacturing a Chinese puzzle-box of quarrels, had been rejected, and there was going to be a reversion to the saner traditions and tone of diplomacy before the new open diplomacy, and the later U.N. diplomacy of showing teeth without biting, came into vogue. In any case, Mr Herter had said nothing to which any sensible person could take objection.

But no. Even before India herself had had time to feel aggrieved the American friends of India raised the cry that a grave faux pas had been committed, and that, however neutralist' India might be, the United States had no right to be neutral. The implied rebuke was that the director of American foreign policy should have remembered what was neutralist India's fundamental condition for managing international relations: it was the simple principle those who are not for me, are against me.

Such a cue was not lost on India. Immediately hand- kerchiefs went to unofficial Indian eyes. The Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs could not follow that example and admit that it was hurt. That would have been infra dig. But it professed to be 'puzzled'. That was enough, and Mr Herter furnished explanations. Even so the Press in India commented that the damage done by the original statement to Indo-American relations was not wholly repaired.

Incidents such as these keep the fear of India fresh in the minds of Western statesmen. Though the latest trend in the West seems to be a reaction from the excessive timidity, there is at least one place where it can never be anything but live. That is the Commonwealth Office in London. An Australian professor lecturing in Delhi once said that the Ministry of Commonwealth Relations in Britain was the most timid of the British Ministries, and its main job was negative-that of cautioning the British Government about the likely effect of its various policies upon Commonwealth relations. Only a few days before him, Mr Malcolm MacDonald, then the British High Commissioner in India, had furnished confirmation in advance of the professor's opinion. Speaking on the so called Commonwealth at a meeting in Delhi, he explained that on that occasion he was going to speak like a model U.K. High Commissioner, which meant that he would say nothing that could be in the slightest degree objectionable in any quarter, utter nothing but safe platitudes, and in short reveal nothing of the slightest interest to anybody. This sense of humour showed that Mr MacDonald had not surrendered wholly to the spirit of the new Common wealth, and he kept his promise in the discourse which followed. I shall not, however, go into the details of the powerful psychological compulsions which make both Great Britain and the United States so anxious about Indian reactions and induce them to take a far more optimistic view of what is happening in India than would have been the case if these compulsions were not present, for I intend to deal with the tangled relations between my country and the West in another book. So I pass on to consider the other obstacles in the way of gaining accurate knowledge about contemporary India.

The very first of these is the general and fairly serious ignorance about India among the foreign observers. There are very few who come even with the minimum book- knowledge, and their stay in the country is short, and their duties too pressing for them to be anything but perfunctory in regard to knowledge. In such circumstances, correct interpretation and appraisement of what is observed is not possible, though the observation itself might be extensive.

There is, next, ignorance of the languages of India. The apparent ease with which foreigners can carry on their work in English comes in the way of the discovery that no true insight into the Indian mind can be gained without a thorough knowledge, both for reading and conversation, of at least one Indian language, and if Sanskrit can be added so much the better. A very large number of us are indeed glib in English, but glibness and expressiveness are not synonymous. The number of Indians who have a per- sonal expression in English is not large, and it is soon found that the majority of the speakers of English employ a conventional diction for putting across conventional ideas. Besides, there is the Hindu secretiveness. No Hindu will speak frankly in English for fear of divulging what he does not want a foreigner to know. It has hap- pened to me when I have been discussing India objectively. there have been winks at me and expressive glances at the foreigners present. It becomes worse if the foreigner speaks to our politicians. Then it seems all a tale of slithy toves, the mome raths, and the mimsy borogoves, and though the listener is compelled to remark audibly. It is grand', he cannot avoid saying to himself, 'But rather hard to understand.'

Even so I would say that all these difficulties are com- paratively speaking secondary ones. There are funda- mental obstacles which call for a full-fledged epistemo- logy, so to speak. A theory of knowledge seems to be an essential prerequisite to any understanding of India by Westerners. A very sketchy one is being offered.

The most important thing to note is the revolutionary transformation that has come over the character of the knowledge about India since the country became independ- ent. So long as British rule lasted, its strongest point was District or local adminstration. In the same way, the strongest point of the intellectual equipment was its em- piric value, derived from a mass of information collected through direct field exploration. The endless series of large and solid official or semi-official publications in which it was embodied constituted a true and gigantic Encyclo- paedia Indica, which has not been superseded even now and perhaps, though partly out of date, will never be re- placed by anything produced by us. 

The essential quality of this old knowledge was, as I have hinted, its practical usefulness. It was brought to- gether by practical men who needed information to carry on administration, to deal with social and economic pro- blems, and to manage people. It was not strong in gene- ralization, and what theories it aired were more or less amateurish. But being absolutely first-hand the knowl- edge rang true, and to it might be applied the words of Bergson that a mind born to speculate or dream might remain outside reality, might deform or transform the real, perhaps even create it, but an intellect bent upon the act to be performed and the reaction to follow, feeling its object so as to get its mobile impression at every instant, is an intellect that touches something of the absolute. There is a tendency in certain quarters, even British-of course, de- generate British-to describe this knowledge as the pro- paganda of Koi Hais, Anglo-Indian Blimps. But the stupidity of this attitude is really more unsavoury than its opportunism.

Another important feature of the old knowledge was that it was concerned almost exclusively with rural India and the common people. The men who collected this knowledge knew little about the Westernizing middle-class, and certainly cared still less. They were repelled by this class of Indians, and always denied their representative character and discounted their influence and power. The result was an insistent emphasis on the static and conservative aspects of Indian life and thought. In this they were one-sided, but the one-sidedness was in favour of what was and will always remain nine-tenths of India. All this has been not only changed but replaced by the opposites. The seekers of knowledge about India are no longer workers seeking it for practical ends, but nearly all des cérébreux, engaged in observation and interpreta- tion, sometimes out of intellectual curiosity, sometimes in the service of preconceived ideas and policies. If their short stay in the country can be regarded as an advantage for freshness of perception and freedom from set notions, it is also a handicap in the way of gaining insight into the modes of Indian thinking and behaviour whose patterns are wholly different from anything in the West.

Moreover, these men stay in the Westernized quarters of the big cities and know nothing of the truly Indian parts of even the same cities. Of course, they go out at times. and watch the wider milieu of Indian life, and not infre- quently bring back perceptive impressions. Nevertheless, these remain external and inferential.

Thus the world's knowledge about India today is obtained overwhelmingly at one remove from people belonging to the Westernized and urban upper middle-class, who have become the heirs of British rule. For nimbleness of wit, plausibility, argumentative skill, and gift of the gab they are not surpassed by many people on the face of the earth. But in the very nature of things they are unqualified to give a full or fair view of what is taking place in the country. For one thing, they have their trusteeship of the people of India, which I look upon their exploitation, to justify. This makes them prone to mis- represent and even to lie. But it would be a mistake to think that as a class they deceive intentionally. They are so completely imitative of the West, so dependent on current literature written in English, mostly by foreigners, for their knowledge of their own country, so ignorant about the original sources of knowledge, and so formed by their urban upbringing that the whole of traditional and rural India remains outside their ken. Perhaps their outlook can be best indicated by saying that the two things in India they ignore most and even dismiss as unimportant are Hinduism and agriculture. Can anything be done about it? To this question, un- der the existing conditions the answer is virtually an un- qualified 'No'. Any attempt to know India by direct ob- servation is resented. Already the Western Press is under a cloud in India, and is suspected of bias and hostility, and a correspondent who sets store by objectivity soon finds the taps of information shut off. If, in addition, a large number of qualified foreigners were to appear with the avowed object of carrying out field observation, the existing silken curtain is likely to be replaced by one of iron.

I come last of all to an obstacle in the way of knowl- edge which is interwoven with the very stuff of India in the material sense. Anyone seeking insight into our life cannot afford the luxury of avoiding or forgetting unpleasant ex- periences. A man out only for agreeable sensations will be beaten at the very outset by the common riddles of our existence: an indefinite sickness of heart which seems to damp off everything living; arid, dour, and laughterless personalities which yet are lackadaisical in action as well as thought. The great plain with its drawn, parched, and ascetical look at least wrinkles to a skyward smile during the rains, human beings never. It is a country which exacts robustness or inflicts neurosis.

Occidentals come from a clean and tidy material world, in which dirt, squalor, and disorder are sins. But I declare every day that a man who cannot endure dirt, dust, stench, noise, ugliness, disorder, heat, and cold has no right to live in India. I would say that no man can be regarded as a fit citizen of India until he has conquered squeamishness to the point of being indifferent to the presence of fifty lepers in various stages of decomposition within a hundred yards, or not minding the sight of ubiquitous human excreta everywhere, even in a big city. I at least can claim that I have not run away from any of these. For the last twenty years I have lived in a part of old Delhi where none of the makers of new India ever visit me, not only because that would be physically un- pleasant to them but also for the reason that it would be socially derogatory. Yet I have not moved out, nor will.

I live just inside the old wall built originally by the Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan, overlooking a fine park and commanding a magnificent view of the famous Ridge, the Jumna, and the Jami Masjid. It is probably the finest aspect to be seen anywhere in Delhi. My Western friends say that it reminds them of the view of the Borghese Gardens from the Pincio. But after independence, for four years, I saw people easing themselves in this park in the morning, sitting in rows. During this time the stench was so foul that after inhaling it for a year I fell ill and came very near death. Within the city I have seen streets running with sewage water and faeces floating on it, while, undisturbed by this, vendors of vegetables and other foodstuffs were selling their produce on the adjacent pave- ments. I have never objected to or minded all this, and I will say that if I have any living knowledge of my coun- try it is a reward for this unflinching realism. So, when Anglicized Indians come to argue with me I expect them to possess at least a fragment of my knowledge and tole- ration of these conditions.

But at the same time I must warn all Western observers against misinterpreting this all-pervasive squalor and un- tidiness. A good deal of such misinterpretation already exists, some of it innocent, some malicious. There are two appearances in India which are utterly deceptive. The first of these is the glib talk of the Anglicized upper middle-class, and the second the external squalor. Neither mean what they would have meant in the West. To take only squalor, in our society it does not have the same correlation with character as it has among European peoples. For instance, in the West a man who has not shaved or has not changed a dirty shirt will be judged as a man with an inefficient mind and slovenly character. In our society this association does not exist, and an un- kempt person might be an exemplary person, besides being an efficient hand. More is said on this subject in Chap- ter 9 of this book.

Squeamishness is out of place in India. I put up with almost everything, as I have already said. In fact, the necessity to be psychologically proof against filth is the first condition of understanding our life. Therefore, I am tempted to read an allegory for those who seek enlighten- ment about India in a story of the Arabian Nights. It is the tale of Prince Diamond, who wanted to go to the fabulous city of Wakak. A holy man warned him against so rash a venture. 'Do not', he said, 'take an endless road filled with terrors, give up your desperate quest. You might spend your whole life, and that in vain, in trying to reach Wakak, and if by fortunate chance you arrive there you would lose your soul.' How many Occidentals have paid this price by trying to write about India!

Princess after princess, every one of whom fell in love with him, entreated him to desist. But at last one of them, herself the daughter of a king of the Jinn, finding him inflexibly resolved and set on his purpose, thought it better to help him than allow him to go to his doom. She gave him some magic weapons, which she said would protect him, and told him to seek out her uncle, the Jinni Flying Simurg, who alone could take him to Wakak. Then she bade farewell to him in bitter tears, after taking a promise that if he came back safely he would remember and return her love.

After many wanderings the Prince at last came upon Simurg, but only to find him sleeping and snoring under a tree. He waited, but when the giant did not wake up even after a long time he lost his patience and began to tickle the soles of the huge feet, which awakened Simurg. But the crafty thing pretended to see nothing, and eyeing the Prince maliciously let out a terrible fart. This went on for over an hour until the atmosphere all around was so charged that any living creature would have been poisoned. But, of course, the Prince was protected against the foulness by the magic weapons. The Jinni was as- tonished to find the trick he had played foiled, and asked, 'What has enabled you to survive the blasts from my bum?" The Prince held up the weapons, upon which the giant stood up, made a deep bow, and offered to be his slave. 

When he learned that Prince Diamond wanted to go to Wakak, Simurg took him on his back, inflated his great body to an even greater size, and flew up. After seven days of flying they arrived over the shining city of Wakak.

I think the genii who guard the secrets of our country, life, and civilization put us to the same test before they will allow us to see real India. But when they do carry us up what a vision it is! Has anyone pondered over the difference which even a height of two hundred feet makes to our conception of the earth we live on? All its squalor and confusion vanish, and we see things spread out below in order, goodness, beauty. So, when I visit the hills, I like to go up to an eminence and sit on it. Even in the big cities in which I have spent most of my life by favourite perch is a high roof.

But the strongest conviction that I had of the power of height to liberate the vision and spirit of man was when, on an air journey from London to Paris, I flew over Dieppe. The coast of the Channel was drawn as if with a brush, the little town with the country around it looked like a beautifully drawn and coloured map, and every small detail was clear. Was this the place, I asked myself, where the expedition had gone wrong and come to grief after running up against unknown obstacles? How stupid! However, it was I who was being stupid. My position high up in the air had so elated me that I com- pletely forgot what blind and helpless creatures we were on the ground. A favourite poem had passed clean out of my mind. It was that in which Baudelaire takes the albatross as the symbol of the poet and compares the bird's grand flights with its waddling on the dock of a ship:

Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule! Lui, naguère si beau, qu'il est comique et laid! L'un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule, L'autre mime, en boitant, l'infirme qui volait! 

None of us can escape this torture of the body on the ground, but there is no power on earth which can deprive us of the freedom to escape in a different way-to rise in spirit to the infinity of silent spaces, which do not frighten but only strengthen.