Born On A Cusp

Just the other day I was saying that I wish Delhi papers would write, too, about the reportedly increasing number of Indian nationals falling victim to violent attacks in the Philippines. (In the context of both a recent investigative report in Manila about the subject, and the consistent coverage here in the last two weeks of the deaths of two Indians in the US.)

Comes now a report about a Punjabi killed in the Philippines. The 38-year-old man, who was a trader, was abducted and later shot dead.

I got my wish; Delhi papers are giving me the news I was looking for. I will not say I’m delighted.

Occupying a lot of space these days in local papers is the news about the killings of two Indian nationals in Louisiana.

On Thursday night last week, the two students were found shot dead inside an apartment in Louisiana State University, where they were both pursuing their PhDs. The police had initially said it was a case of a random break-in, but later changed their theory to one saying the two students — both natives of Andhra Pradesh — were “specifically targeted.”

Over the last days the reportage has been persistent; all angles are being pursued.

I am not bothered by the attention being showered to this news. All life is precious, after all. I am simply curious about the lack of equal attention to the reported spate of killings of Indian nationals living in the Philippines.

In a report in August this year, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism described what it called an “alarming” incidence of violent attacks against Indian nationals in the capital, Metro Manila, and surrounding cities. Quoting India’s Ministry of External Affairs, the report says 19 Indians have been killed in the Philippines in the last two years; in 2006 alone, about a dozen Indians were killed there — the highest number of Indian fatalities that year outside of their home country, higher even than those recorded in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.

(The Indian Embassy in the Philippines estimates that there are about 28,000 Indians in the country, most of them rural folk, and mostly Punjabis and Sindhis, historically the merchants and traders among the population.)

Most of the victims of violence, according to the PCIJ report, were moneylenders — those who extend small loans to poor families and were repaid with 20-percent-interest.

I wish Indian news would write about them too.

Currently reading In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, by Edward Luce. Luce, a journalist married to an Indian family, makes a convincing account of India’s transformation in the recent two decades.

Luce’s work — a product of five years of traveling across India — reminds me that:

1. Indian civilisation is very old; the Indian nation is very young. The ‘India’ that the world knows now came to birth only 60 years ago, yet the Hindustani civilisation that is its cradle is 5,000 years old. The process of nation-building has barely begun, and the birth pangs are here, often magnified by precisely those centuries-old norms that, at the same time, make India unique.

2. There isn’t any one single ‘India.’ This is a country where you will find parents of a bride transporting giraffes from Africa to give an “authentic” touch to their daughter’s theme wedding, the same one where tiny and impoverished agricultural hamlets are home to farmers living in mud huts and whose daily prayers include appeals for rains to come so they can at least grow some pulses in their fields for their evening meal.

3. India is less about black-or-white, and more about huge swaths of grey. For instance, most societies are quick to condemn the use of child labour, and the normative response to the phenomenon is usually one of easy moralistic judgments of the evils that accompany making children work. But India will tell you a different story about child labour; in this country, it is not so simple.

4. Even among those who may know India more intimately than the doe-eyed tourist, India remains a puzzle. Luce was South Asia bureau chief for Financial Times for four years and, as such, has had a long experience with the many facets of Indian life. Yet with all the facts in his hands, a lot of things about the country continue to pose an enigma to Luce: How Gujarat for example, one of the most modern of India’s states in terms of economic growth, remains one of those who are most discriminatory against women and girls; Or how an “untouchable” woman would rise to power as chief minister of the country’s most populous state.

5. One does not need to try too hard to fall in love with India; nor does one need to try too hard to not like it. It’s all here. Food, philosophy, music, history, architecture; democracy, tolerance, opportunity. Corruption, communal conflicts, caste discrimination, poverty.

And that’s the best thing about Luce’s book. It is — equal parts — celebratory of India’s rich past, colourful present, and exciting future, and critical of the country’s warts.