All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
The choice of Singh sends all the right messages. Because he was the architect of India’s successful economic reforms, the business community will be reassured that the return of Congress does not mean a return to state industry and quasi-socialism. He is also squeaky-clean, a rarity among Indian politicians. As a non-Hindu, he is a living demonstration of India’s secular inclusiveness and a rejection of the BJP’s Hindu nationalism. And as a Sikh, he is proof that the painful events of 1984 are firmly in the past, both for India and for the Congress Party.
Plus, of course, the elevation of a Sikh to the highest office in the land may well usher in a golden age of bhangra dancing, which has to be one of the coolest things ever.
Or take India, for example. While the drama in Delhi these last few days might seem a little nuts, just consider how sane you’d feel if the weather was 111 degrees with widespread dust, and you lived in a town where most people have no air conditioners and the electricity craps out in the heat of the afternoon.
If it ever hits 111 in New York for more than two days running, I expect mass looting and general carnage, not to mention multiple hijackings of ice cream trucks.
Jon Stewart, one of my favorite too-smart Jews, gave a commencement speech at William and Mary that’s well worth a read. [via Wonkette]
I have just finished rereading Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. When I first read it many years ago, I didn’t know much more about India than what I’d learned from Ravi Shankar and the Beatles, and my knowledge of Islam was even sketchier. I hadn’t even seen My Beautiful Laundrette. I remember finding it a difficult novel, and I don’t think I ever made much sense of the whole bit about the pilgrims from Titlipur, who march from their little village to the Arabian Sea, expecting it to part for them so that they can walk to Mecca.
On a second reading, I believe it may be the great Rushdie novel, surpassing even the extraordinary Midnight’s Children. It asks very deep questions — What is faith? What are good and evil, and how do we tell them apart? What is God? — and works on them through complex, moving narratives, without ever giving in to the temptation to answer them outright. And for whatever reasons, the novel touched me this time in a way that few novels have.
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On a separate note, India continues its extraordinary tradition of melodrama with Sonia Gandhi’s tearful performance today in parliament. Was it sincere or all for show? Is this a ploy for sympathy and support, or is she really stepping down? Whatever the case, the whole show is worthy of a Bollywood weeper. Now all we need is a song-and-dance number.
The subsequent week is Meditate NYC, a weeklong opportunity to explore NYC’s diverse Buddhist communities as they offer open houses and meditation sessions for beginners or the curious.
What do you get when you combine graffiti, politics, car culture, and the PrintShop aesthetic? That’s right: freeway blogging! Instead of painting “WENDY I LUV U” or “MIDVILLE HS BRONCOS RULE!!!” on a sheet and tacking it to the overpass, people have been printing and posting political messages. It’s clever, it’s witty, it’s only slightly illegal, and it gets more readers in fifteen minutes than I’ll get in a lifetime. On the other hand, it requires actually getting up and doing things, including walking on a freeway overpass, and that sounds hard. Plus, unlike regular blogging, you can’t freeway-blog in your underwear.
Or I guess you can ? I knew a woman who climbed to the statue of Junipero Serra above the 280 Freeway in California and flashed her boobs at the traffic below ? but I think it’d be kind of tacky. [via New Yorkish]
The trees are leafy again, it’s up over 80 degrees today, and last Sunday our whole neighborhood smelled like kerosene. That’s right! It’s summertime again, or at least a mighty fine springtime with summer just around the corner. And what does summer in New York mean? Well, yes, it means beautiful girls in tiny little bits of clothing, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Summer in New York means free concerts!
Not all the listings are out yet, but here’s the 2004 schedule for the stellar Celebrate Brooklyn series at the Prospect Park bandshell. A few shows not to miss:
These are by no means the only worthy shows, just a few that caught my eye. I hope to see you there!
The BBC, as usual, has the best reporting from India, though their lead headline, Gandhi triumphs in India election, may overstate the case. While this is indeed a kind of restoration, with the Congress party and the Gandhi family back in power (descendants of Nehru, including former prime ministers Indira and Rajiv, no relation to Mohandas K. Gandhi or Ben Kingsley), I think the results are better interpreted as a rejection of the status quo. After all, in Kerala, where the Congress Party held power, they were soundly defeated by one of India’s communist parties.
Indian politics are incredibly convoluted and difficult to parse, complicated by language barriers, illiterate electorates, rampant political corruption, and the country’s sheer hugeness. As such, drawing large conclusions is always a difficult game. Still, I think there are some important messages in this election.
1) India is a secular country. The BJP rode to power on a wave of Hindu nationalist emotion, having played a key role in the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya, which led to anti-Muslim riots that killed over 2,000. And in 2002, when anti-Muslim riots broke out in Gujarat, the resulting nativist feeling helped the BJP win that state’s local elections.
All that would seem to demonstrate that the BJP’s ill-defined but divisive policy of Hinduttva, or “Hinduness,” was a sure winner at the ballot box. But India is a land of minorities, with substantial Muslim and Christian populations. And even among Hindus, there are divisions at least as wide as those between, say, a Polish Catholic and a Texan evangelical. Most of India’s south is uneasy about the BJP’s Hindi-centric nationalism; after all, Hindi isn’t even in their language group, much less in their local languages. Tamil Nadu especially has a long history of domination by northern rulers, and they fear losing their language rights and their cultural heritage. And among northern Hindus, caste differences still matter: the BJP has tried to win votes from the lower castes and Dalits (untouchables) by playing them off the Muslims, but the relationship has always been uneasy.
Gujarat was the biggest surprise in this election full of surprises. The voters there rejected the communal violence of two years ago, which has devastated their economy, and chose instead the party of inclusion.
2) The economic reforms are working. The central plank of the BJP’s platform was the economy. It’s booming, and the BJP’s economic reforms are to a great extent responsible for transforming India from a sluggish cryptocommunist backwater into an economic up-and-comer. The positive effects of these changes are visible everywhere: MTV, fancy new shops, better cars, cellular phones. The trouble, however, is that while these benefits are visible, they’re still unattainable for most Indians. The economic changes have benefited the rich and the urban middle classes, but India’s majority is still rural and poor. The government that spent the election campaign crowing over stock market results and GDP increases also overlooked fundamental matters such as water shortages and rising electricity prices, and they paid for their neglect at the polls. Indians are pleased with the economic boom, and I don’t think the new government will lead the nation back into socialism. But the Indian people are right to insist that the fruits of the recent success be distributed more widely.
So this election is not a rejection of India’s new economy. On the contrary, had there been no boom and only business as usual, India’s voters might not have been disgruntled about not getting their fair share.
3) Indian democracy works. The voters surprised the pundits and made real choices that were based on enlightened self-interest. They didn’t fall prey to apathy or nativism. This is a rare case of a great mass of poor people making their voices heard through a legitimate democratic process. The new government will be all too aware of the power of India’s voters to pay attention and turn them out of office if they don’t satisfy people’s basic needs. In a country of nearly a billion people, the government has been held accountable for the state of the nation. This is a triumph for India, for democracy, and for humanity.