Today there appears a certain weariness in the media reports to the situation of the Adivasis, the exploitative mining companies and the corrupt state governments. Short reports of the latest atrocity appear in the press but without the urgency and strategic analysis required of the situation. Prime Minister Modi meanwhile has pledged electricity to the 400 million Indians in the next five years. In the way are environmental protests, court battles and the rights of the Adivasis people.
Things are different in Southeast Asia. Yes, there are formidable battles and fights that require solutions, not least to alleviate the huge suffering of those caught in the middle. And yes, the obstacles and problems confronting the countries when finally winning their independence from the British were massive and could have been overwhelming. The tools and means available to resolve these huge problems were minimal. Despite these disadvantages, enormous progress has been achieved. But it is unlikely to be a journey or solutions similar to those in the West, irrespective of the views and assumptions of Western journalists. The solutions are likely to be homemade solutions, different to those already made and dissimilar to other parts of the world. They are, however, solutions.
Maybe Gurcharan Das has it right when in his much-acclaimed book India Unbound: From Independence to the Global Information Age he writes that: “India will never be a tiger. It is an elephant that has begun to lumber and move ahead.” He goes on to suggest – and this is in 2002 – that the possibly “wise elephant” will have a more stable, peaceful and negotiated transition into the future and is more likely to preserve its way of life and its civilisation of diversity, tolerance and spirituality against the onslaught of the global culture. This could be true. Das is surely right too when he notes in 2007 that, “India is now poised at a great moment in its history.” Today, however, things are more difficult, more contradictory, more communally violent. Aside from the longstanding conflicts of the Adivasi people, Kashmir and secessionist movements, there is the rise of a violent Hindutva – a conservative Hindu Right. Of course, the aggression and violence associated with Hindutva is very different to that accompanying the military conflicts mentioned earlier. It is rather an everyday sort of violence that uses intimidation and vilification in the streets, in intellectual life, in the arts and culture, in the courts, in the media and in the villages as its primary weapon. As mentioned in the previous chapter, victims of attacks and lynchings are usually Muslims, minorities or Dalit. Whipping up religious passions through condemnation of beef eaters and cow slaughter is an increasing occurrence. Of diminished significance is a view and practice of Hinduism as a pluralist, diverse and tolerant religion. Cultural varieties of Hinduism evident in most regions in the country are being squeezed through the promotion of a monolithic version of Hindu nationalism. Appropriating national symbols such as the national flag and merging them with Hinduism aggressively promotes the nation with the religion. Local Hindu gods are replaced by those promoted by the BJP, such as Ram and Vamana.
And yet despite these latest worries and those of a historically more militarised nature India can also be seen as an uplifting story. India’s version of democracy remains strong – an incredible achievement. Pride in these achievements and in the country’s economic strength is strong, and millions of people believe their lives are more comfortable than their parents’. Development has never been a linear or uniform process. Instead, from around the world, it is a puzzling, contradictory and bewildering process with the extent and depth of suffering experienced by the many undocumented and ignored.
Historically, the development of India could have taken many different directions. It could have been a much bigger unified country incorporating a number of now independent countries. It could have ended up as a much smaller country than today. It could also have resulted in a collection of small independent kingdoms or dependencies. As it turned out, things today are not too bad. It’s not surprising though that there is this intense interest and literature within India on its past. It’s a too tortured, recent and disputed historical record, where those records exist. Likewise, the growing optimism of today’s India is encouraging some tentative discussion about the future. The agenda or shopping list on what should happen next is a familiar one. For example, as the January 2017 Seminar journal puts it, if India is to progress to becoming a “proper middle-income economy”, it must “learn some new tricks, adopt new technologies and organise itself differently from the past.” Despite the mega recent growth rates, when compared to China in 2005 (no misprint!), India lags far behind on a variety of societal measures – such as literacy levels, life expectancy rates, investment rates and workforce rates in manufacturing when compared to agriculture. Above all the dysfunctional education system and inadequate health provision provides a drag on future progress. The glowing growth rate (GDP) figures that currently preface any international comment on India may provide a warm feeling of pride, but in fact mask the problems facing the country in the decades ahead.
Despite India’s emergence recently as a global economic player of some clout as well as the ongoing conflicts around the country, we get little coverage in the West of developments unfolding in the country and subcontinent. Passing coverage was made of the 70th anniversary of Partition on the 14th August 2017 but things moved on quite quickly. Local intercommunity and interfaith celebrations happened around the country but got little national coverage. A number of galleries and museums staged special displays and there were a number of radio programmes examining Partition – especially the BBC World Service programme. There were some very moving stories of personal experiences from those involved and who now live in Britain. As Pankaj Mishra put it, “hands were dutifully wrung about the imperialist skulduggery and savage ethnic cleansing that founded the nation states of India and Pakistan, defined their self-images and condemned them to permanent internal and external conflict.” Overall then, the monumental events and humanitarian crises that defined one of the seminal episodes of the last century quickly came and went. And, it was so recent.
There were a couple other issues, however, that brought me up short – memories of my last visit wandering around this or that city returned. First, brief reports in the international press towards the end of 2016 mentioned the financial shockwaves throughout India – especially in the countryside – resulting from the surprising and unforeseen government’s announcement on the 8th November 2016. A television announcement by the Prime Minister declared that all 500 and 1,000 rupee notes (worth around £6 and £12 respectively) were to be illegal tender. From the 9th November, banks and cash machines were closed for two days; a new 2,000 rupee note was introduced on the 10th November and people could exchange their old currency until the end of December. The reason behind the ensuing chaos, panic, bankruptcies, lengthening queues and sheer bewilderment was apparently the government’s desire to rid the country of so-called ‘black money’ – illegal or unaccounted monies. While most countries East and West are struggling with systemic activities by the wealthy and powerful of hidden wealth and tax evasion, few of these countries locate the problem residing in the cash circulating within the economy. Usually the problem is located within offshore accounts and hidden within the property or gold markets. India does have a problem – only 1–2% of people pay direct income tax, but I doubt the ‘demonetisation’ (as it is called) measures will seriously engage with these structural problems.
The other issue that caught my attention was the heavy monsoon flooding in August–September 2017 across India, Bangladesh and Nepal that resulted in at least 1,200 deaths and devastated the lives of some 40 million people. The worse areas affected seemed to be the north along the Himalayan foothills along the India-Nepal border and in the north-east of the region. However, other reports of streets in Bombay being turned into rivers, buildings collapsing, hospitals being closed, plastic garbage blocking drains and the airport disrupted showed that eastern parts of the country too were suffering. Getting news of the devastations in So
utheast Asia was difficult as the media in the West was almost exclusively focussed on the hurricanes and tropical storms passing through the islands and mainland of south-east USA. Graphic images and detailed stories, however, were available online of the humanitarian crisis resulting from, says the Red Cross in India, the fourth significant flood this year.
When something as devastating, widespread and traumatic as the monsoon flooding happens, it is inevitable not to wonder how people and families that befriended you, that coffee bar on the corner or those street sellers that we met most days, survived the waters. No reports are of course that detailed or intimate, but still, you wonder and worry.
That background noise
As I mentioned in the opening chapter to this book, one of the striking features that struck me when talking with many of the other overseas visitors to India was their knowledge and intimacy with different parts of this vast country. For these ‘frequent returners’ as I labelled them, there was something about the country that kept bringing them back. They could have gone elsewhere, such as Sri Lanka or Peru or South Africa. Instead they kept returning to India and, over time, had acquired an enviable working knowledge and know-how about the country and made many lifelong friends. Through a number of discussions with a small group of these travellers, I reported on their experiences and ‘tourist histories’ briefly in Chapter 2 and subsequent chapters. Their favourite journeys and destinations were different, and the issues and topics that most interested them varied. I guess that I too am on my way towards reaching the exalted status as ‘frequent traveller’. I have now visited South Asia some six times in recent years. There is even a small, tiny number of areas and experiences that I feel a certain degree of familiarity with when returning to them – such as eating places, parts of cities, particular train journeys and even some small areas of the Western Ghats. There are parts of the country, however, that I have on my to-visit-next-time list, but for one reason or another never make it. Being on this list means that I keep checking on how things are going while I am back home. Kashmir remains top of the list with me and also many other tourists.
But as pointed out in the opening chapter, it wasn’t simply places and visits that primarily interested me on trips to India. These were important as I have sought to outline in various chapters. It was, however, as I put it the first chapter, the “contextual features”, “the background noise” of everyday life and the seeming presence and weight of history everywhere that strongly interested me and influenced my choice of destinations, reading and discussions with local people. These concerns and interests in turn led to a certain reflexivity on my behalf and to a more considered interest in the nature and experience of ‘being a tourist’. I’m not too sure that I got anywhere with these ‘considerations’ apart from appreciating how strong a grip neoliberal thinking has colonised the field with and how big a business is the global tourist industry – and increasingly dominated by a small number of Western multinational companies. This reflexivity to my own experiences as a tourist in India was situated against the ongoing debate among Indian scholars about how to understand and situate developments in India. I can’t pretend that I was able to follow all the extensive intricacies and conceptualisations in these discussions about post-colonial analysis and, in particular, subaltern studies. I was quite excited, however, when realising that I was ploughing through some of these difficult issues and texts as a result of being a tourist in India. Without ‘being a tourist’, in other words, I would not be seeking out or trying to make sense of this or that. Including oneself as an object of one’s observation – reflexivity – has resulted in the adoption of a more personal perspective in the text as well as an examination of those assumptions and categories that I have used in my travels. I am after all and as mentioned in earlier chapters a white, rich, English-speaking and privileged male which shapes and characterises my understandings and descriptions of the world and what I experienced in India. Or as the travel writer Colin Thubron put it, “you can’t escape your own sensibilities.” More recent interpretative and critical themes in tourist writing or ‘tourismscapes’ are attempts to minimise these limitations. Disappointment and frustration with dominant thinking and analysis within scholarly touristic studies has led to some heavy philosophical debates on realism and ontology which are beyond me. I note though that some commentators call for the dismissal of questions such as ‘what is a tourist’ and ‘what does tourism mean’? They are it is suggested examples of ‘bean counting’ – they are probably correct. At the moment, however, more practical and immediate considerations seem to be dominating the headlines and discussions. Countries especially those in Europe are beginning to limit the numbers of tourists visiting particular sites. Unable to cope with the numbers and demands of the visitors, restrictions are planned. Venice bans huge cruise ships and the picturesque Cinque Terre fishing ports in north-west Italy are introducing a tourist ticket system to control and reduce the number of visitors. “For us it is a question of survival,” reported a local inhabitant. ‘Broadening your mind’ in an age of mass tourism risks interactions with those people and places losing both intimacy and depth. Maybe it has always been the case but all that is left from our encounter is the commercial exchange. As Tobias Jones put it, “Tourism has become equivalent to a one-night stand with each side grabbing what they want: the tourist gets a selfie in front of an iconic building and the locals empty visitors’ pockets as thoroughly as possible.” Unfortunately or fortunately, this is not a problem facing the tourist industry in India. Despite the promotions of “India Shining” or “Incredible India”, overseas tourists are visiting South and Southeast Asia but not India. Vietnam – the size of Madhya Pradesh – has many more tourists than all of India; seven Asian cities have more visitors annually than all of India. China has annually about 60 million foreign tourists, just behind the US and France. India has around 6 million. Growth is good at about 4–6% but other Southeast competitors (Cambodia and Laos) are growing at 20–25%.
It’s an interesting issue – why does India not attract more overseas visitors? At the end of the day though, it is not the most important question for us regular returners. Instead and as mentioned in the opening chapter, what is paramount for us is “trying to better understand and engage with this country that fascinates most of us and which we return to periodically”. We bumble through with some things clearer and other things becoming more confused. But, at least, the regular returners won’t be amongst that majority (59%) that think that the Empire was a good thing and probably won’t be amongst those visiting recent films in the UK such as Victoria and Abdul or Viceroy’s House. Instead they will look out for Monsoon or The Lunchbox, or if very lucky due to its poor distribution, The Darjeeling Limited. Despite Shashi Tharoor’s new book Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India damning Britain’s imperial exploitation of India, nostalgia for the old Empire remains strong in the motherland. In light of the Brexit vote, there is talk of a new Empire 2.0 – rediscovered trading agreements amongst former colonies, especially white ones and those that share similar institutions and cultures. Racist delusions continue to deeply shape the past and also, it appears, the future. Yes, the regular returners will always remain ‘tourists’ but visitors whose visits not only provided discoveries and a deeper historical awareness to their stays but also to those of their own country.
By way of a conclusion it is perhaps worth calling upon an old favourite of mine. EP Thompson, a British historian, provides an apt summary about this interest in India which most of us ‘regular returners’ would share. He was writing a book about his father Edward Thompson’s time with the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. “India,” he wrote some time ago, in the early decades of the twentieth century, “is not an important country, but perhaps the most important country for the future of the world. Here is a country that merits no one’s condescension. All the convergent influences of the world run through this society: Hindu, Moslem, Christian, secular; Stali
nist, liberal, Maoist, democratic socialist, Gandhian. There is not a thought that is being thought in the West or East which is not active in some Indian mind.”
Heady stuff and written all those years ago.
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