India in Mind

by Pankaj Mishra

  Child marriages are illegal in India and one can see why this should be so. Among the Rajputs, for example, it is a matter of shame if a daughter reaches menarche in her parents' home. Consequently, girls begin producing children while they are still children themselves. But to the Rabari, who cling fiercely to the tradition, it is a sensible practice. First of all it is difficult for nomads to gather at one place so important events are made to coincide. Often deaths will be mourned a week before the marriages are celebrated (“mausar” feasts), to cut down costs but also, perhaps, to stress the cyclic nature of life. Tonight eight children would be married, thus forming important alliances and mutual support between families which would last lifetimes. After the marriage the girl would go to spend one night in her susural (in-laws' home), surrounded by affection, made to feel important and special, and then be brought home. There would be no consummation until well after maturity and, even then, she would go back and forth from susural to parents' home many times until she felt comfortable in her new role and until the communities decided the couple was ready to live together. Usually when the woman had her children she would take the newborn back to her parents' home, sometimes for months. Divorce in many communities was allowed, though frowned upon and usually had less to do with incompatibility than with infertility. Once again this would be a decision taken by the elders. If a husband died, then it was possible for a woman to marry again, though most often widows, particularly if they had children, preferred to remain single. All in all marriage was a pragmatic affair and individual desires came a poor second to the harmony of the group.

  We were to take the bind rajah to his wedding in style. Fifteen people packed themselves into my jeep and we set off into the moonlight and dust, the women singing through their noses. When we passed a small shrine by the side of the track everyone let out an almighty whoop of greeting. The tiny boy smiled and blinked like a pampered cat.

  The bindani's (bride's) village was a maze of small rooms and courtyards, a domestic logic that was difficult at first to understand. On a platform about thirty women were ablaze in primary colors and precious metals. I was taken to sit with them. When the woman next to me found out I had been married, she pulled the orni down over my face and pushed me to the ground. Shrieks of delight at this game which everyone joined in. I was instructed in the four or five methods a married woman must use to peep through her orni when there are in-laws or strange men present, using fingers deftly to form the little hole which allows just one eye to show, a most disconcerting gesture and, paradoxically, provocative. Once again there was much poking of my breasts, not as discreet this time, after which it was announced that I was indeed female. I was rescued by Bhairon and made to lie on a string bed covered with quilts in the courtyard. The groom was brought to me and although he occasionally nodded off in my lap, he never once whined or fidgeted. I'd shake him gently awake, as was my duty, and he'd stare at me for a second before breaking into a smile—dignified as a grandfather.

  Into this courtyard forgotten in the depth of time came a skinny young man in Terylene flares and a message T-shirt. Pressed to his ear was a radio blaring out Hindi movie songs in competition with the women's voices. He knew a great deal about “phoren” and announced to all present that western women had wicked morals and that they did not breastfeed their children. He was one of the educated elite and his only ambition was to land a government job so that he would never have to work again. He talked about money and disco music and was scornful of grazing as a profession. Was the future of the Rabari incarnate in this young man?

  At the bride's compound (the bindanis were even tinier than the binds) some hired musicians were singing devotional songs to men stoned on opium. The Rabari, so sensible and shrewd with their money, do not practice the economically crippling— and spreading—system of dowry. Customs surrounding bride price (the opposite of dowry) vary from place to place but are usually more symbolic than financial. A family will try to marry all its daughters in one go, so although the celebrations may be lavish they only empty the coffers once. On this occasion the bridegroom's family displayed the gifts presented to the bride— a set of clothes, some silver anklets, foodstuffs, and a little money. These were inspected carefully for any trace of meanness by various mothers, aunties, and grannies, and pronounced satisfactory.

  The night passed in a blur. People coming and going, bursts of singing, snoring from various charpois, hawking, coughing and spitting, the arrival of plates of food, rats nesting in hair or nibbling feet. At some point I went to sleep under the spacious sky but was woken shortly afterwards by visitors coming by for a “dekho” at the chief guest. At dawn there was corn gruel and yogurt, after which I was led to another section of the village where a thousand Rabari had gathered from far and wide for the party, dressed up in their very best. This was a death–wedding feast and it was a huge and expensive occasion. Along the flat rooftops, lined up like geranium pots, were rows of bejeweled heads. The joke about my married status had swept through the whole gathering. Banks of women pulled my orni over my face or tried to teach me the peephole trick. Dust rose into a sky as white as paper.

  When I returned to the courtyard the groom greeted me by putting out his arms to be picked up, and with a heart-melting smile. No western child would have stood this stress for an hour. But this little creature, perhaps because he had never been separated from community life, did not once lose his composure during the whole four days. But then, grace under pressure is a valued trait among the pastoralists. In a few years this baby would be out with the herds, battling the world for his bread.

  By mid-afternoon I found myself sitting in a small room at the front of a carpet of tightly packed men's faces. I had contracted some kind of stomach bug and was anxious about an undignified dash for the door using fifty turbans as steppingstones. There were millions of flies, too many bodies, heat. I thought that a little food in my stomach might combat the waves of nausea, so in my exhaustion reached out to take a sticky sweet with my left hand. A common breath was held, an old man said “aahhhh,” and just in time I checked myself. I took it with my right hand, everyone laughed, the shyness eased, and we began to talk.

  There was trouble out on the dang. An old man had come back by bus with the news. The shepherds had had to bribe a forest officer with five thousand rupees to graze the flock—the equivalent of five months' income. Each owner would contribute a percentage of the money proportionate to the size of his flock but it was still a big financial loss to the village. That wasn't all. A few shepherds had been arrested for falsifying the number of sheep they had, so as to pay less tax to the state government. Now one of them had skipped jail, and the police were looking for him. This, too, would require money for bribes. The top numberdar (leader of migration), who had returned for the wedding only two days before, would have to journey back to the dang immediately to sort out the mess.

  I asked what they thought of politics and how they might vote. They replied that their only concern was survival and whatever politician might help them with that would receive their vote. On the other hand most of them didn't bother to vote, either because they had no belief in the efficacy of a democracy wormy with corruption or because they were out on the dang, hundreds of miles from home. So large a collection of shepherds was a rare occasion, most of them having little opportunity to leave the herds and come home. Their chief concern was with grazing rights, government control on the sale of wool, the loss of land to farmers, and the dangers of migration. They made clear that these problems were common to all the pashupalak (animal herders) irrespective of caste.

  But one man announced that he belonged to the BJP. He was fat and buttery, gold rings adorned his fingers, and, although he was dressed in traditional Raika clothes, he looked like a badly cast actor next to his lean, sun-shriveled relatives. He owned a shop in a nearby town. He could speak a little English and informed me that his fellow Raika were illiterate and ignorant, so there was no point in asking them ab
out anything. He added that the reason the Muslims caused so much trouble was that they ate beef and therefore their “brain temperature was very high.”

  I wondered how much he influenced the others. He was, after all, wealthy and literate. He knew about the bureaucratic world. Did they rely on his judgment? From the way they listened to him respectfully but distantly, I suspected not. The nomads are the most tolerant of people and I saw virtually no communalist tendencies among them. They sell their meat to Muslims. It is Muslims who shear their sheep. There are Muslim graziers and so far the sense of comradeship with them, because of their common occupations, common problems, is strong. Besides, how can one find the time to stick to the finer points of Hinduism when one is out on the dang unable to wash or perform rituals? And how can one sneer at the cow-eaters when one sometimes indulges in a bit of mutton on the quiet? But when the nomads stopped wandering as one day they must…?

  There were Muslim Rabari present at the wedding. Centuries ago when the Mughals invaded, they caused many problems for the Rabari, who often acted as spies for the Rajput rulers. One particular group was captured by the invaders and taken to Delhi. It was here that they were forced to eat beef, thereby becoming instantly de-Hinduized. Their descendants were followers of Islam but they still performed ceremonies at various caste functions and their affinity with their original caste seemed as strong as their identity as Mohammedans.

  I could discipline my raging stomach no longer. Blocking the door stood all seven feet of Giga. He grabbed me by the gold necklace like a New York mugger. (Rabari humor is sometimes opaque.) Hastily I took it off and made a dash for the nearest wall, to be followed and laughed at by children who were curious about a “phoren's” body functions. Giga had lent the necklace and was no doubt worried that I was about to head for the hills with it. And yet it was he who, two days later, after I'd spent another sleepless, opium-filled night at his house, and was now saying good-bye to a hundred friends, took both my hands gently in his, pressed them together in front of his heart, and said, “We are your children.”

  E. M. FORSTER

  (1879–1970)

  The author of Howard's End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924) was born among the prim and snobbish Victorian middle classes. He did not know about sex until he was thirty, and he lived with his mother until the age of sixty-five. Much of his long life, however, was a discreet attempt to escape and overturn the prejudices of his class and age. The attempt began at Cambridge and Bloomsbury, and then Egypt, where he had his first sexual encounter with a poor Muslim bus conductor. India, which he first saw in 1912–13, made him an even more determined critic of imperialism and strengthened his ethic of “personal relationships,” which he hoped would overcome the bitterness between the ruler and the ruled. But, as is evident in the following report of a Muslim wedding, an English irony remained even in his most sympathetic portraits of India and Indians. On a second visit to India in 1921, he worked for a few weeks as secretary to the Maharajah of a small state in central India. The Maharajah was witty and incompetent; his kingdom was falling apart. In this atmosphere of intrigue and decrepitude—well-described in The Hill of Devi (1953)—Forster confided his sexual tastes to the Maharajah who promptly arranged for the court barber to have an affair with his timid-seeming English secretary. Shortly after his second visit, Forster published A Passage to India.

  from ABINGER HARVEST

  ADRIFT IN INDIA

  1. THE NINE GEMS OF UJJAIN

  “There is the old building,” said he, and pointed to a new building.

  “But I want the ruins of which the stationmaster spoke; the palace that King Vikramaditya built, and adorned with Kalidas, and the other eight. Where is it? Where are they?”

  “Old building,” he repeated more doubtfully, and checked the horse. Far out to the left, behind a grove of trees, a white and fantastic mass cut into the dusty horizon. Otherwise India prevailed. Presently I said, “I think you are driving me wrong,” and, since now nothing happened at all, added, “Very well, drive me in that direction.” The horse then left the road and proceeded with a hesitating step across the fields.

  Ujjain is famous in legend and fact, and as sacred as Benares, and surely there should have been steps, and temples, and the holy river Sipra. Where were they? Since leaving the station we had seen nothing but crops and people, and birds, and horses as feeble as our own. The track we were following wavered and blurred, and offered alternatives; it had no earnestness of purpose like the tracks of England. And the crops were haphazard too—flung this way and that on the enormous earth, with patches of brown between them. There was no place for anything, and nothing was in its place. There was no time either. All the small change of the north rang false, and nothing remained certain but the dome of the sky and the disk of the sun.

  Where the track frayed out into chaos the horse stopped, but the driver repeated “Old, very old,” and pointed to the new building. We left the horse to dream. I ordered him to rejoin it. He said that he would, but looking back I found that he, too, was dreaming, sitting upon his heels, in the shadow of the castor-oil plants. I ordered him again, and this time he moved, but not in the direction of the horse. “Take care; we shall all lose one another,” I shouted. But disintegration had begun, and my expedition was fraying out, like the track, like the fields.

  Uncharioted, unattended, I reached the trees, and found under them, as everywhere, a few men. The plain lacks the romance of solitude. Desolate at the first glance, it conceals numberless groups of a few men. The grasses and the high crops sway, the distant path undulates, and is barred with brown bodies or heightened with saffron and crimson. In the evening the villages stand out and call to one another across emptiness with drums and fires. This clump of trees was apparently a village, for near the few men was a sort of enclosure surrounding a kind of street, and gods multiplied. The ground was littered with huts and rubbish for a few yards, and then the plain resumed; to continue in its gentle confusion as far as the eye could see.

  But all unobserved, the plain was producing a hill, from the summit of which were visible ruins—the ruins. The scene amazed. They lay on the other side of a swift river, which had cut a deep channel in the soil, and flowed with a violence incredible in that drowsy land. There were waterfalls, chattering shallows, pools, and to the right a deep crack, where the whole stream gathered together and forced itself between jaws of stone. The river gave nothing to the land; no meadows or water weeds edged it. It flowed, like the Ganges of legend, precipitate out of heaven across earth on its way to plunge under the sea and purify hell.

  On the opposite bank rose the big modern building, which now quaintly resembled some castle on the Loire. The ruins lay close to the stream—a keep of grey stone with a water-gate and steps. Some of the stones had fallen, some were carved, and, crossing the shallows, I climbed them. Beyond them appeared more ruins and another river.

  This second river had been civilized. It came from the first and returned to it through murmurous curtains and weirs, and in its brief course had been built a water palace. It flowed through tanks of carved stone, and mirrored pavilions and broken causeways, whence a few men were bathing, and lovingly caressed their bodies and whispered that holiness may be gracious and life not all an illusion, and no plain interminable. It sang of certainties nearer than the sky, and having sung was reabsorbed into the first. As I gazed at it I realized that it was no river, but part of the ruined palace, and that men had carved it, as they had carved the stones.

  Going back, I missed the shallows and had to wade. The pools, too shallow for alligators, suggested leeches, but all was well, and in the plain beyond a tonga wandered aimlessly. It was mine, and my driver was not surprised that we had all met again. Safe on the high road, I realized that I had not given one thought to the past. Was that really Vikramaditya's palace? Had Kalidas and the other eight ever prayed in those radiant waters? Kalidas describes Ujjain. In his poem of The Cloud Messenger—a poem as ill-planned a
nd charming as my own expedition—he praises the beloved city. He feigns that a demigod, exiled from his lady, employs a cloud to take her a message from him. An English cloud would go, but this is Hindu. The poem is occupied by an account of the places it might pass if it went far enough out of its course, and of those places the most out-of-the-way is Ujjain. Were the cloud to stray thither, it would enter the city with Sipra, the sacred stream, and would hear the old country people singing songs of mirth in the streets. While maidens clapped their hands, and peacocks their wings, it might enter perfumed balconies as a shower, or as a sunset radiance might cling round the arm of Shiva. In the evening, when women steal to their lovers “through darkness that a needle might divide,” the cloud might show them the way by noiseless lightning flash, and weary of their happiness and its own might repose itself among sleeping doves till dawn. Such was Kalidas' account of his home, and the other eight—was not one of them a lexicographer?—may have sported there with him. The groves near must have suggested to him the magic grove in Sakuntala, where the wood nymphs pushed wedding garments through the leaves. “Whence came these ornaments?” one of the characters inquires, “Has the holy hermit created them by an effort of his mind?” The conclusion, though natural, is wrong. “Not quite,” answers another. “The sweet trees bore them unaided. While we gathered blossoms, fairy hands were stretched out.” Cries a third, “We are only poor girls. How shall we know how such ornaments are put on? Still, we have seen pictures. We can imitate them.” They adorn the bride…