India's Unending Journey

by Mark Tully

  According to the Ramayana, the temple town of Ayodhya in north India was the capital of Rama’s kingdom, where he returned to rule after his exile and after defeating the demon-king of Lanka, who had abducted his wife Sita. When I visited Ayodhya, I found many different approaches to Rama and they did not necessarily involve revering him as an ascetic. The followers of the Rasik tradition concentrate on Rama and Sita as a young married couple. Some of these devotees try, at a spiritual level, to experience Rama as Sita would have done. This form of spirituality is very similar to the intensely feminine spirituality, with sexual undertones, that is sometimes linked with St John of the Cross, for example. But when I asked the scholar Acharya Kripa Shankarji Maharaj about the tradition, he was not amused. ‘Man–woman love is dirty; forget it,’ he said. Then, thinking that perhaps he’d gone too far, he went on, ‘Well, you can say it’s good but not good in a good sense. Love is ghalat paribhasha, a dirty word these days.’

  The Acharya represents the interpretation that sees Rama as an ascetic and there are some feminists today who argue that this Rama has had malign consequences for women. They maintain that, far from portraying an ideal man–woman relationship, the Ramayana presents Sita as a model of a weak, submissive woman. Two feminists, Kamla Bhasin and Ritu Menon, even went so far as to suggest that, ‘with Sita as our ideal, can sati – widow burning – be far behind?’

  The Indian Jungian therapist Rashna Imhasly-Gandhy believes that the Ramayana affects the people of India today in much the same way as the Victorian interpretation of Christianity once affected the people of Britain. In a paper on the diversity of Indian myths, she criticises the Ramayana because in it Sita appears to subordinate herself to her husband, regarding him as ‘a near god’. Looking at the impact of this portrayal on modern India, Rashna maintains: ‘Many Indian women even today, like Sita, are subdued in their marital home, their spirit broken, and their minds enslaved. They have learnt to subordinate themselves to the male ego; they must love and worship the man and must believe they are dependent upon him.’ But Rashna’s is only one interpretation of the influence of the Ramayana. I know that while there are many Indian women in villages, towns and cities who would agree with her, there are also many who would not recognise themselves in her portrait.

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  My own favourite myth is the story of Shiva and Parvati, because to me it implies something that I personally feel to be profoundly important: whilst I believe in equality between the sexes, the pivotal role of Parvati in Hindu legend and the fact that Shiva is powerless without her underline for me both the power of the feminine and the different roles of male and female in nature’s scheme. Parvati stands not only for women, but for the female aspect in men as well.

  The Western sexual revolution may have swept away Victorian sexuality and given women many equal opportunities but, as we have seen, it has not completely diminished male domination. The continued use of women’s bodies as sex-objects is obvious evidence of that domination. Maybe it is not surprising that this should be so, as the Western mind has always been predominantly masculine in outlook and the more recent form of feminism, which truly respects the feminine, is perhaps only just beginning to change that.

  In the Western world, God has always been a masculine presence. One of the arguments put forward for a celibate clergy by the Roman Catholic Church is the fact that all the apostles were male and so, of course, was Paul, the founder of Christian theology. We have already mentioned the Church fathers, such as St Augustine, but we have not spoken of any Church mothers. It is significant, however, that there have always been plenty of Christian women mystics, but there were no women theologians within the western Church until relatively recently.

  Women have been singularly absent from the history of secular philosophy from Plato and Aristotle onwards. Looking down the chapter headings of Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, I do not find a single woman’s name listed there. In his book, The Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas sees this masculinity of thought as fundamental to the Western struggle to establish our human autonomy from nature. ‘The evolution of the Western mind has been driven by a heroic impulse to forge an autonomous rational human self by separating itself from the primordial unity with nature,’ he states. But Tarnas feels that that impulse is weakening and that a longing for the feminine side of our nature is breaking through now that we have – in his words – ‘pressed the masculine quest to its utmost one-sided extreme in the late modern mind’.

  If that is so, perhaps we should turn once more to the symbolism of Khajuraho, and to the wedding of Shiva and Parvati, in order to begin to redress the balance between male and female, showing equal respect to both.

  THE GLOBAL VILLAGE: IN SEARCH OF BALANCE

  IN THE MIDDLE ages, theology was the queen of sciences in Europe. Theologians claimed to know with certainty how society should be regulated, what its goals should be and how those goals should be achieved. But I for one wouldn’t suggest that theology should regain her crown; nor would I deny the enormous benefits of the Enlightenment that dethroned her. In Chapter 6, I have already been critical of the Roman Catholic Church’s attempt to cling on to power in Ireland well into the twentieth century. I have also seen the impact of theology in Pakistan, where General Zia-ul-Haq came to power in 1978 and where he subsequently imposed military rule in the name of Islam, instructed the recently elected Members of Parliament to stay at home and gagged the press. While theologians did not object to the flawed trial and death sentence passed on the deposed Prime Minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, theologians did call for the afternoon of public floggings I had the misfortune to witness, during which men who had been found guilty by kangaroo courts of comparatively minor crimes against Islam, such as petty theft, were flogged until blood stained their pajamas. Although I never witnessed a public hanging in Pakistan, some of my colleagues did, publishing photographs of these shocking events.

  So, no, I would not recommend that theology should be restored to her throne. As I understand it, there should be no throne and there should be no dominant discipline; instead there should be a balance between all disciplines. Be that as it may, that throne still exists, and in this chapter I am going to argue that economics now occupies it. The latest god is the market, and we are asked to believe that heaven on earth will be achieved through economic growth. This is not to say that economists, the market and economic growth don’t all have a role to play. However, it is to suggest that their current role is too dominant. Economics governs politics, leaving little room for government decisions to be counter-balanced by studies of human behaviour, such as those provided by sociology, psychology, political science and, indeed, religious studies.

  Today’s dominant economics worships the certainties of market capitalism, globalisation, private enterprise and minimum government intervention. The yardstick it uses to measure its success is growth in GDP, or Gross Domestic Product. When I was young, a form of socialist economics dominated, the rationale of which was almost the mirror opposite of that of today’s market capitalism. Socialist economists advocated a major role for the state, distrusted private enterprise and rejected market capitalism. Today, we have seen an all too familiar swing from one extreme to another. Economists, by and large, have failed to seek a middle road and have dismissed socialism out of hand.

  No one who lived through the socialist years in India could possibly support a swing back to full-blooded socialism there. When I arrived in India in 1965, eighteen years of socialism and central planning (admittedly assisted by monsoon failures and the cost of two wars) had created an economy of shortages. Consumer goods were in such short supply that foreign diplomats’ wives preparing to leave the country found a ready market for their half-used lipsticks and their underwear. Electricity was rationed and there was a long waiting list for telephones. There was a famine in Bihar, and India was so dependent on American food aid that it was said the country was ‘living from ship to mouth’.

/>   The private sector survived on sufferance, having to go to the government for permission not only to invest in new projects but even to increase the productivity of existing ones. Large sections of the economy were out of bounds to the private sector. Banking and other financial services were tied up in red tape. I remember being given a cheque for the BBC that had been issued by the Reserve Bank, India’s central bank. When I took it to the BBC’s bank they refused to accept it, telling me I would have to get it cleared by the Reserve Bank first. Back at the Reserve Bank, I was referred to the officer who ‘checks cheques’ – who found three reasons to reject a cheque issued by his own bank.

  All the same, when Nehru became the first Prime Minister of independent India after the Second World War, there were good reasons for him to espouse socialism, then the dominant economic theory. And after two centuries in which India’s economic policy had been run by a foreign government, it’s not surprising that Nehru did not want to rely on imports, foreign investments or global markets to establish the state. In any event, global markets were at that time not yet well developed. So it seemed to make sense to build a self-sufficient India and to pull the new nation up by its bootstraps. What’s more, Soviet propaganda exaggerating the success of central planning led Nehru to believe that this strategy could succeed. But central planning, together with the administration required for a restrictive currency and trade policy, spawned a massive bureaucracy in a country already bureaucratised by the Raj. The vested interests of capitalists were replaced by the vested interests of those bureaucrats who administered the controlled economy. The politicians, who should have been the bureaucrats’ masters, became their partners in twisting controls to suit their own financial purposes.

  Indira Gandhi came to power in 1965 and went on to tighten the screws on the economy in order to build her constituency among the poor. Banks were nationalised, a move that was justified by the fact that the banks were owned by industrialists who were funnelling scarce credit their way. However, when Indira Gandhi moved to nationalise the food trade, she bit off more than she could chew. Her proposals only made a bad situation worse, and she was forced to retreat, handing back that particular business to the traders. By the beginning of the 1980s, when Indira Gandhi began to realise that the shackles she had placed on the economy had to be loosened, her earlier aim of bringing ‘the commanding heights of the economy’ under public ownership had already been largely achieved. About forty-five per cent of the industrial output was produced by the public sector, which included the eight largest companies and twenty-four of the top thirty.

  One result of the socialist ‘licence permit raj’, as it was called, in which the economy was controlled by the state and licences given only to a select few, was that for many years a make of car called the Ambassador enjoyed a virtually unchallenged rule over India’s roads. Protected by its exclusive licence from any effective competition, Hindustan Motors’ version of the British Morris Oxford 1948 model became a symbol of India’s industrial backwardness. Eventually, the car’s longevity gave it a global cult status, and Hindustan Motors were able to export it as a collector’s item.

  Mind you, the aerodynamically challenged Ambassador, which is shaped not unlike a bowler hat on wheels, has proved itself a suitable vehicle for India’s pot-holed roads and rural cart tracks. It has a high clearance, which protects its undercarriage from all but the deepest of those holes, and the murderous unmarked speed breakers that villagers lay across roads at will. The Ambassador also has a remarkable capacity. The largest number of passengers I personally have ever seen crammed into one is twelve.

  The Ambassador’s weakness lay in its finishing. Because Hindustan Motors faced no effective competition and there was always a long list of customers waiting for their cars, they didn’t have to bother about putting the vehicles together particularly well and making sure all the nuts and bolts were tightened. There is a certain captain of British industry of my acquaintance who never loses an opportunity to remind me of an occasion when we were bowling along in my own Ambassador and the bonnet flew off. On the positive side, the Ambassador’s weaknesses gave rise to a cottage industry, with mechanics dotted all over the country who could patch up any broken-down Ambassador and send it on its way. Although the world came to see the Ambassador as a symbol of India’s industrial backwardness, for many ministers and officials it became an important symbol of India, and riding in it became, in turn, a symbol of their patriotism.

  Now that the Indian automobile industry has been freed from the restrictions of the licence permit raj, the Ambassador has been dethroned by global models manufactured in India, as well as by a few rival Indian designed cars. While some ministers and officials remain loyal to the Ambassador, that monopoly has also been broken. Nevertheless, Hindustan Motors remains confident that there is a market for the latest modification of the Ambassador. It’s better constructed than the old models, as I found when I drove in an Ambassador from Kolkata to Delhi to make a radio travel programme for the BBC. Alarm bells rang only once, when there was a dreadful clang as we emerged from a particularly deep pot-hole. But we found that only the number plate had come adrift.

  Figures show the remarkable expansion of the Indian automobile industry once the licensing system started to be unscrambled in 1991, following a macroeconomic crisis. From an almost stagnant output feeding an almost stagnant market, industry has achieved an average annual growth rate of seventeen per cent. Once almost entirely limited to the home market, India is now a global player. It is the largest manufacturer of tractors and three-wheelers, and the fourth largest manufacturer of trucks in the world. If current trends continue, India will be the seventh largest manufacturer of cars by 2016. All this is accompanied by a burgeoning automobile ancillaries industry. In its Draft Mission Plan for the automobile industry, the Indian government forecasts that it will expand within ten years from a turnover of 34 billion to 145 billion US dollars. That industry’s growth is now proving so rapid demonstrates the potential that was held back under the old system. But the obvious disadvantages of giving the government too much control over the economy should not cloak the gains that were also made during the licence permit raj period.

  Under Nehru, India started to establish the heavy industries necessary to provide a base for its economic recovery. It also created its own nuclear industry. And after Nehru, the country benefited from the ‘Green Revolution’, which arose from a strategy adopted by the government in 1969. Farmers were encouraged by government incentives and scientists from agricultural universities to sow new breeds of high-yielding seeds. They were shown how much chemical fertilizer and pesticide to use, and were guaranteed a supply of water. Today, this revolution might be criticised for not utilising organic farming methods, but in the 1970s its impact ended the ship-to-mouth supply chain and at long last enabled India to grow enough food to feed her own people.

  Because of our Western habit of seeing issues in black and white, advocates of market capitalism sometimes underestimate or ignore the achievements of controlled economies and overemphasise their failures.

  Socialism and government controls over the economy were anathema to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Her husband Dennis was shocked when she praised Indira Gandhi during a television interview she gave at the end of one of her prime-ministerial visits to India. Dennis Thatcher and I were watching the interview being filmed and he turned to me and whispered, ‘But she’s a bit of a lefty, isn’t she?’ On another occasion, speaking to Australian businessmen in 1981, Mrs Thatcher praised Westernised industrialised economies for increasing average income two-and-a-half times per head between 1950 and 1980. She gave much of the credit to ‘the miracle economies of Japan, Germany and France’. Yet she didn’t acknowledge that these were three of the most tightly controlled economies.

  Turning to the political scene of more recent years, Tony Blair and his colleagues were so keen to put a distance between themselves and their party’s socialis
t past that they renamed themselves ‘New Labour’. Although Old Labour had much to its credit, particularly many of the reforms of the first post-War government, Tony Blair’s government swung so far the other way that he was soon being described as the greatest triumph of Thatcherism.

  For an outright condemnation of socialism and a one-sided endorsement of market capitalism, it’s hard to beat an emotional George Bush speaking to the American National Endowment for Democracy in 2003:

  In the middle of the twentieth century some imagined that central planning and social regimentation were a short cut to national strength. In fact, the prosperity, and social vitality, and technological progress of a people are directly determined by [the] extent of their liberty. Freedom honours and unleashes human creativity – and creativity determines the strength and wealth of nations. Liberty is both the plan of Heaven for humanity, and the hope for progress here on earth.

  If God is a market capitalist then, surely – in George Bush’s book at least – the devil must be a socialist.

  Joseph Stiglitz is the Nobel Prize-winning economist who first highlighted the impact of market economics on government decision-making. He was Chairman of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors, but since then he has called for a cooling-off period in the shouting match between the advocates of government intervention and the advocates of the market. In his book The Roaring Nineties, which analyses the causes of the American boom and bust economy of those years, he puts forward ‘a new vision for America’. It’s a vision ‘which lies somewhere between those who see government having a dominant role in the economy and those who argue for a minimalist role; but also between the critics who see capitalism as a system that is rotten to the core, and those who see the market economy as unblemished, a miraculous invention of man that brings unprecedented prosperity to all’. Stiglitz’s vision and agenda ‘takes into account the links between the economy and political processes, and between these and the kind of society – and the kinds of individuals – we create’. It’s not just, as Bill Clinton thought, ‘the economy, stupid!’.