India's Unending Journey_Finding Balance in a Time of Change

by Mark Tully

  What a vast difference there is between the Delhi I first came to know in 1965 and Delhi today. There has been a population explosion. Whereas about three million people used to live in Delhi when I first came there, now it has some 13 million citizens – and probably many more than that if you include the new towns that have sprung up adjacent to the capital. In the sixties Delhi was still an old-fashioned city, a city of cyclists, horse-drawn transport and carts pulled by bullocks that plodded sedately along the streets, oblivious to all the noisy protests from speedier traffic. There was only one permanent bridge across the river Yamuna, an old double-decker iron construction with clanking trains on the top and traffic jams underneath. One of the first traffic jams I experienced on that bridge was caused by a cart so overloaded that it had tipped backwards, lifting the horse off his front legs. There wasn’t a department store in the city, let alone a shopping mall. The central shopping area, Connaught Circus (now renamed Rajiv Chowk), was still surrounded by bungalows. The government’s Ashoka Hotel, a sprawling, red sandstone building in the heart of diplomatic Delhi, was the only hotel that could be called five star. Today, the animals have almost entirely disappeared from the streets of Delhi, except for stray dogs and the occasional cow wandering in the middle of the road in search of newspaper to chew, or the odd elephant padding to a hotel, a wedding, a temple festival or anywhere else she will be welcome and earn money for her mahout. Connaught Circus is now surrounded by high-rise buildings and Delhi is a modern city with plenty of five star hotels and highways, shopping malls, headquarters of multinational companies and – at last – the beginnings of a metro railway. Delhi has changed and I have inevitably changed with it.

  In 1965, I arrived in Delhi feeling insecure both within myself and in my career. The discovery that I didn’t have a vocation to be a priest had left a vacuum in my life that had not yet been filled. I was still floundering around, trying to discover an alternative vocation. The chip that my academic career had bequeathed me still sat firmly on my shoulder. I hadn’t discovered any other talent that could compensate me for my feelings of inadequacy. I still clung to the religious certainties I had learnt during my education, regarding them as absolutes and being unwilling to yield an inch, and I felt threatened when they were challenged. The merest suggestion of a chink in my intellectual armour threatened my whole position.

  One of the friends I have remained closest to since leaving Cambridge remains Victor Forrington, who once persuaded me to spend an afternoon drinking in Lincoln. Yet in our college days and for years afterwards we used to have quite bitter arguments about the existence of God. Vic was a mathematician and maintained that it was scientifically impossible to believe in God, whereas I desperately wanted to adhere to my belief. But in my heart of hearts I feared his arguments were much stronger because he understood science and I did not. The more shaky I felt, the angrier I got.

  Now that India has taught me the uncertainty of certainty, I no longer feel threatened when my beliefs are challenged, because I don’t believe science, theology, philosophy or any other discipline has the final answers to questions about the meaning of life and the existence of God. I realise that we have to discuss with those who have other points of view, not block our ears as I used to do in those arguments with Vic. I learnt this open-mindedness in Delhi.

  When I landed in Delhi all those years ago, I was driven to Claridges Hotel. I had been warned not to expect the luxury of the famous London hotel of that name, but I was agreeably surprised to find that for the first time in my life I was staying in a room with my own bathroom. My room had a small balcony, or verandah, too. When I went out onto the verandah I breathed in the smoke from a cow-dung stove on which the gardeners were cooking their lunch. This smell was mingled with the strong scent of marigolds and the whole of my Kolkata childhood flashed through my mind. Afterwards I could only think of describing the experience as akin to watching an express train shoot through a station at full speed. Smell is the most powerful of the senses when it comes to reviving memories, and standing there on the verandah had revived my memories of our garden in Kolkata and the servants’ cow-dung stoves there. I suddenly felt I had come home. After some years, I came to realise that this incident was the first sign that India was meant to play a special role in my life.

  A few weeks later, it was Christmas and I went to midnight mass in the Anglican Cathedral. After Independence in 1947 the Anglicans in South India united with the Methodists and some other Protestant Churches to form the Church of South India. By that Christmas of 1965 negotiations for a similar union in North India were well under way. These unions were based on a compromise reached through the Indian tradition of dialogue and discussion, of listening and learning from each other, and it’s now some sixty years since they were agreed. In contrast, Anglicans and Methodists in England have still not come together.

  The yellow sandstone cathedral was constructed in the dying days of the Raj, after the capital had been moved to Delhi from Kolkata. The building owes a lot to Lord Irwin, the Viceroy between 1926 and 1931, who has been described as a man of ‘singular and exemplary piety’. He not only raised funds for the cathedral but often came to check on the progress of the builders and to discuss the plans with the architect. As the Viceroy was an Anglo-Catholic, he was particularly pleased that the cathedral was designed for the High Church tradition of worship. Judging by the building’s gloomy interior, its lofty roof and its altar distanced from the congregation by a long chancel, the architect clearly intended that the emphasis of worship in it would be on mystery, on the transcendental, and with particular reverence for the sacrament.

  Although the Church of North India was on the verge of a merger which Anglo-Catholics in Britain criticised for sacrificing certain basic Catholic principles to reach a compromise with the Protestants, I think that Lord Irwin would still have found much that was familiar in that midnight mass of 1965. The sense of mystery was preserved, with the priest celebrating the mass in sparkling white and gold vestments, and clouds of fragrant incense pouring from the censer vigorously swung by an acolyte. However, I was surprised to see turban-wearing Sikhs, as well as Hindus, among the congregation packed into the cathedral. I had come from a Britain where my Roman Catholic friends would never attend a service with me, and I had rarely been to any service that was not Anglican. It was obvious that not only were Christians of different denominations welcome in Delhi’s cathedral but also those who were not Christians at all. Rather than the consecrated wafer and wine, these individuals were given a blessing when they came up to the altar rails. But that did not always satisfy them. A priest told me later that he had had a prayer book thrown at him once when he refused communion to a non-Christian. And on another occasion that same priest gave in when a Hindu came to the altar rails for a second time and begged for a wafer, saying, ‘I need it, I need it, I must have it!’ It is understandable that Hindus and Sikhs should expect to receive the Christian sacraments when they visit churches and cathedrals, as everyone who visits their temples and gurudwaras is offered prasad, or food that has been blessed, and it would be an insult not to accept it.

  The multi-faith congregation at that midnight mass was my first indication of India’s religious pluralism and enthusiasm for the festivals of all faiths. But where did that tradition come from? To find out I was advised to read a short book by Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who was then President of India. As an undergraduate he had studied at Madras Christian College where, even though he knew that Christian priests would be among his examiners, he had written a thesis refuting the claim that Christ was unique. Radhakrishnan had gone on to enjoy a distinguished university career, which had included holding the Chair of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford. He was a formidable academic and, although academics are not always known for accessible writing, I found his short book, The Hindu View of Life, easy to read. Indeed, it subsequently had a profound impact on me, helping me to overcome my early prejudices.

  When I w
as a child in Kolkata, my parents had always told us that Muslims were like us because they believed in one God, yet Hindus were ‘beyond the pale’. Not only did they believe in many gods but they worshipped idols. Idolatry is, of course, a practice that is specifically forbidden in the Ten Commandments. So I was bought up to believe that Hinduism was a contemptible religion. Sometimes I saw the processions at the end of the great Durga Puja festival winding through the streets of Kolkata on their way to immerse the goddess in the river Hooghly. To my young eyes, the multi-coloured images of the goddess Durga riding on her tiger appeared gaudy, garish and terrifying. The shouting and the bands, a chaotic cacophony, alarmed me, and I was intimidated by the ecstatic devotees. Fear of Hinduism lodged itself in my mind.

  When I came back to India I brought my childhood prejudices against Hinduism with me. However, as I quickly made Hindu friends, I realised there was nothing to be afraid of in Hinduism and that the religion could not be contemptible if so many good and intelligent people subscribed to it. But Hinduism still seemed so diverse and so different from Semitic religions – and in particular from those precise Christian certainties I had been taught – that I thought I would never be able to get my head round it. Radhakrishnan’s The Hindu View of Life first persuaded me it was worth having a try, so I regard the book with a particular affection and always recommend it to anyone who comes to India wanting to learn more about Hinduism.

  In his book, Radhakrishnan explains that Hinduism does not demand the kind of certainty that had always troubled me so much about Christianity, as I understood it. He says there has never been ‘a uniform, stationary, unalterable Hinduism whether in belief or in practice’ and he describes Hinduism as ‘a movement, not a position; a process not a result; a growing tradition, not a fixed revelation’. Because it was not fixed there could be no certainty and the possibility of further development must always be allowed. But, even so, Radhakrishnan warns against thinking that ‘Hindus doubted the reality of a supreme universal spirit’. Rather, Hindus accept that there can be many descriptions of this spirit and that none is complete. That is why in the Brhad-ananyaka Upanishad those two words neti, neti, which I mentioned in Chapter 1, are repeatedly added after a description of the supreme spirit or reality. Radhakrishnan translates neti as meaning ‘not this’. But, as I have mentioned, my friend the Sanskrit scholar Chaturvedi Badrinath always insists it should be translated as ‘not yet complete’, ‘not this alone’, because the word neti implies that we can never come to a final and complete definition of God, the ultimate reality or the supreme universal spirit – call it what you will.

  But here I have to be careful. When I was discussing this chapter with another Sanskrit scholar, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, he said, ‘I don’t really agree with your concept of Hinduism’s suspicion of certainty. Hindus are often very certain they are right and others are wrong. What they do say, however, is that their certainty is not necessarily the only certainty. Although, of course, even then, with the variety of Hindusim, there are some who would insist that their certainty is a better explanation than any other.’

  I replied, ‘But saying yours is not the only certainty is so far removed from the certainty of the Semitic religions, from the “Jesus is the only way” form of Christianity I was taught, that it seems to me to be – if not a suspicion of certainty – a denial of it.’

  ‘Well, I can see your argument,’ Ram conceded, ‘and I can certainly see where you are coming from. However, I’d be more cautious than you are when you talk of Hindu suspicion of certainty. But I agree that Hindu pluralism does require a degree of humility and that is one of the themes of your book.’

  Hinduism doesn’t have a monopoly on pluralism. It is part of the general Indian tradition of questioning, discussion, dissent and indeed scepticism that Amartya Sen describes in his book The Argumentative Indian. Pluralism is a characteristic of all the major religions born in India, but it was through my interest in Mahatma Gandhi, and through reading Radhakrishnan’s work, that I first came to be aware of it. Since then, Hinduism has been the Indian religion I have read and talked most about. Without wanting to venture into arguments about what exactly constitutes Hinduism or to what extent the foundational culture of India is Hindu, because eighty per cent of the people living in India today are classified as Hindus, and culturally it is the dominant religion in India today, India’s Unending Journey is inevitably a book in which Hinduism takes centre stage.

  To my mind, pluralism involves humility. It means acknowledging that you don’t have the complete or final answer, that what you know may seem right, but there are other points of view. That is where the controversial word ‘compromise’ comes in. I was taught to believe that compromise was a dirty word, smacking of cowardice, but that was not Mahatma Gandhi’s point of view. While I was making a radio programme about the Mahatma in South Africa, more than one South African told me with pride, ‘Indians say we gave you Gandhi, and we say we gave you back a Mahatma.’ When Gandhi arrived in South Africa he was an unsuccessful lawyer. When he left twenty-one years later, the prominent South African Boer politician Jan Christian Smuts said: ‘The saint has left our shores. I sincerely hope forever.’

  Gandhi’s road to sainthood started with his first case in South Africa, which was resolved by a compromise. From then on Gandhi came to believe that the purpose of a lawyer was not to defeat an opponent, not to score a victory, but to make peace between two factions at war with each other. He later said, ‘The very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise. I saw in later life that this spirit was an essential part of satyagraha [non-violent resistance].’

  Early on in my own career I believed I was fighting for principles and didn’t even consider the possibility of compromise. For four happy years I promoted the work of the Abbeyfield Society, which was a new organisation that pioneered housing for old people by integrating them into their neighbourhoods to prevent loneliness. But there was tension between the director of the charity, who wanted the society to expand as fast as possible, and the founder, Richard Carr-Gomm. Richard was afraid that the unique principles he had laid down for Abbeyfield were being sacrificed in the hurry to provide more and more housing. The director complained to the committee that Richard was preventing him running the society in a business-like manner. The committee supported him and sacked Richard. I and the two other regional directors for England resigned in protest. At the time, taking this course of action seemed to me to be a matter of principle. Nowadays I am much more suspicious when people start talking about ‘matters of principle’. Had my colleagues and I been less certain that right was entirely on one side we might have been able to act as brokers and persuade Richard and the director to reach a compromise.

  I see my journalistic career as an example of another lesson India has taught me about humility and accepting uncertainty – the importance of acknowledging the role of fate in our lives. I am often told, not asked, in India: ‘You must have always wanted to be a journalist.’ But I have to acknowledge that I never intended to become one. I am also told: ‘You must have come back to India because you wanted to return to the land of your birth’, and I have to admit that I never thought of returning until there seemed no alternative. If, after my experience on the verandah that first day when I returned to the country, I had not somehow stuck to the belief that my destiny lay in India, I might not have had a career at all.

  It was fate rather than any deliberate effort on my part that had brought me back to India. I managed to move from the Abbeyfield to the BBC because of a chance vacancy in the personnel department. The tattered remnant of my vocation to the priesthood led me to think that personnel might involve caring for people and would prove to be the career for me. But it soon became clear that the job was more to do with files and application forms and was not the career for me at all. So when the assistant representative in the Delhi office fell ill and had to be flown home, I applied for his post. In spite of my knowledge o
f Hindi being limited to nursery rhymes, I got the job.

  It soon became apparent that yet again my career had gone down a dead end. I found that the job of assistant representative was a non-job. One of my few responsibilities was supervising the office accounts. But they were always prepared for me by Harbans Lal, who had already been working as the office accountant for years and had no need of my help. When my father left Kolkata and joined a company in Britain he would often say, ‘My babus in India did the work of six people here and did it much better!’ Lal Sahib possessed all the qualities that my father had admired in his juniors, and all I had to do was to sign off the paperwork.

  My boss, Mark Dodd, encouraged me to fill my time by learning about broadcasting and to make my first broadcast. It was a radio feature on the annual vintage car rally in Delhi. The feature included a champagne breakfast with the Maharaja of Bharatpur – which was probably what sold it to the audience. The Maharajas have always fascinated Indians and Westerners. From then on, I gradually expanded my broadcasting activities and moved into journalism.

  Accepting the role of fate in life can, of course, lead to fatalism, and needs to be balanced by accepting the role of free will as well. I was not encouraged to find that balance by the competitive, individualistic culture I was brought up in. Maintaining that balance also requires an understanding of the importance of experience, something I was not taught to develop by my rationalist education.