“India is pluralist society that creates magic with democracy, rule of law and individual freedom, community relations and (cultural) diversity. What a place to be an intellectual. I wouldn’t mind being born ten times to rediscover India.”

- Robert Blackwell

On 22nd July, 2008, Indian democracy was again put to test. 275 members of India’s Parliament in a historic session, voted their confidence in the leadership of the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, diminutive, gentle economist known for his brilliance and progressive outlook, who has been leading the country since 2004. As the finance minister in the Congress led Government under the then prime minister - P.V. Narasimha Rao, he had been responsible for the first steps to integrate India into the global economic system. In 2008, he had yet another ace up his sleeve. This time he wanted to take India into the top league of nuclear nations without compromising on India’s historical stand on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Nuclear Treaty with the United States would give India the open access to the much-needed latest nuclear technology, and nuclear fuel supplies, for non-military use mainly in the field of nuclear energy, and other civilian uses.

India once again rose to that challenge when Dr Manmohan Singh was able to get a vote of confidence for his Government despite strong opposition in a divided Parliament.

The Nuclear Treaty with the United States is critically important for India’s emerging energy scenario over the next 2-3 decades. It will assure India’s status as one of the Global Economic superpowers.

“Bear in mind that the commerce of India is the commerce of the world and … he who can exclusively command it is the dictator of Europe.”

- Peter the Great of Russia

This holds true even today with one change ‘he who can exclusively command it is the dictator of the world.’

One of the oldest civilisations of the world along with the Greek, Egyptian and the Chinese, India has always been relevant and significant. Known as the ‘Sone Ki Chiriyan’ or the Golden Bird, India became the Jewel in the crown of her colonial ruler - Great Britain. Edward Luce in his book: In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India analyses India within and contextualises her globally.

‘India is booming, poised to become one of the world’s three largest economies in the next generation and to overtake China as the world’s most populous country by 2032.’

He further states at ‘the subcontinent’s spectacular growth is taking place against the backdrop of a society that has yet fully to come to terms with liberal modernity. Emerging India continues to be beset by deep contradictions: it is a fully fledged nuclear weapons state with almost 40% of the world’s malnourished children; a growing economic powerhouse with an enduring anti materialist philosophy; it plays host to some of the world’s most cutting-edge research and development, and yet is home to one of the most intolerant religious chauvinist in the world. For all its complexity and many layered histories, one thing is certain – India’s fate matters.’

The complexity of the social structures, the spirituality of the land, the multi-vocality of cultures, the aesthetics of the erotic, the wealth of Indian textiles makes India a refined civilization. India has always been an icon for spirituality and is universally accepted for its ancient wisdom. In the last five years India has jumped as a frontrunner in the ranks of the modern world because of its stunning economic growth.

From an exotic culture known for its wildlife, sadhus, poverty, natural disaster, of the developing world, it has catapulted into being an industrial powerhouse and a leader in many areas of economic growth, particularly Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing. China started this journey more than a decade before India. But today India has caught up in the race and at present both India and China are the two giants of the east who are a large visible presence in the Global world. As nations of the future, both countries have taken full advantage of globalisation trade, industry and intellectual knowledge. Both countries have a vast pool of manpower, which is growing not just in numbers but also in quality.

China’s singular strength lies in Industrial production, cheap labour, the entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese and encouragement by the Chinese Government. China is a globally preferred destination for Industrial production with giants such as Sony and Liugong, Caterpillar, Kodak, Mahindra & Mahindra, OTIS; household goods like Haier, shoes with brands such as Puma, Adidas, Reebok and Nike; hardware such as Nikon, Lenovo along with fashion accessories such as Louis Vuitton. India, while growing in a parallel trajectory, unlike China has a huge domestic market. Personal savings and investment, oil production, direct foreign investment is ensuring India’s place in the sun, encouraged by its political stability, a fairly good institutional framework, rule of law, judiciary, regulatory mechanism for industry and trade.

The rapid economic growth, its catapulting into the arena of industrialization, and now a front runner in the geography of the world armed with nuclear power, India has truly regained its glory which had come into the shade particularly when it was shadowed by its imperial colonizers.

“India was the motherland of our race and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages. India was the mother of our philosophy, of much of our mathematics, of the ideals embodied in Christianity… of self-government and democracy. In many ways, Mother India is the mother of us all”

- Will Durant, American Historian

India’s indigenous systems of knowledge begin right from the Vedic Period, which was in the second and first millennia BCE continuing up to the 6th century BCE. The Vedas, Upanishads, Aryankyas, the Puranas and the Natyasastra gave the world a great many firsts. The Upanishads for instance contained the definitive explications of the divine universal syllable Aum or Om, the cosmic vibrations underlying all existence. The Natyasastra was the very foundation of the fine arts in India, influencing music, classical Indian dance and literature. The Puranas consisted of the history of the Universe from creation to destruction, the genealogies of heroes, kings or the sages and description of Hindu cosmology, philosophy and the geography.

I would at this point do a quick travelogue with certain iconic moments of Indian History which for me are also markers of the development of a representation of a plural, democratic, multi-vocal character of the geography titled India soon after India’s attained Independence in the August of 1947. Five hundred princely states joined India, with over 22 languages 1,650 dialects, India was marked by a great deal of cultural heterogeneity.

“India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great grand mother of tradition.”

- American Writer and Humorist Mark Twain

To understand ‘India Now,’ it is important to get a glimpse of ‘India Then’. The Indus valley becomes the point of take off in Indian history. An urban civilization it had a sophisticated drainage, town planning system.

The subsequent Mauryan Period saw a loose federation of city states the ‘Janapadas’ held together at the centre by Chandragupta Maurya. The Indo-Greek journey started because one of Alexander the Great’s generals,
Seleucus Nikator strengthened his eastern border and crossed the Indus River and invaded India. Ever since there has been no looking back of ‘foreign’ amalgamation in India – the Hunas, Scythians, Kushans all made their way into India through Punjab for that was the easiest way to enter India. As is frequently attested by the ancient Indian texts, the Kambojas, Sakas, Kushanas, Hunas, Turks and the Mughals all came to India from Central Asia. These Dynasties of India came as the invaders and dynasties of Indian origin also ruled in Khotan and other places in Central Asia.

This was also the period when two important religions entered the fray of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.

“India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.”
- Hu Shih (Former Chinese ambassador to USA, referring to the entry of Buddhism into China. Buddhism was born in ancient India).

From the 3rd – 7th century AD during the Gupta rule in northern India, the ‘Golden Period’ in ancient India was stamped. This was the time of the major writings of a renowned classical Sanskrit poet and dramatist Kālidasa, his place being the same as that of Shakespeare in English, with his plays based on Hindu mythology and philosophy. Also the time of Aryabhatta, the first in the line of great mathematician-astronomers who lived in the dying years of the Gupta empire. His major work Aryabhatiya was extensively referred to in the Indian mathematical literature, and has survived to modern times.

And then from the Arab Invasion of Sind, in 711-713 AD by Mohammed Bin Qasim, I now jump straight to the advent of the Mughals in 1526. Babur founded the Mughal dynasty in India, unlike many of his predecessors who invaded India but never made India their home had come to stay. His son and successor Humayan was the second Mughal emperor who ruled parts of Northern India along with Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was overthrown by the Sultan of Bengal, the Afghan Sher Shah Suri in 1540 AD. For 15 years Humayun took refuge in the court of the Iranian Safavid ruler Shah Tahmsap. On his triumphant return in 1555 A.D, he brought with me a set of painters the Ali brothers who with their renditions of the Hamzanamah initiated an entire new trend in the miniature painting tradition of India. His son ‘Akbar the Great’ as he was known, was considered the greatest of the Mughal emperors who eliminated his external military threats from the Afghan descendants of Sher Shah Suri. He was a polymath: an architect, artisan emperor, engineer and an inventor to name some. He founded his own religious cult the Din-i-llahi or the ‘Divine Faith.’ The grandeur and the enlightened rule of Akbar is seen in the recent Bollywood film in 2008 as Jodha Akbar, starring India’s leading actors. After Akbar, followed the reign of his son Jehangir and then to the great patron of architecture the Emperor Shah Jahan, whose reign came to be known as the Golden Age of Mughals.
This was the period of immense hybridity in every aspect of India’s culture and tradition. From religion to textiles, a great effervescence took place.

“If I am asked which nation had been advanced in the ancient world in respect of education and culture then I would say it was - India”

- Max Muller, German Indologist

Max Mueller could not have been more made more apt. He was part of the intellectual brigade that loved India and derived inspiration from the land, like Arthur Schopenhauer before him or the English poet T. S Eliot after him, who end the epic poem The Wasteland with the Sanskrit words ‘Shantih Shantih Shantih”( an invocation to universal peace)

Parallelly, Indian handicrafts, textiles, architecture and sculpture too were evolving and moving with India’s ‘Zeitgeist’.

Continued fusions and amalgamations was seen in colonial India. From ‘muggalitawny soup’ to Anglo Indian cuisine of mutton cutlets and ‘kedigeree’ , to English ‘chintzes’ produced in India, the Indo-English hybridity still lingers . Unlike many colonies to a large extent India does not have a deeply troubled past with her colonizer. Sure there are moments of turmoil resentments but India because of its religion and spirituality has an uncanny ability to rise above every invasion, every control, every foreign domination and exploitation.

Like Phoenix rising from its ashes’ India grows in giant leaps across the world.

At yet another level, due to its economic growth India, is the flavour of the world. From Hollywood to Bollywood, from production houses like Warner Bros , to Hollywood rap artist Snoop Dog jamming with Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar, to spiritual and travel tourism India has become the world’s popular destination. From the days of the flower children in the 1960’s when Rishikesh was their, the new tourist spot to hit the international market is Goa. From food to fashion, from ‘chicken tikka masala’ to the unstitched drape , the saree, India is visible in high street fashion.


Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy, Rohinton Mistry, V.S. Naipaul, Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Shashi Tharoor and William Dalyrymple are some top writers in world literature for whom India is their muse. One out of the 10 Indian authors who have been long listed for the 2008 Man Asian Literature Prize, financially supported by the London based financial services firm Man Asia and initiated by the Hong Kong International Literary Festival Limited, Siddharth Dhavant Shanghvi aptly says. “The stories coming out of Asia are tender and sexual, complex and deeply humane. I’m curious how variously our writers manifest the profound sameness of the human experience.” Another trajectory has been initiated by the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who along with Ramachandra Guha and Sunil Khilnani gave a fresh cultural Insider’s Insight into understanding India Now. Sen’s ‘Argumentative Indian’ , Guha’s ‘India after Gandhi’ and Khilanani’s The Idea of India ‘ are wonderful texts which touch a chord in any literate Indian’s heart. There have been old India hands like Mark Tully who have written sensitively about India, while William Dalrymple and Ed Luce with their ‘outside’ gaze give their own singular insights.

The gaze today is Outside In and Inside Out.

India today is racing on a sure albeit uneven and bumpy road , for along with this upsurge of sudden riches there are deep pockets of darkness, from political unrest (communist insurgencies in rural central and eastern India) to widespread developmental backwardness in areas like sanitation, safe drinking water, hunger and poverty.

But what keeps India going on singing the song of beauty and joy is its strong cultural roots which keep this fractured nation strong and together, as the only largest democracy is its spirituality.

“In religion, India is the only millionaire … The One land that all men desire to see and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined”

- Mark Twain