For those who are not following the plot closely, I am now working for a company called IDEX (www.idex.com - and yes, I’m working on a web overhaul), which ostensibly is a free standing “national leader in the fields of community development and sustainable tourism” (my official marketing blather, thank you) but which is actually part of a nebulous, overlapping and incestual three-organization nexus, consisting of one NGO, one travel company and one specialist startup trying its best to occupy the volunteer tourism space.

I haven’t quite unpacked the twistings and turnings of this three-headed beast, but as far as I can tell, the aetiology goes something like: mother and son help found NGO (named Lok Rang) which goes on to rack up considerable $ from the likes of UNICEF and the Government of India for doing community development work (i.e. midwife education, fair trade work with local artisans). Son then decides to start travel company (Rex Tours) specializing in straight ahead tourism in India’s foreign tourist heartland. In touring Europe to pump up the travel company, son finds out about volunteer tourism, at which point he decides to start volunteer tourism company (IDEX), through which foreigners who want something more substantial than “ten days of Rajasthani color and culture” can work in a community development project in a real, live Indian village. Whose community development projects, you asked? Well, Lok Rang’s of course.  From there, the overlappings only get trickier, as in: who owns those jeeps I’m always getting driven around in? And who owns the huts where the volunteers stay? And who is running these community development projects in the real live Indian town of Shiv? And who is paying the drivers? And who is running the “rural camp”? And what are all of Rex Tours equipment doing the main Lok Rang office? I’m assuming at this point you get the picture. As one might say in Hindi – sab sab parivar mei hei (its all in the family).

None of which is to say that there aren’t plus sides to life as an employee of the Lok Rang-Rex Tours-Idex chimera. For example, depending on my mood and the type of people I’m talking to, I can either be working for an NGO (and hence be out for the little people and all that’s good and right in the world) or in the tourist industry (and hence be out for profit, greed, exploitation and superficial experience). Or else, if it’s someone I want to get rid of, I can try to explain the real story, at which point there eyes glaze over. Also, because my boss is mostly busy with the actual travel company, which I’m guessing is the cash cow (although those UNICEF grants can’t be bad for the bottom line) I am basically free to do whatever I want with IDEX in terms of making marketing materials, building an orientation program (Yes, I am responsible for orienting people to India), dictating operating procedures business development, you name it. Plus, even if the whole thing is definitely on the shady side, my boss is a totally straight up guy who is a pleasure to work with, whenever he’s in the office. Oh, and he pays me in cash, which feels good, even if it ain’t worth that much.

Now that all that’s crystal clear, I can get on with the travel blog aspect of this entry regarding my recent journey out to the deserts of western Rajasthan. Did I say desert? I meant: utterly imposing wasteland. Well, perhaps that’s not fair, but in the name of bridging that always problematic gap between language and reality, I can’t help but ask – how is it that something like - “The Arid high plateau of South-Western Rajasthan is broken by wild cliffs and hill ranges. Irrigation dams or deep wells are the source of water for the fields in the oases lying within the Valleys” (http://www.webindia123.com/Rajasthan/land/land.htm) - sound appealing and intriguing, when in actuality what is being described is one of the world’s most forbidding and inhospitable corners? In the name of a bit of narrative pace, I’ll leave that question for the moment but, if you have some insight into what exactly is so magical, fantastic or otherwise swell about deserts, do fill me in. 

In any case, IDEX’s one and only zone of operation is in Western Rajasthan, specifically in a town called Shiv, and so, as I’m revising, organizing and promoting IDEX activities these days, everyone agreed that it would be a good idea for me to see what things looked like on the ground. Accompanying me to Shiv were the three IDEX guides, and eight volunteers – seven Danish college girls and a sole 32-year-old British management consultant who has since quite the program (she wanted to work harder). After a twelve hour overnight train (painless) and a two hour local bus ride (cramped but painless), we arrived at the rural camp, which consists of a number of “ethnic huts” (don’t even get me started on what the hell that means), which are actually quite comfortable and have running water and air cooling devices.

The basic drill at the rural camp is that the volunteers get carted from there on a daily basis to local primary schools, where they sort of go through the motions of teaching English to the little ones for three hours or so. We visited the schools, which are dilapidated but functional (though I was sad to hear that the teachers sometimes don’t show up). We visited a lot of local officials in order to try to set the volunteer program, now in its second season, on a more official footing. I taught the volunteers a bit of Hindi. Thankfully, the workload was light, as the late September heat was still absolutely crushing. As is probably obvious, I’m a little sceptical about the ultimate value of this sort of program, although I’m actually less cynical about everything than it might seem from my little asides. In any case, it was a great treat to get to see life in this sort of setting, both in Shiv, a village of 12,00, and at the district headquarters in Barmer, where, after a rather scary ride on some stranger’s scooter, I found a really great dealer of Barmer hand printed textiles. Having enough Hindi to distinguish myself from a tourist, I got a chance to interact with a few folks and, perhaps more importantly, to experience the physicality of the area.

After a couple of days at the rural camp, I was pretty confident that I had a sense of the place. Plus, as there was lots of rumblings about the guides being unhappy with the Lok Rang staff, and as there were obviously a few too many hangers on sponging off the whole scene (e.g. brother of Lok Rang director who sidelights as a Vedic astrologer and thinks Confucius got all of his material from India), and as there were rumors in town and even news articles about a former Lok Rang board member from Shiv who had since quit and was making accusations of some sort of impropriety, well, yeah, it was time to go. Luckily, Shiv is on the one real road in this part of Rasjasthan, so it was easy enough to sit on that road and hail down the hourly bus for Jaisalmer, a total favorite of Western tourists that I thought I would check out as a detour on the way back to Jaipur.

As for Jaisalemer, I don’t have so much great to say. People rave about the 12th century fort, and rightfully so, cause it’s old and really cool looking and fully integrated into the city, but after that little moment of “wow, cool fort”, the charm wears off pretty quickly, at least in the Sept. heat. Because, though I’m sure its much more pleasant in the cooler months, when the famed sunset is an aesthetic/spiritual experience and not just a long awaited respite from the heat, in the end Jaisalmer is just another Rajasthani tourist town, which isn’t such a bad thing, but also ain’t that ground breaking. Like: enough “hello, friends” already, I don’t want to come in your shop; in fact, I don’t even want to be in your dirty, smelly town, so if you don’t mind mujhe bataie - train station kha hei? (please tell me – where’s the train station). Ok, that was really a low blow, b/c Im sure Jaiselmer is great if you’re with someone and the weather is cool, and Im sure all those vendors really do want to be my friend. Anyway, the body known as Isaac has now been in close proximity to the fort and town known as Jaisalmer, and pictures have been taken to prove this fact, so at least there’s that.

From Jaisalmer a very long and slow train dominated by pilgrims going to pay homage to a certain Baba Ram Dev in Jodhpur took me back to Jaipur. A rather unpleasant ride, but I did have the pleasure of taking an image of said Baba Ram Dev that was handed to me and showing it to the Canadian tourists sitting next to me while informing them “this is a picture of God”. Then I made them eat the prasad being handed around. 

It has been three weeks here in Jaipur. I have a job, an apartment and some beginning sense of my new home. To see where I work, check out http://www.idex.org.in. To see the marble floored apartment I am sharing with Andrea, get yourself a plane ticket. To get a sense of my sense of my new home, check out the following.

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Jaipur: city of Jai Singh, a Rajput king circa early 1700s, who had a yen for planning and astrology. City of Jai Singh, a king who built a massive observatory consisting of various stone proto-telescopes and a huge castle consisting of architexture which guidebooks call whimsical (meaning like Mughal architecture but not as impressive). City of a king who built his old city on advice from the Shastras, which is something like basing a city on the dictates of the Talmud, built it with really wide streets and seven geometriclly ordered sectors and a faceted palace façade where the women could sit and watch parades.

Jaipur: The Pink City, which unlike Jaiselmer to the West, which is “Golden” only at sunset, lives up to its name 24/7. A pink city built of sandstone whose color was meant to echo the deep red brown of the Mughal cities. A city where the supposedly whimsical Rajput architects thought dull pink would somehow echo rust brown red with good affect. A city that has been pink since 1727 but has been especially bright in its stucco pinkness ever since they repainted it to welcome the Prince of Wales in 1879. A pink city where the building color code remains more forceful than the house painting rules in American suburbia, and the shops in the bazaar are really numbered. 

Jaipur: capital of Rajasthan, India’s largest state (geographically anyway). Capital of Rajasthan, member of India’s Hindi belt, that assemblage of basically failed states stretching from Rajasthan in the West to Orissa and Bihar in the East, Hindi speaking states where poverty and bad government and female infanticide and illiteracy and every social ill you can imagine are a part of everyday life. Capital of Rajasthan, a state that if just as poor as its Hindi belt brethren, especially for its large population of tribal groups, at least has adequate law and order, probably because so many people from Rajasthan are in the army. Capital of Rajasthan, a state whose law and order success makes its historical and cultural attractions available to Western tourists, not because they are more cultural or more Indian or more anything, but simply because they are safe.

Jaipur: city of Jai Singh, whose yen for planning and wide streets has produced an entire town where driving is pleasurable. City of really wide grid-like streets where you can take your two wheeler, in my case a scooter, and get up to 65 km an hour and feel safe, not that there aren’t dangerous potholes or busses veering into your lane or people driving on the wrong side of the road, but you still feel safe, the roads are pucca, and the feeling of driving down them at twilight, when the heat has finally abated and the smog paints the sky pinker than the stucco walls of the old city is exhilarating in a breaking-into-song sort of way. City of wide streets and big round traffic circles where cycle rickshaws stay to the outside and Tata Sumo SUVs hog the tightest line, honking urgently but without aggression.

Jaipur: North Indian city where some people are counted and some are not. City where 2 million documented citizens are counted and 2 million undocumented are not. Or perhaps city where 1.5 million undocumented people, or 1.7 million, or 2.1 million are not counted. City where uncounted people live in places where you’d expect, without doors for census workers to knock on. City where uncounted people support the economy by working in what is oh so euphemistically called the “informal sector”, support it by not being counted. City of oh so many uncounted people doing the jobs that uncounted people in India do: sweeping, begging, picking rags, driving rickshaws, carrying things. City where the governments of India and Rajasthan, both incompetent in their own ways, both founded on different traditions of bureaucracy than the one I know, have counted only about half of the population.

Jaipur: city of polo, that bizarre combination of croquet and horse racing that was actually invented in India. City where the children of minor ex-royalty own lots of horse and play polo as a full time sport. City where someone will tell you with all seriousness how they have dedicated their life to polo, as if they were telling you about their charity work with the lepers. City where you can sit in the stands next to the families of minor ex-royalty and their admirers at the polo fields and listen to an announcer exclaim “and Major Rathore is driving for the goal! And there, he makes no mistake about it, goal for Major Sukdhev Rathore!” City of deposed Rajput royalty and their polo-playing children.

 

Jaipur: north Indian city of typical post-modernity. City where typical post-modern Indian architecture, full of shiny glass and corporate names, competes with crumbling concrete and old havelis that have become old hotels. City where airconditioned supermarkets hope to  one day overtake bazaars. City where the mall at Gaurav Tower is "the only happening place in town" for the kids. City where young entrepeneurs and young ex-Rajput royalty and uncounted people and Western tourists in their embarassing outfits and students studying Indian culture all mix and match in the interactions and exclamations of today, Hindi dotted with English or English dotted with Hindi or English dotted with Indianisms or my English dotted with reproduced Indianisms.  

Jaipur: city that exceeds its own names. City where regret or nostalgia or outrage or romanticization or infatuation are all slightly out of place. City that apart from all of the angles and the assessments and the sweeping forces of history and the slow aging of time, is just happening, one day at a time. City that is hosting me, for no apparent reason and with no foreseen results, as part of its irresistible happening.

It was time to leave Rishikesh. It really is a charming place, all those wonderfully garish ashrams and tiny ramshackle retreats and thirteen-story high temples flush on the bank of the Ganges, their bells ringing constantly as pilgrims dutifully circumabulate one floor after another. For hardcore Hindu holiday grandeur it may not compare to its sister city Haridwar, home of the world’s coolest religiously motivated river bathing scene, but as I am not on a hard core Hindu holiday, I’ll take the laid back vibe anytime. Even the babas seem more relaxed in Rishikesh.

And yet, it was definitely time to go. I had thought to spend ten days here writing and doing yoga, but it was not working out. Just too many pilgrims; too many hawkers selling things to pilgrims; too much sticky, sweaty heat; too much paint flaking off the walls in my budget accommodations; too many scantily clad Israeli’s speaking a language that I once thought I loved but that now grates rapaciously on my ears (maybe it’s just the paucity of my vocabulary, but every sentence seems to start with ani rotzeh – I want). And the thought of searching out this or that yoga teacher in this or that ashram in order to do downward dog sandwiched between random Germans seeking enlightenment, Indian style. Not that I have anything against Germans, mind you, or enlightenment for that matter, but as they say in Hindi, nahin chilega, meaning, it was just not gonna fly. Maybe someday I’ll come back without my computer and a head full of unwritten words and find my guru. For the moment, all I wanted was to be back in Jaipur, where I could cook my own food, get broadband internet access and go to sleep to the hum of air conditioning.

And so I hiked up the hill, thinking to make my way to the Rishikesh train station, which unfortunately doesn’t really have any trains going through it, but maybe would sell me a ticket for a train leaving from Haridwar. Before I got that far, however, I spotted the inviting confines of a travel agent, at which point I remembered the way my former professor at Columbia, Jack Hawley (who I saw briefly in Pune) responded when I asked him if he was going to the Pune train station to get his ticket. Oh, those days are over for me. Meaning, let someone else push through the crowds, wait on the lines and negotiate the Byzantine system of concessions and reservations maintained by the Indian railway system. Don’t get me wrong, those days are definitely not over for me; I actually still get a thrill out of finding the proper window and cajoling some railway employee in broken Hindi to sell me a ticket – please, madam. . . .mei mazboor hu (I’m helpless). However, seeing as my whole purpose was to get the hell out of low-budget India, it seemed appropriate to take the I’m over it approach, which in any case only amounts to a 60 rupee ($1.50) processing fee.

Of course, in India as anywhere, you get what you paid for. After talking things over with the travel agent, who was predictably surly, and impressing upon him the fact that I absolutely needed to be on the one train that left in the morning from Haridwar to Jaipur (a rather convenient schedule, since generally one would need to transfer in Delhi), I allowed myself to be convinced that the ticket would be forthcoming – no problem; day journey only, so no problem – and agreed to pick it up later that night. Upon my return, having been presented with a sleeper class ticket that listed me as waitlist #421, I finally grasped the meaning of day journey, no problem, which, fully parsed, means - while there was no way in hell I would ever have gotten a seat on such a random train on such incredibly short notice, since I would not be on the train when it was time to go to sleep, my seatlessness was, in the grand scheme of things, no problem. Having been on overnight trains without a seat, I can definitely appreciate this logic. At the same time, I was hardly thrilled at the prospect of the following day’s journey.

The train was due to leave Haridwar at 7:30 AM, so to be safe I was up at 5:00 AM. Made good time on the thirty km journey from Rishikesh, so had plenty of time for some aloo paratha (fried potato bread) and chai – my last reasonable meal of the day. Thankfully, I was in enough of a rush to be able to duck out of a conversation in the restaurant with a very jolly man who started asking me in Hindi about how the absence of my “wife” affected my sexual prowess. What did Foucault say about the Orient’s tradition of ars erotica? Anyway, when I finally entered the Haridwar railway station, any illusions about my fate for the remainder of the day were summarily squashed. The platform was absolutely jammed packed with pilgrims who seemed anxious to set a record for most luggage per person on an Indian train. Not that I should have been surprised – why would this train, which only runs once a week, not be jam packed - but as is often the case here, the awesome physicality of the scene definitely had me reeling. For a moment I thought of searching out a ticket window and seeing whether my negotiating skills could get me a reserved seat, but I just couldn’t muster the energy and so sat down on my bag to read the Sunday paper. Still uneasy, I kept looking up from the eighteenth article I’ve read about the Bollywood starlet who committed suicide after breaking up with her boyfriend (suicide in India. . .there's a topic for another entry) to see if some friendly ticket taker was in the vicinity.

The train was late, which only gave me more time to ponder my woefully inadequate strategy, or lack thereof. As 8:00 PM approached, I threw my bag on my back and started wandering the platform, trying to scope a slightly less populated area, though without really knowing why. Finally, the familiar blue paneled cars came into view, at which point utter madness broke lose. I am used to traveling third tier AC, which is a decidedly middle class sort of scene. Not that things don’t get a bit wild and catty when people board the nicer class cars, but my point is that I was simply unprepared for the equivalent scene in sleeper class. Though its remains unclear why people board trains in India the way they do, in a massive no-holds barred shoving match, its obvious to even a casual student of crowd psychology that the frenzy is contagious. Somehow the train doors become sacred portals to another reality, and you are willing to undergo and ignominity and perpetrate any foul deed to gain entrance.

Considering my advanced level of anxiety, I was especially to the frenzied contagion. After gently shouldering aside a few women old enough to be my grandmother. I finally found my way into a sleeper car chosen at random. Needless to say, I was the only white face, and my presence sparked many a generic Indian stare, along with the wonderful advice of a middle aged woman who advised me in the pulsing throng to take care of yourself. As my large bag was an obvious disadvantage, I found the first unoccupied seat and shoved it underneath. Indian train cars generally follow a similar floor plan, with a large compartment on one side of the aisle that sits/sleeps six, and then a small compartment on the other side that sits/sleeps two. I was in the small compartment, sitting cross-legged and watching the mad rush all around me as I wondered when the people who actually had rights to these seats would show up. One soon did, a lovely woman who appreciated my garbled Hindi and proceeded to mock the outlandish behavior of the Gujarati passengers (it tuned out that the train was eventually headed to Ahmedabad) who have a reputation for being, um, outlandish. That she was also Gujarati didn’t seem to dampen her enthusiasm for the joke. I laughed appreciatively.

My new seat partner asked me where my seat was and I explained weakly that I needed to talk to the conductor about that. She sympathized and we seemed to have reached a détente. But where was her husband? Because there had to be a husband. And indeed there was. By the time he showed up, however, I had apparently exerted some sort of riparian rights to his seat, and he seemed unconcerned about my presence, not even letting me finish my best Hindi obsequity – agr aapko koi itaraz nahin. . .(If you don’t have any objection. . . ) as he sat down next to me, the seats being constructed in such a way as to allow three people to sit where only two ought to be. Things seemed rather swell at this point, especially because he didn’t seem too interested in his seat and kept leaving for long periods of time. I made friends across the aisle with more Gujaratis, including a dashing youngster who spoke some english. My motherly seatmate, who was a 3AC type (so she told me) who could only get a reservation in sleeper, pulled out a book and I closed my eyes and did my best to sleep sitting up.

It was all a little too good to be true. The husband returned and by 11:00 AM it seemed clear to me that I was overstaying my welcome. In retrospect, I probably could have milked the arrangement for much longer, but a sense of propriety and fairness that is in some ways out of place here compelled me to move. And so I did, thinking that the vestibules between cars would surely have plenty of space, an assumption which turned out to be exceedingly misguided. Not being an experienced rider of sleeper class, I can’t say whether this is typical, but the vestibules were absolutely socked with people – families, lone men, little children – you name it. After investigating a few cars I was feeling a bit stunned, and so decided to amuse myself my searching out a ticket taker. Showing him my rather useless ticket, I received a blast of Hindi too fast for me to understand but that semmed to imply the obvious, namely, that I was not destined to get a seat.

(Note: the problem with knowing some Hindi, especially knowing certain catchy phrases like Mein aapse ek savaal puchu? – might I ask you a question? is that people will hit you with an unintelligible full fluent blast, which leaves you with the choice of 1. Switching to English, thus admitting complete defeat 2. Giving a noncommittal hah-ji which is sort of like come again, and will only earn you a repeat of the original bewildering phrase or 3. Offering up the pitiful sounding samajhme nahin atti, which means I don’t understand and is really a quick way of informing someone that you don’t really speak Hindi, since no one actual says I don’t understand in such a formulaic way.)

Having exhausted my meager resources, I was actually more at peace, as I now accepted my fate. Returning to my original car, I met up with the dashing Gujarati student, who also turned out to be seatless (he was just squeezing in with his grandmother). Back to the vestibule we went, where a little patience resulted in the clearing out of one of the doorways to the outside, a perect sitting spot that with a little squeezing can fit two people. Legs dangling out of the car, we watched the scenery pass by and talked about this and that, switching from Hindi to English in a pleasurably mindless exchange of cultural ephemera. The first student I have met who isn’t studying business or engineering, he told me he wants to learn about fashion design (hence the dashing apparel) and asked me typical young Indian boy questions about sex, while I told him I studied religion and asked him typical American tourist questions about the different kinds of train engines.

Though younger than me, my new friend, good name Jai (victory), house name Raj (king)  (many Indians have two names, one used by their family and one for everything else) took a protective sort of attitude towards me, insisting that I kept track of my belongings, worrying about the fact that I wasn’t eating the exceedingly dangerous looking food available on the train and making sure that I didn’t wander off when the train stopped at stations. It was really swee, and not unappreciated as I was feeling a bit dazed and definitely undernourished.. Eventually we moved to a new vestibule where I answered a new crowd’s typical questions - Toh, Hindustan keisei lagta hei, aap (So how do you like India) - with my by now rehearsed answers, designed to simultaneoulsly satisfy and bewilder – Mei kya kahu. . .agr mujhe Hindustan na pasand, to mein yha pei na rahu (What can I say. . . If I didn’t like India, I wouldn’t be here). We passed around my copy of Naagraj, an Indian comic book about a hero who shoots snakes out of his arms, and smiled at each other when conversation failed.

With my ass getting extremely sore and my eyelids demanding rest, I decided to scope the scene for a place to lie down. Three cars down I found it, sort of – two trunks that had been placed unceremoniously in a vestibule blocking traffic. I squeezed between the trunk and the outside door and laid newspaper on the ground to minimize the grime factor, catching an hours sleep or so. Returning to the previous vestibule after some time, I earned Jai’s rebuke for wandering off (he was worried) and exchanged addresses with like every guy in the car, all of who wanted me to come visit them in Ahemdabad. An hour later, and the train, which had amazingly made up considerable time after running late at the beginning of the journey, finally arrived in Jaipur. Thirty minutes after that I smiled gratefully as hot water from my shower washed away the day's grime.

NON FICTION TITLES

* Chatterjee, Partha Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World, a Derivative Discourse

Partha Chatterjee is one of the great minds of his generation, and this is his first great intellectual effort. A must read for students of political theory and Indian society, Nationalist Thought will reward any reader with even cursory philosophical interests. Considering its theoretical import, Nationalist Thought is an extremely short book, which is further subdivided into two sections. The first half is a weighty but concise theoretical exploration whose beautifully argued central thesis – that post-colonial nationalism represents a unique historical moment best understood through Gramsci’s notion of “passive revolution” – goes a long way to explaining why the Italian Marxist is such a big deal these days. This section also features some memorable polemics against students of nationalism (including the great Benedict Anderson) who have mistakenly conceived of the post-colonial situation as a footnote to the real history of nationalism, written primarily in 18^th and 19^th century Europe. The second half presents close readings of three seminal figures in Indian nationalism – Bankimchandra, Gandhi and Nehru – who Chatterjee uses to signpost his schematic understanding of the passive revolution as “Departure, Manoeuver and Arrival”. The section on Gandhi, which brings out both the unmatched significance and amazing moral force of this incredible man, is especially fascinating, and taken as a whole the close readings give the book a nice balance of abstraction and detail, though admittedly the detail is mostly limited to the writings of these three figures. While Nationalist Thought is brilliant throughout, it is not without its flaws. Chatterjee’s tendency towards schematization in the second half of the work is a bit implausible, as is his willingness to conflate India with “the colonial world”. That three very Indian figures are made to stand so exactly for the three essential moments of colonial nationalism reads as a bit of a stretch. That said, Chatterjee’s incisive dissection of the Indian situation is so compelling that one is tempted to go along with even his more far flung assertions. No need to say more – read this book! 

* Chatterjee, Partha A Nation and its Fragments

Less groundbreaking but in many ways more compelling than Nationalist Thought. Having done the hard systematic theoretical work in his first book, Chatterjee here turns his attention to the fabric of the nation, reaching beyond texts and into the concrete realities of Indian life. The book is arranged as a series of essays on different “fragments” of the nation – women, peasants, religious leaders. While unitary in their outlook, which assumes throughout the case made in Nationalist Thought, the chapters offer a variety of scholarly approaches, and each one presents a relatively coherent and separate argument. Chatterjee’s central themes, such as Indian nationalism’s private/public split, can seem pedestrian or obvious, until you realize that the author was instrumental in establishing them as seminal ideas! Especially memorable chapters on Ramakrishna and the creation of Bengali middle class; the role of women as guardians of the national culture and the transition from Puranic to empiricist historiography, but most every chapter is equally rewarding. The short final chapter, which begins in typical Chatterjee fashion with an excerpt from a play, goes a long way in outlining the possibilities and imposing limitations of what I see as Chatterjee’s ultimate intellectual project, namely “constructing an alternative universal to the dominant dharma” that is the hegemonic collaboration between capital and the nation. Readers will learn more from this book about Indian history and will probably enjoy the process more as well, but I would still recommend starting with Nationalist Thought.     

Dalyrymple, William The Age of Kali

This one really rubbed me the wrong way, tough I’m told that his White Moguls, an epic novel about New Delhi, is excellent. Dalrymple deserves full credit for an adventurous spirit and nose for trouble that lands him all sorts of amazing and interesting interviews and experiences. That said, his writing is journalistic in the more pejorative sense of the word (read: pedestrian) and his tone throughout is wide-eyed and tediously upbeat. Presented as a series of article/essays, the unifying trope is a neo-orientalist imagining of modern India as mired in the predatory and immoral Kali Yuga (Age of Folly). While one can hardly contradict the observation that India is a haven for all manner of human depredation, this basic point remains facile unless undergirded by a sophisticated critical apparatus. Unfortunately, interpretation seems basically foreign to Dalrymple’s intellectual project, making his unifying trope little more than a glib borrowing from the Puranas, and his essays little more than tabula rasa on which his various interview subjects can etch their particular views on the ills of Indian society, with little resistance from the good natured reporter. I put this one down to stay after Dalrymple concluded a profile of a particularly nasty Hindu right leader with the incisive observation that very bad people can be very courteous at tea time. Thanks, Will, but I prefer my chai with something a little more hard hitting than that stale biscuit of analysis. 

 *Guha, Ranajit ed. A Subaltern Studies reader 1986-1995

There are more than a few collections of subaltern studies essays and I honestly can’t tell you which ones are the best. Like other collections, this one saves you the time of leafing through the chaffe that has appeared in the dozen or so Subaltern Series publications to date. The collection features many of big names – Chatterjee, Pandey, Chakrabarty – and I trust that the editor, Ranajit Guha, who is kind of the granddad of the movement, has done an able job of picking the brightest fruits from a laden tree. I have read about half of the essays, and my general reaction is mixed. I have always been somewhat skeptical about the theoretical underpinnings of the subaltern studies project, and the essays in this collection have done nothing to change my mind. Not only do I agree with those who have argued against the project’s curiously essentialist presuppositions, but as a sometimes scholar of religion, I can’t help resisting a collapsing of all “subaltern” activity (such as it exists) into the binary of resistance or submission. Though Marxism may have been jettisoned, subalternists still seem mired in a certain form of historical materialism, for lack of a better word. Of course, its all more complicated than that, but the point is that there’s nothing surprising about the theoretical approach of these essays. Which fact is in many ways a good things. Whether you think the overall project is coherent, subalternists deserve the utmost credit for re-orienting Indian historiography toward populations, movements and identities that have either been overlooked or indiscriminately squeezed into Marxist schematics. What’s more, they do so in original ways that display throughout a deep sympathy for their subject and an appropriate (if occasionally tortured) awareness of their own role as producers of knowledge about Indian history. Careful perusal of these essays will reward the reader with detailed descriptions of the tendentious relations between Indian subaltern populations and the colonial state. Guha’s introduction, though overly brief, is also helpful in terms of the basic “what are these guys and gals on about”, though I actually think that the subaltern studies project (which I would still have trouble defining myself) has been more convincingly named and situated from outside than from within. If you see this one in a bookstore, pick it up, but if you see a collection by a different name, it will probably do just as well.  

*Ludden, David ed. Reading Subaltern Studies

By no means the most insightful critic of the subaltern studies movement, Ludden has adopted an interesting and ultimately successful editorial approach. His basic thesis – that subaltern studies can be productively read through its various critics – is spot on, and while the actual results are uneven, the overall effect is illuminating. The gems in this collection of essays are Rosalind O’Hanlon’s essay “Recovering the Subject. . . “, the first major review of subaltern studies outside of India, and Sumit Sarkar’s brilliant polemic against his formal subaltern brethren, “The Decline of the Subaltern. . .” which closes the collection in grand fashion. Ludden’s summary introduction is helpful in terms of general orientation, but not otherwise noteworthy. Credit is also due to the editor for commencing the collection with critical essays from the Indian academy, which might normally be overlooked by international scholars. While one should not approach this book as a replacement for engaging with the subalternists own representations of their project, the ballast provided by these (relative) outsiders can be crucial for understanding how subaltern studies fits into the larger intellectual milieu in which it is operating.  

Mehta, Gita Karma Cola

Ostensibly an unmasking of the seedy underbelly that lurks Jabba-the-Hut style beneath the saffron glitter of India’s various gurus, ashrams and other centers for spiritual transcendence, Karma Cola is kind of a mad (as in crazy) screed without a real point. Not surprisingly, this polemic sans argument is in the end a bit unsatisfying: Mehta wants you to love her or hate her, but I never quite made it past the “what is she on about?” stage. I think Mehta’s point, which among other things comes off as a bit dated, goes like this: as you probably know, (some) ashrams are full of charlatan sants-cum-thieves and stoned-out, sexually immature nitwits. What you may not know, however, is that this is actually a really bad thing, and not just because these folks are giving religion a bad name (not clear that she cares) and setting horrible standards for personal hygiene. For, in addition to getting fleeced and fucked, a lot of these foreigners (and Mehta does present some amazing numbers on just how many people from Europe and America are “hanging out” in India), actually go crazy, as in totally gonzo, at which point their governments, whose visa and passport rules they have systematically defied, have to come rescue them, at some considerable cost and effort. I say that I think that this is Mehta’s point because the book is presented as a jumble of interviews, sketches and mini-rants that, while intended as stylish and experimental, often ends up sounding like it was written during a weeklong ashram drug binge (not that Mehta is the type). The book definitely has its share of brilliant moments and memorable phrases that make the reader’s effort more than worthwhile, and its recommended for anyone interested in the ashram scene specifically or all manner of new age and revivalist spirituality in general. That said, you can’t help feeling that the author could have done so much more with the bizarre material she’s uncovered. 

Metcalf, Thomas and Barabara Metcalf A Concise History of INDIA

Workmanlike in its presentation, well informed and catholic in its outlook, faithful to its title in terms of brevity; not surprising that this book is eventually so uninspiring. Maybe it’s just the nature of a concise history, which sacrifices deep analysis and copious detail for orienting generalizations and punctuated empiricism. Maybe it’s the tiresome “we’re from the Cambridge school and we’re damned well proud of it tone”; or maybe its because I actually agree with subalternists that the Cambridge school is needlessly obsessed with Indian factionalism at the expense of a deeper and broader understandings of the forces active in Indian history. Maybe it’s the slightly weird image I have of this husband and wife India all-star historical team speaking Hindi in Berkeley coffee shops. Reading history is for me about two things: a really great story and an absurdly gluttonous feast of details that you’re soon to forget (or else store away for unexpected cameos in decades hence brainstorms and bar trivia games). The Metcalfs are not great storytellers, and at least in this instance their job was to set a rather meager table. I definitely learned a few things, especially about the role India played in the development of the modern state as we know it – did you know the first modern census took place in India?? – but the dullness of the experience makes retention of these lessons doubtful.       

*Orwell, George Orwell and the Disposessed 

Not really about India, though the theme of poverty is at least tertiarily related, and there’s a great 1944 evisceration of Rudyard Kipling (or so Andrea tells me – I haven’t quite gotten to it yet). The major text in this collection is Down and Out in Paris and London, which is sort of Orwell’s riff on the poor and artsy in Paris lark, that is, until he leaves Paris and goes to London. Paris section has nothing on Hemingway or Henry Miller. London section is cooler and more in Orwell’s comfort zone somehow – gives a typically spare but evocative portrait of life as a tramp in depression era London (1933). Lots of other random reviews, letters, articles etc. that give a rounder portrait of Orwell than you’ll get if you stop at 1984 and the cartoon version of Animal Farm. I’m putting this in here mostly because I sweat Orwell and I want anyone who reads this to know it. There’s definitely a healthy mix of the seaweed in with the pearls, not surprising since this collection grabs just about everything Orwell ever wrote on the subject of being broke, and I don’t think Down and Out is Orwell at his best, but this guy’s seaweed beats most people’s pearls by a mile.   

Revel, Jean Francois and Matthieu Ricard The Monk and the Philosopher

Please contact me if you manage to read this book cover to cover – I may know some psychologists who will pay good money to perform certain tests on you. Honestly, how do two such well-educated, apparently interesting people discussing some of the most important questions of our age manage to sound so consistently boring, pompous and pedantic for so long? The basic premise of the book - western philosopher/public intellectual dad and scientist-turned-Buddhist monk son meet in Switzerland for chats about the meaning of life et al. – sounds mildly appealing, despite the facile East meets West gloss. But whatever potential exists is quickly swallowed up by the two combatants’ ineptitude. Speaking for the “West”, Revel, who apparently is some big thing in France, seems mostly interested in showing off his admittedly vast knowledge of the history of Western philosophy. Besides intellectual preening, the noted philosopher offers an interrogation of his son’s Buddhist beliefs that is predictable, repetitive and uninspired, while his own flaccid defense of liberalism, which he portrays as the best thing going now that socialism and fundamentalism have been giving their philosophical walking papers, is equally expected and lackluster. The best Revel manages are a few interesting comparisons between some of the ancient Greeks (obviously one of his specialties) and certain Buddhist ideas, but its nothing that hasn’t been said far better by the international Buddhological community (e.g. Jay Garfield) which is often impressively well schooled in these matters. As for son Matthieu (and by the way, what’s the deal with the different last names – did guru-ji make Matt drop the Revel??), while his back-story is fascinating - trained scientists leaves lab to spend twenty years at the feet of a Tibetan Rinpoche - and his tone bears little hint of his father’s pedantry, the results are hardly more inspiring. Representing the “East”, Matthieu trots out all of the typical clichés about how Tibet's venerable spiritual science might be the essential ballast to the deep unhappiness generated by the West’s materialist scientism. While such things are true enough as far as they go, the point is they don’t go very far at all. Obviously an ardent student at the monastery, Ricard offers some interesting details about specific Tibetan psycho-philosophical ideas and meditation techniques, however, his overall presentation lacks a unifying argument outside the usual tropes. Moreover, as Ricard lacks his father’s glibness or talent for argumentation, the points he does have end up sounding awkward and unconvincing. Of course, it’s no easy trick to make incredibly divergent systems of thought talk to one another, so the false starts and utter failures that are legion in this book are neither unexpected nor unprecedented; indeed, better men and women have failed where these two dare to tread. What’s more, I personally give credit to anyone who embarks on such effort, even if they lack the sort of openness required (father) or have aims that are largely apologetic (son). There’s also something heartwarmingly familiar about father making determined but occasionally inept effort to understand son’s strikingly different life choices, but Revel is in the end too pretentious and oblivious to sustain this positive association.

* Sarai Media Lab Sarai Readers 1-4

No, I did not read all four readers cover to cover. In fact, these collections are made for skimming, skipping around, flipping through and other occasional and accidental approaches to reading. The reward for random exploration can be varied – the Sarai folks are as cutting edge as it gets, which sometimes means more like bleeding edge. At its best, the writing is inspiringly avant garde, as in: a real glimpse of the future, imagined in turns idealistically or cynically. Widely diverse yet invariably connected issues like free software, surveillance, identity, nationalism, development and terrorism are approached from compelling and inventive angles, with an eye towards a kind of productive cultural criticism that exists at the crossroads between the philosophical and the political. Moreover, the meaning and the message are appropriately unified, both in terms of the wide variety of writing styles presented – from email exchanges and free associated rambles to tightly organized scholarly writing – and the overall design and copious artwork. At less inspiring moments, some authors are too willing to let jargon and abstruse in-jokes stand in for substantive criticism, making their work both difficult to wade through and eventually unsatisfying. A mixed bag, then, as would be expected in such willfully eclectic collections, but full of next generation party favors. For lighter doses of the same, check out www.sarai.net, where tolerance for a bit of jargon will put you in touch with the heart of India’s next generation of public intellectuals.  

A tour de force presentation of modern Indian “history from below”. In summarizing massive amounts of recent research on modern Indian history, Sarkar negotiates effectively and at times inspiringly between traditional Marxist economism and a still developing subaltern perspective. Systematic and comprehensive, the book is no picnic to get through, but the dedicated reader is amply rewarded with a historical portrait that effectively signposts the many roads not taken in the development of the Indian state, without therefore succumbing to the temptations of counter-factual history. Historiography is a set of largely dead facts animated by the careful attentions of the historian; Sarkar’s careful and broad use of sources is at the heart of his amazing ability to breathe life into his subjects, whether world historical figures like Gandhi and Nehru or obscure leaders of peasant revolts. His treatment of Gandhi and Nehru especially combines forceful critique with genuine sympathy. The reader is left with a crucial understanding of how the Indian nationalist leadership succumbed to the prerogatives of bourgeois capitalism that somehow preserves an appropriate respect and admiration for the heroes of the nationalist struggle and the massive significance of their anti-colonial agitation. A virulent and effective critic of the horrendous role played by the Hindu right throughout this period but especially in the lead-up to partition, Sarkar does seem to give a free pass to Jinnah and the other side of communalist extremism, but in terms of the bulk of Indian historiography, this is probably an appropriate corrective. This book is required reading for anyone interested in modern India.

*Sen, Amartya Inequality Re-examined