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INDIA
About India
"Unity in Diversity" was
the slogan chosen when India celebrated fifty years of Independence
in 1997, a declaration replete with as much optimism as pride. Stretching
from the frozen barrier of the Himalayas to the tropical greenery
of Kerala, and from the sacred Ganges to the sands of the Thar desert,
the country's boundaries encompass incomparable variety.
Walk the streets of any Indian city and you'll rub shoulders with
representatives of several of the world's great faiths, a multitude
of castes and outcastes, fair-skinned, turbanned Punjabis and dark-skinned
Tamils. You'll also encounter temple rituals that have been performed
since the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs, onion-domed mosques erected
centuries before the Taj Mahal was ever dreamt of, and quirky echoes
of the British Raj on virtually every corner.
That so much of India's past remains discernible today is all the
more astonishing given the pace of change since Independence in
1947. Spurred by the free-market reforms of the early 1990s, the
economic revolution started by Rajiv Gandhi has transformed the
country with new consumer goods, technologies and ways of life.
Now the land where the Buddha lived and taught, whose religious
festivals are as old as the rivers that sustain them, is the second-largest
producer of computer software in the world, with its own satellites
and nuclear weapons.
However, the presence in even the most far-flung market towns of
internet cafés and Japanese hatchbacks has thrown into sharp
relief the problems that have bedevilled the subcontinent since
long before it became the world's largest secular democracy. Rooted
in the monolithic hierarchy of caste, poverty remains a harsh fact
of life for around forty percent of India's inhabitants. No other
nation on earth has slum settlements on the scale of those in Delhi,
Mumbai and Calcutta, nor so many malnourished children, uneducated
women and homes without access to clean water and waste disposal.
Many first-time visitors find themselves unable to see past such
glaring disparities. Others come expecting a timeless ascetic wonderland
and are surprised to encounter one of the most materialistic societies
on the planet. Still more find themselves intimidated by what may
seem, initially, an incomprehensible and bewildering continent.
But for all its jarring juxtapositions, intractable paradoxes and
frustrations, India remains an utterly compelling destination. Intricate
and worn, its distinctive patina - the stream of life in its crowded
bazaars, the ubiquitous filmi music, the pungent melange of beedi
smoke, cooking spices, dust and cow dung - casts a spell that few
forget from the moment they step off a plane. Love it or hate it
- and most travellers oscillate between the two - India will shift
the way you see the world. |
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