Three weeks in Hindustan- Part 4
Homeward Bound

Pavan Vangipuram

India has changed. That much has been clear since the day I entered the country. But the nature and extent of the change only gradually revealed itself to me.

There is much more wealth now, and more people approach their daily lives with a sense of purpose, instead of a dull, fatalistic drift. The deeper aspects of Old India, however, are not so easily erased. The country still finds itself hopelessly mired in an archaic and outdated religion; the population remains maniacally superstitious (long after the advent of toilet paper, why are Indians still repulsed and offended by the left hand?), and a genuine selfishness combined with a general lack of respect for the law remains throughout.

This last point wants consideration. During the last ten years, India’s infrastructure has improved enormously. Dirt roads have become paved, two lane highways have been expanded, dividers have been put up, and nearly every road has been widened. These measures have been put in place to improve the flow of traffic in the face of the torrent of new vehicles on the road, but what if the use if even the most basic of traffic laws is completely ignored?

The dashed white lane dividers, for instance, are about as useful in India as the traffic lights are, in absence of a policeman. Both are utterly disregarded by the majority of drivers; it is not uncommon to see a large mass of vehicles crawling along a road where adherence to lanes would obviously make the flow of traffic far smoother. So it is with traffic lights: if there is no policeman around (and sometimes, even if there is one), the average Indian driver will blithely jump a red light, paying it no more mind than he would a yield sign.

A sight which is so common in the United States, drivers slowing down to allow others to merge, would be something less than a rarity in India. It simply would not happen. The reason for this is clear enough: generations of scarcity and overpopulation have instilled it in the Indian psyche that one must get theirs while the getting is good. You will hardly ever see an orderly line form in India for any good, no matter how plentiful. The overriding sentiment is “Me today – You tomorrow,” and this is reflected in the frightful chaos one finds at any Indian place of business.

These are cultural qualities that one may find in many eastern countries. Where it matters, however, India and Hinduism have shown themselves capable of change, and marked change at that. One hundred years ago, non-members of the Brahmin caste were absolutely not allowed to perform even the most menial function at Hindu temples (in fact, in many temples in the south, non-Brahmins were not even allowed into the temples to worship), yet a temple I visited in Chennai had a smiling non-Brahmin cheerfully handing out prasadm, and this did not seem out of place.

Even 50 years ago, this would have been an egregious blasphemy. Three hundred years ago, it was commonplace for a widow to throw herself on the funeral pyre of her husband. This would be simply unthinkable today. Hinduism has shown itself capable of shedding many of its discriminatory (and frankly horrifying) practices while retaining its inner essence. If a traditional Hindu from five hundred years ago were to be somehow transported to modern-day, he would hardly recognize the religion that is practiced, yet he would feel immediately at home. This is the quality that has allowed India to retain its national character in the face of decades of modernization, centuries of colonial rule, and millennia of foreign conquest.

For years I was ashamed of my Indian ancestry. My first visits to India, in the early-to-mid 1990s, did little to cure me of this. Everywhere I looked I saw decay, stagnation and poverty. The streets would be lined with tents and shanty tenements, as far as the eye could see. Beggars of the most pathetic sort would choke the sidewalks; their hungry, imploring eyes making me feel immediately guilty for my unearned wealth. There seemed to be little hope anywhere.

I come away from India now with a far different picture. The country still suffers from many of the vices that kept it in subjugation: the lack of community sense, the disregard for laws, which are inconvenient and the near-absence of a defined national unity.

But India has shown herself to be capable of change, and the future now looks far brighter. India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, once said that India must become a country which one can be proud. It took 60 years for India to realize this. And as I look back, with the country quickly receding into the distance, I cannot help but be proud.