Being Indian: Inside the Real India
Pavan K. Varma
Language: English
Pages: 201
ISBN: B01K18NU4S
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In the 21st century every sixth human being will be Indian. India is very close to becoming the second largest consumer market in the world, with a buying middle class numbering over half a billion.It is in the top ten in overall GNP. Yet at least 200 million Indians remain desperately poor. Illiteracy rates are high. Communal violence is widespread; corruption endemic. Brides are still tortured and burnt for dowries; the caste system has lost little of its power and none of its brutality.
How are we to make sense of these two, apparently contradictory, pictures of India today? And how can we overcome the many misconceptions about India that are fed by the stereotypes created by foreigners and the myths about themselves projected by Indians? In Being Indian, Pavan Varma, whom the Guardian has called 'one of the country's most perceptive writers', demolishes the myths and generalisations as he turns his sharply observant gaze on his fellow countrymen to examine what really makes Indians tick and what they have to offer the world in the 21st century.
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Yadav, Laloo Prasad 46, 136, 166 Yeats, W.B. 112 Yes Boss 145 Yudhishtira 25, 26, 27 Zargar, Mushtaq 154 Zee TV channel 84-5 COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint copyright material: Oxford University Press India, New Delhi. Extracts from the following books reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press, New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography, 1980; Independent India: The First Fifty Years, edited by.
Mandir at Panvel, not far from Mumbai, a dog is worshipped as the reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi. When Sai Sri Pandu Baba (as the dog has been christened) left for his heavenly abode in 1997, he was bathed in waters from India’s holiest rivers, and buried in a samadhi (grave) lined with sandalwood, to the chanting of Vedic hymns. Needless to say, the priests at the temple have found a successor to the Pandu Baba in the form of another dog, and the crowd of worshippers has not lessened. In a.
Resurrection of faith is just unthinking ritualism? During the traditional fasting period of the Navratras, more young Hindus are emulating their elders and staying off non-vegetarian food, and even onions. Food and beverage outlets across Indian cities report a dip in sales during this period, as youngsters abstain from meat and alcohol. Yet the same youngsters rarely question, for instance, the stereotyped role of women in the most popular TV serials, where traditional symbols like the sindoor.
The myth of ahimsa or non-violence as an intrinsic part of the Indian personality, was sold by Mahatma Gandhi and conveniently bought by the nation. In actual fact, ‘the only pre-modern use of ahimsa in a social context was by (Emperor) Ashoka in the third century BC, and then only after considerable violence.’8 Indians are capable of remarkable and frequent violence, and newspapers routinely report instances of domestic servants battered by educated employers, of brides tortured and burnt for.
Ticket from Illinois. Another Indian-American, 32-year-old Rhodes scholar Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal, was born six months after his parents emigrated to America in 1971. In November 2003, in elections in the southern state of Louisiana, he almost became the country’s first Indian-American governor, losing narrowly to his veteran Democrat opponent in a race that could have swung either way. Indian-Americans are proud of these developments. Much of Jindal’s political funding came from Indians in.