Spot the difference: India then & now

By Sheena Shafia

Reading Joseph Campbell's Brahman and Baksheesh, an account of his travels across India in 1954-1955 seemed serendipitous as the election results unfolded. A new India is about to emerge, seems to be the general consensus. The people had spoken and we're on our way. This new India, circa 2009, will be inclusive, non-sectarian, progressive, forward-looking and at the same time, socially conscious.

Campbell is of course the famous scholar and mythologist. His visit to India was long planned, and his friendships with Ananda Coomaswamy and Heinrich Zimmer, whose books he edited, and his reading of Indian texts and Hindu philosophy had fired his imagination and expectation.

He provides a perspective on a new nation -- though an ancient civilisation --trying to make a mark on a new world order. First off, he is disappointed: "I came to India to hear of brahman and all I have heard so far is politics and patriotism. Zimmer's formula appears to be correct: devotion to the Mother appears to have become a devotion to Mother India."

The anti-American rhetoric he hears from everyone, especially prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, he finds offensive and hypocritical -- after all, US money was flowing into India and being accepted everywhere. Then, on his travels through North India he sees squalor everywhere and yet every other Indian he meets is frightfully sanctimonious and superior about Indian spirituality versus Western materialism.


As Campbell moved from Delhi and North India to Bangalore, Calcutta and finally Bombay, he came to terms with his dislike and indeed liked India more and more. But some of his observations still stand and act as prophecies even.(Though as a mythologist Campbell certainly knew that the stories and history flow, round and round, the serpent eating its tail, without beginning or end). Has the devotion to the Mother lost completely to the love for Mother India?

Certainly, we have embraced American capitalism. If we are going towards Nehruvian socialism now, there are some roads on which we have travelled too far. We cannot go back. But we can and must lift those 500 million Indians out of the mess in which they still live. For this, Campbell saw a conflict between Vinoba Bhave's and Nehru; or Gandhi versus Nehru.

It's an argument we might well hear again in these times. What affected Campbell the most -- apart from the lack of the Upanishadic thought in daily life which he came looking for and might have been amused to find it repackaged to us via the Americanised Deepak Chopras and Robin Sharmas -- was the status of women and the lack of social interaction between the genders. Indian society would have to open those doors.

Here Campbell might have been pleasantly surprised. If women were invisible across North India in the 1950s, they've come a long way, baby. In Bombay he met society ladies called Pipsi and Popsy and they're still here. In those days, they promoted art and culture, today it is largely themselves. But surely, across the nation, women are on the go.

His third observation about the lack of effort made by India's businessmen to alleviate India's problems, sadly, remains. He writes glowingly of the Sarabhais in Ahmedabad, a rare industrial family which gave to the arts and sciences. The names since have been few and far between, barring the Tatas, whose philanthropy predates the rest. Instant profit was the norm then and nothing much has changed.Someone explained to Campbell that Indian businessmen do not want to wait to make profits and therefore do not take risks. It shows.

India in the 1950s was eager to find a place in the polity of nations. In 2009, we're well on our way there. It's interesting to see that progress --women's rights -- has been made but so much has remained the same. As for our spiritual centre? Now that is another story.