INDIA THROUGH THE EYES OF A WESTERNER

Gone are the days, it seems, when books written on India by Western writers were either excessive odes to Indias exoticism or filled with doomsday judgements about a country collapsing under the weight of its social contradictions. Todays writers, like Luce prefer to chronicle rather than judge, and their writings are imbued with affection but also informed by exhaustive research.

India has laboured too long under the burden of spiritual greatness that Westerners have for centuries thrust upon it and which Indians had themselves got into the habit of picking up and sending back
Edward Luce

Even the voices from within are growing more assured and the perspective is that of an increasingly liberal, outwardlooking country that is eager to use the opportunities now within its grasp. It is only now that Indian minds are getting de-colonised , says Das, a consummate story teller, whose second book, Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma is to be released next month. One of Dass favourite stories is that of Raju, a tea stall boy who, inspired by a television show on Bill Gates, nurses dreams of studying computer science and starting his own firm in his village.
As Giridharadas writes in the earlier mentioned column, India has changed dramatically, viscerally, improbably in these 2,000 days: farms giving way to factories; ultra-cheap cars being built; companies buying out rivals abroad. But the greatest change I have witnessed is elsewhere. It is in the mind. That self-confidence is now reflected in our writings. A great example is A Better India, A Better world by Infosys chairman NR Narayana Murthy, a collection of lectures through which he makes a compelling argument for why an increase in India's power in the coming decades will be in the world's larger interests. Pavan K Varma, prolific writer and Indian Ambassador to Bhutan, believes our non-fiction writing is finally getting out of self-perpetuated myths. In the flush after independence you begin to write books in categories that you believe will reinforce the image that you think others have of you. Sixty years down the line, you hopefully develop the self-confidence in terms of who you really are, not what others think you should be. Then you write more honestly, candidly and there is a market for that, adds Varma, who is writing Becoming Indian, from his home in Thimpu, on the issue of culture and identity.

Old India, New India

Does that necessarily mean we can finally talk of India in the present without getting into the inevitable backdrop of the past Some people are obsessed with the colonial past, in the attitude of a victim. Thats very defeatist, says Das, whose latest book is an interesting way of interpreting the present through the lens of the past. It turns to the Mahabharata and discovers that its world of moral haziness bears closer resemblance to modern day dilemmas of right versus wrong than we imagined. Amitabh Kant, principal secretary and special commissioner of the government of Kerala, and author of Branding India, a fascinating story about the Incredible India campaign , says the temptation for everyone is to show the vibrant, confident, young India, but the challenge will be not to lose oneself in modernity. The era of the brochure book on India is over, says Varma, although like Das he believes that one must come to terms with ones past. Not in terms of glorifying it or decrying it but understanding it, he says. There are a whole host of young writers for whom the past isnt as critical as the present. Writers like Palash Mehrotra who was a journalist and parttime Practical Ethics teacher at Doon school before deciding it was time someone wrote about changing India, from within. His upcoming title The Butterfly Generation is aimed at the young urban Indian grappling with issues like promiscuity, drugs, money and personal liberty. They have issues other than caste to worry about, he says.

Anything one might say about India, the opposite can also be shown to be true" Amartya Sen

The other factor driving supply is, of course, a growing global readership that believes India and its future are worth understanding . And that readership, says Mehrotra, eggs foreign publishers on to back writing that brings a fresh perspective to this old onion of a nation . Kumar is witnessing first-hand the hunger that the West has for knowledge on India and Indian businesses. Having just released Indias Global Powerhouses he is already in India to research his second book on the subject of innovation in India. Finding a publisher today is the easiest part of the exercise, he says with a laugh. Tully warns, though, against getting caught up in the superpower euphoria. I would actually hope India is the one country that doesnt care for the label of a superpower, he says, admitting he feels both affection and exasperation when he writes about India, Im exasperated about things like ineffective governance. As Nilekani writes in his book: The opportunity of the global economy has highlighted our internal differences between the educated and the illiterate, the public and private sectors, between the well and the poorly governed , and between those who have access and those who have not. Still, bad and good, the world is watching India. We are something like an onion, one complex layer after one another thats worth examining, says Varma. The opportunities for non-fiction writing on India have really opened up, says Himanshu Chakrawarti, COO, Landmark. Its a gold mine for publishers, echoes Mitra. What then might master statesman Winston Churchill have to say about all this attention showered on a country he once infamously described as a beastly country with a beastly religion, no more a country than the equator Save his well-chewed Havana, he might have had to go this one alone. arati.menon@timesgroup .com