For the last decade or so, 21st century India has been a confusing place. We are bombarded with triumphant messages of India’s rise as an economic superpower while simultaneously feeling the crunch of rising costs and diminishing earning capacities. Celebrations in Ayodhya take place amidst atrocities against minorities which garner the government’s and mainstream media’s silence or blatant approval. The morality of the mob is fast becoming the norm, and young people especially, being strangers to history, are susceptible to believe that commonplace violence, inequality, and religious intolerance are the norm in the country.
Chandan Gowda’s Another India transports the reader to a simpler India, unboastful, secure in its rich traditions, and diverse people. In this book of a seventy-odd essays, the author draws from the rich heritage of Karnataka to present lesser-known figures, ideas, and events. His reflections range from religious philosophies, visionary political thinking, literary traditions, and folk tales which reminds us there is nothing simple about the moral imagination of India. It is in contrast, a tapestry of ethics woven in different periods of time and drawn from many sources. In comparison, the present majoritarian view comes across as simplistic.
In his first essay, ‘A People Without a Stereotype’ Chandan playfully contemplates the lack of a generic stereotype of the Kannadiga in popular media. Unlike the jovial Punjabi, or the enterprising Malayali, he attributes Karnataka’s diverse ethnic and linguistic communities that make it rather impossible to create a uniform caricature. Homogeneity even within specific communities is scarcely found. This is illustrated in the essay on rituals for expectant mothers within Muslim communities which vary from district to district. Identities of communities also evolve with time. In ‘The Myth of a Single Home’, the author traces a sect of the Vokkaliga community in their conversion to Jainism in the 8th century, while still retaining their hunting and agricultural practices. He ends by saying that the ghar of a community is often ‘renovated, rebuilt, and moved’ to new ghars with old belongings; and that a caste rarely has one origin.
The monotheism of the Hinduism propagated today is challenged in a charming account of the folklore and varied practices surrounding India’s innumerable village deities. Village deities visit their divine relatives in cities, write letters to them, and have pranks played on them by their devotees. It portrays the deeply personal and subjective relationship of communities with the divine. The narration of Sant Shishunala Sharif, a Muslim sage who is taught by an unorthodox Brahmin guru makes a case for the syncretic nature of spiritual wisdom which is recognized regardless of caste and creed.
Essays on the ideas of political figures of the past show nuanced understanding of the vital role myth and religion in creating India’s unique moral sensibilities. While abhorring dogmatic religious adherence, mythology was recognized as a collective consciousness of people’s desires, aspirations, and sorrows and not a stringent set of beliefs and practices. In ‘Passions of Lohia’, we are presented with Rammanohar Lohia’s principle of immediacy or action rooted in the present. The socialist thinker cautions against desiring utopias both past and future, which only justifies revivalist movements of revenge, and sacrifices the present for future laurels.
In light of calls for 70-hour work weeks by Industry leaders, it is comforting to know that India once wasn’t ashamed of its idyllic and slow-paced past. ‘You people have no hustle in you,’ once said U.S. President H. Hoover to M. Visveswaraya, the chief engineer of the Mysore kingdom. The latter immediately took it upon himself to expand the state’s entrepreneurial horizons and reform its undisciplined subjects. In several accounts, leaders are often seen as wary of unchecked technological, industrial, and state expansion in the daily lives of citizens. Gandhi’s Gram Swaraj is one obvious example, but Kuvempu’s Vishwamanava, and Lohia’s Seven Revolutions share the same sentiment that inward transformation and cultivating brotherhood were far more important in the development of the country. The book also calls us to re-evaluate our modern imaginations of farmers, and barbers, historical professions that have lost prestige and dignity in the capitalistic present.
Within Another India is a treasure trove of tales spanning various geographies in Karnataka. An impressive work in translation and scholarship, the author’s narrations are taken from different versions of tribal epics while some are adaptations of famous folk songs and novels. Compilations of origin stories of deities and political figures demonstrate folklore as sites of reinterpretation and dislocating power from dominant narratives. A review of literary works mentioned in this book is a good starting point for those wishing to explore important literature in the state.
Perhaps the most unique contribution of the book is the author’s essays on lesser-known figures. Overshadowed by larger-than-life personalities of politicians, the mycelial network of grassroots leaders often goes unnoticed. The writings of Ksheerasagar on the rights of Adivasis of HD Kote for instance, or the activism of the farmer leader Kadidal Shamanna are examples of unheralded work done in sustaining a democracy. Professor M.M. Kalburgi, a refined scholar of philosophy and classical literature who was murdered by right-wing extremists for his criticism of superstition is a sad reminder that many progressive thinkers go under the radar of law and suffer vigilantism.
In ‘The Democratic Imagination of a Poem’, the exclusion of a religious leader from a Kuvempu poem is turned into a matter of contention. Chandan strikingly points out that the modern reader is often out of touch with important debates in vernacular languages due to a lack of cultural sensibilities that education institutions do not afford.
The problem inherent in a book of essays is that it lacks continuity. Although brilliant in their own right, I found myself finishing one essay and experiencing a kind of inertia while beginning an altogether different idea. It is a book best read between short intervals. At other times, the writings prove too brief or disconnected from the larger themes in the book and risk appearing as merely interesting factoids. The author also must allow the reader to come up with their conclusions instead of spelling them out.
Personally, I was very impressed with the wisdom of our freedom fighters etched out in this book. I have a newfound appreciation for the tiny threads of enlightenment and effort that go into making the fabric of a nation. The book is a reminder that India is after all an idea, and that ideas are fought for. That there is nothing accidental or unplanned about harmony in a society as diverse as ours and that India is a project of great intention, effort, and care. Another India challenges the reader to reconsider the wealth of their cultural, moral, and aesthetic inheritances and to fight for this idea again.
