RELIANCE: The company that gave us a founding father who inspired a Bollywood blockbuster, suitings that not “only Vimal” could wear, one of the world's largest petrochemical plants, a high-tech communications network, a family feud to rival any soap opera, and a cricket World Cup. Now split into two empires, each headed by a billionaire.
RELIGION: Ever-present in Indian life. Whether it is the loudspeaker-aided call of the Lucknow muezzin or the raucous din of the Kolkata puja-pandal, the stray half-starved cow meandering through a gully, or the profusion of fruitcake in the stores at Christmas, the presence and influence of religion is everywhere apparent. Hardly a foundation stone is laid, ship launched, or hazardous ascent by car begun without the ritual smashing of a coconut or the offering of a puja to propitiate the gods. Fundamentally, Indians are a religious people, even if (as in the case of the enthusiastic young Kolkatans who collect “donations” for the betterment of their local Durga Puja Pandal) they claim to be Communist. Three of the world's major faiths — Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism — originated on Indian soil, as did several of the minor ones (the Jains and the Qadianis, for instance) and most of the others — notably Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism — have found fertile ground here. Unfortunately, in India as elsewhere, religion has also served to justify injustice, to provoke division, and to whip up hatred: the faithful rarely live up to the gentle precepts of their faiths. But India, of all countries, remains the living embodiment of the dictum that there is only one religion, though there are a hundred varieties of it.
RENAMING: A highly developed art for Indian streets and monuments, though nowhere is it more refined than in Kolkata, where a Left Front government managed, during the Vietnam War, to rename the street that housed the U.S. consulate after Ho Chi Minh. (The Americans, however, were cleverer, changing their letterheads to reflect a side gate that opened onto the less disconcerting Little Russell Street, which was not named for Bertrand.) Where this becomes more disconcerting is when whole cities are renamed: in the 1990s Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata entered the consciousness of English speakers. The nativism this bespeaks sits ill with the cosmopolitanism to which India has been laying claim at the beginning of the twenty-first century, but we have to list it among the many contradictions that constitute the Indian paradox. It's a great pity, though, to lose centuries of brand-name building, especially for Bombay and Madras; and to do so out of nothing but a petty chauvinism, a reassertion of pride in the right to label rather than the capacity to build. As I wrote at the time, our civic leaders seemed to be saying, in an admission of their own smallness: if we can't create, we can at least rename.
RICE: The great Indian food, whatever northerners may think about the merits of wheat. There are few more lyrical sights in India than the lush green of the paddy fields, and few happier ones than a Tamil or a Bengali before a plateful of rice. At the basic level rice is a sustainer of millions, the source of more energy for Indians than any other food, the vital staple of our land. At the level of culinary art, rice is the essential ingredient of those triumphs of Indian cuisine, the idli and the dosa. An India without rice would no longer be India.
SARI: Is to Indian dress what rice is to Indian food, its prose as well as its poetry. No more graceful garment has been invented by man, nor one more truly flattering, for the sari can conceal flaws that other dresses only accentuate and hint at features that other costumes only hide. It has adorned Indian womanhood for at least two thousand years, but it has never gone out of fashion, primarily because it has adapted with the times. Worn straight or pleated between the legs, with pallavs flung over the left or the right shoulder, below long-sleeved high-necked blouses or backless cholis, saris have retained an appeal that cuts across all distinctions of rank, religion, age, or shape. Tied primly beneath the breastbone or low in “hipster” style, knotted at the waist or pinned to an undergarment, in plain colors or patterned prints, polyester or poplin, heavy silk or sturdy cotton, saris have survived every sartorial change from the burqa to the miniskirt. In Pakistan, the sari has resisted the blandishments of the official churidar culture and is triumphantly worn on special occasions; in Bangladesh, the battle did not even need to be fought. In India, alas, its use by the impatient younger generation is fading, and when I once appealed to “save the sari from a sorry fate,” I was met with a feminist backlash that left me reeling. So there is something of rueful defiance in this glossary entry: the sari is a triumphant achievement of Indian culture, but only Indian women can save it from being reduced to ritual wear, donned only to temples and weddings.
SECULARISM: An article of faith in the Indian political ethos, but where dictionaries define it in opposition to religion, Indians equate it to toleration of all religions. Either way, secularism presumes that the state shall grant no favor on the basis of religion, even though 81 percent of the population may have one in common. In an intensely religious nation like India, this credo is easier stated than adhered to, but there is widespread recognition among opinion leaders that India can no more abandon secularism than it can democracy. At least at the top, secularism has worked well, with armed services chiefs having represented every major community and Rashtrapati Bhavan having been home to presidents of three leading faiths. The important thing, however, is that for all the attacks upon “pseudo-secularism,” the overwhelming majority of Indians remain noncommunal, wedded to the chronic pluralism of our civilization, of which secularism is merely the official reflection.
SINGH, KHUSHWANT: If one were to single out an Indian journalist whose name has evoked instant reactions across the land for the longest time, one would not look beyond Khushwant Singh. No other man could be remembered for two achievements so different as revealing the existence of the female torso to the incredulous readership of the formerly staid Illustrated Weekly of India and returning his Padma Shri Award to an equally stunned President Zail Singh. Khushwant Singh is revered by many for making bluntness and candor respectable in a profession that thrived on euphemism and ellipsis, for teaching journalists that it was not incompatible with their trade to get up from their desks, and for showing readers for the first time that writing was meant to be enjoyed as much as admired. He is condemned by an equal number of critics for what they see as his salivating lasciviousness, his tiresomely idiosyncratic obsessions, and his complete lack of either taste or discretion. No English-speaking Indian reader is neutral about Khushwant Singh: the one thing he does not do is leave his readers cold. May he live to be a hundred, and may he continue to amuse, delight, and provoke well past that landmark.
SOCIALISM: The political credo of India's left wing. It was also the credo of India's right wing (remember when the BJP claimed “Gandhian Socialism” as its ruling ideology?), its center, its ruling party, and all its editorialists. You could own land, fancy apartments, and cars and call yourself a socialist; the dominant principle of Indian socialism is “do as I say, not as I do.” It is only since 1991 that it has become acceptable in India for some people not to be socialists, but the vast majority still pays lip service to the creed, whether or not they implement its tenets in policy or practice.