CELL PHONES: The instrument that has truly networked India. We don't have as many as China, but we're now selling more every month (7 million) than any country on earth. Not only does it cost Indians less to use a cell phone than anyone else on the planet, but the handy little devices have done something that decades of socialism could not — they've empowered the less fortunate. Cell phones are wielded today by people who could not have dreamt of joining the eight-year waiting lists our country used to have for landline connections — drivers, farmers, fisher folk. It is difficult to imagine a greater transformation than one wrought by the communications revolution in India, and the cell phone is its triumphant symbol.
CENSORSHIP: Holds a strange status in India: unacceptable and even unthinkable with respect to the national print media but perfectly applicable to radio, TV, cinema, and (in times of trouble) the provincial press. This is part of the elitism of the guardians of our public morals: those with the education and good taste to read the Times of India will not overreact to its contents, but the peasant in the villages must be protected from the pernicious effects of too much freedom. Sentiments we take for granted in the editorial pages of our big-city papers are thus carefully excised from All-India Radio discussions; fashion shows on TV are rigorously screened to weed out nonconformist attire that might shock the sensibilities of the custodians of bharatiya sanskriti. Though nudes appear in urban glossy magazines to titillate the bourgeoisie, villagers for whom partially clad women are a daily sight are spared the view of bare Bolly-wood bosoms by our city-based censors. Violence is illegal but is rife on our screens; love is legal but is reduced to coyness by our censors. It's time our democracy decided we're mature enough to do away with censorship altogether.
CLUBS: Thought likely, by Forster and other critics of colonialism, to be the first British institution to die with imperialism. In India, however, they simply passed into the hands of another elite and have carried on gloriously unchanged, with week-old British papers still available in the members’ reading rooms and areas off-limits to women. Clubs are harmless enough as pleasant places to escape from the bustle of the city and to catch a game of tennis or a cucumber sandwich. But when they preserve the worst of the colonial legacy without the slightest imagination or national self-respect, as far too many do, they are worse than absurd. As a child, I was thrown out of the Breach Candy swimming pool in Bombay for being an Indian, a state of existence my innocent American host had not imagined would pose a problem in India; as a teenager I have been upbraided by a committee member for not taking a fork and knife to my naan at dinner; in another club I have had to tuck a kurta into the waist-band of my trousers, since a flowing desi garment was not considered appropriate attire. The Communist minister who led a party of sweat-strained Santhal tribals into the pool of a whites-only club in Calcutta in 1969 expressed the feelings of millions of his countrymen. What a pity the tribals could not then be elected to the club's committee to put its affairs straight for good.
COMMUNAL VIOLENCE: Tragically, a sad reality and an avoidable stain on the Indian societal map. Every Indian carries with him the shame of the periodic bouts of bloodletting that hit the world's headlines: Hindu-Muslim, Thakur-Harijan, Assamese-Bengali, Sikh-Hindu, Shia-Sunni. One of the costs of being a composite nation proud of its storied “unity in diversity” is that diversity sometimes asserts itself at the expense of unity. When the madness passes, as it always does, what is left amid the wreckage is the belated recognition of intertwined destinies.
CONGRESS: The name of our national movement before it became reduced to that of a political party, and new generations of Indians are continuing to discover how vital its magic is. Shorn of its associations, Congress is even a faintly absurd name, for all it means is “assembly,” but it is the association with the freedom struggle that makes “Congress” such a sought-after suffix even for opposition parties (from the Tamil Maanila Congress to the Trinamool Congress). No other political party in the developing world has as old or as seminal a history, as agglomerative a nature, and as many offspring (with Congresses — I, O, R, S, J, and even U at one stage). The Indian National Congress even inspired the African National Congress in South Africa and a host of lesser parties around the globe. That is why, even as it is reduced to heading a minority government, the Congress — as a movement and a model — should remain a source of pride for all Indians, even those who utterly reject its performance after independence.
CORRUPTION: Endemic in our society, even if it is never quite as all-pervasive as we ourselves proclaim it is. Indians are givers and takers of bribes, adulterators of foodstuffs, black marketeers of cinema tickets, resellers of train reservations, payers of capitation fees. Our soil nurtures bootleggers, smugglers, hoarders, and touts of all descriptions. Perhaps this is because there are so many laws and regulations that some will always have to be violated; perhaps it is that in any situation of resource scarcity, temptation will always be reinforced by need; perhaps it is simply that we have so many underpaid officials exercising power out of all proportion to their earnings that some are bound to want to narrow the gap by profiting from the power to permit. Perhaps, as Gibbon remarked about the Roman Empire, corruption is merely “the infallible symptom of constitutional liberty”—how else can politicians afford to run for election, after all? Or perhaps we should stop making excuses and find within ourselves a Hercules to clean out our Augean stables.
COWS: As much a symbol of India as of Switzerland, though ours do not contribute to a flourishing cheese and chocolate industry. But the veneration of the cow and its ubiquitousness have become something of a cliché, masking the often depressing reality of the conditions in which Indian cows live and die.
CRICKET: Not considered our national sport until quite recently (when I was growing up, it was supposed to be hockey), but the crowds at cricket matches and the media coverage of the game confirm the new reality. In how many countries would work crawl practically to a halt during a major match, crowds stay awake till the wee hours of the morning to hear a result from abroad, and pilots interrupt their passengers’ reveries to announce the latest score? The range and subtlety of cricket, its infinite variations and complexities, its vulnerability to the caprices of the weather and its inability to guarantee a result make it perfectly suited to the Indian temperament. Now that our players’ performances are beginning (World Cup aside) to match the spectators’ enthusiasm, now that talent scouts and coaches are moving to the villages, now that the money in the game is attracting players of ability from all walks (and runs!) of life, now that 80 percent of the sport's global revenues come from India, it is time to celebrate the truth in Ashis Nandy's claim that cricket is really an Indian game accidentally discovered by the British.