GANGA: The country's great river, which to some degree is ironic since the names India, Indian, Hindu, and Hindustan all derive from the river Indus, which now flows through Pakistan. It is the Ganga, though, that irrigates northern India's great alluvial plain, waters many of Hinduism's holy places, and washes away the sins of believers. Nehru waxed lyrical about the Ganga in his will; to him it was “the river of India, beloved of her people, round which are intertwined her racial memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats. She has been a symbol of India's age-long culture and civilization, ever-changing, ever-flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga, a memory of the past of India, running into the present, and flowing in to the great ocean of the future.” To Nehru, the most sacred river of Hinduism was a force for cultural unity, a torrent that unites history with hope. When his grandson Rajiv Gandhi was elected prime minister he used his first post-election broadcast to announce the setting up of a Central Ganga Authority to cleanse and safeguard this “symbol of India's culture, the source of our legend and poetry, the sustainer of millions” and “to restore its pristine purity” after centuries of neglect and pollution. Two decades later the Ganga is less neglected but more polluted.
GAVASKAR, SUNIL: A cricket player is one of contemporary India's first authentic national heroes — somebody good enough at his chosen vocation to be numbered among the best in the world at it. Who can forget his memorable debut series of 774 runs in four Tests against the West Indies, and what it meant for a generation of Indian cricket fans who were becoming inured to defeat? Since then his innumerable batting records have fallen to others, most memo-rably the highest number of Test centuries ever scored and the most runs ever made in Test cricket, but they were records he set in a sport where Indians did not use to set records. Even if his captaincy never quite measured up to expectations, Gavaskar's batting, as he stood up to the world's fastest and most fearsome bowling attacks, did as much for national pride as it did for Indian cricket.
GHERAOS: India's contribution to the art of industrial disputes. The notion of getting your own way by blockading your opponent in his office may have little in common with that of the self-sacrificial fast, but as a tactic of coercion it is used at least as often in India. Regrettably, there is no equivalent Indian invention on the conciliation side of the process.
GODMEN: More prosaically, “gurus,” India's major export of the second half of the twentieth century, offering manna and mysticism to an assortment of foreign seekers in need of it, though some of the biggest and best of the tribe remain on our shores. Godmen appeal to the deep-seated reverence in Indians (by no means only Hindus) for spiritual wisdom and inner peace, perhaps because the conditions of Indian life make it so difficult for most of us to acquire either. Many also prey on the credulous by seeking to demonstrate their divinity through their mastery of magic, a device used for millennia by those who seek to impress themselves on others. The majority, however, are content to manifest their sanctity by sanctimoniousness, producing long and barely intelligible discourses into which their listeners can read whatever meaning they wish. If religion is the opium of the Indian people, then godmen are God's little chillums.
GULF, THE: Not a body of water, but a magic land in faraway Araby, paved with gold, cheap electronics, and the hopes of Indian immigrants. Someone will no doubt do a study one day on the number of Indians who sold land, jewelry, or the family home to abandon a reasonably viable existence in India for the life of a laborer, clerk, driver, or shop assistant in the Gulf, offering ten times the income, five times the hardship, and half the joy. It has been a long tradition, particularly in Kerala, to seek work in distant places, live frugally, remit the bulk of one's earnings home, and hope to retire on the accumulations of a lifetime of privation, but the Gulf changed the scale of the whole enterprise, dramatically increasing the stakes. The Gulf began to attract highly educated and well-qualified expatriates as well. Though there is growing consciousness of the problems encountered by working-class Indian emigrants in the area and frequent reports of broken promises, dishonest or tyrannical employers, abysmal living conditions, terrible loneliness, and lack of legal rights, there are very few signs as yet that the Gulf dream is fading. That will take something else — a narrowing of the vast gulf of affluence that separates life in the Gulf from the life of lower-middle-class Indians in India.
HARIJANS: “Sons of God,” is what Gandhiji called the untouchables in an effort to remove the stigma of that term. Unfortunately, the word has quickly become another typical Indian palliative — a means of concealing a problem by changing its name. No wonder that Harijans themselves prefer “Dalit”—the oppressed. Nothing like calling a spade a bloody shovel when it comes to labeling social injustice.
HINDI: The language of 51 percent of our people, a vernacular two hundred years old with practically no history, little tradition, and minimal literature, which is no doubt why it enjoys the elevated status of our “national” language. Every two-bit northern politician demands that it be the sole official language of India; the loudest clamor usually comes from politicos who are busy educating their own children in the English medium to ensure they have the very opportunities they propose to deny the rest of the populace. One chauvinist central minister addressed a letter in Hindi to West Bengal's then chief minister Jyoti Basu, who duly replied in Bengali; that ended the correspondence. On the other hand, Hindi is the language in which Bollywood's film producers reach their biggest markets, so there must be something to be said for it — as long as you don't say it in Chennai or Kolkata.
HINDUISM: The religion of over 80 percent of Indians. As a way of life it pervades almost all things Indian, bringing to politics, work, and social relations the same flexibility of doctrine, reverence for custom, and absorptive eclecticism that characterize the religion — as well as the same tendency to respect outworn superstition, worship sacred cows, and offer undue deference to gurus. (See also Congress.) Hinduism is also the sole major religion that doesn't claim to be the only true religion, and the only religious tradition that allows for such eclecticism of doctrine that there is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. This hasn't prevented self-appointed votaries of the faith from developing their own brand of Hindu fundamentalism, even though Hinduism is uniquely a faith without fundamentals. What they don't seem to realize is that Hinduism is a civilization, not a dogma. It's ironic that those who claim to be its defenders define Hinduism in a way that makes it something it isn't — narrow-minded, exclusive, and intolerant.
HOSPITALITY: The great Indian virtue, practiced indiscriminately and unhesitatingly irrespective of such unworthy considerations as whether one can afford it. Indians throw open their doors to strangers, offering their time, their food, and the use of their homes at the drop of a mat. After dowry, hospitality is probably the greatest single cause of Indian indebtedness. There is one catch, though: we are usually hospitable only to those we consider our social equals or betters. Oddly enough, foreigners inevitably seem to qualify.