IndiaStar: A Literary-Art Magazine     Barbara Crossette Dumps on India by Aa Sagokia [Intro: Aa Sagokia is a Michigan-based writer.]       Books, it is said, are of three types: some to be swallowed, some to be digested, and others to be chewed. In addition to those categories of books for intellectual food, one also encounters a different category: books to be booed. Barbara Crossette's book India: Facing the Twenty First Century (Indiana University Press) deserves at the very least a chorus of boos, certainly rebukes of various hues and probably even the noose. Ms Crossette, who is perceived in America as an expert on India has been a correspondent for the New York Times in New Delhi. In addition, she has also worked in Bangkok and can therefore be expected to have some understanding of the average levels of progress and achievement in South and South East Asia. It is therefore a matter of great regret that her reporting concentrates only on India's failures and shortcomings rather than a balanced description.The name, which draws the reader's attention under the guise of forecasting India's future challenges and abilities to meet them, is a misnomer, since Ms Crossette seems to be more preoccupied with defacing India as the nation exists in the 20th century than explaining how India would be facing the 21st century.   India, which is the world's largest democracy, has a set of complex features, problems, contrasts and contradictions which are as vast and varied as the climate encountered as one travels from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. It is wishful thinking indeed to believe that one can capture the complexities of the problems in a few hundred pages; to think that one can actually predict and evaluate India's global position in the twenty-first century is nothing short of wishing for the moon. Yet, it is exactly this that Ms Crossette attempts, achieving little other than handwaving and pointing fingers at India's perceived shortcomings. Reading Ms Crossette's book gives the reader the uneasy feeling that India has come apart at its seams and is poised for a gigantic crash which is distinct contrast to the optimism that is expressed by the average Indian about his country's ability to weather storms (as reported in an India Today Poll some time ago) or even John Kenneth Galbraith's description of India as "functioning anarchy." Inability to control the growth rate, rise of fundamentalism, budget deficits, three wars, inflation, internal insurgency-- many are the problems that India has weathered leaving no room for the cynical view that Ms Crossette takes about India and its overall inability to survive.   The introduction to the book declares that the "book was undertaken in the spirit of Myrdal's pioneering intellectual journey". While Ms Crosette's intentions to soar as high as the albatross and view India dispassionately from the heavens are laudable, it is a sad fact that she has failed to give the reader even a bird's eye view of India. In what can be described at best as a hop-jump-skip process, Ms Crossette's book leaps back and forth between delineating India's social, economic, and political problems, brushing no more than the iceberg's tip under any heading. Superficially sketching India's history, the book attempts to trace the origins of economic inequality, India's complex social problems and inadequacies of the political system in rapid succession, producing nothing but vexation.   Identifying, cutting and polishing the various facets of India's social, political, and cultural features has been long held to be a daunting task; it is rarely that one encounters success and attention to minutae like that of Gunnar Myrdal's "Asian Drama" in weaving the tapestry of the complex web in question. At the same time, one does not encounter many books which under the guise of weaving the tapestry, spin something close to a yarn; books which are more about obfuscation and expressing contempt than a genuine and thoughtful discussion. If Ms Crossette's aim was to maim, she has scored bull's eye time and again, if it was indeed to discuss India's ability to cope up with the 21st Century, it is a failure for the simple reason that it has not even attempted to look at the problem, other than list a few preconceived and stereotyped opinions.   What is surprising is the fact that Ms Crossette doesn't have a word to say about India's manifold victories-- pyrrihic according to some, but victories nevertheless. It's becoming the first third world country to become a nuclear power on the basis of indigenous technology alone, establishment of a university system which cranks out graduates with surprising efficiency and above all, self-sufficiency in terms of agricultural products and above all its commitment to democratic elections and process.   The appetizer, it is said, is a good indicator of the quality of everything that follows next. The map of India, given in the begining of the book, shows certain states and their capitals, other states but not their capitals; for some unfathomable reason, in the map of U.P, Ayodhya is highlighted. If Ayodhya is paid attention in view of its being the nucleus of Hindu fundamentalism, it is surprising that Ms Crossette doesn't offset this by highlighting Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, where one of the most famous Hindu shrines flourishes in the middle of a Christian dominated district or Nanded , one of the hallowed spots in the history of Sikhism in the middle of Hindu dominated Maharashtra, both of which reflect the secular, live-and -let-live attitude that most Indians have. In a return to the thinking that prevailed in British India about Hindus swamping non-Hindus with their numerical strength, she asserts that "Muslim Indians receive letters and documents bearing "Hindu" dates. " What she seems to miss is the fact that the Indian government does not follow the Hindu calendar but the Gregorian calendar. It is also important to remember that Kannada Hindus, Gujarati Hindus and Bengali Hindus celebrate the new year on different days, which makes it difficult to understand as to what she means by "Hindu calendar"( singular).   Her obsession for ascribing all problems to inter-ethnic and communal differences reveals itself in her discourse about the Harijans of India, which would make one conclude that Harijans are not Hindu, but are members of a different religion altogether. One winces upon noticing that she pays scant attention to political correctness in India by constantly refering to Harijans by the deregatory and archiac term-- "untouchable". While she reports on the havoc caused by the caste system and the treatment of Harijans, she does not report about the strides made by India in combating (if not overcoming) the illtreatment of Harijans; much less does she talk about the fact that there exist means in India which help the Harijans to express themsleves, be it Dalit poetry at the literary level or compulsory Harijan representation at the political level, or a genuine effort to absorb them into the mainstream.A refrain most nauseating, Ms Crossette's cliche of "Caste system" is frequent. It would not be incorrect to conclude that her thesis about the caste system and it's consequences is a potpourri of babble and rabble,garnished with a generous dose of foible and quibble, rendering the whole dish inedible and achieving little in conveying any message to an average non-Indian other than one of weird sensationalism.   Her discussion of Indian history is restricted only to those episodes where India can be made to look silly or stupid, events where it came out second best. In terms of use (more appropriately, abuse) of history for hurling allegations at India, Ms Crosette shows considerable enthusiasm; as an example, she tells us that India has no respect and value for its Mughal heritage and architecture overlooking the fact that any tourist brochure brought by the Indian government would have a paean to the Taj Mahal and another to the Lal Qila. Emperor Akbar is mentioned by most Indian history books as having been one of the greatest kings that India has ever produced. In a near mythical account of an episode from the mythological epic Mahabharata , Ms Crossette suggests that Salya changed sides in the Mahabharata voluntarily; if so, would she explain as to why he delighted in deriding Karna consistently through the war? "Indian worship" she emphatically declares, "was mostly of Shiva and Vishnu," leaving out the Shakti cult or lots of "Indians" were practising Buddhists and Jainas. In being consistent with her general pattern of lack of research, she states that Ambedkar completed his studies in England on the basis of a scholarship granted by "a Maharajah" (unnamed for some reason inspite of the fact any biography of Ambedkar clearly says that it was the Gaekwad of Baroda), ignoring the fact that the scholarship ran out early on and Ambedkar was forced to return to India in order to raise funds from his friends. One doesn't have to reflect twice on the validity of her comments on history when she alternates between getting any episode either incorrectly or incomplete. It may be true that India has geo-political ambitions about being recognized as the leading power in South Asia, but to claim that India has treated its smaller neighbours as mere side dishes is imagination running riot. In order to bolster her thesis about India's bullying its neighbours, Ms Crossette makes the hithero unheard of suggestion that Mrs Gandhi was jealous of the progress that Srilanka was making and therefore helped start and stoke the fires of Tamil separatism in the northern part of the island. Would this theory hold any water when the followings facts are taken into account? First, there were riots between the Tamils and Sinhalese as early as 1958 (when Indira Gandhi was still a political novice). Second, 1956 was a watershed in Srilankan history because of the implmenation of the disastrous "Sinhala Only" policy (which effectively reduced the status of Tamils to second class citizens). In what is one-sided reporting and interviewing at its best, she quotes J.R.Jayawardene on this issue overlooking the fact that he himself was a Sinhala chauvinist who contributed to the image of his "United National Party" being dubbed the "United Nazi Party" in view of its style of functioning. It is true that Indira Gandhi did try to fish in troubled waters partly out of sympathy for the Tamils, partly with an eye on political gain in Tamil Nadu and partly out of a need to safeguard India's geopolitical ambitions , but it is difficult to subscribe to the theory that the ethnic conflict was started by her or brought about with a view to ruin Sri Lanka.   Her discussion of the leaders of post-Independence Indian politics is peculiar in that she discusses Indira Gandhi at length and relegates others to the background. Indira Gandhi was no paragon of virtues, but Ms Crossette seems to be depict her as something close to Marie Antoinette or Eva Peron.What is very surprising in this context is the fact that she ignores Inder Malhotra's balanced and analytical biography (Indira Gandhi: A Personal And Political Biography) of Indira Gandhi or Dom Moraes's informative essays; Raj Thapar's vitriolic "All these Years:a Memoir" seems to be her bible towards understanding the functioning of Indira Gandhi and her cronies. Thapar's comments must be viewed in the light of her conviction that she herself was personally responsible for unleashing a monster on India, something that she and Romesh Thapar did not intend when they helped Indira write her speeches and helped her climb her first political rungs.   Crossette's book is notable for the high opinion that she has of V.P.Singh, the ex-prime minister who according to her, is man of "unchallenged integrity". What she overlooks is that ineffeciency more than integrity (or more precisely, an aptitude for ineptitude) was the main trait of this gentleman. Anybody who has read Janardan Thakur's book on V.P Singh, which the author backs up with letters and interviews with people who had known V.P.Singh from his Manda days, will be able to tell how flawed Ms Crossette's appraisal of V.P.Singh is. In what is one of the few bright and optimistic strokes in the book, Ms Crossette assures us that I.K.Gujral is a competent individual as can be seen from his tenure as external affairs minister in the V.P.Singh cabinet, which is enough to make the average reader feel euphoric; even if it ignores the fact that I.K.Gujral's finest moment came about in 1975 when he defied Indira Gandhi's directives and resigned as the Information & Broadcasting Minister.   Bereaucratic bungles, the police force demonstrating more brawn than brain, crimes being committed with impunity are all part of a universal phenomenon, more so with the developing countries. Ms Crossette selectively lists a few examples of each and tries to portray them as a uniquely Indian feature. She gleefully ridicules the Indian governmental set with the venom of a viper, her animus for it bordering on the hyper. Harping on the inability of the government to deliver or correct miscarriages of justice, ignoring the details and complexities of India's set up, she delights in defending anybody and everybody who has been in trouble with the Government and goes far enough to make heroes out of people who were caught spying on and in India . One of the more interesting points in her description of the atrocities of the Indian police involves a single isolated case of an American who was harassed by the West Bengal Police Force. Out of this molehill (albeit regrettable), Ms Crossette erects a mountain which culminates in describing the controversial Ananda Marg sect as being"anti-communist" and the government of West Bengal practising Stalin-style persecution.   In a different context, Ms Crossette's tendency of singling out India demonstrates itself when she rails about Indian politicians patronizing astrologers. The fact that a universal symbiotic relationship exists between astrologers and politicians can easily be verified by examining the hold that astrologers wielded over Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Princess Diana, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and a host of other politicians all over South East Asia; a fact overlooked by Ms Crossette in her enthusiasm to bad- mouth Indian politicians.   In the process of offering her opinion about the degeneration and inadequacy of Hinduism to address the moral needs of its adherents, she declares that Hinduism offers no theological barrier in the way of corruption, turning a Nelson's eye to the fact that the "Arthasastra" and "Pancatantra" contain innumerable sermons about good, correct and moralistic behavior and that A.L.Basham has specifically refered to the "stern respect that the ancient Tamils had for justice." It must also be noted that where such barriers exist (as presumably in the case of Christianity) the "hallowed" souls of Spiro Agnew, Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon have broken such shibboleths many times over. She then informs us that the Indian languages have no word for "charity" , a fact that is belied by looking up any standard Sanskrit dictionary under the entry "daatrtvam"( besides other entries). In arguably one of the most foot-in-mouth comments ever encountered in modern day accounts of Hindu architecture, she claims that [the Hindus] "lacking the arch and the dome, built dark, massive towers" leaving the following questions unanswered: Are arches and domes estimators of architectural beauty? Are they more complex to construct than a tower? The reader is left in a real quandry, not knowing whether to pity her ignorance or to rage at her arrogance.   Upon examining the bibliography at the end of the book, one cannot help noticing that Ms Crossette's research and reading is restricted to very few books, quite a few of which are notable for their diatribes against India. Nirad Chaudhari's mephistophilean ferocity, which has been let loose against Hinduism time and again seems to have provided Ms Crossette with much of her ammunition; she also seems to regard Romila Thapar's marxism-oriented works on history as the Gospel Truth. She notes that Ravi Rikhye is perceived as a "gadfly" but faithfully follows his utterances, which are notable for their contempt and dim view of India. In keeping with the spirit of "hunt with the hounds and run with the hares," Ms Crossette denounces communism and its practices (as described earlier) but has no problem following Marxist interpretation of history when it depicts India in very poor light.   The consequence of letting this tome be reprinted without corrections or quoted as an authoritative text is that it would propogate a very wrong picture of India, a veritable mine of misinformation which would only reinforce the widely held view in the U.S. about India being Hades, the entrance to hell.   For all aspiring journalists, the book is a must read for one and only reason: It is a good guide to how a book must NOT be written. To borrow Shakespeare's immortal phrase from "As You Like it," the book can be aptly described as "sans taste, sans eyes, sans everything." Upon perusing Katherine Mayo's "Mother India", Mahatma Gandhi is said to have pronounced judgement: "A drain inspector's report!" In conclusion, after reading Ms Crossette's updated version of "Mother India", whose motto evidently is"Smother India" most Indians would exclaim "Sequel to "Mother India," "Stepmother India" -- a commodious commode's content!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------