Change, India's Middle Class, Hinduism

"Ukraine had its orange revolution, Georgia had its tulip revolution. And now democratic India is having its white revolution. Historians will look back at 11/26, the day the Mumbai attacks started, as a turning point for the political awakening of India's growing, 200-million-strong middle class"—Prashant Agrawal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122867595766686077.html ((The Wall Street Journal--12/10/08). This article is about Indian middle class’s first-time fight against ineffectual leadership

The article that captured my imagination more was the one written by Navtaj Dhillon (Mr. Dhillon is a fellow at the Brookings Institution's Wolfensohn Center).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122843741466881409.html (The Wall Street Journal--12/08/08). Dhillon argues how "the privileged class has had a hand in sustaining ineffectual leadership. In national and state elections, voter turnout in urban centers has been declining as middle-income voters distance themselves from the electoral process. As former Indian diplomat Pavan Varma argues in his book 'The Great Indian Middle Class,' for decades economically advanced Indians have been preoccupied with material gain. Whether it was the subversion of democracy under Indira Gandhi, or acquiescence to communal riots and corruption, the middle class is accustomed to overlooking the fault lines in Indian society."

I wrote a piece along these lines about a dozen years ago (I told you I was ahead of my timeJ:))

Here is another quote (The New York Times--12/6/08) that made me chuckle: "Two of the four main targets were luxury hotels frequented by the city’s wealthy elite: the Taj, facing the Gateway of India, and the twin Oberoi and Trident hotels, a few miles west on Nariman Point. They were the elite’s watering holes and business dinner destinations. And to lose them, said Alex Kuruvilla, who runs the Condé Nast publications in India, is like losing a limb.

"It’s like what I imagine an amputee would feel," he said. "It’s so much part of our lives."

My reaction to these sentiments uttered by this media titan was "how typical!’ The powerful who live in La La land, feel like an amputee only when their luxurious way of life is threatened and not when the man on the street has nothing on his back and nothing in his belly, and at times with a few limbs missing, too.

It’s amazing how, perhaps being the birthplace of democracy, in Greece the killing of one single 15-year-old boy by the police, has turned the country upside down, and in India, self-introspection seems to come about only when things affect one directly.

When I go to church on Sunday’s to sing in the choir I also end up listening to the sermons delivered by the pastor there. Then when I talk to my Jewish friends, they tell me how their religion advocates "repairing things when they are broken." My Hindu friends are quick to point out how the Bhagavad Gita is the "greatest book" ever written. When I ask, what exactly does the Gita tell us? With much pride in her voice, one says, "Fight for what you believe in," though her take was not delivered so succinctly.

Good advice, indeed, but the only problem is until a situation happens in our own backyard, we seem to remain silent. This, perhaps, is not an unusual human trait. To my question, "What does Hinduism teach us?" another friend, a former I.A.S. Officer, in an unguarded moment, accompanied by vigorous hand gestures, utters, "Take care of things within your four walls and throw the garbage right outside."

Much needs to be sorted out in India. Till this is done, things are not going to improve greatly for the new amputees either.

Ciao!
Ro.