FROM BUSINESS WORLD OF 23 FEBRUARY 2005
Two winter conclaves
Hundreds of NRIs descended on
Bombay on 7 January. That was slightly irregular, for the BJP government had
fixed 9 January as the Travelling Indians’ Day (TID); that was the day in 1915
on which Gandhi returned to India from South Africa. But this was a conclave of
important NRIs, who found it more convenient to meet over a weekend; hence 7-9
January. It was the third Bharatiya Pravasi Diwas – more precisely, three days.
The meeting received front-page
coverage because the President and the Prime Minister addressed it; but as
happens with anything that goes on for too long, the comments on it were rather
tired and unenthusiastic. But that was, I think, because outsiders see only the
worthies’ pontification – and journalists only stay for it. Actually, despite
the organizers’ best efforts, the TID does attract some interesting speakers
sometimes. I have only just caught up with the proceedings of the first TID;
here are some nuggets.
It all started in August 2000, when the foreign ministry appointed
a high-level committee on the Indian diaspora headed by the Hon Dr Lakshmi Mal
Singhvi, Advocate General to Indira Gandhi’s government from 1970 till 1977,
and High Commissioner to Britain from 1991 till 1997. It recommended that
customs areas at airports should be equipped with surveillance cameras to deter
customs officials from asking for bribes, that Indian girls should be counseled
before marrying NRIs, that Indian banks should not give fraudulent loans to
their favourites out of deposits placed by NRIs, and that the government should
hold a TID every year. As is normal, theother recommendations did not cut much
ice. But the idea of a TID struck a chord with the government, and the first
one was held in 2003 with FICCI as sponsor. To keep out Pakistanis and
Bangladeshis, only Indians who emigrated after Republic Day, 1950, were to be
considered NRIs.
At the 2003 TID conference, Singhvi said, “I hope and pray that
Providence will bless this propitious beginning for a fascinating journey of
this fruitful exploration and endeavour, and in the years to come we will look
upon it as the starting point of a consecrated and purposeful new pilgrimage of
this kindled togetherness of the global Indian family.” This style of English
was the norm in the nineteenth century; today it is so rare that its masters
should be preserved in aspic.
And Murli Manohar
Joshi, the HRD minister, said, “We have now an India innovation fund i.e., that
those who innovate. They may be educated or they may not be educated. They may
be having any degree or not having any degree, but if they have something to
offer, something unique, something which can be commercialized, something that
can be widely used, we will help them. And we have very good experience. In the
very first year we received about a thousand applications, but in the next year
we received about 13,000 or 14,000 applications. Some of these grassroot
technologies we have transferred to South Africa where our illiterate dropouts
were carried to South Africa. And there they stayed in the villages and
improved their life, improved their technologies. That is a very wonderful
experience, which we had with this program where our ordinary common folk
people tried to solve their problems through their own indigenous talents and
ultimately their solutions turned out to be highly beneficial.” As often
happens with important people, Joshi had obviously come without a prepared
speech, and he regurgitated what he remembered from the last meeting he had
attended. Maybe he had had the experience of the British minister who used to
read out speeches written by his flunkeys and then show his dissatisfaction. So
once, when he was giving a speech, he read out the first page, and then turned
the page to find one with just one sentence: “Now you are on your own,
Minister!”
Speaking late in the
conference, Sir Vidia Naipaul began, “Well, I am slightly at a loss because in
the short time I have been here I have heard so many of the same things again
and again and what is worst from my point of view, they have anticipated many
of the things I was going to say and I have had to recast very quickly my
thoughts about this matter. I know that this occasion has the element of the
trade fair, I think very much one is aware of that as one entered this building
today; and the idea of money and commercial success of the recent Indian
emigrants to the United States and Europe may be the driving force of this
gathering and so it should be because without economic success there can be nothing;
without economic success there is kind of cultural degradation and failure very
often.” Gathering his wits, he talked about Ananda K Kumaraswami, who offered
his collection of 900 ancient paintings to Safdarjung Museum in Hyderabad and
then to Benares Hindu University. Both rejected his offer, and it went to
Boston Institute of Fine Arts. The lesson he drew was: “We should rather turn
the barbs a little sometimes on ourselves to find out why we have failed
historically, why the great Indian civilization of South East Asia collapsed,
why the Dutch had to re-build Parambalam, why those buildings, beautiful things
like Parambalam and Borambadur had been allowed to fall into decay. We have to
understand this. We have to develop a true sense of history and we must stop
blaming the British for everything.”
Professor Amartya Sen
said, “The great Sanskrit grammarian, certainly the greatest in Sanskrit,
possibly the greatest grammarian in any language, Panini, was actually an
Afghan. He describes it in his own life history. He describes himself as
Shalaturia Upakubhya from the village of Shalatur on the banks of Kuha, the
river Kabool.” In another illustration of India as an open society, he said,
“Kumarajeeva himself, is an example of a mixture. He was half-Turkish
half-Indian, went to China, headed the foreign languages institute, translated
about 70 books one of which was the Vadrachedika Karnaparamika often known in
English as the Diamond Sutra. That was the first printed book in the 9th
century in China.” In conclusion, he said, “I
think if we celebrate being Indians, which I do and I think all of you do, it
is not that we see ourselves as a kind of flourishing Kupamanduka, a well-frog
confined to a little well, but a culture, a civilization, a people that has soared
in the world, interacted with the world and not been afraid of interaction. It
is the openness, external openness, and internal openness, in dialogue,
openness in every sphere of life. That, I think, we celebrated as Indians. That
is the reason why I would like to say, if I were asked the question what am I
most proud of to be Indian – and I am very proud of being an Indian – it is the
openness of our heritage and our culture; and we have to defend it, celebrate
it, value it and fight for it.”
So
maybe it is not such a bad idea to have a TID every year. In between the
interminably boring speeches of ministers and prime ministers, the innumerable
whiskies and the insufferable parties, there will once in a while be fifteen
minutes of edification and entertainment.
