India's Founding Fathers

By the time Queen Victoria was declared Empress of India, the subcontinent's ancient political traditions had been all but erased.

By SUDHA KOUL

Britain dominated India for almost two centuries—initially through the East India Co. and later directly as the Raj—finally granting it independence in 1947. The Indian anti-colonial struggle was unique in that it reached its goal without violent overthrow. This was one of the great achievements of the nationalist movement's enlightened leadership.
In "Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India," the historian Ananya Vajpeyi shows how these leaders looked to ancient Indian texts and traditions as they led the nation toward swaraj, or self-rule. The author profiles five prominent anti-colonial leaders and examines how each of them contributed to the nation's successful "search for the self": Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who need no introduction; the Bengali poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore; his nephew, the artist Abanindranath Tagore; and B.R. Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian constitution.
India had a glorious past, with millennia of learning, literature, science and art, culture and tradition. Yet by the time the country became the jewel in the crown of Queen Victoria, who was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877, knowledge of the ancient Indic political tradition—the ideas and practices by which "the precolonial kingdoms of the Mughals, the Deccani Sultans, the Nayakas, the Marathas, the Rajputs, and the Sikhs" ruled the subcontinent—had been all but erased thanks to a combination of colonial rule and internal decay. When Indians were told that democracy was a gift of the West, for example, very few questioned the assumption, even though panchayats, or self-governing village bodies, had existed for thousands of years on the subcontinent.
Most historians credit liberal ideas from Britain, absorbed by the Western-oriented Indian elite, with giving birth to modern India. (The Congress Party of Gandhi and Nehru was founded at the suggestion of A.O. Hume, a British civil servant, in 1885.) Few are aware of the extent to which nationalist leaders turned to Indic texts to revive Indians' sense of collective selfhood, and how extensively these shaped their own political practice and the country's post-independence social compact.
The author argues that the essential concepts from which her five Indian leaders drew their ideas for self-rule were mostly indigenous. They include: dharma (the self's aspiration for ethical order); artha (practical purpose); ahimsa (non-violence); duhkha (suffering); viraha (the self's longing); and samvega (the shock of self-recognition). These concepts are distinct from but not in opposition to Western ideals such as equality, liberty and fraternity.
Nehru's quest for national selfhood, for example, revolved around the two central ideas of dharma and artha, or ethical order and pragmatism. The first was exemplified by the inclusive reign, more than two millennia ago, of the Emperor Asoka. The second was embodied in the realpolitik pragmatism of Asoka's grandfather, the Emperor Chandragupta. Aspirational dharma inspired Nehru during the freedom struggle; after independence, he leaned toward purposeful artha.
As Ms. Vajpeyi explains, Nehru married "these opposing vectors in his thought and practice." But his conception of these ideals wasn't merely nostalgic; both had to be reinterpreted for the 20th century. "I should like you to think that the Asokan period in Indian history was essentially an international period," Nehru told the Indian constituent assembly. "In the Asokan era," Nehru instructed, "India's ambassadors went abroad to far countries . . . as ambassadors of peace and culture and goodwill." Asoka's inclusiveness also inspired the clear-cut secularism that Nehru wanted for modern india. "It is strange that anyone should be so foolish," Nehru wrote, "as to think that religion and faith can be thrust down a person's throat at the point of the sword or a bayonet." His fortnightly missives to the chief ministers of the states of the Indian federation make evident his transition from a philosopher into a philosopher-statesman.
When it came time to choose the newly formed Republic of India's national emblems, Nehru selected artifacts unearthed from the Asokan era to visually represent these ethical categories. The state seal of India, for example, is based on the lion capitals that topped Asokan columns and posts. The dharmacakra (wheel of law) at the center of the Indian flag likewise harks back to the Asokan era. "The author of every one of these choices, at the time of Independence, was none other Jawaharlal Nehru," says Ms. Vajpeyi. The appeal of these symbols for Nehru, the author writes, was that in both their ancient and modern incarnations, they represented not just the vastness but also the ethical imperatives of the Indian state.
Noticeably absent from Ms. Vajpeyi's account is the Muslim contribution to the struggle for the Indian self. The author notes a lack of academic or other narrative attention to the quest of Indian Muslims for selfhood and sovereignty and acknowledges her inability to adequately address the subject in her book. India's pre-independence Muslim-Hindu rupture and the subcontinent's descent into a bloodbath at partition reveal the difficulties faced by the Indian founders in uniting a massive, disparate nation to overcome the most powerful empire at the time.
Today the country struggles with sectarian strife as well as corruption and poverty. Ms. Vajpeyi, though, sees hope. The founders' purposes were served by the turn to the past, and she believes the country can learn from the founders' experiences. "By reflecting on the crisis that India went through less than a century ago," the author writes, "we may discover what kinds of soul searching, acts of reading, and interpretive leaps are necessary at such junctures in history."
Ms. Koul is the author of a memoir, "The Tiger Ladies." She has just finished writing "The Kashmir Chronicles," a novel.


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 精靈之城：德里一年 City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

p.9  Essex Man 沒注解決
這是近代1980s 英國社會的一重要概念語
現在Wikipedia可以找出這字的說明 新的平均人 工人階段 嚮往中產者



Essex man and Mondeo man are stereotypical figures which were popularised in 1990s England. "Essex man" as a political figure is an example of a type of median voter and was used to help explain the electoral successes of Margaret Thatcher in the previous decade. The closely related "Mondeo man" was identified as the sort of voter the Labour Party needed to attract to win the 1997 election.^[1]




City of Djinns (1994) is a travelogue by William Dalrymple about the historical capital of India, Delhi. It is his second book, and culminated as a result of his six-year stay in New Delhi.
City of Djinns was the first product of Dalrymple’s love affair with India, centring on Delhi, a city with ‘a bottomless seam of stories’. Shaped more like a novel than a travel book, he and his wife encounter a teeming cast of characters: his Sikh landlady, taxi drivers, customs officials, and British survivors of the Raj, as well as whirling dervishes and eunuch dancers (‘a strange mix of piety and bawdiness’). Dalrymple describes ancient ruins and the experience of living in the modern city: he goes in search of the history behind the epic stories of the Mahabharata. Still more seriously, he finds evidence of the city’s violent past and present day - the 1857 mutiny against British rule (anticipating The Last Mughal); the Partition massacres in 1947; and the riots after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984.
The book followed his established style of historical digressions, tied in with contemporary events and a multitude of anecdotes.

查一下 這是2007年貼文
2009/4 我從朋友了解2008年買的黃道琳
藏書 是
譯者已逝 (Naipaul, India: A Million Mutinies Now印度：百萬叛變的今天)
之部分藏書



印度三部曲(V. S. Naipaul 台灣: 奈波爾中國: 奈保爾 奈保爾爵士，2001年諾貝爾文學獎得主。1932年出生于特里尼達島上的一個印度移民家庭。1950年獲獎學金進 入牛津大學攻讀英國文學，1953年取得學位後遷居倫敦，任職英國廣播公司，1957年以《神秘按摩師》正式開 始寫作生涯。 )





現在看這30年前的"悲觀"說法
不知道印度究竟改變多少
因為30年是歷史之一瞬而已



這本台灣先出版約 二年

【印度受傷的文明：印度三部曲之二－當代名家旅行文學54】

I S B N：9578278942

作 者：奈波爾

精平裝：/頁數 平裝本 / 234頁

出版社：馬可孛羅

出版日： 2001/11/10

「當今最優秀英語小說家」奈波爾就在此時二度造訪印度，撰成他的印度二部曲《印度：受傷的文明》一書。在此書中，他透過敏銳觀察，以分析手法探討了印度人 態度，以機鋒畢露、時而悲愴的文采，重現了此千年古國的種種難題，無一不切中核心，較諸世界銀行經濟學家小組和各式專家不遑多讓，令人景仰欣喜兼而有之。 這廣袤、神祕的苦悶大陸，在奈波爾眼中，由於久居於被征服者地位，「知性上已寄生於別的文明」，「獨立後迅即出現的戒嚴時期，凸顯了印度的創意無能、知性 枯竭，無力自衛，也彰顯出每個印度人觀念中的印度都不完整」。透過這趟旅程的所見所聞，奈波爾益發增強了心中信念：歷經千年異國統治的印度，迄今仍未找到 再生論。



An Area of Darkness (1964)
這本中國先出版約 二年

【幽黯國度－當代名家旅行文學29】

I S B N：9867247280

作 者：奈波爾

精平裝： 平裝本

出版社：英屬蓋曼群島商家庭傳媒股份有限

出版日：2006/03/01

India: A Wounded Civilization (1977)

奇 大陸版的翻譯者是....
幽黯國度：記憶與現實交錯的印度之旅

• 作者：[英]V.S.奈保爾著
• 譯者：李永平譯
• 出版社：生活‧讀書‧新知三聯書店
• 出版日期：2003年08月01日
• 語言：簡體中文 ISBN：7108018063

1962年，奈保爾首次踏訪印度－他父祖輩的家園。從孟買、德里、加爾各答，再到他外祖父的故鄉，這個有著暖味身份的“異鄉人”與“過客”，見到的是無處 不在的貧困與丑陋，感受到的是震驚、憤怒、疏離、鄙夷與失落。春了一貫的冷嘲熱諷與孤傲尖酸中，後殖民情境中的印度亂象是那麼的令人無奈與絕望。這一年的 印度之旅其實也是他企圖探詢自己的歷史與身份認同的內心之旅，而他的收獲卻是看到︰印度屬于黑夜－一個已經死亡的世界，一段漫長的旅程。本書被奈保爾寫得 像畫家做的畫，可以說，不論他以何種文學形式書寫，他都是個大師！




India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990)

• 作者：[英]V.S.奈保爾著
• 譯者：黃道琳譯
• 出版社：生活‧讀書‧新知三聯書店
• 出版日期：2003年08月01日
• 語言：簡體中文 ISBN：7108018748

1988年，奈保爾第三度周游印度，這次的主題是從他特里尼達的童年生活中所感知的印度，驗證對照已是單一實體的印度。近距離觀察之後，他所看見的是它如 何分解成宗教、種姓、階級的拼圖。對奈保爾而言，這多樣性正是印度的力量所在。與前兩次游歷印度相比較，他的看法又如何呢？最顯著的，也許就是奈保爾更加 接近或者說成為了一個印度人，也就能更準確地向我們描述印度。 《印度︰百萬叛變的今天》幾乎就是印度人的口述歷史。奈保爾在書中毫不掩飾自己的角色、一個聆听者、一個記錄印度人心聲的人。本書內含“孟買劇場”、“秘 書身世：印度百年翦影”、“打破禁錮”、“小型戰爭”、“戰役之後”、“努力終端”等九部分內容。


印度之旅序曲︰申請一些證件
第一部
第一章 想像力停駐的地方
第二章 階級
第三章 來自殖民地的人
第四章 追求浪漫傳奇的人
第二部
第五章 達爾湖中的娃娃屋
第六章 中古城市
第七章 進香
第三部
第八章 廢墟狂想曲
第九章 枕上的花環
第十章 緊急狀態
第十一章 還鄉記
尾聲︰奔逃
附錄 奈保爾作品年表

India: A Million Mutinies Now is a book authored by V. S. Naipaul in 1990. It is a travelogue penned during the author's sojourn in his ancestral land — India. It was the third of Naipaul's acclaimed Indian trilogy which includes An Area of Darkness and India: A Wounded Civilization. True to his style, the narration is anecdotal and descriptive.
Naipaul expresses serious misgivings about Indian attitudes and the Indian way of life. On the other hand Naipaul notes the economic growth and its associated emancipation of the various peoples of India The title makes an analogy between the emancipation of millions and the Mutiny of 1857. The book is somewhat optimistic about the country and its peoples.

mu・ti・ny

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