Alternatives for the Village and Rural Revival: India and China

Rural and urban divide in China and India are increasing not only in terms of material wealth but also cultural standing. In grotesque simplifications, villages signify what is "backward" or under-developed. But one should understand that this is the result of current modes of development, which disrupt village social fabric and family structures at the expense of developing cities. Many villages in both China and India experiences drops in income from farmland and a loss of village youth to city migration. Recent efforts to help the village become self-sustainable include Barefoot College, started by husband and wife Bunker Roy and Aruna Roy. This college trains villagers to become experts in their own right and resist the fetishization of credentials. As The Hindu reports,

Rajasthan’s Ajmer and Rajsamand districts have been the sites of their work for enabling the self-respecting to become self-reliant as well, the self-abnegating to become self-assured too, and the self-denying to become inspirationally self-affirming.

Aruna and Bunker Roy

I first learned about Aruna Roy and her dedication to villages and the MKSS (Mazdoor Kisan Shakhti Sangathan —the Organisation for the Empowerment of Workers and Peasants) that aims to secure the rights villagers through British journalist Edward Luce's 2006 book In Spite of the Gods--

Ms. Roy is a Gandhian to the tips of her fingers: her saris are always made of cotton; she is a vegetarian; she lives ascetically among the villagers; she uses the occasional hunger strike, and more frequently the dharna, or sit-down protest, to pressurise the authorities — both tactics Gandhi pioneered against the British. And, although she concedes that escaping your caste identity is much more difficult in the village than in the town, she sees the former as the key to India's future. 

...

Each meal was a nutritious vegetarian mix of rice,  roti (Indian bread),  dhal (lentils), and a variation of potatoes, aubergine and okra, with a glass of buttermilk.

Nikhil Dey, when interviewed by Luce, resists being labeled as Gandhian or Marxist, claiming to inherit the heritage of both schools of thought. "We can make the village work through better farming and cottage industries. If people leave the villages then they also lose the rootedness that comes with living where you are from and the strength you draw from your natural surroundings."

While Luce's account focuses on Aruna's collaboration with Nikhil Dey, I read about other inspiring efforts of the Roys again from a detailed 2013 Chinese report on the Barefoot College by Hong Kong journalist Susanna Chui-Yung Cheung. She also commented on the simple food and was amazed by the college's success in training of age-old grannies how to create solar panels. She interpreted the Barefoot College as Gandhian.

 

Solar panels and its engineers

Still, the lack of of respectable employment opportunities in the typical Rajasthani villages pose a serious problem for similar villages in developing countries. As Luce holds skepticism for Roy and Dey's efforts, he reported on the desire for migration out of the village--

(Peasants) stood up and announced their profession. It was a roll-call of agricultural failure. The first was a well-digger who travels from village to village. Another worked as a security guard for Reliance Industries, one of India's largest companies, in Delhi. The next was a cloth worker who had lost his job in the city. The fourth had been trying for years without success to join the army. The next two were both menial workers at a hotel in the city of Ahmedabad in the neighbouring state of Gujarat. And so on.  Barely any of the men remain in the village because farming is not enough to make ends meet. 

In China, many hail back to 20th century thinkers such as philosopher Liang Shuming (梁漱溟) for ideas on village reconstruction. More recently intellectuals such as Ou Ning have also tried experimenting with cultural revivals in the countryside as well. Xiong Peiyun's Seeing China Through a Village (《一个村庄里的中国》) also documents social issues in an elegiac tone as a writer who left his village for the city. PhD student Yige Dong's gender analysis (《女权视角下的碧山计划》) also sheds light on how we understand the contribution of women to the village economy. India also produced many intellectual discussions surrounding the question of village economies, which I learned from reading Age of Entanglement: German and Indian Intellectuals across Empire.

During roughly the same era as Liang Shuming, economist and social thinker Radhakamal Mukerjee studied the issue of village development in the 1925. He suggested that the German model of small scale industries could be emulated by India. Radhakamal argued for the power of the Indian village economy, and "the strenuous diffusion of production factors" as an alternative to "Western, city-centered, and finance-driven capitalism." Mukherjee "praised the village and handicraft economies... as well as the benefits it would bring to Indian society." This is distinctly different than a state capital-intensive model proposed by some socialists at the time.
"Radhakamal spoke of 'rurbanization' and the 'cityward drift' that would instigate 'the improvement of the technical conditions of the village, which will satisfy the more intellectual and ambitious of the village youth,'" quotes Kris Manjapura, author of Age of Entanglement. The "co-operative credit" movements in Germany also inspired Radhakamal. He regarded the Germany's model of agricultural reconstruction through decentralized network of expertise and finances was appropriate for India.
In my opinion, Radhakamal would certainly hope to see more initiatives similar to those of Bunker Roy, Aruna Roy, and Nikhil Dey's rural revival projects. In face of globalization, some people find trouble "catching up" with rising costs and standards levels of living. Migrant laborers around the world accept their dismal and disenfranchised conditions of living despite the lack of legal protection. However, one should also reflect on alternative methods, especially when current models of development exploit migrant labor and resources in atrocious ways.

The Bishan Plan is Not Elitist

Is an intellectual automatically elitist? How should a scholar engage in activism and should he or she analyze, categorize and conceptualize? What if some critique that the very conceptualization of activism creates economic inequality?

One of Ou's presentation inside the bar

In Harvard sociology PhD Ms. Zhou Yun's critique, Ms. Zhou wrote that the Bishan Project in its current shape and form is an elitist one for several reasons. This claim occurred last month, in which I wrote a thought-piece acknowledging aspects of both sides of the argument. This post will target the specific issue of the language Ou Ning used when explaining the execution of the Bishan Plan. Ms. Zhou pointed to several instances in which Ou Ning distanced himself from "the people," such as conducting the presentations in a bar. Ou Ning explained that the size of the audiences required that venue. He presented the talk in the bar for pragmatic reasons rather than aiming for a bourgeois affect. Zhou Yun also critiqued Ou Ning's conceptual words such as "civil society." To quote the Chinese text,"介绍理念PPT是全英文的，满是civil society、social engineering、party politics等等大词." Zhou Yun also sees this symbolic boundary between the intellectuals and the Bishan people, which recreates economic inequalities.

The latter claim that cultural boundaries recreating economic inequality cannot be substantiated in this particular case due to the lack data. This post aims to tackle the issue of the "elitist" language allegedly used by Ou Ning during Zhou's short visit organized by Nanjing University. In the presentation Ms. Zhou heard, where Ou used words such as "civil society," he was speaking to a group of out-of-town observers and scholars, not the "people of Bishan." He also explained that he did not see the need to update the English Powerpoint he used for NYU a while ago.

I believe that while some intellectuals spend a lot of time conceptualizing rather than action (which is often portrayed as the opposite of social change), using concepts during activism and projects should be encouraged rather than labeled as "elitist." Zhou is calling for what Gayatri Spivak would term as "clamoring for anti-intellectualism, a sort of complete monosyllabification of one’s vocabulary within academic enclosures." This quote is from the interview titled "The problem of self representation" collected in The Postcolonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues.

Here is the excerpt from the illuminating exchange between Dr. Spivak and Dr. Walter Adamson. While Spivak calls for intellectuals' unlearning for better communication, she cautions us of anti-intellectualism. I think provides a comprehensive defense of Ou Ning and other intellectuals wishing for social engagement with the peasants or subaltern, while also using big, "fancy" concepts depending on the situation. 

Spivak: ... There is an impulse among literary critics and other kinds of intellectuals to save the masses, speak for the masses, describe the masses. On the other hand, how about attempting to learn to speak in such a way that the masses will not regard as bullshit. When I think of the masses, I think of a woman belonging to that 84% of women’s work in India, which is unorganized peasant labour. Now if I could speak in such a way that such a person would actually listen to me and not dismiss me as yet another of those many colonial missionaries, that would embody the project of unlearning. ... What can the intellectual do toward the texts of the oppressed? Represent them and analyze them, disclosing one’s own positionality for other communities in power. ... 

Adamson: Does speaking to marginalized groups and yet not “deskilling” oneself mean anything about the kinds of texts that one ought to speak about?

Spivak: When I said that one shouldn’t invite people to de-skill themselves, I was talking about a kind of anti-intellectualism that exists among academics and counter-academics. One ought not to patronize the oppressed. And that’s where the line leaves us. Unlearning one’s privileged discourse so that, in fact, one can be heard by people who are not within the academy is very different from clamoring for anti-intellectualism, a sort of complete monosyllabification of one’s vocabulary within academic enclosures. And it seems to me that one’s practice is very dependent upon one’s positionality, one’s situation. I come from a state where the illiterate--not the functionally illiterate, but the real illiterate, who can't tell the difference between one letter and another--are still possessed of a great deal of political sophistication, and are certainly not against learning a few things. I'm constantly struck by the anti-intellectualism within the most opulent university systems in the world. So that's where I was speaking about de-skilling. 

Spivak continues to explain that literary analyses of subaltern voices also depend on the situation even if she is read as "giving a voice" to the subaltern subject of study. Granted, Ou is not a literary scholar, but I find this issue very common among circles of intellectuals aiming for social change. While the flow of information and proscribed norms have been predominantly controlled by the intellectuals and distributed to the subaltern, should all efforts to communicate ideals be criticized? I think not; intervention of this flow of information, as Spivak aptly put it, depends on circumstances. The Bishan Plan may pander to the urban / bourgeoisie aesthetics in its execution, but the specific act of explaining the project in academic terms does not make it "elitist" in the sense that creates more inequalities.

The Question of Rewriting Palestinian People into History

After a summer hiatus due to my 8-week intensive Hindi language program, I am back to frequently blogging about what I have been learning. I am a listener of the excellent Ottoman History Podcast and their newest episode interviewed the author of Rediscovering Palestine, social historian Beshara Doumani. The interview is very enlightening for historians and graduate students.

I always found it difficult to explain my interests in post-colonial history and Dr. Doumani, a professor of history at Brown University, explained the mission of the contemporary historian very well. Here is an excerpt of his insight on historiography typed by me from the recorded conversation. 

Writing Palestinians into history is a very difficult theoretical problem. Because one cannot do history first without unpacking and being critical of their own identity. So if we begin from the premise that nationalist construction of the past are usually false, and predictable, and meant to bolster specific political positions, we see our missions as "professional historians" not so much to write history as it is but to ask different kinds of questions that mess up these narratives of power, really, to do a subversive history, in the good sense of the word. So does one then write people into history when the notion of peoplehood itself is subject to critique. 

The host, Chris Gratien brings up the point that Golda Meir once said,  "There were no such things as Palestinians." And Dr. Doumani continues--

When Golda Meir says there is no such thing as Palestinians, and we have slogans such as 'a land for a people for a people without a land,' then, writing those people into history becomes a nationalist act... So that is where the theoretical problems lies.

So how does one maneuver? That's a simpler proposition for people who write about an end of a conflict or when it is no longer hot. ... In the case of those who want to write Palestinians into history, but to do it in a way that is not reinforcing nationalist constructions of the past, at a time when the conflict is still hot, then it becomes a problem, because the political stakes are complicated. ... For me, I was aware that writing Palestinians into history could be seen as a nationalist act. I was determined to write it in ways to be critical of nationalist constructions of that past, not just for the sake of being critical, but because what I was finding was very different from what they were saying. 

Doumani continues to argue that the erasure of Palestinians started even before Zionism, with three different forces at play: Orientalists, Zionists, Arab Nationalists, and Islamists. They all agreed that the history (especially before the 19th century) of Palestinians were not important. Doumani continues to explain that Islamists looked at this period of golden Islamic justice that was shattered by western intervention, so the period was idealized and hard to study. Palestinian nationalists considered that the Ottoman rulers oppressed the land of milk and honey, which paved the way for British colonialists and Zionists. These narratives argue that all these forces of change were external,

...so whatever people did at that time didn't matter. They were victims or bystanders of what was being done by outsiders. And the periodization was the same. Nothing really happened until the 1880s or 20th century. These are just two of the many binaries agreed by all four narratives of the past. ... It shows the depth of the problem they face and have faced throughout the 19th and well into the 20th century, which is the refusal of the world to recognize the right of Palestinians to constitute as a political community. 

We see this continue in contemporary debates that Palestinians are "Arabs" and should be able to relocate to Arab. As Doumani draws connections between the past and the present, he says, "The idea that close to 2 million people are thrown in to one big open prison... to keep them alive but not really living, it's amazing that people accept that." To declare Gaza as an ahistorical place of no connections to anyone, is another example accomplished through the erasure of the Palestinian people, he argues.

Another interesting point Doumani made in the podcast regarding the destruction of olive trees has both a material and symbolic element--

One has to do with livelihoods; the other has to do with the fact that the less a commodity becomes important in society, the more it becomes a symbol. The less the Palestinians lived off of olive trees, the more they became a symbol for what it means to be a Palestinian... I don't think it's accidental that the Israeli occupation authorities regularly resort to the cutting down  olive trees as a way of not just punishing but psychologically ruining and repressing a population.

Both Gratien and Doumani discussed the different sources emerging. As a scholar interested in material, Doumani calls for more specific studies of sources to generate new questions and insights. Still, he also values the the question of how we use our sources and political vocabulary also have to be examined carefully (reg: Edward Said / Orientalism.) Gratien also laments that many materials are often understudied, "Oral history is only when it's too late becomes important. It's when the people are about to die do they become important." Doumani counters that "Archives do not preexist the questions that we ask; it's our questions that create archives. Archives are constructed and they will never end." Still, Doumani also understands the urgency, as he regards "The land itself is the biggest archive, and it is being changed as we speak." He mentioned new technologies, such as GIS, enables historians to interpret the past.

The sources Doumani used for his book Rediscovering Palestine, such as court records and family papers of the region in question (Nablus), is also very important resources to keep in mind for (social) historians. He physically visited the West Bank for research, but he laments the lack of national resources for preserving Palestinian archives. He also observes that Israeli scholars have more access to these archives than Palestinians. Doumani considers that there is a war going on with representation in the contemporary as well as the past events. This is a universal task that conscientious historians must tackle in any area of study, but obviously should be done more actively in the case of disputed regions, such as Palestine.

Leftist Projects and Subaltern Silence | 碧山计划

A lively and important discussion started by Harvard sociology PhD Ms. Zhou Yun critique of the Bishan Jihua (碧山计划) has come to my attention. The Bishan program's initiator Ou Ning (​欧宁) is a rather big name as an art curator and intellectual. Based on what the discussions, it is Ou Ning’s effort to revitalize the village and help them become livelier through civil society. Specific goals elude me as well as the online discussion, but Ou Ning's vision of the ideal village (Bishan) focuses more on the cultural aspect of the locality than the model CCP village development program would. As a result of the program, Bishan village now has a bookstore, a hip bar, and reoccurring cultural + crafts festivals. (The one time I met esteemed sociologist Dr. Yu Jianrong  于建嵘 at a discussion about NGOs, he talked very enthusiastically about his own version of Bishan in Guizhou’s 黔西南).

Bishan Bookstore (碧山书局)
Photo Credits: Ou Ning

Zhou Yun makes some very good points about how the liberal-elite discourse perpetuates the inequality between rural (farmers) and urban elites. She also points that while tourism seems to commodify the rural areas, many residents in rural areas like Bishan with rich cultural endowment would prefer tourism. But I also share the concern of some of the comments below that think 1) she is thinking ahead of herself--if the arrangement of capital doesn't change and farmer continue to be “at the bottom of the economic food chain,” analyzing discourse may not be the best recourse. 2) She is exaggerating the lack of consensus between the locals and Ou Ning based on some impressions. (I would presume that Ou Ning would know more about villages than a hypothetical foreign NGO, such as depicted in Passage to Manhood: Youth Migration, Heroin, and AIDS in Southwest China.) Even if some Bishan residents have no opinion regarding Ou Ning's ambition, she does not acknowledge the existence of local supporters.

One of the sobering comments below (emphasis added):

"Of course, capital and power might destroy the village cultural and ecosystem. But before capital has even reached the village, if one starts to worry about whether [a project] is 'elitist' or 'nativist,' it seems to be akin to worrying about whether the sky will fall. 
Dr. Fei (Hsiao-tung)'s Peasant Life in China: A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley still has much relevance today. Because even after one hundred years (since he wrote it), China still is a maiban country: foreigners print money to exploit the (Chinese) city, the city exploits the rural villages, the villages exploit the environment, and the environment cannot speak so it can only be exploited (without question). Right now the question is how to empower the two weakest in along the food chain--the village and environment. There are many ways in regards to how to empower them, and some forms are terrible indeed if viewed from certain angles."

“诚然，资本和权力可能对乡村文化生态可能会带来毁灭性的影响。但在资本没有到位之前，就开始焦虑精英主义还是自然主义，岂不杞人忧天。  费老的《江村经济》在今天依然有现实意义，正是因为一百年后的中国今天依然是买办大国，洋人印钞抢城市，城市抢乡村，乡村抢环境，环境不会说话， 只有被抢。当下如何反哺处于权力链条上最底端的乡村和环境才是重点。如何反哺当然会有各种形式，有些形式可能从某个角度来看可以说是极为糟糕。” 

The larger question presented here is--if the Chinese government does allow for more organizing from the bottom-up (here, “bottom” includes elites such as Ou Ning), are the locals and the public open to leftist / utopian projects such as the the Bishan Jihua? Ou Ning definitely sees a possibility. Then again, I would anticipate a Marxist response being that the rural areas will still have to rely to some extent on consumers from the urban areas, which clearly does not shield them from capitalism (I recall a U-Madison graduate student's point about certain Laos rubber plants’ different modes of production seem to provide good alternatives for their lives, but from a Marxist perspective they still have to function under the same global capitalist system and respond to the global rubber price).  Still, a cultural revival of the rural areas in the popular imagination will definitely benefit the image and subsequently the material conditions of some villages.

It’s also interesting how many participants in this discussion accept the de facto “nongcun” (rural) v. “chengshi” (urban) dual categorizations for people. Politically, these categories are designated by the government; culturally many discussion participants also  distinguish between the two, with the urban is "modernized," while the rural is the "backward" or "marginalized." In reality I think 1) a significant amount of people fall between the two, such as the migrant hair stylists of Fujian or college students with rural backgrounds / hukous, both types which successfully emulate urban sensibilities. 2) There are many different kinds of vested interests and cultural identity within the “urban” or “rural.” 3) The Urban v. Rural category carries both feudal and modern weights, since the hukou system extends beyond the CCP but has been reemphasized and evolved since the CCP. 4) Ethnic minorities would complicate the dualistic picture. I wonder if Zhou Yun would maintain a similar stance regarding the lack of subaltern voices if she were writing about a village in Xinjiang or Tibet. 

All in all, I am glad that this discussion is open and receiving media attention; it seems that at least some Chinese netizens are willing to imagine a more bottom-up approach and aware of leftist projects such as the Bishan Jihua. 

Recollections from My Calcutta Trip, January 2013

murals of a subway stop. first two blocks are the stanzas in Bengali, second two blocks in English

The same voice murmurs in these desultory lines 

which is born in wayside pansies

letting hasty glances pass by. 

- Fireflies, Rabindranath Tagore

I never had a chance to write about my trip to Calcutta / Kolkata because it was not part of the organized class trip. I have made a couple of Indian Bengali friends in Madison and I have been reading Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland lately. The novel has a lot about Calcutta and it brings back a lot of memories. Here is a best attempt at reconstructing the three days that happened 1.5 years ago at the home of Ravi Shankar and Tagore and former capital of British India.

On the way to Delhi Airport, I passed graffiti that said "I hate my life" on highway wall. I didn't know I had to print my itinerary required for entering the Delhi airport. Armed police check at every entrance gate in fear of terrorists. I had to pay 100 rupees for using the services to print. It occurred to me that airports should be used for homeless people during the nights. But then that would also require needless security. On the plane, two Indian men sat next to me. I took a copy of the free newspapers. When I put my newspaper in the backseat pocket, the man next to me decidedly picked it up a few minutes later and started reading it. I liked the street-like tacit agreement between the two of us and his assumption that I wouldn’t mind. He put it back in my section of the backseat pocket after he was done.

The Kolkata Airport was much smaller than any other second tier city’s you’d see in China, but political scientists warn against judging a region by its airports, so I didn’t mind. I looked for my host and friend from college Vedika at the baggage pickup area. I didn’t have an Indian phone so I was super anxious that Vedika wouldn’t find me. After 2/3 of the Delhi group left, she appeared and waved. Vedika was wearing a black polka-dotted white shirt and hugged me. She looked classy. I remember the joke she told me that she always dressed better in India than in the U.S. because her mom makes sure she looks nice before she leaves the house. Usually at our SoCal college she wore a t-shirt or a sweater, but looked very pretty in anything, in my opinion. She walked with me to her driver, who was a handsome man in his 30s.

Vedika

We passed ads for the rising female politician Mamata Banerjee (Chief Minister of West Bengal to this day). Transexual hijras with spiritual power tapped the car window asking for money.

Vedika’s class/caste would soon stand out for me more and more over the next few days. Her house had several (Bengali) servants; her father is a Marwari businessman and her mother a housewife. Her grandmother was a stern woman from Allahabad who adored Swami Vivekananda and questioned judgmentally me about religion in China. (“India has spirituality!! Everything is one! We don't negate any religion. Christ. Buddha.”) I didn’t bow down to touch her feet ritually when saying hi, which probably irked her. I managed to do so when saying goodbye. As Marwaris, they were all vegetarians. The house was spacious with several marbled rooms and some vintage black and white wedding photos.

The servants were in awe of me throughout, but in an endearing and warm way and I even drew a card for them when I left. I also gave the driver a tip, per suggestion of Vedika. He was also bashful but happy about accepting it. I never got to know the driver’s name. He did not hang any talisman on the car’s rear window, because Vedika’s dad told him not to. He was a nice man, though he got into a fight with the neighbors one day and knocked on the family door in anguish. Vedika’s grandmother opened the door and ushered us quickly to other parts of the house. Eventually Vedika’s dad told him to stop the fight.

During my stay, the family also hosted some form of puja. I witnessed five pandits chanting slokas, two who are Sanskrit university professors from Banaras. I asked, "How come professors can do this kind of work?""They have vacations." Then I saw the pandits bless Vedika and her brother (in between phone calls). Before we left the house for the Kali Temple, the private, home pandit sprayed water around the house as well as on our heads--don't get tricked by the pandits at the Kali temple."

The Tollygunge

The novel The Lowland’s plot is centered around Maoist insurgencies in India, yet it opens with the Tolly Club in Calcutta, which is very apt. Started by Englishmen in the 1800s, it is the colonial vestige of Calcutta and the country-club signifier of elitism. Although the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front governed West Bengal for many decades, it never eradicated that part of society. Vedika’s father insisted on taking me there with the family and told me how it took him years to get exclusive access membership. They are used to drinking before dinner. I refrained from drinking entirely that night because I was in my sanyasi (renouncer) phase in terms of drinking; still kind of trying to keep it up today as well. The interior and food was underwhelming and I didn’t get to see the garden because it was already night time. We had stale conversations, probably because I felt uncomfortable with the privilege. I didn’t like Vedika’s younger brother, who was arrogant and and drank alcohol and drove us back home. (I recalled this event later when we found out that Tamar, CMC class 2014 died in a car accident in Bolivia during the India trip.) He probably didn’t like me either.

Excerpt from The Lowland:

"Thanks to Cruickshank the villa was restored, and a country club was established in its place. Cruickshank was named the first president. It was for the British that the city’s tramline was extended so far south in the early 1930s. It was to facilitate their journey to the Tolly Club, to escape the city’s commotion, and to be among their own. 

... 

Now if they happened to pass the Tolly Club together on their way to or from the tram depot, Udayan called it an affront. People still filled slums all over the city, children were born and raised on the streets. Why were a hundred acres walled off for the enjoyment of a few? 

Subhash remembered the imported trees, the jackals, the bird cries. The golf balls heavy in their pockets, the undulating green of the course. He remembered Udayan going over the wall first, challenging him to follow. Crouching on the ground the last evening they were there, trying to shield him. 

But Udayan said that golf was the pastime of the comprador bourgeoisie. He said the Tolly Club was proof that India was still a semicolonial country, behaving as if the British had never left. 

He pointed out that Che, who had worked as a caddy on a golf course in Argentina, had come to the same conclusion. That after the Cuban revolution, getting rid of the golf courses was one of the first things Castro had done."

My stomach disagreed with me on Friday so we didn’t do much. I thought it was a lagged Delhi belly from the stuff I had in Delhi, but who would know. I had copious amounts of chai and biscuits. I drank a lot of water, though Vedika’s sweet mother said, “This is India, you don’t need to drink that much water.” So I stopped and still felt fine. But I didn’t dare try the street food vada pav and made only one exception for the syrup dipped ice gola, but didn’t like it so gave the rest to a street kid.

Outdoor Shrine for Shiva

Over the following days, we went to a mandir and we both made offerings; we saw a banyan tree with deities and Vedika made an offering. I later learned that these are for / constructed by dalits who are not permitted to enter mandirs. We saw a Vivekananda Sport Club that also had a statue honoring Anagarika Dharmapala, "a Ceylonese Buddhist revivalist and writer. He was one of the founding contributors of Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism and Buddhism. He was also a pioneer in the revival of Buddhism in India after it had been virtually extinct there for several centuries, and he was the first Buddhist in modern times to preach the Dharma in three continents: Asia, North America, and Europe." 

We played board games with other vegetarian college students-home-for-the-winter--

Veg burgers as snacks

We patronized a shisha parlor and a dance club along with Pretti, unfortunately on a quiet Sunday night. Pretti, a recent graduate from a three-year college, had many wild stories about watching David Guetta live and taking care of drunk people in England. I asked if anything like hooking up happened, and she was amazingly stunned silent by the question and whispered “no.” I realized that the diaspora still kept up with social mores of their home in that way.

Ganesha guarding Pretti's house

We also went to the marble Victoria Memorial building. The tickets were very cheap for locals. Everyone in the extremely long line was amazingly patient, and Vedika led me to cut in line, both when entering the main gate and entering the building. I felt kind of embarrassed but no one seemed to care. We laughed at the pretentious quote of Queen Victoria about how her empire looked out for the interests of Indian dominions inside the building. 

weren't allowed to take pics but this big lie just had to be documented-- "We shall respect the rights, diginity and honor of the Indian princes as our own and we desire that they as'well as our subjects should enjoy that prosperity and that social advancement which can only be secured by internal peace and good government"

On the most westernized Park (King) Street, we went to the Oxford University Press Bookstore, which looked just like the bookstore in Swades. The collection was officious and it wasn’t as good as the bookstore I saw in a Delhi mall, which had Arundhati Roy and Han Han. We also bought a delicious rum ball at Flury’s. 

Rum ball

This is the well-known bakery that gets a lot of honor mentions in Bollywood films, though my recent friend still thought American stores had more varieties. The bakery also had a cafe, and I saw a Sikh drinking tea with a businessman there, as well as several white foreigners. We had (badly imitated, overly fried) Chinese food with two fellow international CMCers also traveling in India at Flavors of China. There was a security scanner for weapons, but the someone said that it would be easy sneak a gun in anyways. (Similar situation for Wisconsin--a lot of Madison shops ban concealed firearms but it is allowed by the state.) While we waited on a red light after we exited, a girl-beggar approached us and we both had to look away. A flute seller also played music next to us.

flute seller on Park Street

I saw faded Communist symbols. I visited the College Street famous for second-handed books, but most English books were too technical and I regretted not understanding Bengali to buy the interesting looking comics.  Vedika sad that University of Calcutta was nearby but didn't regard it as the best school for students.

I also posed next to this epic slogan near College Street, and another slogan that said "Struggle to Study. Study to Change Society." Another hand-made poster said "Culture Sanction of Rape must stop!"

We visited the Asiatic Society that had an incredibly shoddy interior and bureaucratic process for visitors (probably because rarely did anyone visit). A man served as a docent and had to be translated by Vedika. Later an English-speaking female professor of history also introduced some of the old exhibitions items--sutras written on pattra leaves--to us hastily. 

Asiatic Society

After we left, people started going to work (12pm). I was so amazed and I still recount it again. That memory probably has merged with other street scenes I have seen in films. We ate lunch at famous Indian chain Cafe Coffee Day, and I liked the food. A lot of tourist sites closed for several hours in between each day as well as on my last day, including the modern art museum, typical of the unavailable Calcutta. So we walked around and I saw a few boys playing soccer and a lot of beautiful trees. and there was even a Ravi Shankar cover show that night, but Vedika wasn’t that interested. I also bought a table cloth from the bougie fabric store Fab India.
Later on the plane back to Delhi, the two men sitting next to me were those kind of airplane friends, who complained about the Calcutta’s slow pace and red tape. They started saying how the people were so lazy and never got their work done. I was surprised no other person came to their objection on the plane. The more I read about it now, let it be from writer Amit Chaudhuri or some other source, I wish to visit Calcutta again for longer periods of time. 

Chinese Stereotypes of India

When I tell someone in China that my history / area studies field is India, the reaction is usually negative. Anyone who has been there or who knows a friend who has been there seems to be the know-it-all experts on the situation of India.

1. "India is so dirty."
2. "India disrespects women."
3. (a) "You're gonna get the Delhi belly."
(b) "You're gonna get lifelong parasites and suffer it for your whole life." 

Less Frequent But also Condescending and Stereotyping reactions--
4. "You will have to pay dowry if you marry a Brahmin and then you will have to undergo sati once he dies."
5. "Buddhism is no longer practiced widely there... (implied: why should you go?)"-- publisher

Photo credit: Humans of New Delhi / Buddha portrayed in nirvana, Kingdom of Dreams, Gurgoan

6. "My Indian classmates call home a lot and their English sounds funny." - Pomona College student
7. "The ascetics and sadhus never take baths and practice all kinds of weird stuff." -- college professor as he shows photographed spectacles of disheveled sadhus

I am usually annoyed by these repetitive exhortations, but I am too polite to tell them to shut up and too passive to debate with them or invoke the maxim that "whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true." (A similar exchange occurs when they find out I am vegetarian.) All of these contain some truths (Urban spaces in North India are often dirtier than China; women do experience different levels of discrimination in India; Delhi belly and parasites do exist.), but also reflect the disregard Chinese people have of other cultures and moreover, their idea of what a youth should pursue in his or her life. India is very complicated and some practices extends beyond the national boundaries into broader (South) Asia as well as the desi diaspora in the West Indies and East Africa.
My post is not just for venting about paternalistic attitudes of Chinese elders, but should also serve as a place for critical examination of perceptions of India. Granted, Chinese people's disdain of other cultures is not unique to their views on India. Adrian Belic once observed in an interview with the China Hipster Podcast that when he asked where people around the world wanted to go most, many people say they want to travel to some place personal and different. When he asked Chinese people, they always seem want to go to the biggest Chinatown. He used to think that only Americans had that kind of "We're the best" mentality, but he has seen it among Chinese people as well. Chinese people display similarly reactions to Chicago, which "safety" is a large concern. 
To quote my friend Alex Hsu's observation of the Chinese people he interacted with in his post sharing The Case for Reparations on Facebook --

When I mention I'm from Chicago, I am often made to comment on Chicago's crime rate and the history and current state of American race-relations. My Mandarin is hardly up to the task; my English might not be either. Coates's is. I will be sharing this with my friends here. Amazing. 

From what I hear about India, now I know that a lot is just the mentality of horrors Chinese people like to circulate about unfamiliar terrain. Another lesson learned: I should not be as susceptible to advice as I was five years ago.

On the other hand, I have met some Chinese people among the younger generation who are more open to other cultures, picking Iran or Israel over Europe when planning overseas trips. Among the older generation, European countries are also fair game for bashing when it comes to thieves. 

I was also pretty scared before coming to Chicago. I also went to Chinatown when I visited Chicago for the first time. It was awesome, but so was Little India.

Chicago Chinatown Entrance

Understanding India's Elections

I was an avid supporter for Arvind Kejriwal for his campaign as well as the anti-corruption Aam Admi Party (AAP) these past few months. Among many liberal policies, AAP candidates have called for more lenient policies towards Kashmir and put overturning the anti-gay legislation on the party agenda. I find the leader Kejriwal to be very charismatic, savvy, inspiring, and dedicated. I knew that AAP would not win many seats, since it is still in an inchoate stage with few solid bases. Still, I was shocked by the sweeping magnitude in which the BJP's Narendra Modi won the elections. Today, I woke up to the election results in Madison, WI and posted a Facebook status about the matter.

Found out yesterday that my host here is a small business owner who voted for Scott Walker during the recall... Now the pro-business, anti-Muslim candidate Narendra Modi won in India's PM elections and I was in denial till today. Idealists have to fight on!

Nonetheless, India 2014 has seen a phenomenal exercise of democratic rights of 550 million people and there are many more details to be hashed out. AAP vote share impressed and outpaced many--"more than DMK, Shiv Sena, ADMK, NCP SAD, CPI, RJD, JDS, TRS, TDP, INLD, BJD, JDU, DMDK, LJP," tweeted @Just_Anuja.  The idealistic effect of AAP will definitely last on India's youth beyond these elections and I am sure of a Kejriwal comeback. 

Sino-India relations may deteriorate if Modi continues the hawkish foreign policy stances. But if he is true to his pro-business models, perhaps there would be an increase in bilateral trade. 

Judging from Modi’s governance in Gujarat, the daily said he places emphasis on infrastructure development, attracting investment and the establishment of special economic zones. “Economic development and improving people’s livelihoods are expected to be high on his agenda once he is elected prime minister. There is the possibility that he will expand Sino-India economic and trade cooperation and seek more Chinese investment,” Fu Xiaoqiang, a research fellow with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said.

Per request of a fellow writer, I compiled the news sources I have been following the past few months for the election. A post for nonfiction introductions to modern India will follow soon.

                            

News Outlets

• First Post
• The Indian Express
• The Caravan; excellent long-form journalism

Blogs

• Five Forty Five; rising NY-based digital journalists
• New York Times India

Twitter accounts

• Ramachandra Guha; historian and writer
• Jonathan Shainin; former editor for the Caravan
• Overrated Outcast; satirist and iconoclast
• Barkha Dutt; female news anchor and excellent interviewer for NDTV