November 12, 2010
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS — A few years ago, in a password-protected room of a Bangalore outsourcing operation, I came across a young man fiddling with an Airbus A380. With clicks of a mouse, he was virtually examining the aircraft’s electrical systems. Airbus was a big client, but, these being boom times, others at the same firm were working for Boeing in another password-protected room.
The man appeared closer in age to his first shave than to fatherhood.
My memory has him slouching in the chair. I succumbed to the temptation of a current-events joke: The A380 was in the news those days for falling behind on the production schedule. Smiling, I asked the man whether he was to blame for the delay.
“Actually, sir,” he replied, “if they had outsourced the whole plane to us, it would have been finished early.”
There was something distinctly un-Indian about a response like this.
An unmistakable whiff of America had gotten into him. The young man’s parents probably wouldn’t have spoken in that way; they might have found such talk disrespectful and tempting of fate. But what was Indian and un-Indian was changing, and such verve, confidence, self-belief were contagious among the globalized, upwardly mobile young.
The man came to my mind this week as the United States and India, on the occasion of President Barack Obama’s visit to the subcontinent, breathed new warmth into a relationship that has heated up considerably since the Cold War, then was seen in some quarters as cooling again under the Obama administration.
Those fears seemed dampened by a shower of economic deals, by visible chemistry between Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, by an Indian news media that fawned over the Obamas, and by the U.S. president’s surprising announcement of support for a permanent Indian seat on an expanded U.N. Security Council.
During the visit, Mr. Obama repeatedly described the Indian-American bond as “the defining partnership of the 21st century.”
The prevailing narrative of how such partnerships form tends to emphasize diplomacy and trade: The media covers such partnerships through the vehicle of summitry and communiqué and when those summit meetings happen, they almost always involve a world leader traveling with droves of chief executives in tow to reinforce economically what is politically achieved.
But the process by which nations come together, get to know each other is more complex and mysterious and subtle than meets the eye.
The case of India and the United States reveals what is true of many other cases as well: Beneath the summitry and state dinners and trade deals, there is a gradual human weaving through which two countries sensitize themselves to each other, inspire and learn from each other, laugh at and argue with each other, mimic each other’s fashions and management philosophies, discover each other’s pressure points.
It happened in the bookstores. In India, where the self had for many millions traditionally been something to sublimate to the family and clan, the stores began to fill with take-charge-of-your-life American self-help titles like “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”
U.S.-style management philosophy likewise taught a rising generation of Indian managers to invigorate their fathers’ sluggish enterprises.
In the United States, meanwhile, books on meditation, yoga and ayurvedic medicine proliferated; as one country learned from the other how to light dynamism’s fire, another learned how to slow it down and live with balance. And writers like Jhumpa Lahiri explained India to Americans and America to Indians, and showed, in her little family microcosms, what life might look like were the two worlds to blend.
It happened in the arts and culture. A new crop of Bollywood song makers merged American hip-hop beats into their tracks and sometimes even rap interludes. Indian advertisements began to speak in the American language of selfhood, freedom and choice — “The Internet is under new management. Yours,” declared an ad for Yahoo in The Hindustan Times. Filmmakers began to make popular off-Bollywood films more likely to appeal to Westerners: darker, grittier, shorter song-and-dance-free titles like “Life in a Metro” and “Love Sex aur Dhokha.”
America reciprocated with an Academy Award for “Slumdog Millionaire,” with the casting of Aishwarya Rai in “Bride and Prejudice,” with Indian characters in mainstream television shows like “Outsourced” and movies like “Office Space.”
Each country became more comfortable with public officials with ties to the other country. In India, American-returned officials like Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Palaniappan Chidambaram, Rahul Gandhi and Shashi Tharoor did much to overcome the suspicion of them as outsiders and firangis — foreigners. In America in these last few years, voters have grown more comfortable with South Asian faces in their governors’ mansions and legislatures.
It happened in the realm of style. In India, the jeans slowly grew skinnier and acquired deliberate, paid-for wear and tear, while slipping from the waist down to the hip. Slinky tank tops multiplied on the streets of Mumbai and Delhi, sold by men who would faint if they saw their wives wearing one. And U.S. stores seem simultaneously to have concluded that their jewelry could use a little masala, sparing no opportunity to Indianize necklaces and earrings.
So much of the bottom-up bilateral warming took place in a handful of spaces: places like the Bagel Shop in the Bandra quarter of Mumbai, where expats and locals mingled; the Grand Hyatt hotel nearby, where conferences were held to give Indian and American journalists and power brokers unprecedented access to each other; Rasika, an Indian restaurant in Washington, where Indians and Washington lobbyist types dined side by side; the business-class cabins of Continental’s and Delta’s direct U.S.-India flights, aboard which it became increasingly common for regular pliers of that route to run into one another.
When a summit meeting occurs, cameras click and analyses are penned and prognostications are offered. What is sometimes lost in the lights is the quiet daily summitry of millions of ordinary people. It can build a relationship over long years and can make diplomatic breakthroughs, important though they are, seem merely like acknowledgements of what already, inexorably is.
Great article, Anand! I particularly enjoyed the contrast offered by your statement “while one country learned to light dynamism’s fire, another learned how to slow it down and live with balance”. So true… On a personal level, one of my first Indian inspirations was Deepak Chopra.
Certainly, different cultures can and should learn from each other, though let us hope that they can do so without undue prejudice. This is why travel is so important for furthering understanding. In any case, the harmful and reactive nationalism of the 20th century is slowly but inevitably giving way to the interconnected and progressive globalism of the 21st. Cheers!
I guess when a country that shares a border and an economic competition with China becomes an object of interest of the US of A then Indian writers like you line up and suggest a rationale for an obvious foreign policy redo!
Get serious Anand, the move by the US to twin with India is simply foreign policy realpolitik. When the main competition gets tough then you do your best to surround them with your new allies! The premise of your book and your editorial is understandable because you are Indian and thus a good salesman. Good luck but pls don’t pretend to me that you take your rationale seriously.
No Anand, I don’t think that’s it. You’ve dolled it up and sprinkled sparklies everywhere, but no, that’s not it. There’s a darker, deeper undertone to this entire affair of partnership.
The west may be waking up to India (India woke up to the west in the 1990s itself) now but the wakeup call is coming from a little further north to India.
What you’ve described is only the surface, inside a lot of wheeling and dealing is going on, and every deal is cut at the edge of the teeth of both the governments.
And along with all that ‘acceptance’, there’s a lot of phobia everywhere. Let’s not forget what ‘Outsourced’ is really about.
But thanks for the article anyway. It’s very pro-India.
I think Anand are an amazingly observant writer with original insights. Some of the comments state that American is cozying up with India only because of China/Pak/Afghan. Thats true to a certain extent but that does not mean that what Anand wrote here is not also true.
Anand (Bliss) has captured the experience of many Americans (and Indians) who have been exposed to each other only to find real benefit and joy from the other culture. The transfer of knowledge and ideas really does go both ways. My own personal journey into Indian culture began through the experience of my daughter who met and befriended an Indian girl while in High School. That relationship benefited both girls, and eventually enriched my daughter to such an extent that she became interested enough to learn Hindi and studied Indian Art and Culture. She would bring home during college breaks Bollywood movies, which I found so exotic and very different from our own Hollywood movies. While in some ways less realistic to my own eyes, they were somehow more human and dealt with basic human conflicts, values, and traditions. They seemed to stand for things that we as Americans seemed to have forgotten.
During her college years she studied in Jaipur (Rajasthan( where she lived with an Indian family for 6 months. While she was away, I used Indian Filmi to learn and understand what she might be experiencing. A small Inidan grocery store was the source for many wonderful Indian DVDs, and when the shop owner discovered that my daughter was in Jaipur, they went out of their way to recommend movies that would show me Rajasthan, as well as other parts of India. While she was living the experience, I had my own introduction into Indian culture. I have since enlarged my circle of Indian friends, studied Hindi myself (at the age of 65) and in 2008 spend 3 months traveling throughout India myself. While there I stayed at the homes of 7 different families – all of these arrangements were made in advance by my newly acquired Indian friends who insisted that I visit and stay with their families in their hometowns. I not only learned what “Guest is God” means, but I experienced it. It has been a woderful and humbling experience to have such friendly and caring people allow me into their lives. I could spend pages (and hours) discussing all that I have seen and learned. Anand is correct – but only for those who are open to seeing and sharing the cultures of others. To drive home the point I will share the case of one of the Indian couples I met here in the US. The man came for Lucknow (and yes, he insisted I visit there and stay with his family – which I am so glad I did) and the women is American from Pennslyvania. She speaks Hindi so well that if youheard her speaking in another room and did not see here, you would simply assume she was in fact Indian. She fell in love we India and would prefer to live there. He, on the other hand is as American as apple pie. When he visits India he just can’t wait to get back in the old USA. I joke with him that she is more Indian than he is! The truth is that, just like me and my daughter, the Indian culture compliments and enhances our own experience, our humanity. If we can take the best of both worlds, we become better human beings. I have shared my experiences with other Americans, and I can say for a fact that it has opened their eyes as well. They often comment that “we had no idea it was like that.” India, like America has it’s good and bad sides. I find the heart of the Indian people to be so warm and friendly that it simply overpowers everything else. There are Americans like that as well. At the core, we are more alike then it might at first appear. Everything is different, but everything is somehow the same. I am more at home with Indians and India sometimes then I am here in my own country. It is not global politics that drives countries together or apart (although that can certainly come into play), it is the interaction of countless human beings who find value and friendship in other people who are both so different and yet so much the same. I find Anand both pro-Indian and pro-American. I am proud to admit I am as well.