Pankaj Mishra on Small Town India
Yet another article by Mishra. This time in the Guardian lamenting "the death of small town India." Resonating specially for those who like me grew up in one of those small north Indian towns. Patna is technically a capital but it fits in the profile Mishra paints very well too. He has actually turned this into a cliche by repeatedly writing the same thing over and over again. I was relieved not to see a reference to Edmund Wilson in this piece. (Mishra is suddenly everywhere, New Yorker, Harpers, New York Review of Books, London Review of Books each of them recently ran an essay by him on either India or China. All saying almost the same thing in the tone of same cautious pessimism as if writing a self-conscious counterpoint to the gung-ho articles in The Economist or Business Week or other magazines.)
The Guardian has a number of articles on India marking the Independence Day. The one on Bangalore by Ian Jack is particularly worth reading. That's another city I know well.
12 comments:
Pankaj Mishra must be SO unhappy, with India doing as well as it is now.
looks like you are not a fan.
me, i feel like taking some valium capsules after I read one of those earth-is-flat-now articles. i guess reading mishra is healthier.
oh may be it was "world is flat now"?
Oh, he's one of those die-hard socialists, he'll never see reason. Better than Arundhati Roy, at any rate.
Actually, I do think genius loci is valuable. I also think it's inescapable, there's a limit to the power of globalization.
he is not really a socialist either. he just styles himself as a self-conscious intellectual, as opposed to journalists and pamphleteers, one who holds a more "nuanced" opinion on subjects and hesitates before making final judgments, specially if they are optimistic ones.
he is just highlighting the obvious contradictions in the globalization stories being sold by the usual peddlers... genius loci is just one such contradiction. there are many more.
Actually, having read the article, I kind of feel nostalgic myself...
And I did prefer the old Bangalore, by far.
Alok: not a fan of Thomas. L. Friedman eh?
Too much of Mishra is nauseating. I am all for cautious optimism but he is too much. Btw, did you read his New Yorker article? The end mad me do a complete double take...it was so ridiculous
you mean where he says indian state was more brutal in suppressing self-determination of ethnic minorities than the british empire?
no when he talks about Churchill and jihadists.
"Churchill assailed him for helping Britain’s “enemies,” “Hindustan,” against “Britain’s friends,” the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad engulfing even distant New York and London."
Oh i think he is just making the standard claim that the british empire was mainly responsible for the current problems in the middle east and with radical islam. even after that it was american self-interest (another me-too-imperialist) which propped and supported the fanatical Islamic extremism. I think this argument has a lot of merit.
It is not just true of the British empire, it is true for every other empire too. They all ultimately collpse but not before they have made all sorts of problems with ethnicities even more intractable than they were before. Collapse of the Austrian empire for example. Even the history of the Ottomans...
I know it is a common argument but I think Mishra is over reaching and simplifying. I dont completely disagree with him but I think the relation is more sublte and there are and always have been far too many factors at play.
yes i agree. but there is also a trend in revisionist history that claims that the british empire was essentially a benevolent one. it is encouraging that people like mishra are writing against this argument.
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