‘No one person gets to limit what it means to be Indian’: Namit Arora, author of ‘Indians’

To write his book, Arora travelled to the seats of the different civilisations of India.

An alumnus of IIT, Kharagpur, Namit Arora spent almost two decades in Silicon Valley as an Internet technology professional. In 2013, he quit his job and returned to India and, almost for two years, he volunteered with the Delhi government to find innovative solutions to civic problems; he led the drafting of Delhi’s solar energy policy and a task force on air pollution. In between, he published two books, The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities, a non-fiction, and Love and Loathing in Silicon Valley, a novel set in Silicon Valley.

Arora’s third book is about Indian civilization, titled Indians: A Brief History of a Civilization. He spoke to Scroll.in about his journey from tech professional to author, his latest book, and how he looks at the idea of Indianness. Excerpts from the interview:

Tell us something about your journey from a career in internet technology to becoming a published author of two non-fiction books and a novel. What inspired Indians: A Brief History of a Civilization?
I was herded into the “safe” engineering profession by the great forces of the Indian middle-class. Not that I desired something else in my teens. It was actually good for me in many ways. It took me from IIT Kharagpur to California. Earnings from my career funded my wanderlust and evening education in the humanities. But I did see it mostly as a day job that paid the bills.

In the early years, as with most aspiring writers, I too faced my share of rejections in the publishing world, but I lived and learned, and built a nest egg. In due course, I quit the job, returned to India, and persevered until, fortunately, things worked out. Ironically, it was my unloved tech career that financed my new life of full-time reading, writing, travelling and the sporadic volunteer project like drafting the solar energy policy for Delhi – not to mention my labour of love, Indians.

My interest in history really began after leaving India, when life in the US raised for me various questions of culture and identity. In my mid-twenties, backpacking through Mexico in the early 1990s, I was blown away by the ruins of the Mayan and Aztec civilisations. That got me hooked on “lost cities”, or historical sites that were entirely lost to living memory and were dug out by archaeologists. I’ve since visited scores of lost cities around the world.

In the mid-2000s, my partner and I took a break from work to travel in India for two years. That was an amazing experience. We visited over a hundred sites in 20 states, including all of the lost cities I write about in Indians. Each of them raised new questions for me whose answers I could not easily find.

Namit Arora at the site of Nalanda University.

For instance, I wondered what life was like in the city of Dholavira, and what of the Harappan ethos is still with us. What urban milieu produced a great thinker like Nagarjuna? What was a day in the life of a student at Nalanda? What religious worldview promoted erotica on Khajuraho’s temple walls, and why did it disappear? How did the city of Vijayanagar become so rich? Can scoundrels also gain moksha after death in Varanasi? Questions like these.

So I started digging for answers, from which emerged the idea for a book like Indians. I read early travellers and literary-philosophical works, academic histories and monographs, Bahujan and feminist scholars, and Hindu nationalists. I visited site museums and read archaeologists’ reports. I wrote book reviews, essays and travelogues. As I connected the dots, the scope of the project evolved.

What was the transition to the history of Indian civilisation after writing a novel, Love and Loathing in Silicon Valley?
It wasn’t difficult. Though the novel and the history book were published within eighteen months of each other, both books had gestated for over a decade. They proceeded in parallel and became two different modes through which I explored questions of culture and identity, with the hope of gaining a better understanding of my world and my place in it.

The dust jacket of your new book says ‘Indian civilisation is an idea, a reality, an enigma.’ Can you elaborate on this statement?
I think the statement tries to capture the varied, mutating quality of Indian civilisation. Its reality is, of course, borne out by any academic definition of “civilisation”, even as its form and content have never been stagnant or singular. 

Indeed, Indian civilisation has been a journey of profound and continuous change – from the Harappans who built the first cities with indoor toilets and the most egalitarian civilisation of the ancient world, through the dramatic reshaping of the subcontinent’s culture by the Aryan migrants with new languages, religious ideas and the varna system, the rise and fall of Buddhism and Tantrism, the advent of feudalism and Bhakti, and the Turko-Persians bringing Islam and giving rise to a new syncretic culture, to India’s momentous encounter with European colonialism and western modernity.

Not surprisingly, then, Indian civilisation has been different things to different people. For instance, there is no historical evidence that Brahmins and outcastes, or urbanites and Adivasis, or priests and Carvakas, or sultans and peasants, or Tamils and Mizos, took pride in a common idea of Indian civilisation – and is there a good reason to privilege one over the other? Can it not contain many such ideas? With so many coexisting social realities, Indian civilisation is also an enigma that has produced various, often conflicting, appraisals of its central features and qualities. People joke that India frequently confounds academic social science. To adapt Whitman, Indian civilisation is large, it contains multitudes. So it’s all of these at once: idea, reality, enigma.

Different sets of people describe and define ‘Indianness’ in different ways. How do you look at the idea of Indian identity? What according to you are the basic qualifications for being an Indian?
As I see it, anyone who considers herself an Indian is Indian. Period. There should be no further litmus tests, no additional qualifications. “Indianness”, or “Indian identity”, which transcends the citizenship of the modern state, ought to be expansive enough to accommodate all those who consider themselves Indian in whatever ways they see fit, wherever they live. No one person or group gets to limit what it means to be Indian, at least not without a fight. As the poet Rahat Indori memorably said, “Kisi Ke Baap Ka Hindustan Thodi Hai”.

Many books have been written about the history of Indian civilisation by Indians as well as foreigners. How is your book different from them?
I think each reader will see my book as different (or not) in her own way. That said, let me offer a few provisional thoughts of my own. I’d say that Indians is rare in combining narrative history with archaeological travel writing. It’s a non-traditional history. It aims for an engaging, human portrait of our lost cities, in which the traveller (me) is part of the narrative.

It also draws new insights from early travellers’ accounts that speak to our 21st century concerns and sensibilities. In short, it tries to bring alive our forgotten pasts in rich and evocative detail, combining quirky stories with the big picture of Indian civilisation and its evolution. It strives to include non-elite perspectives – the view from below – rare in histories written by non-Indians and upper-caste Indians. Nor do I shrink from controversial topics or avoid calling a spade a spade. It also incorporates significant new research from archaeology and genetics.

According to American historian Hayden White, ‘history is no less a form of fiction than the novel is a form of historical representation’. How do you interpret this statement?
What I hear White saying is that, as narrative forms, history and fiction have more in common than meets the eye. This is a compelling view, though it can be easily misunderstood. I mean, one might object and point out that the historical narrative is built on facts and verifiable events, while the fictional narrative requires nothing more than subjective human experience and imagination, and so these are two very different kinds of endeavours.

But facts are one thing, their interpretation another. Facts alone do not necessarily make the narrative of history more truthful than the narrative of fiction. Indeed, fiction can often reveal our past and present more truthfully and vividly than what facts alone can convey. This is because both types of narratives must also employ significant interpretation – ie, subjective moral and aesthetic choices and judgments – which is what makes them similar forms.

A corollary is that a great historian has much in common with a literary master. Both must attempt to enter the society they reference, to see the world as its members saw it, and understand, to the extent possible, what it was like to live in it. Both require ample sensitivity, imagination, depth of perception, the right distance, and the ability to synthesise vast bits of social knowledge. Both must examine the psychology, morals, aspirations, and assumptions of ordinary people. Neither can claim to be an impartial or omniscient narrator, and so both history and fiction are subjective, value-laden enterprises sharing a family resemblance.

You present insights in your book from the accounts of the Persian traveller, Alberuni, and the French traveller, François Bernier. Both spent more than a decade in India and wrote extensively about their experiences. How do you compare their views about India?
Alberuni visited India between 1017 and 1030, when Mahmud of Ghazni was raiding wealthy temples. Bernier stayed from 1658-69, during Aurangzeb’s first decade as emperor in Delhi. They are two of the most fascinating and perceptive observers of medieval north Indian society. Both espoused a scientific temper and a humanistic ethos. 

Both admired many things Indian but also criticised other things. They each wrote near the eve of a major incursion from outside the subcontinent – Turko-Persian and European, respectively. Like any observer, they too had their biases and blind spots (which I discuss), but they’re still very informative about two different moments in Indian society.

Alberuni, a veritable polymath, had emerged from a great flowering of science and cosmopolitan culture centred in Persia. He despised Mahmud and condemned his raids. He learned Sanskrit in India, studied the major Indian religious, philosophical and scientific texts, translated some into Arabic, and sought out learned Brahmins to clarify his doubts. He praised earlier Indian achievements in mathematics and science, but noted the dismal state of science in contemporary India (for instance, unlike Aryabhata half a millennium earlier, leading Indian astronomers now held that the earth did not rotate on its axis but was at rest).

Caste made a powerful impression on Alberuni. He saw that such birth-based inequalities and segregated living, sustained by both religious scriptures and temporal laws, prevented social solidarity and a sense of common cause. He called it the chief difference between Indians and his own people. He hated the caste mindset of the elites. It bothered him that learned Indians did not mingle with foreigners like him – refusing to sit, eat, and drink with him – for fear of being “polluted”. He saw this as a kind of “fanaticism”, and called them more “narrow-minded” than their ancestors.

Alberuni’s extensive account confirms that on the eve of the Turko-Persian invasions, Indian society wasn’t exactly the picture of intellectual and moral vigour that many now fondly imagine it to have been. India’s intellectual culture had declined in the preceding centuries; it had fallen behind in science. Buddhism and Tantrism were in terminal decline, Bhakti and Brahminical orthodoxy were ascendant. Indians had grown more insular, conservative, superstitious, caste-bound, puritanical and patriarchal (I explore this change and its causes in the book).

Such “is the state of things in India”, Alberuni lamented, that Brahmins attempt to combine ideas of purity and pollution with the pursuit of science. He also described and analysed Indian texts, marital and funerary customs, taxation and inheritance, laws and punishments, etc – which frequently differed based on one’s varna status. His portrait of north India is so thoughtful and persuasive that he deserves to be called the “first Indologist”.

As for Bernier, he was a physician-philosopher who identified with the emerging Enlightenment thought in Europe. He greatly admired the fine architecture of Delhi and Agra. Employed by one of Aurangzeb’s noblemen, he observed the pomp and glitter of the Mughal court, “the base and disgusting adulation which is invariably witnessed there” and “the vice of flattery [that] pervades all ranks”.

He derided harmful superstitions, the practice of Sati fuelled by “merciless Brahmens” but discouraged by Mughal governors, and noted the primitive state of Indian medicine. Indians “understand nothing of anatomy,” he wrote. “They never open the body either of man or beast,” so do not know of the circulation of blood (working with bodily fluids was “polluting”). According to Bernier, Hindu scholastic education in its customary guru-shishya format, which he observed in Varanasi, was limited to mostly Brahmin men of “an indolent disposition”. He proclaimed that ‘”profound and universal ignorance is the natural consequence of such a state of society”.

Bernier’s account reveals a powerful, extractive bureaucracy concentrating riches at the top, funding a huge army and the luxuries of Indian aristocrats and the seraglio. This malady went beyond the Mughal realm. He reports extreme disparities and that “most towns in Hindoustan are made up of earth, mud, and other wretched materials”, and are poorer “than those of many other parts of the globe” (then too, India’s per capita GDP was below the global average).

Bernier analysed the causes of the dismal economic state of common folk in pre-colonial India – worse than in Europe, and a far cry from popular history’s boosterish metaphor, sone ki chidiya. As in Alberuni’s time, Bernier’s account shows Indians, especially Hindus, as creatively weak, ritualistic, mired in regressive cultural habits – and, in hindsight, entirely ill-equipped to resist the next big incursion too: a European imperialism powered by modernity, joint-stock mercantilism, the nation-state, science and scholarship (which would also lead them to discover, through the coloniser’s eyes, their own forgotten antiquity).

In his recent book, Early Indians, Tony Joseph, whose work you also quote in your book, argues, ‘We are all migrants. We are all mixed.’ What is your take on this statement?
Tony’s claim is spot on, not only in terms of physical migration and the mixing of genes; it’s also true with the migration and mixing of culture. Whatever the means, cultural diffusion across regions, ethnicities, languages, religions, traders, etc has been a prominent feature of Indian life. Think of what the Aryans from Central Asia added to Indian languages, the Greeks to art, the Persians to architecture, the Sufis to music, the British to politics, and so on.

The Hindu pantheon grew out of extreme cultural appropriation and assimilation of non-Vedic folk deities. Look at how mixed our art, architecture, literature, philosophy, music, dance, cuisine, sports, dress, painting, and crafts are today. And Indians gave much to others too. The depth and complexity of such mixing becomes even more vivid in the long view of history that I take in my book.

Can you talk to us about your visits to Dholavira? How has it contributed to the understanding of Harappan civilisation?
Dholavira (2600-1900 BCE) is the best excavated Harappan city in India. It is a lovely site to wander through, with gateways, streets and homes laid out on a grid-like plan. Astonishingly, one can still find on the ground shards of their painted pottery, bits of stone bangles, and semi-precious stones used to make jewellery. One can see greenish copper slag from the smelting process for purifying the ore, as well as the tiny bones of some of the animals Dholavirans ate: cows, buffaloes, goats, sheep, wild pigs, wild asses, deer, fish, rabbit and chicken.

The onsite museum has evocative game boards carved on stone, children’s toys, figurines, seals, pottery, and more. The village of Dholavira, after which the Harappan city is named, is a short walk away, and the landscape around the island is starkly picturesque.

All Harappan sites have much in common but they spanned a large geography and are also diverse. Unlike the four larger Harappan cities we know of, riverine and rain-blessed, Dholavira was on an arid island in the Arabian Sea (it’s now amidst a salt marsh, the Great Rann of Kutch). Because of this, its inhabitants focused a lot more on capturing water.

They built amazing water harvesting systems, city-wide storm-water drains, and sixteen giant reservoirs, one of which is nine times larger than an Olympic sized swimming pool and a hundred times larger than the Great Bath of Mohenjo-Daro. They surrounded the city centre with reservoirs, which must have made a visually appealing sight.

Most of Dholavira’s structures were built not in mud-brick, the Harappan norm, but in stone, including beautiful multihued stones from a nearby quarry that I visited. Dholavira has turned up what may be the world’s first stadium, with a stand of three rows. Its trade and material culture were more maritime than riverine, and it was likely a leader in Harappan seafaring innovations. Its funerary structures also differ from other Harappan cities in largely being cenotaphs, devoid of human remains, suggesting different cultural beliefs.

Dholavirans had other distinctive cultural attributes, but their major legacy seems to me their incredible creativity, resolve and engineering acumen ,through which they managed their scarce water resources for many centuries. They waged an epic struggle against the elements. Will we, their descendants, be inspired by them and rouse ourselves to tackle climate change?

Are you planning a follow-up to Indians?
No concrete plans yet. I’m just making my way through a pile of books that had built up while I was working on Indians. I also lost my father to Covid this year during the second wave, which has been very unsettling. Perhaps a new book project, for which I have at least a couple of candidates, will emerge in due course.

Abdullah Khan is a Mumbai-based novelist, screenwriter, literary critic and banker. His debut novel Patna Blues has been translated into eight languages. 

(Source: Scroll)

Gulf rupee: When the Reserve Bank of India played central banker in West Asia

 Even after Indian independence, the rupee was the legal tender in a few Persian Gulf states. It was replaced with the Gulf rupee in 1959 to curb gold smuggling.

When an Indian traveller wanted to visit certain Persian Gulf sheikhdoms in the 1950s, there was no need to stock up on foreign currency before the journey since the Indian rupee was the legal tender in these countries. For almost all financial transactions, the United Arab Emirates (then known as the Trucial States), Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar used the rupee. The system was put in place by the British when they ruled India. But the arrangement suited the Reserve Bank of India as well, as the Gulf countries would purchase the rupees with pound sterling, against which the Indian currency was pegged.

By virtue of the system, India had economic clout in the Persian Gulf states that were still British protectorates and years away from a major oil boom. However, smugglers and other criminals saw it as an opportunity to make money from the average Indian’s desire to hoard gold.

Indranil Mukherjee/AFP

The modus operandi was quite simple. Smugglers would send young men to the Gulf on ostensible business trips with wads of rupee notes. There, gold would be purchased with the smuggled rupees and brought back to India. This would inevitably create an excess of Indian currency in the Gulf, leading to the extra rupees being sold back to the RBI, which lost valuable foreign exchange.

As is the case now, gold smugglers were very innovative in their methods to bypass Indian Customs officials. A well-known and often-repeated anecdote among the first generation of Malayali migrant workers in the Gulf tells the story of a man who was asked by an acquaintance to take a clock back to Bombay from a Gulf country. The unsuspecting young man carried the clock, inside which gold biscuits were neatly hidden, and was arrested and prosecuted in India.

“While the smuggling had been a problem for many years, in 1957 and 1958 the problem rose to alarming proportions and took a large toll on India’s reserves of foreign exchange,” Peter Symes, an Australian researcher and expert on paper money, wrote in a 1999 article.

A New York Times report from April 1959 stated that India had to pay the equivalent of $92.4 million in sterling for rupees presented through traders and banks in the Persian Gulf in 1957 alone. The report estimated that $69.3 million went to the region from India in exchange for smuggled gold in the first nine months of 1957.

Launch of the Gulf rupee

By 1959, India faced a major foreign exchange crisis thanks to the thriving gold smuggling business, losing hundreds of millions in sterling.

“To obviate or at least mitigate malpractices, which such an arrangement could give rise to, a separate series of notes exclusively for circulation in the Gulf (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Trucial States) were issued by the Indian Government and the Reserve Bank of India in the 1950s,” according to the RBI.

On May 1, 1959, Indian President Rajendra Prasad gave his assent for the Reserve Bank of India (Amendment) Act 1959, after it was passed by both houses of the Parliament. The law allowed the Indian government and RBI to issue special notes that were intended to be circulated only in the Gulf region. This currency, which had the same value as the Indian rupee, was known as the Gulf rupee or External rupee.

One Gulf Rupee. Wikimedia Commons [CC0 1.0]

“The Ministry of Finance drew up the reform after months of secret consultations and after obtaining the approval of the British Government, the Bank of England and the rulers of the sheikhdoms,” the New York Times reported after the Lok Sabha passed the bill.

Shrouded in secrecy, as was the case with the 2016 demonetisation in India, few members of the ruling party knew that this reform was being planned. The task was entrusted to Morarji Desai, then the minister of finance. The bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on April 27, 1959.

“The introduction of the amendment to the Reserve Bank of India Act, to the Indian parliament, caused some consternation to the members of parliament, as it was proposed without any warning,” Symes wrote. “The Government of India had tried to introduce the amendment with a degree of haste so that they could reduce the window of opportunity for people who might take advantage of the proposed issue of special notes and increase the smuggling activity in the immediate future. However, following a delay of a day or so in which the opposition was allowed to review the measures, the amendment to the Act was passed with little difficulty.”

The Gulf rupee notes retained the contemporary design but were different in colour and carried the prefix “Z”. The notes were issued one, ten and hundred denominations and were redeemable only at the Bombay office of issue.

Holders of regular Indian currency notes in the Gulf were given six weeks to exchange them for the new currency or sterling. The transition to the new notes was fairly smooth and regular rupee notes were no longer accepted in the Gulf. Innovative gold smugglers, however, found other ways to satiate the Indian appetite for the precious metal. At the time of the passing of the bill, Indians were believed to be privately hoarding up to $2 billion in gold.

Haj notes

Indian pilgrims also took rupee notes when they went on the Haj pilgrimage, where they could freely exchange them for Saudi riyals. The Indian government had initially allowed Saudi banks and traders to exchange these rupees for sterling in Bombay, but fears persisted over smugglers using this route to buy foreign exchange.

In response to this threat, the Indian government began to issue special Haj rupee notes for pilgrims going to Mecca and Medina. The notes in ten and hundred denomination had the word HAJ inscribed on the obverse. Another way to distinguish them from normal rupee notes was the serial number that was prefixed with the letters “HA”.

The Haj rupee was exchanged at par to the Saudi riyal in the early 1960s. (A Saudi riyal is now worth almost 20 rupees.) Haji Siddique Mohammed, a 79-year old retired railway employee from Mangalore, remembers using the Haj rupee during a pilgrimage in 1963. “We got the Haj rupee from the Haj Committee of India, before boarding the ship for Jeddah,” Mohammed told this writer. “I managed to preserve a couple of notes, but they were unfortunately lost when I moved out of my official quarters after retirement.”

Devaluation of the rupee

The special notes for the Haj and the Gulf stayed in circulation until the mid-1960s but were slowly being phased out in some countries. This was at a time when Indian economic growth was slow, and the Gulf nations were in the early stages of a boom. Kuwait introduced its own currency as early as 1961 and a few years later, Bahrain followed suit.

The end of the Gulf rupee was, however, precipitated by an important development in India. In June 1966, Indian Finance Minister Sachindra Chaudhuri, with the blessings of Indira Gandhi, announced a devaluation of the rupee. Overnight the exchange rate of the dollar rose to Rs 7.5 from Rs 4.76. Although this decision surprised many, rumours were doing the rounds for several months.

A World Bank team that had visited India in 1965 proposed the idea of devaluation of the rupee to get the economy moving. Media reports of the time suggested that devaluation was one of the West’s preconditions for increasing aid for India’s fourth five-year plan. The decision prompted members of the opposition and the business community to accuse the government of bowing to pressure from the United States and multilateral lending institutions.

The devaluation created a stir in West Asia, with some rulers asking the British government to intervene, since the original arrangement to rely on the Indian rupee was put in place by the British. Such requests were turned down.

Qatar and Dubai withdrew the Gulf rupee from circulation within months of the devaluation of the Indian rupee, with both states temporarily using Saudi riyals. They would subsequently use Qatar and Dubai riyals, which had the same value of the pre-devaluation Indian rupee. Most of the Trucial States followed suit, but Abu Dhabi decided to use the Bahraini dinar, which had an exchange rate of 10 Gulf rupees.

A bank in Al Ain, southeast of Dubai. Dubai withdrew the Gulf rupee from circulation within months of the devaluation of the Indian rupee in 1966. Credit: WAM/AFP

“Consequently, following the introduction of the Qatar and Dubai riyal, the Qatar and Dubai Currency Board made a claim to the Reserve Bank of India for the total amount of sterling originally sent to cover the rupees held by Qatar and Dubai, and not the lesser value of what the Gulf rupees were actually worth,” Symes wrote.

The RBI would deal with each of the Gulf states separately when it came to the settlement of the sterling reserves that it held.

The RBI-issued currency survived in Oman until 1970 and was mostly accepted as legal tender only in the country’s ports. In May 1970, the Saidi rial (named in honour of the House of Al Said) was introduced as a currency in Oman and replaced the Gulf rupee. The new currency was exchanged at par with the sterling. Gulf rupees were exchanged for 21 rupees to the riyal and were redeemed in Bombay by the Omani government. The country’s present currency the Omani rial became the legal tender in 1972.

The Haj and Gulf rupee notes were withdrawn by the RBI in the early 1970s and are now a much-sought after collector’s item. Auctions conducted by Spink & Son have managed to get bids from 120 pounds and VAT for a 10 Gulf rupee note to 44,000 pounds for a 100 Haj rupee note. Collectors and enthusiasts warn of several fake notes being sold for high prices on different e-commerce websites.

Five decades after the Gulf and Haj rupees have ceased to exist, India continues to enjoy strong business and cultural links with Persian Gulf states but the idea of the country getting back the economic clout that newly-independent India enjoyed in West Asia does not look realistic.

Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer and independent journalist, based in Mumbai. He is a Kalpalata Fellow for History & Heritage Writings for 2021.

(Source: Scroll)

Hyderabad’s distinct Chaush community has roots in Yemen

 The Chaush, a diasporic group that has roots in the Hadramawt region of Yemen, came to Hyderabad to work as soldiers in the Nizam’s military, in private militias or as tax collectors.

At a time when Muslims in India are constantly asked to display their nationalism and explain their choices of food, love and profession, it is important to remember that identity is not a monolith. It is historically constructed and multidimensional. Neither can it be restricted by visa and passport regimes on printed paper, nor can it be defined by legal definitions of nationalism and citizenship. It is lived everyday as memories and connections between multiple local, regional and universal contexts.

The Chaush, a distinct diasporic group in Hyderabad that has roots in the Hadramawt region of Yemen, exemplify the possibilities of inhabiting translocal identities, as this essay shows. Chaush is an Ottoman Turkish word that denotes a junior military rank indicating the predominance of soldiers and mercenaries in the early Hadrami migration to Hyderabad centuries ago, from Hadramawt valley or wadi in South Yemen. The scholars and traders of the wadi are subjects of legends and it occupies an important place in early Islamic history. Hadrami Arabs were instrumental in the spread of Islam in the Indian Ocean through complex networks of kinship and economic relationships along its port cities. Through centuries, Hadramis have travelled as religious scholars, traders and mercenaries. Their presence is still written across the Indian Ocean from Comoros Islands to Kerala to Singapore and Indonesia.

Most Hadrami Arabs came to Hyderabad to work as soldiers in the Nizam’s military, irregular forces, in private militias or as jamadars/tax collectors. They also occupied high ranking military positions as officers in the Hyderabad Army. For example, General El Edroos, a Hadrami, was the Commander-in-Chief of the Hyderabad forces when they surrendered to the Indian forces in 1948.

But, as scholars have noted, Arab mercenaries were already a part of the multiple armies, especially Maratha armies, across the Deccan before the British and the Mughal empires started competing for dominance. For example, the Gaikwad Maharaja of Baroda employed many Arab soldiers, including Ja‘far al-Kathiri, whose successors later came to work for the Nizam of Hyderabad and financed the Al Kathiri Sultanate in Hadramawt with the profits they earned in Hyderabad. Another prominent Hadrami family is the Al Quaiti family, a part of Hyderabad’s nobility, which established the important Al Quaiti Sultanate in Hadramawt.

In Hyderabad city, Barkas and Chandrayangutta are both predominantly Chaush neighbourhoods. Names of shops, hospitals and schools in these areas announce this community’s claim on this space. Restaurants serving Mandi and Kahwa (cuisine unique to the community) line all main streets. Chaush men can be identified by their sartorial choices. They wear geometrically patterned lungis or wraps under kurtas. These wraps are available in shops in Barkas, Lad Bazaar and Shehran. These are popularly referred to as sarung, a word that has etymological roots in Indo-Malay and is now a part of the Arabic language. These are popular items that are bought as gifts by relatives or family when they visit Hyderabad from abroad. It is common knowledge among the Chaush that these sarungs are produced in Malaysia and Indonesia, then supplied to the Gulf, from where they are marketed elsewhere.

The garment also allows one to locate the Hadrami diaspora in the larger matrix of global capitalist production and supply chains. During the late colonial period, Hadramis in South East Asia, especially Indonesia, acted as intermediaries in the cloth business. The local batik industry there still remains a site from where the sarung cloth is produced. Similarly, the open ‘Arab style’ sandals have become very popular amongst the Chaush community in the last three decades. These are produced in South East Asia and then supplied from Dubai to Yemen and elsewhere in the Indian Ocean region.

For a Chaush, the distinction between Arab and Hadrami identity is blurred – Arab being a meta-identity that subsumes the Hadrami identity. However, Hyderabadi Hadramis primarily associate themselves with the creolised Chaush identity and as Syed/Mashiekh/Qabail – social stratification systems of Hadramawt. Therefore, Chaush identity is truly translocal – diasporic yet stratified on traditional lines. It is regional – Arab and Hadrami at the same time. Most importantly, Chaush identity is also universal – most are members of Shafi’i Maddhab (Sunni sect) yet in Hyderabad it is not uncommon for various Sunni sects to pray together.

Modern Yemeni and Indian nation-states complicate the Chaush identity because the homogenising narratives of these postcolonial nation-states affirm ideas of fixed borders and reified identities. However, for the Chaush, the links with Hadramawt as a geographic entity or a socio-political imaginary allows for demarcation of boundaries of their identity. Yet, state-centric definitions of ‘host society’ and ‘home country’ are too limited to capture or understand these meanings.

Hadrami naming patterns can be witnessed across Chandrayangutta and Barkas

The word watan comes closest to the idea of a homeland for the Chaush.  Watan does not mean a nation-state, but it is an interplay of translocal geographies of origin/s, that is, regions, cities or villages. For the Chaush, members born in Hadramawt or watan are called Wilayati (literally foreign born; a person born in Hadramawt ‘the homeland’ is still a foreigner to the creole) and those born outside the homeland (diasporic) are called Muwalladin (foreign born creole/of mixed parentage, hence non-pure), denying the possibility of authentic or the stress to retain a ‘pure’ core or a ‘syncretic’ present – in practices, customs, traditions or language. Hadramis born in India are called Mawlluwd-e-Hind. Chaush means both Wilayati as well as Muwallad. A Chaush never belongs.

The movement of the muwalladin as a historic diaspora also gets reflected in the current trends of migrating to the Gulf within the Chaush community in Hyderabad. Post police action, most Chaush found themselves stripped of their normative privileges and status, and ended up participating in the informal sectors of the postcolonial Indian State. 

Today, the community finds it difficult to compete with those who have more social capital in terms of access and education. Almost all Chaush households have one or more members working in the Gulf. Economic migration to the Gulf began in the 1960s, however, it intensified in the 1970s with relaxed passport and visa regimes.

Migrating to the Gulf is preferable to working in Hyderabad for most Chaush, not only because it offers better economic opportunities, but also because there is a relative ease with the idea of moving within the Indian Ocean area. Therefore, given the high demand for labour in the Gulf markets and the established networks that this community has, it is easier to transcend the disadvantages it faces at ‘home’ by migrating. Interestingly, many Chaush women – young and old – who have not been to newer malls and markets in Hyderabad, know street names and malls in Dubai and Jeddah.

The Chaush identity defies notions of authenticity. This diaspora affirms that a ‘lived everyday’ is located in between historically contingent local/s and universal. For them translocal mobility is normal. It opens up questions regarding different ideas of assimilation and integration that have prevailed in the non-west, specifically in the Indian Ocean region. And offers new frames for understanding concepts like homeland, host society, and notions of belonging.

The point above cannot be emphasised enough in a time when within India, many intellectuals – public and otherwise – are trying to ‘defend’ Indian Muslims by pitting a limited local syncretic South Asian Islam against the universal barbaric global Islam. This practice is not only intellectually dangerous for it presents a part of Indian Muslims identity as its whole, but also because it is laced with the remains of orientalised ideas of Islam. The idea that universal Islam is the other of the modern world has been witnessed in multiple guises since enlightenment – sometimes as racism, sometimes as development and sometimes as a defence of human rights. The work of South Asianists, which implicitly borrows from this dichotomy of a bad revivalist global Muslim versus a Good Indian syncretic Muslim, only reinforced Islamophobic tropes and suspicions against an already vulnerable population. Hence, the Indian Ocean region, Deccan and Hyderabad offer a methodological possibility for us to develop a more inclusive approach to identity formation.

Author: Khatija Khader completed her PhD at Jawaharlal Nehru University and currently teaches at the Centre for International Relations, Islamic University for Science and Technology (IUST) in Kashmir. Views expressed are the author’s own.

(Source: TNM)

What if Indian states were countries

 If we compare Indian states to India’s neighbourhood, we find that only Goa, Sikkim, and NCT of Delhi have a GDP per capita higher than China’s GDP per capita of $16,772.

India is the seventh largest country in the world in terms of area and has the second largest population in the world at 1.36 billion. In 2015, The Economist called it “a continent masquerading as a country.” Taking this thought forward, CEDA is starting a series where we will look at how Indian states compare with other countries in the world.

Representational image | People at a market place in Ranchi | Bloomberg Photo

In the picture above, we have tried to find countries comparable to Indian states based on GDP per capita (International Dollars, purchasing power parity). According to the World Bank, “an international dollar would buy in the cited country a comparable amount of goods and services a U.S. dollar would buy in the United States.” Purchasing power parity refers to the rate of conversion that equalizes the purchasing power of different currencies by eliminating the differences in price levels between countries.

When we hover over a state in the heat map above, we can see the state’s GDP per capita in the year 2019 and the country closest to it in terms of GDP per capita in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms.

For example, when we hover over Goa, we see that the GDP per capita (International Dollars, PPP) is $21,922. An equivalent country for Goa is the Caribbean country, Antigua and Barbuda with GDP per capita of $22,460. Goa is also the state with the highest GDP per capita in India.

Sikkim ranks second in the country with a per capita GDP of $20,098 which is like Belarus which has a GDP per capita of $20,099. The NCT of Delhi follows Sikkim at third place with a GDP per capita of $17,808 and finds itself at par with North Macedonia ($17,583).

Among south Indian states, Telangana at $10,857 finds itself at par with Iraq in GDP per capita terms while Karnataka ($10,644) and Kerala (10,572) have similar GDP per capita as Jordan ($10,497). Andhra Pradesh ($7,835) is at par with Morocco ($7,856).

Uttar Pradesh has a GDP per capita of $3,310 which is like the west African nation, Benin ($3,426). Bihar has the lowest GDP per capita in India at $2,076 and it is at the same level as another west African nation, Guinea-Bissau ($2,021).

States domestic product for the year 2019 has been taken from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. GDP per capita for Indian states has been calculated using official population projections for 2019 based on Census 2011 and figures in Indian Rupee have been converted to International Dollars on PPP basis using OECD’s conversion factor. Other countries GDP per capita for 2019 has been taken from the World Bank.

If we compare Indian states to India’s neighbourhood, we find that only Goa, Sikkim, and NCT of Delhi have a GDP per capita higher than China’s GDP per capita of $16,772.

Author: Vibhav Khandelwal is a student of economics and finance at Ashoka University. Views are personal.

(Source: The Print)

Mahatma Gandhi disagreed with Rabindranath Tagore on many things. Here’s where they agreed

 An excerpt from ‘Tagore and Gandhi: Walking Alone, Walking Together’, by Rudrangshu Mukherjee.

In spite of the divergence in their philosophical and spiritual perspectives, there were some fundamental issues on which they were in complete agreement. These are no less important. One was their commitment to service which was at the core of what Rabindranath, in his first letter to Gandhi, referred to as their common sadhana. Gandhi embodied service to the people. This was his calling, his life. He could thus say towards the end of his life, “My life is my message.” He made dedicated service for the common people a “talisman” for decisions, policies, etc.:

“I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away.”

Gandhi’s commitment to service is so well known, it does not need any reiteration, but Rabindranath’s work in this sphere is less noticed as he is seen more as a creative artist.

Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi.

From the time he began touring parts of the Bengal countryside to look after his family’s landed estates, he became concerned and then involved with the welfare of the people who lived in the villages. He wrote about these problems in his essays [...L]ater on in his life he devoted himself to the welfare and the development of villages around Santiniketan. His aim was to structure the economy of these villages to make the people self-reliant in an environment whose principle would not be self-interest but co-operation. He wrote:

“The symptoms of our miseries cannot be removed from the outside, their causes must be extirpated from within. If we wish to do this, we must undertake two tasks; first to educate everyone in the land, so as to unite them mentally with all the world...Secondly, to unite them among themselves in the sphere of their livelihood, so as to bring about their union with the world through their work.”

Rabindranath’s concern and dedication to service to the poor was reflected in his creative work – especially his short stories and in some of his novels. Witness Gora’s restless endeavour to work among and for the poor; and also the depiction of the character of Jethamoshai (uncle) in the novel Chaturanga.

For both Gandhi and Rabindranath, the dedication to service for the poor was integrally connected to their vision of swaraj. Neither of them understood swaraj as mere political freedom from British rule. This political freedom was to be complemented by the emancipation of human beings.

What constituted this dimension of swaraj? It was constituted by the ability and the empowerment of individuals to regulate and run their own lives independent of external institutions like the state. Individuals should have the strength to fearlessly conduct their own daily lives. Gandhi emphasised abhaya (fearlessness) and Rabindranath atmashakti (soul force) – the two notions were inseparable and could only grow out of service and responsibility. Rabindranath wrote, “For India, true freedom is social freedom: the freedom to do good...”

Rabindranath expressed his vision of swaraj in a famous song which roughly translated goes as, “We are all kings in the kingdom of our king”. If everyone was sovereign, there was no necessity for a king. Gandhi approximated to the same idea through his vision of “enlightened anarchy”. He wrote in January 1939:

“Political power, in my opinion, cannot be our ultimate aim. It is one of the means used by men for their all-round advancement. The power to control national life through national representatives is called political power. 

Representatives will become unnecessary if the national life becomes so perfect as to be self-controlled. It will then be a state of enlightened anarchy in which each person will become his own ruler. He will conduct himself in such a way that his behaviour will not hamper the well-being of his neighbours. In an ideal State there will be no political institution and therefore no political power.”

Their vision of swaraj was embedded in ahimsa – another idea that converged in the sadhana of Gandhi and Rabindranath. For both of them, ahimsa represented a moral force which in India was pitched against British rule. It was, however, a moral force for the whole of humanity. Both had stood on the principle of ahimsa and had withdrawn from movements in which they had played a critical part when they saw those movements deviating from non-violence and deploying coercion and violence.

It was in one such conjuncture during the Swadeshi movement that Rabindranath had stepped aside from the movement and in great mental anguish composed that memorable song, “Ekla cholo re”. If no one answers to your call, walk alone. Gandhi made this song his life’s motto and lived it when he walked away from the Non-cooperation Movement after the violence at Chauri Chaura and then again in the last months of his life when he refused to be part of negotiations to partition India and walked away alone to Noakhali to pursue his life’s calling of service to the poor, of ahimsa, and abhaya.

Since ahimsa was one of the pillars of their lives, Rabindranath and Gandhi saw India (and the world) in terms of harmony, free from hatred of any kind, religious and racial. Their idea of India was inclusive and assimilative, and they were anguished when they saw that idea and ideal of India being ripped apart by sectarian violence.

Rabindranath was spared the tragedy of witnessing Partition and the communal violence that preceded and followed it. He had to suffer though the spectacle of global violence in the months before his death. Gandhi had to live through the violence of Partition, and according to those who knew him, was never quite the same person after that experience. He told Nirmal Bose towards the end of his life, “I don’t want to be a failure. But I may be a failure.” As an apostle of non-violence he fell a victim to violence.

Through the expressions of difference and respect for each other, Gandhi and Rabindranath set an example of debating and deliberating on public, social, and political questions. They formed a legacy of public reasoning. They debated without acrimony. This is an essential constituent of the Gandhi-Rabindranath heritage – a beacon as India walks the razor’s edge to fashion a society that is inclusive, free of bigotry and hatred, and informed by civilised discussion and discourse. Through their words and their deeds Rabindranath and Gandhi taught us to:

“...Sing with mortal voice...unchanged ...
Though fallen on evil days,
On evil days though fallen and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compast round,
And solitude; yet not alone...” 

Excerpted with permission from Tagore and Gandhi: Walking Alone, Walking Together, Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Aleph Book Company.

(Source: Scroll)