Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Seventeen days in India in the summer of 2010 - Some Final Impressions

By Rabbi Jonathan Miller

Temple Emanu-El, Birmingham, Alabama

(Traveled with Revs. Robert Hurst, Ray Dunmyer, A.B. Sutton, Steve Jones, Barry Vaughn, Ed Hurley)

India barrages your senses. There is constant stimulation and noise which challenge my mind, spirit and senses. For me, there was very little quiet. I am not a quiet person. I like to go and do and take in the world, which fascinates me more than ever, even as I am well-traveled and getting older. What a planet that God has provided for us!

There are many different Indias, and in this I am including Bangladesh. And we saw a lot of them. There is the India of holy men and women, the India of beggars and hawkers, the India of color and smell (not all of it lovely, mind you!) and great food, the India of people trying to make a living and getting from one place to another in a sea of people. Even though we are each created in the image of God, every human being is different. We have our own particular desires and fears and wants and needs. But every human being is the same here, too. We are all struggling in one way or another, some to find a place to sleep, to get from one place to another, to escape the heat, to be secure, to find some sense of meaning in a place that teems with life and where we each want to be somebody in some fashion.

Who are the Indian people? India is a funny country. It is much like America, only a whole lot older. Who are the Indian People? They are Brahmins and Untouchables, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Punjabis, Bengalis, Tibetans and Tamils—and those were only the people we came across. India has nearly as many people as China, and if Pakistan and Bangladesh are added to the mix, this subcontinent is the most populous part of the world. India has 17 official languages. Each language reflects a diverse culture, ethnic group, religious outlook, and cuisine, mode of dress and world view. It is astounding. At first glance, all the Indians look alike to western eyes. But after spending some time here, we were able to discern some of the many differences that distinguish Indians from each other. And who are the true Indians? Are they the Hindu holy men, the sophisticated urbanites, the anglophile cricket players, the tchai guy on the train, the business tycoons, the poor farmers, the porters who hang out at the train station to bring the bags to the rickshaw or tuk tuk, the plastic bottle collectors, or the computer engineers? Just who are these folks, who have been able to absorb cultures and invaders and empire makers, and somehow spit them out or turn them all into Indians? Indians swallow those who come to conquer and rule. Who are the Indians? The Moguls from Mongolia built many of the India’s greatest buildings, often on top of Hindu monuments and temples. Then the British came and engaged many of the rajas to help them rule the population and make them rich. India is the world’s oldest civilization, but it doesn’t have a coherent identity. So in the family of nations, this country is much like Israel on a far grander scale: the oldest of civilizations in the youngest of countries. And while it is all very confusing and difficult to understand, this country is advancing, lurching forward. It is both a backward third world country and a developing economic powerhouse.

Beggars: My heart breaks every time somebody comes to my car or approaches me on the street or touches my arm or follows me for a block asking for some rupees. The money means nothing to me. But it is impossible to give to these people. There are just too many of them. And many of them are not so sad. The mother who sends the brother out with the baby to beg for food is doing what culturally she is permitted to do. Beggars are a way of life in India. Our guides have repeatedly told us that many of them even have bank accounts and pay off the police so they can stay in their corner unmolested. Begging is a business. But then there is the boy with the hunched back or the kid with deformed legs and missing limbs. And you just have to walk by because there will be another kid on the next block, and then another and then another. And they look particularly for the guy who has grey hair and a belly wearing a red wicked shirt, and they know that he has the money in his pocket. And you don’t give because you have given, and you begin to feel annoyed at them for their poverty and patheticness and for their laying the guilt trip on you which is their business after all, and you wonder to yourself, “Hey, I just saw at 8:00 in the morning all these clean cut kids in school uniforms going to get an education and you are walking around with your baby brother or sister who is wearing just a shmutzik shirt and nothing covering the bottom, and what the hell is going to happen to you and your baby brother or sister ten years from now, if that is even your brother or sister that you are carrying around—who knows what is going on in this country?” And this doesn’t leave you.

Hustle: Everybody has to hustle, here. And few people are what they seem to be. And you never know who is who. Well, maybe if I lived here, I would get the place, but I really don’t know. I don’t know who owns the hotel and who works there. I don’t know who owns their rickshaw, and who rents it for a few rupees every day, hoping to earn back his investment. I don’t know who works in the shop and who the shopkeepers are. I don’t know who the head of the hawkers is and who works for these modern day Fagans. (Somebody has to provide the post cards and elephant statues to the street hawks who hunt us down as prey.) Our guides have a habit of taking us to stores that provide good merchandise. That is ok. They get a kickback of up to 10% of what we spend. That is ok too. Everybody has to make a living, and they take us to reputable stores that sell quality stuff (I think!). Our guide in Delhi took us out for a $30 per person lunch. The food was good, but I am sure that this restaurant belonged to his brother in law or his friend from the madrassahs, who will kick back 25% for the privilege of bilking us naïve Americans. In Amritsar, we sat with a common merchant, a poor shopkeeper. It turns out that he and his sons own a rather sizeable import export business, that they commission their carpets and jewelry, and that they export spices to Paramus, NJ. You never know who is who in this country. And everybody does what they have to do to get by. In candid conversations with our guides, in every part of this country, they bemoan the corruption that is endemic in government as the country’s biggest problem. But everybody goes to the till and milks every opportunity for what it is worth. It is frustrating. On the other hand, life is tenuous in India, and I believe that everybody is afraid of one day becoming a rickshaw driver, either in this world or through the karmic rules of eternal engagement, in the next life. Maybe this is what keeps them going all the time, all the time going.

Animals: Ok, let’s count ‘em. Cows and bulls and monkeys and donkeys and goats and dogs who bark in the middle of the night (all of them stray) and a few cats, snakes and a mouse who traveled with us for a day—so many of these that after a while may as well stop taking pictures of them. What am I going to do with 50 pictures of monkeys climbing on rooftops or cows blocking the road consuming copious amounts of garbage? All part of India.

Garbage: Another plaint is the mounds of garbage that can be found in the cities and in the countryside, on the sides of the road and in most every corner of this country. People in their cars throw garbage out the window. People toss stuff around without care. People squat on the side of the road or the railroad tracks to do what people have to do, and then get up and walk away. We visited the Indian War Memorial Monument in Delhi. It was beautiful, a sandstone Arc de Triomphe with an eternal flame below and the names of 15 thousand of India’s 90 thousand casualties from the First World War carved on its walls. It was Sunday, and people come to picnic and hang out. Delhi’s government buildings are spectacular. The area is reminiscent of the National Mall in Washington, DC, only the buildings are built from Sandstone, instead of white marble. It is truly beautiful. When we went to visit the War Memorial, I was shocked at the amount of trash strewn all over the park. I watched people buying food from vendors, and then throwing their trash on the ground—even though garbage bins stood only three steps away.

Religion: We came for religion, and we got train rides, car wrecks, beggars and hustlers, great food, awesome tourist sites, nice people and we cemented wonderful friendships within our group. Most of the Indian people we met could not have been nicer. There was always someone to carry your bag, sell you a post card, show you the bathroom and help you out. Some of them were mercenary. But most were quite nice. But we came for religion.

And man o man, we got religion. We got the missionaries and the Sisters of Charity and the Hindus on the Ganges with Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and the 33,000,000 gods found in the Hindu texts. We got mass and mantras, prayer wheels and calls to prayer, flags and banners, noise and stillness, meditation and ostentation, colors and sights and smells and sounds of faith that never have entered the Western imagination. Hindu, Catholic, Muslim, Baha’i, Buddhist, Protestant, and Sufi and Sikh all live together in relative accord, except of course when they don’t. But most of the time they do. And that is so remarkable.

Why have all these religions taken such great hold in India and Bangladesh? Why have all these religions been so ripe and powerful and potent in this place—let’s say, as compared to France or Britain or even the United States for that matter? What about this place empowers visionaries and holy men to come up with new ideas imbued with a deep spirituality? I have been giving this some thought, and here are my ideas. I wonder if my colleagues feel the same.

Most of the strongest Indian religions are not doctrinaire. This is different from the Muslim and Christian west. If you want to pray to Shiva, fine, that is up to you. If you want to meditate and practice detachment, fine, that is up to you. In Hinduism, there are 33,000,000 million gods, and in Buddhism there are none. Go figure it out. Our Abrahamic faith traditions (Judaism less so than the others) define themselves on doctrines, and historically have spent a good amount of treasure and compulsion to enforce these doctrines. We have one God, and that God is demanding. But not Hinduism or Buddhism, the two “biggies” that started on the subcontinent. Their answer to everything religious was, “fine, it is up to you.” So even when Islam came, it had to compete with this non-doctrinaire attitude about what is right and wrong in religious life. So even Islam in Bangladesh and India too, is less strict and more focused on the freedom of choice among the adherents than it is in Arabia. Fine, it is up to you.
Secondly, the notion of reincarnation which plays so large a role in Hinduism and Buddhism would seem to add to the mix, giving poor people hope that they will only be tormented in this life, and be better able to hunker down and deal with what life brings when it brings it in whatever life it comes. Reincarnation and detachment play a role with each other, I am sure.

Shalom, and time to get home, already.

Your Opinion Matters!

Rabbi Jonathan Miller has served Temple Emanu-El on Birmingham’s South Side for twenty years. He is an inveterate traveler, and returned from India and Bangladesh on a group sponsored by the Institute for Clergy Excellence.