Planes, Trains, and Auto-Rickshaws

by Laura Pedersen

  Meantime, it might be a good idea to burn whatever high school history textbooks suggest that America is number one in everything it does. As much as I love these United States, according to a 2010 Newsweek study of the best countries to live in, America ranks number eleven. It didn’t even make the top ten. We still have some work to do. George Bernard Shaw once described patriotism as “the conviction that a particular country is superior to all others because you were born in it.”

  Finally, as with most types of social progress, change tends to happen over time. A number of Indian matrimonial ads say that caste doesn’t matter. This may mean that caste doesn’t matter, or it may mean that a person of low caste is looking for a spouse. On the bright side, I was told by a number of parents currently seeking mates for their children that if the potential partner is educated and has a good job, then caste really isn’t an issue.

  Boldface Names

  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948). The main thing is to remember where the H goes in Gandhi. My aunt Sarah had her H floating all over the show throughout elementary school, according to her exacting older sister, a.k.a. my alleged biological mother. Gandhi, known to millions as the Mahatma, is the father figure of Indian nationalism and known for the famous quote “Be the change you wish to see in the world” (which is actually a bumper sticker version of what he really said). People are often surprised to discover that Gandhi, who was from an upper-caste family, didn’t start his career as a yogi, but rather as a University of London–trained lawyer.

  Gandhi entered into an arranged marriage with Kasturbai Makanji (later known as Kasturba) in a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony, when he was thirteen and she was fourteen, which was not unusual for the time. When Gandhi was fifteen, they had their first son, who died, and they went on to have four more sons who would survive to adulthood. Gandhi renounced sexual relations with his wife when he was thirty-six without giving her a choice in the matter, nor, it would appear, the option to go elsewhere.

  Gandhi had a stormy relationship with his oldest son, Harilal. He wouldn’t allow his son to accept a scholarship to study law in London, so the boy ran away and became an alcoholic embezzler whom Gandhi ultimately disowned. When his second son, Manilal, was caught in a cuddle with a young married Indian woman, Gandhi talked her into shaving her head and convinced Manilal to accept a lifelong vow of chastity. The three children he later fathered with his wife Sushila suggest that the pledge didn’t hold. A 2007 movie titled Gandhi, My Father shows a slightly darker daddy dearest side to the man depicted in schoolbooks around the world as a dearly beloved leader and caused considerable controversy when it was released in India. However, members of the family, such as great-grandson Tushar Gandhi, who called it “deeply moving and very finely balanced,” approved of the film. At the end of the day, it must be difficult to have a world-famous father whose time and attention is in demand by so many others. Franklin Delano Roosevelt comes to mind, who was elected to four terms as president of the United States, while his six offspring led tumultuous lives.

  The politically savvy Gandhi introduced large-scale satyagraha, resistance to tyranny through mass nonviolent protests. He paved the road to independence by organizing nationwide campaigns to assist farmers and urban laborers, fight poverty, end discrimination against untouchables, improve the position of women (Gandhi favored permitting widows to remarry and the abolition of child marriage), and spearheading noncooperation campaigns against the British. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was influenced by Gandhi, as evidenced by his calls for peaceful marches and sit-ins. (Fun fact: Martin Luther King Jr. was born Michael King Jr. and his father changed both their names.) Interestingly, Gandhi’s reading of American author and tax resistor Henry David Thoreau’s essay Civil Disobedience had reinforced his ideas about refusing to obey laws that were discriminatory through nonviolent forms of resistance and protest. Going back one step further, Thoreau had read the Eastern philosophical Hindu works Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads.

  South Africa’s Nelson Mandela would similarly find inspiration in both Gandhi and King as he called for boycotts and nonviolent protests to end oppression by a white minority. Gandhi was actually working as a lawyer in South Africa when he started his life as an activist by protesting government discrimination against Indians who were living there. His faith in nonviolence was so complete that he believed women being raped should not fight their attackers but defeat them through submission and silence, and that European Jews should employ passive resistance against Hitler.

  The Mahatma preached and practiced self-discipline and celibacy and frequently fasted. He concluded that by avoiding desire he was not abolishing it, so he allowed physical contact with women and in that way supposedly conquered his urges. However, insiders were shocked to discover that Gandhi was occasionally found lying naked in bed with a young woman, also unclothed and sometimes related, such as Manu, his eighteen-year-old grandniece, or else Abha, the wife of his grandnephew. These situations were always chaste, according to Gandhi.

  As Gandhi was about to address a prayer meeting on January 30, 1948, just six months after Indian independence, he was shot to death by Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse. Hindu extremists were angry at Gandhi because he’d finally agreed to Partition (even though it was by then a fait accompli) and because he advocated peace with the Muslims (or “appeasement of Muslims,” in the words of his assassin). Brutality was being rained down upon Hindus in Pakistan and Kashmir (likewise, there was violence toward Muslims by Hindus in India), and Hindu separatists wanted to knock the Muslims back into the eighth century without interference from the Mahatma.

  When Gandhi first began campaigning against British rule, they looked upon him with amusement. Two decades later, they regarded him as a brilliant leader, consummate politician, and the greatest threat to their continued dominance of the subcontinent. However, some modern historians argue that the British were prepared to relinquish India by the 1940s, and Gandhi’s fierce stand for independence didn’t play much of a role in the decision.

  Modern-day Indian journalists and historians often give Gandhi a mixed report card. There is criticism about how he handled Partition and also of his rural romanticism. Gandhi mandated that village life be India’s soul, along with simplicity and humility, thus he wasn’t a proponent of industrialization, modernization, technology, or even constitutional democracy. Railroads, telegraphs, foreign goods, lawyers, doctors, hospitals, and birth control all had to go, as far as the Mahatma was concerned. “If there were no hospitals for venereal diseases or even for consumptives, we would have less consumption, and less sexual vice amongst us.” (The fickle finger of fate has made the country home to several Gandhi Hospitals and the Gandhi Medical College.) Nevertheless, Indians, like most people, turned out to have a predilection for healthcare and consumerism. Furthermore, a philosophy of nonviolence isn’t exactly tenable in a nuclear nation whose military is regularly called upon to address border disputes. Meantime, kids without video games and texting? Forget it.

  Still, Indians continue to be sensitive about Gandhi’s reputation, and as recently as 2011, the government of Gandhi’s home state of Gujarat banned the book Great Soul by former New York Times editor and Pulitzer Prize-winner Joseph Lelyveld for discussing a close friendship Gandhi had with a German man who was probably a homosexual. I’m not sure how book banning squares with democracy, but I guess it’s better than issuing a fatwa (Islamic death sentence) like the one that landed on Indian-born writer Salman Rushdie’s head after publishing The Satanic Verses, compliments of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. No matter, an irreverent depiction of sacred leaders is still the fastest and cheapest way to create a best seller.

  Finally, I find it odd that Gandhi was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Especially when you consider that during the same period, one went to US secretary of state Cordell Hull (in 1945), who advised President Roosevelt to send back to Europe the SS St. Louis, which carried 936 asylum-seeking Jews, most of whom
were later killed in the Holocaust. One of Gandhi’s greatest contributions to political activism, which we’ve recently seen used to enormous effect across the Middle East and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States, is the practice of bringing together large numbers of highly motivated and disciplined protesters in public places. The white loincloth as spiritual statement may not have withstood the test of time, but he certainly succeeded in utilizing the collective power of moral authority, especially when spotlighted by international media. At the Gandhi museum in Ahmadabad, this is one of his many quotes featured: “The Seven Deadly Sins are wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, business without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principle.” And that alone was worth the price of admission.

  Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) was a poet and freedom fighter also known as The Nightingale of India. A fierce activist in the Independence movement, she also lectured around the country on child welfare, fair labor practices, Hindu-Muslim unity and women’s rights. During one campaign for home rule, she was jailed for twenty-one months along with Gandhi. They became close friends, and apparently the Mahatma didn’t mind Naidu calling him Mickey Mouse. Naidu knew that Gandhi’s ashram compound on the banks of the Sabarmati River, where it was forbidden to kill even snakes, didn’t generate enough income to stay solvent and therefore required financing by Ahmadabad textile magnates and Bombay shipping barons, which gave rise to her most famous quip: “It took a lot of money to keep him in poverty.” Naidu also said, “When there is oppression, the only self-respecting thing is to rise and say this shall cease today.” She was so concerned about the world’s downtrodden that she even managed a trip to New York in 1928 to call attention to the plight of Native Americans and African Americans. Naidu was the first woman to become president of the Indian National Congress and the governor of an Indian state. Her immensely popular poetry celebrated contemporary Indian life and featured beggars, fishermen, widows, peddlers, milkmaids, dancers, and rickshaw drivers.

  Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964). This is not a Spanish dude, and so, yes, you pronounce the J. Nehru was an Indian statesman and the first prime minister of an independent India, from 1947 until his death, in 1964. Nehru and his politically active father, Motilal Nehru, along with Mahatma Gandhi, were sometimes referred to as the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Nehru worked closely with Britain’s Lord Mountbatten during the transition to home rule, and most believe that Lady Mountbatten and the widowed Nehru were in the throes of a passionate love affair. Even Lady Mountbatten’s own children later admitted that she was a hard gal to keep on the verandah. Nehru was a student of history, nuanced thinker, talented strategist, and truly deserving of his title the Architect of Modern India. He brought democracy, secularism, and socialism to a society built on regionalism, tribalism, and religion. Nehru even went so far as to ensure that the constitution granted some basic rights to women.

  Nehru clearly had his sights set on becoming the first prime minister during the lead-up to Independence. But when Gandhi saw that there was a bad moon on the rise with regard to the Muslims wanting to break off and form Pakistan, the clever peacemaker suggested that Nehru allow Mohammed Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslims, to become the first prime minister of a united India to demonstrate that Hindus and Muslims could live side by side in harmony. Although Jinnah tried to keep it a secret, Gandhi and Nehru knew that he suffered from tuberculosis and lung cancer and would not be in charge of anything for long, so Nehru would soon have his chance. Jinnah smoked like a chimney and was rarely far from a bottle of whiskey, and there are those who say he even ate ham sandwiches, all of which happen to be on most Muslims’ list of Things Not To Do. Besides that, he didn’t favor traditional Muslim dress, rarely entered a mosque, spoke little Urdu, and couldn’t recite from the Koran. Nevertheless, Nehru wanted to be the first prime minister rather than the second prime minister and so the offer, which, had it been accepted, might have prevented the bloodshed of more than a million people following Partition, was never made. And if it had been made, Jinnah, by then in favor of starting his own Muslim democracy, would most likely have rejected the proposal. Consequently, Jinnah became the first governor-general of Pakistan, on August 15, 1947, and did indeed die just over a year later, on September 11, 1948.

  Jawaharlal Nehru went on to become India’s longest-serving prime minister to date and spawned a dynasty, with his daughter and grandson becoming prime ministers and his great-grandson currently next in line. Despite being raised in a Hindu family, Nehru was an atheist who went so far as to write, “Religion as practiced in India has become the old man of the sea for us and it has not only broken our backs but stifled and almost killed all originality of thought or mind.” For this reason, he’d specifically requested not to have a Hindu funeral. However, his politically astute daughter thought otherwise and gave him a traditional Hindu wake, followed by cremation on a funeral pyre lit by his grandson.

  You’re not truly international until a drink, like a Bloody Mary or Earl Grey tea, or a garment, such as the Che beret or the bright red Garibaldi shirt, is named after you. The unisex hip-length tailored jacket with a round stand-up collar favored by India’s first prime minister is to this day known as a Nehru jacket.

  Fun fact: Gandhi, Jinnah, and Nehru were all born in India but trained as lawyers in England.

  Indira Gandhi (1917–1984). Isn’t she Mahatma Gandhi’s daughter or granddaughter? No. Indira Priyadarshini Nehru was the only daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru and his wife, Kamala. The man who married Indira was a Parsi, born Feroze Gandhy, but during the late 1930s began to spell his last name as Gandhi. At least that’s the official version. Any Indian will happily tell you how this is all a big cover-up because Feroze was born a Muslim with the family name of Khan, and it was plain to see that Indira would not have a political future with such a husband. So Feroze supposedly asked Mahatma Gandhi to approve this love match, which hadn’t been arranged by their parents and, in fact, was generally frowned upon. Gandhi ostensibly agreed and adopted Feroze so that the young suitor could change his name to Gandhi.

  Indira Ghandi, who first took the reins as prime minister in 1966, would become one of the most powerful women in the world, which seems paradoxical in a country that was known for subjugating women. Indira claimed that she did not fancy herself a feminist and frequently extolled the virtues of being a mother and homemaker. Yet she referred to women as “the biggest oppressed minority in the world” and said that Indian women were handicapped from birth.

  Interestingly, there’s a tradition of dynastic politics in South Asia where women often rise to prominence as the daughters or wives of powerful men, many of whom have been assassinated or else the victims of violence. Pakistan’s eleventh prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, inherited the political mantle of her father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was overthrown in 1977 and executed two years later. (Benazir would be assassinated while campaigning in 2007.) In Sri Lanka, Sirimavo Bandaranaike rose to power after the assassination of her husband, W. R. D. Bandaranaike, in 1959. And in Bangladesh, for a time the two most prominent opposition leaders were the daughter and widow of assassinated former presidents. However, the nepotism reality show prize goes to the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where the 1987 death of chief minister and former film star M. G. Ramachandran sparked waves of looting and rioting across the entire state that lasted for a month. Ramchandran’s wife and mistress both fought publicly to succeed him. His wife of twenty-four years triumphed over his mistress (who preferred to be called a “protégée”), but that didn’t last long and they ended up forming a coalition in 1988. Corazon Aquino was the first woman president of the Philippines (1986–1992) and despite being a self-proclaimed “plain housewife,” had been married to the popular Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., who was assassinated in 1983. (BTW, Aquino is not the shoe lady—that was Imelda, widow of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos.) The fir
st female president of Indonesia (2001–2004), Megawati Sukarnoputri, just happened to be the daughter of the country’s first president, Sukarno. And in August 2011, Yingluck Shinawatra was sworn in as the first female prime minister of Thailand. Coincidentally, her brother, ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, lives in exile after having been overthrown in a 2006 military coup while facing charges of authoritarianism and corruption. (The Supreme Court later found him guilty of abnormal wealth and seized $232 million of his frozen assets.)

  Indira Gandhi went on to be elected prime minister four times and dominated the subcontinent for almost two decades. The period was not without controversy, particularly when she suspended democracy for twenty-one months between 1975 and 1977.

  In June of 1984, Indira Gandhi ordered Operation Bluestar, in which Indian military was used to remove Sikh separatists (they wanted a Sikh homeland in the Punjab area) from the previously mentioned Golden Temple in Amritsar, where they were amassing weapons. Government-generated reports claimed that 83 soldiers died along with 492 civilians, although independent estimates put the number as high as 8,000. As a result, the operation was highly controversial. Four months later, on October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Following that, more than 5,000 Sikhs were killed in anti-Sikh rioting.

  Indira’s son Rajiv Gandhi served as prime minister from his mother’s death until his defeat in 1989. On May 21, 1991, while out campaigning for a party member, he was killed by a female suicide bomber, along with fourteen others. The attack was meant as vengeance by a group of separatist guerillas in Sri Lanka, where Rajiv had sent a peacekeeping force while prime minister.