TV Review: The Birth of Empire – The East India Company

The BBC has at times a fascination with India and almost every few months it seems a BBC television crew is in Calcutta. Notably Rick Stein has been there, and Ian Hislop began a Great Railway Journey at the Calcutta Club. One of my favourite programmes on India was Alexander Frater’s Monsoon where he ended up in Cherrapunji, reputedly the wettest place on earth. For me it invoked memories of Assam where I spent a monsoon as a child. I much enjoyed Brian Cox’s Jute Journey where he focussed on the Dundee Scots who made their working lives in Bengal managing jute factories. Recently Anita Rani drove around in India on Four Wheels. There have been some TV misses as well: Paul Merton in India and Caroline Quentin: A Passage Through India come to mind although these weren’t BBC productions. Nevertheless I did look forward to The Birth of Empire.

Sitting down to watch this two-partner presented by Dan Snow I waited for my first cliché and sure enough it came: “The Jewel in the Crown”.  It is always remarkable that a small European country of 4 million people managed to colonise an entire sub-continent then of 190 million and producing perhaps one quarter of the world’s output.

The facts of the East India Company are well-known: a joint stock company given a monopoly by the English Crown to pursue trade in India at the start of the seventeenth century. Company employees find cloth, spices, tea, diamonds, pearls and pepper on the Coromandel Coast near modern day Chennai (Madras) after setting up a trading post in 1639. Ships journey to and from India, trade increases, the company makes vast profits, and consolidates its positions. More trading posts are created, there were 22 in the eighteenth century, with new warehouses and citadels, and the foundations of Bombay and Calcutta created. The East India Company and not the British government is the sovereign power, forging agreements with the local princes, overseeing justice, raising taxes, and maintaining probably what was then the largest standing army in the world.

Fabrics in particular are the major commodity comprising 60% of the Company’s revenues. And the Company begins to practice the concept of listening to the English customer who prize hand printed chintzes, and their brilliant and fasted colours. The initial period saw the beginning of a hot drink culture, tea and coffee, and the influence of spices, which of course leads to the situation today when chicken tikka Masala is almost an indigenous UK invention. Calcutta becomes the centre of British India and remains so till 1911 when the Bengalis are agitating for independence.

The programmes have a strong focus on the East India Company employees who arrive in India, with jobs oiled by nepotism and corruption – plus ca change in India today. The employees were allowed to engage in private trading which made many of them enormously rich by contemporary standards.

But while great wealth was a possibility the risks were high. Huge numbers died because of the heat and diseases like dysentery and malaria. In one year one-third of the Europeans in Calcutta during monsoon perished.  Snow spends some time at the Park Street Cemetery in Calcutta. The Company sent out wine which was supplemented by local brews of toddy and arak. It was discovered that quinine which was soon used to make tonic for gin and tonic mitigated the chances of catching malaria. Soon hard-drinking together with gambling and brawling became the norms of behaviour.

What exasperated the authorities in London was the numbers of employees who had “gone native” and taken up with local women often setting up households with multiple women. There were also relationships with the daughters of Portuguese traders and missionaries. But efforts to limit these relationships by sending out British women ended in failure.

The East India Company was very skilled in playing off one group of Indians against each other, and would only engage in battle if absolutely necessary. At the Battle of Plassey, which sealed the preminence of the Company, Clive was outnumbered 10 to 1, but won the battle thanks to local traitors. There were relatively few British soldiers supplemented by local volunteers who were trained in British methods.

Despite some employees having gone “native” the Company was at times surprisingly callous about the demands of the various religions. The Mutiny of 1857, known as the First War of Independence in India, was sparked by rumours that pig fat and cow fat, respectively anathema to Muslim and Hindu soldiers, were used as grease in gun cartridges.  The rumours, whether true or not, managed to unite Muslims and Hindus against the British. With brutality and horrors committed by both sides, the revolt was eventually put down.

The Mutiny of 1857 sparked widescale changes with overall control of India passing to the Crown. Reforms prompted by Macaulay sought to Anglicise the native population and he defeated proposals to maintain an Asiatic approach. The object was to create “Indians in colour and blood, but English in taste, opinion, morals and intellect.” To exemplify this Snow visits La Martiniere School in Calcutta and talked to students who suggest that they only speak English most of the time. Macaulay also proposed the creation of a professional well educated Indian Civil Service, initially of Britons only, to run the administration, and a UK based legal system.

What Snow fails to mention is that while 1857 saw the beginning of the Anglicisation process it was probably also the start of more entrenched British attitudes, with more white women coming out to India thus limiting inter-racial relationships, and the development of a British cultural, moral and racial superiority mindset. Many of the earlier settlers recognised a unique and compelling culture within India, and that appeared to have been forgotten later.

The East India Company was seen as the exemplar of the modern multi-national corporation maintaining control from long-distance, with shares issued in London, an accounting system, and rules of corporate governance. Comparisons with modern day companies might have been instructive.

Dan Snow was an engaging presenter who looked to have done his background research, but I do have the feeling he is more of a military historian which is where he made his name. At times the programme moved back and forth to the UK, with contributions from academic talking heads and visits to sites in London such as warehouses and the Lloyds Building.

The two hours went quickly but I felt there were issues and themes that could have been explored further. First the question of why the UK was in a position to dominate a large alien country, particularly in an era when other European countries were looking to develop their own colonies. Some comparisons with other European countries such as France and the Netherlands, which had their own East India Companies, might have been apposite. Could India in other circumstances have been divided into British, and larger Francophone, Dutch and Lussophone zones as Africa was? There were French and Portuguese enclaves but they were relatively small and ultimately never a serious threat to British hegemony in India.

Were the British more benign than say the French, or the Spanish as colonialists? I might contend that apart from the Mutiny and isolated incidents such as the Amritsar Massacre there was little overt brutality.

The lives of Indians in this period and their interactions with the East India Company were almost completely ignored. In addition the long term effects on India after 1857 were glossed over. Was India a better place following the rule of the Company and the British Raj?  There is the implication that India has benefitted enormously from exposure to the English language both as a unifying force and as a driver to enable global trade. If English were not an option then perhaps Hindi might be more widely spoken. Amongst the elite knowledge of near perfect idiomatic English is almost a given. Anecdotally if one approaches a hotel reception and speaks in a language other than English the reply will invariably be in English. And, for example, interviews during the Indian Premier cricket League are almost always in English. But whether fluency in English has been an enabler to world trade and soft power is difficult to assess. Japan, South Korea and China have, for example, not found trading difficult despite poor language skills although that is changing. One very rarely finds Indian diplomats making statements about world affairs. Fluency in English amongst the elite may hinder the domestic economy as many, including my father, and for example many Indian students and businessmen in the US, find it easy to leave India and take up new roles. But despite the position of the English language India has still not achieved any real impact in world trade except in some industries like software.

While The Birth of Empire was a compelling narrative it would have benefitted from greater exposition and analysis. Most of the background on the Company could have been compressed into an hour giving sufficient time to explore other issues.

Surrogacy in India

I am reading Rampuri’s ‘Autobiography of a Sadhu’ at the moment and there is a wonderful part where another sadhu complains, ‘When you white people first came, you were rich, important and powerful.  You were sahibs and governors and viceroys even….’  Rampuri explains that ‘they’ came to conquer and rule, but ‘we people’ have to come to learn from you.  So, says the sadhu, ‘…before you came to take our land and our wealth, and now you come to take our knowledge!.....what will you give for the knowledge? Or you just take it and run away?’. But then he laughs and exclaims, ‘Take it, take it all…….we give it all to you with love!’[1]

India has certainly been the source of many riches for the West: first it was tea, cotton and spices, then human skeletons for medical students[2], then seekers of knowledge and enlightenment and now ……wombs.  Or at least wombs for rent by couples desperate for children from the UK, the US and elsewhere.  The practice is also growing among well-off Indians as well, as it was revealed earlier this year that Shah Rukh Khan, the Bollywood star, and his wife had their newborn son carried by a surrogate.

Surrogacy in India is a booming industry, one worth an estimated $2.3 billion a year in revenue.  25,000 babies are estimated to have been born since commercial surrogacy was  legalised in 2002, with 50% of those from the West.  Around 30% of commissioning parents are thought to be either single or homosexual (presumably from outside India).  In the UK, while surrogacy is legal, commercial surrogacy is not, whereby a surrogate mother is contracted to carry a baby for a fee.  In practice in the UK, however, the surrogate mother typically is given a sum of around £10,000 – 15,000 as some kind of compensation, which, although not meant to be a fee is usually authorised by the courts once the baby has been born.  Importantly, however, contracts in the UK are not enforceable (so a surrogate might change her mind) and the legal mother is always the woman giving birth, not the genetic mother – necessitating legal involvement to transfer legal parenthood via parental order or adoption.

In India, by contrast, contracts are enforceable – meaning a surrogate mother cannot change her mind and decide to keep the baby.  Legal parenthood is with the genetic mother and father – not the surrogate who carries the baby.  Crucially, because the costs of living and medical care are cheaper in India, costs of surrogacy are much lower.

BBC 4’s excellent documentary, ‘The House of Surrogates’ last week focused on the Akanksha Infertility clinic in Anand, Gujarat, run by fertility specialist Dr Nayna Patel.  Dr Patel first came to prominence in 2004 when she helped a woman in India become a surrogate mother to her own grandchildren.  She realised the potential of surrogacy and established her clinic where around 100 surrogate mothers at any one time stay in an attached dormitory.  Couples pay the clinic around $28,000 (around £17,500), of which the surrogate mother gets $8,000 (around £5,000) – a fraction of what this might cost in the USA, where commercial surrogacy is also legal.  For this, the clinic can create in vitro embryos from the genetic parents’ egg and sperm which are then implanted into the surrogate mother (1 or 2 – the rest frozen. This is for full (IVF) surrogacy – partial surrogacy would fertilise the surrogate mother’s own egg with donor sperm). The surrogate will stay in the dormitory – forbidden from staying with her family -  for the duration of her pregnancy, where she is fed, monitored and encouraged to rest before giving birth and the baby collected by the genetic parents. This is to ensure the surrogate mother receives adequate nutrition and vitamins and avoids hard physical labour which might jeopardise the pregnancy.

The set up is obviously controversial, with Dr Patel having come in for much criticism over time.  But, she describes herself as a strong feminist and says it is all about women helping each other.  Dr Patel says people have two basic instincts: to survive and to procreate.   As she sees it, she is helping with both: the surrogates survive with the money they are paid, and the childless couples procreate.  It is hard not to have some sympathy with this viewpoint – at a purely rational level, it’s a win-win situation.  The couples get a much-wanted baby they otherwise would not have been able to have, while the surrogate mother is paid a life changing sum of money than she might never earn – enough to build a house or pay for children’s education.

To watch the actual practice of this though, on a large scale – a production line, or ‘baby farm’ is quite another thing.  To be a surrogate on an informal basis, for perhaps another family member is one thing - but this is very different from commercial surrogacy as a business.  As clinics go, Dr Patel’s seems well-run and, while the women sleep 8 or 10 to a room in fairly basic accommodation, this has to be contrasted with conditions they might have come from in villages.  Dr Patel herself is very much the matriarch running the show.  Her concerns seem patronising at times – for example, in vetting how the women plan to invest or spend the money.  But she also provides some education for new skills whilst the women are pregnant – both to relieve boredom and so they might be able to earn their own money afterwards.  I might have preferred IT, health care or business skills rather than the sewing, embroidery and beauty on offer – but this might reflect a pragmatism about the most realistic way for these women to gain income from self-employment, and their lack of basic education, rather than returning to financial dependency or hard, low paid manual labour.

The technology in the clinic seemed as good as any clinic in the West – though I was a bit concerned (from an ethical standpoint) at how easily Dr Patel was persuaded by the couple to implant 2 embryos, not 1 – seemingly without discussion with the surrogate mother of any potential increased risks to her.

What was harder to watch was the behaviour of some of the Western couples.  They clearly must have been desperate to have gone to these lengths for a baby, but to see a Canadian woman inspect the potential surrogate mother for her next child – ‘good hips, not too small and the preferred religion of Christianity’ – seemed little better than inspecting cattle at a market.  Then an American woman who came to meet and collect her baby, barely glancing at the woman lying on the bed who had just given birth.  Such conduct might reinforce Indian sensibilities about rich Westerners although it is debatable whether rich Indians would have behaved any better.

But to think of the surrogate mothers as just being exploited doesn’t do justice to the complexity of the situation.  The women seem to know exactly what they are getting into, and do so with the backing of their husbands and families.  Yes, it is commodification of their bodies, perhaps reducing them to a purely biological role of baby carrier.  But so is exploiting an intelligent person’s learning in a company or the muscular strength of a man on a building site.  These women are probably making a calculated decision, faced with a limited number of options for earning money.  Yes, poverty is the driving factor – but then it is a driving factor in the vast majority of people’s willingness to engage in any kind of paid labour.  And Dr Patel hasn’t done too badly either – as she invests in building a new ‘one-stop shop’ costing around $6 million.

The legal situation, however, is not as straightforward as clinics might lead couples to believe.  If the parents are domiciled in the UK, UK law will apply to them no matter where the conception takes place.  This can mean, therefore, that for a baby born to a surrogate mother in India, whose genetic parents are UK domiciled, neither parent will be the legal parent.  In India, because the legal parents are the genetic parents, but in the UK the legal mother remains the surrogate mother who gave birth.  The child would therefore be born an orphan.[3]

Calls for more regulation in India have led to a proposed Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, currently under discussion.   Proposals include banning homosexual couples, single individuals and unmarried couples from surrogacy in India, enabling direct negotiation between the surrogate and commissioning parents for the fee, an age limit on surrogates and a limit on how many pregnancies (including her own) she can carry.  Whether this will be enough for effective legal and ethical regulation remains to be seen.  The ban on same sex couples is clearly discriminatory (same sex couples are not legal in India), although the argument is that it aims to protect the rights of the offspring where same sex adoptive parents might not be legal or recognized.  If this ban goes through, however, it will clearly be bad for the surrogacy business in India.

Perhaps the voices not heard in the surrogacy debate are those of the babies born, and the longer term psychological effects on them knowing they were ‘manufactured’ in an Indian womb.  For the moment though, surrogacy in India continues – perhaps not given purely with love (as with knowledge) but for the right fee.

A postscript:  While US mothers are turning to Indian surrogates, wealthy Chinese couples are seeking US surrogate mothers.  This can evade the strict one-child policy in China, whilst also under US law the child is a US citizen if born there – and can apply for a green card for their parents once they turn 21.  Chinese agencies are offering a basic surrogacy package for $120,000 to $200,000 – meaning that, as one agent put it – for around $300,00 (including plane tickets and other expenses) you can get 2 children and the whole family can emigrate to the US.  A future vision of a global roundabout in the production of children comes to mind, with international outsourcing of the manufacture of babies across the globe.  A nightmare scenario, or one that is just using new technologies to everyone's advantage that in time will become as accepted as modern medicine, the internet or cars?

---

[1] At p.87 - 88

[2] Very lucrative, until the Indian government banned the export of skeletons in 1985 – which probably just drove it underground instead

[3] See the cases of Re G (Surrogacy: Foreign Domicile [2007] EWHC 2814 (Fam) and Re X&Y (Foreign Surrogacy) [2008] EWHC 3030 (Fam)

Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC TV) – Indian Journeys

[caption id="attachment_776" align="alignleft" width="280"] Image courtesy of the BBC[/caption]

“Whenever I come to India I realise how English I am.....”, so says Gurinder Chadha in the programme dedicated to tracing her family history. This is undoubtedly a sentiment with which I would concur, particularly when arriving at Kolkata Airport and being driven into the smells and sounds of the city.

‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ is a BBC series delving into the family histories of celebrities. Recently a programme featured Nitin Ganatra, the Eastenders actor, and I realised I had recorded programmes featuring Meera Syal, a comedian / actress / writer, perhaps best known for the TV series ‘Goodness Gracious Me’, and Gurinder Chadha, a film director best known for ‘Bend It Like Beckham’.

Each family had slightly different journeys in reaching the UK.  Ganatra and Chadha were both born in Kenya before their parents came to the UK following discrimination against foreigners after independence, while Syal’s parents came directly from India. Their family histories are perhaps representative of many Indian families in the UK, some of whom had to struggle when their qualifications were not recognised and they could not bring money - from Kenya in particular.

I recognised many of the celebrities’ traits and culture. Like me they were all second generation, but often with a deep-rooted insecurity regarding their identity. Were they Indian, wearing Indian clothes and going to festivals, speaking Indian languages, or were they English? You learn these insecurities are perfectly normal amongst the second generation. The celebrities all spoke their parents’ language but could not read or write it. They spoke to their parents in English, and responses were in a mix of languages. When they spoke an Indian language, I realised there was a slight hesitancy as if unwilling, but then the words flowed.

For the Kenyan-born Ganatra and Chadha, the sense of insecurity and dislocation was perhaps even stronger given that they had 3 different cultures to assimilate: English, Kenyan and Indian. Ganatra’s antecedents had come to Kenya from Gujarat to work as labourers on the railroads in the 1890s, and had stayed setting up shops in the newly built Kenyan railway towns. Chadha’s great-grandparents had come from the Punjab as policemen and later set up trading posts. From the photos their lives in Kenya seemed comfortable with a strong sense of community. I was surprised there were Indian schools for the children, temples and gurdwaras, but their development is indicative of the size of the Indian community in Kenya. What was interesting was the continuous contact with relatives in India, bringing brothers to work in Kenya, the sending home of money, frequent journeys and long stays in India to, for example, marry off sisters. So those familial links were always strong and maintained.

After Kenyan independence in 1963 Indians were forced to choose between their British passports and adopting Kenyan nationality. There was increasing tension between the black majority and Indians, and many chose to come to the UK from the late 1960s onwards.  Chadha recounted how her father was unable to find suitable work in the UK and felt himself forced to shave off his beard, a religious prerequisite for a Sikh, because of discrimination, and then found work as a postman. Ganatra’s father, meanwhile, found it difficult to raise finance for his business ventures but eventually paid back his first loan, for £2,000, early.

Syal differentiates herself to some extent by focusing on the fact that her parents had a “love marriage” which must have been unusual in its time, perhaps the early 60s, and that they crossed the religious divide, one a Hindu and the other a Sikh. I presumed the marriages of Chadha and Ganatra’s parents were arranged. Syal’s background seemed the most comfortable in India with a grandfather being a journalist in pre-Independence India.

Of the three celebrities, Ganatra’s ancestors appear to have come from the most impoverished background. Ganatra was shocked by the fact that his maternal grandparents were married at the ages of 6 and 10, but what was heart rending was that so many of his uncles and aunts died at a very early age. Often the deaths were not reported but researchers found details of the death of an aunt and Ganatra was given an official death certificate. These early deaths were attributed to the high rate of complications in pregnancy and birth in young girls married before their own bodies were fully mature, as well as the high cost and limited availability of food, and diseases like malaria.  It was probably famine and disease that forced Ganatra’s grandfather to take a very hard labouring job in Kenya.

What is surprising at times is how little awareness of family history there is or that facts have been glossed over even from two generations previously. Perhaps there is a desire not to talk about some elements of family history. Ganatra was not aware of his grandparents’ early marriage or of the deaths of family members. In addition, Ganatra did not seem to know about the political tensions that drove his parents out of Kenya. Chadha believes she has a black African cousin but family members alternately support and deny the notion. Her family believes they may be related to a noble house. Amongst my own family anecdotes there is an assumption that my paternal grandfather was doctor to the King of Nepal. I had visions of going to Kathmandu and trying to ascertain the provenance of the story.

Towards the end of each programme the celebrities try to find their home village in India, or in Chadha’s case in what is now Pakistan. Often that is quite moving, particular for someone like them who is a product of a trans-national diaspora. Ganatra found a man who knew his family and, without prompting it seems, knew that they had gone to Africa.

The celebrities also try to find records of their families.  Unlike in the UK where it would be a matter of looking at censuses, and registers of births, deaths and marriages, such government records did not exist in India. Instead family histories are noted by priests in books or on cloth going back several generations.  However priests, have to manually go through the records as there are no indexes. Syal’s family records are noted on a single piece of cloth to prevent fraud. The sexist nature of Indian society becomes apparent when it is revealed that the records only follow the male line.

I have over time researched a little into my family history. I have records and documents of my grandfather’s medical student days, one uncle painstakingly wrote me out a comprehensive family tree, and I have visited the house in the grounds of a hospital in a small town in West Bengal where my father was born. I have collected more information, and with the help of cousins, and surviving uncles and aunts will try and visit more places relevant to our family including houses that are still family owned.

While the three celebrities and I are second generation, although the Kenyan born-duo’s families might have been in Kenya for 2-3 generations previously, there is a strong connection to India but it remains to be seen how future generations will feel the pull of India. There might be an interest in some elements of culture like food, clothes and Bollywood, but there might be little interest in exploring India and family history. Almost certainly future generations will not speak or understand any Indian languages. My understanding is that, while members of the Indian diaspora in the Caribbean retained some Indian culture, they feel emotionally distant from India.  My generation was almost forced to assimilate as there was little Indian culture in the UK to explore. Like the three celebrities I found the pull of India greater as one gets older but balanced by a greater security to explore the culture and my roots.

 

Kumbh Mela - the Greatest Show on Earth - BBC2

‘At the time of the Kumbh Mela, at the point of the confluence of the rivers, a space opens up between this world and the spiritual’.

This was the description of the Kumbh Mela put forward by Professor Chakravarti Ram-Prasad, of Lancaster University. I just love this kind of grand narrative, this birds-eye viewpoint of our tiny universe. It reminds me of the opening of the first chapter of the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra on the ‘Purification of the Buddha-Field’:

‘Reverence to all Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Aryasravakas, and Pratyekabuddhas, in the past, the present and the future.

Thus have I heard at one time. The Lord Buddha was in residence in the garden of Amrapali, in the city of Vaisali, attended by a great gathering. Of bhiksus there were eight thousand, all saints. They were free from impurities and afflictions, and all had attained self-mastery. Their minds were entirely liberated by perfect knowledge. They were calm and dignified like royal elephants. They had accomplished their work, done what they had to do, cast off their burdens, attained their goals, and totally destroyed the bonds of existence. They all had attained the utmost perfection of every form of mind control.’ (1)

Fabulous stuff. And the reason why the Kumbh Mela is celebrated – again from Professor Chakravarti Ram-Prasad:

‘The nectar of immortality was found and fought over by the gods and demons. Some drops of it fell to earth and the places where it fell are the places where the Kumbh Mela is now celebrated’.

The drops fell to earth in Allahabad in February of this year, and the BBC was there to witness it. Over 100 million people were expected, over the course of 55 days to gather, worship the gods and purify themselves in the water of the Ganges. Apparently this year was a ‘Maha Kumbh’ – a ‘Great Kumbh’ which only happens every 144 years and always at Allahabad. Just as a comparison, the numbers at the annual Hajj in Mecca – the pilgrimage site of Muslims – average around the 2.5 – 3 million mark.

The BBC followed 4 British men and women attending the Kumbh Mela this year. There was Helen O’Hagan, an erstwhile business development manager at a London law firm, turned spiritual seeker in India, having spent the last 3 months at a yoga centre in India. At the age of 34 years, when her peers were getting married and starting families, she yearned for something more, for the spiritual – and made what she referred to as a ‘choiceless decision’ to pursue this yearning. You couldn’t help wondering if she had just read ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ – but nevertheless you had to have some sympathy with her quest. I think life in a City law firm would make me turn to God (or whatever) after a few years. And at least she was sincere, having found a guru and spent the previous 2 months on a silent retreat.

Then there was Shivali Bhammer – an economics graduate, former City trader – turned devotional Hindu singer, daughter of wealthy Indian business parents and brought up in Kensington. She was impeccably made up and even in India seemed to wear beautiful, designer clothes as she danced and searched for inspiration from the devotional singers present. ‘It looks like an extremely colourful refugee camp’ she remarked from her car, driving through the crowds. Then, bravely approaching a stark naked, ash covered sadhu, she said, ‘I think you are very beautiful’ – being very careful to look him directly in the face. ‘I don’t care about being beautiful – it’s got nothing to do with me’, he replied.

Kanan Thakerar was a business woman attending with Riya, her niece – also studying economics. Just to pause here for an aside: why does everyone seem to be studying economics now, or is an economics graduate, or working in finance or law? What happened to medicine or dentistry as the tried and tested route to financial stability and professional status in the UK? Even the hours for junior doctors are a bit more reasonable than they were – but maybe the lure of City salaries and bonuses beckon too much for the 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants from South Asia. Anyway, Kanan was in the process of setting up a consultancy advising businesses on setting up in an Indian market – but wanted to explore her Hindu roots further.

Finally there was Dr Manish Pankhania – known as ‘Roshan’, attending with his guru Swami Vishwananda.

For me though, the 2 most interesting people interviewed were an American-born sadhu called Baba Rampuri and Shaunaka Rishi Das – a Hindu, originally born an Irish Catholic.

Baba Rampuri, with the long beard and orange robes of an Indian sadhu, was from Beverley Hills, California. He left the US in 1969 at the age of 18, looking for ‘magic and mystery’ in India – found it, and stayed. It was 20 years, though, before he understood anything – as it was astoundingly complicated and sophisticated. He found the relationships among the ‘sadhu family’ in India as intricate as within any other family. Good on him, I thought, for going to India searching and staying the course. It would have been so easy to give up when the going (spiritually or materially) got tough and go back to consumer complacency back in the US like so many other people.

As with Shaunaka Rishi Das – now the Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. He joined a Hare Krishna ashram in Dublin in 1979, though his original desire was to be a Christian. Instead, he found Hindus ‘practising Christianity, but not calling it that’ (2) – and had to struggle with the fact of Christianity being practised to the highest standard, but by non-Christians. If only all of us followed through with our youthful idealism, instead of getting bogged down along the way with careers, families, consumer goods and frivolous wants and desires. ‘The meaning of the sadhu life is of sacrifice – it’s not a consumer thing,’ said Baba Rampuri. How true this is, but also how rare to find sacrifice and self discipline being upheld as a virtue in this post-modern, instant gratification society we have created.

My thoughts turn to Shivali’s devotional singing and You Tube videos. I find myself slightly troubled by Hindu devotional songs being packaged and promoted in this way. The perfection of Shivali’s make up and clothes, the carefully chosen settings for her songs and electronic modification of her voice – all sit uncomfortably for me with the true ascetics, the sadhus who leave behind family, belongings, clothes and status to venture into the spiritual unknown, with no guarantee of any results. The spiritual quest does not package up quite so easily for a capitalist market. Perhaps I am being a little harsh though, as she has indeed made the effort to travel to the Kumbh, and has had the courage to pursue something different – something that many millions of others wouldn’t even try to explore.

And so to the high point – 10 February and the main bathing day where an estimated 30 million people bathed in the Ganges to wash away their sins. Led by a huge procession of naked sadhus, it made an extraordinary sight. Roshan was pleased to be able to join the sadhu procession for the first time, as Hindus from the wider diaspora were recognised equally. There was another first as well – not touched on in the documentary. For the first time, Dalits (‘Untouchables’) were also allowed to bathe in the Ganges alongside Brahmins – which apparently ‘dissolved’ their ‘Untouchable’ status. Swami Vishwananda has commented, ‘….there are lots of profound changes taking place. Nobody knows why they are happening now. It is a Divine arrangement’. (3) Or perhaps it has nothing to do with the Divine but a growing realisation in India and Hinduism – and criticism from human rights campaigners outside - that defining millions of fellow human beings as somehow sub-human, destined to live on the margins of society, has absolutely no place in today’s world.

India really is such a country of contrasts – where conservative traditions still govern relationships between the sexes – especially outside the major urban centres – yet here thousands of completely naked men parade to bathe in the Ganges, alongside women. I did wonder where all the holy women were (sadhvis) and why they were not joining in (perhaps not naked) – it would have been good to see renunciate and ascetic women instead.

Meanwhile, Shivali takes a trip out in her own boat on the river, away from all the crowds. Her intention is to take a ritual dip too, but even away from all the others, she can’t bring herself to do it. Worried about pollution in the river, she just dips her hands in the water instead. 

1. Robert A.F.Thurman (translator), ‘The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti’. The Pennsylvania State University Press 1990 edition.

2. "Memories of a life less ordinary". Wexford People. April 8, 2009.

3. Bhakti Marga press release 18 March 2013.

TV Review - Rick Stein in India

I had been looking forward to this programme ever since I saw the accompanying book getting coverage on Amazon. I actually bought a copy for Sue and gave it to her as an early birthday present. Perhaps I can look forward to lots of new Indian dishes in the next few weeks. Then I learnt that Calcutta (I still can’t bring myself to call it Kolkata) was to be centre stage in the first programme of the series – so it was a must-see.

Stein began by showing off his kitchen for the series which I thought was on a house boat on a lagoon in Kerala. He showed himself observant of Indian traditions by letting a pan of milk boil over as a sign of good luck although I had never heard of this. In his commentary he said he had spent 3 months in India and wanted to dispel some of the myths about curry. Then from the near silence of Kerala we were transported to the sights, sounds, and tastes of Calcutta.

In Calcutta the first stop was Nizam’s, a place I have heard of – in my introduction to Calcutta “Days and Nights in Calcutta” – for its famous kathi rolls – fluffy parathas stuffed with a vegetarian or meat filling. Regular readers of this website will know that we have experienced similar kathi rolls in Mid-Wales. (Link) The next stop was what Stein called “a hole in the wall” restaurant which served a prawn cutlet fried in butter.

When the next scene started Sue and I texted each other almost simultaneously: “It’s Angus!!”. Again readers of this website will know that we recently went to Angus Denoon’s Kolkata Street Food event (link here) and it was a delight to see him in Calcutta guiding Stein and wearing his usual tartan hat in the heat. Stein’s initial comment was that he would love to bring all his trainee chefs to experience the street food.

Denoon guided Stein around the street food of Calcutta. First there was a chura stall. Churas are flattened rice with water, yoghurt, and sugar. Then a stall selling pushkas (pani puri), crispy balls stuffed with mashed potato and tamarind water. The last savoury stall featured one of our favourites, and one that Angus has made his trademark - jhal muri. Here it included puffed rice, tomatoes, coconut, onion, and mustard oil. Stein compared it to savoury rice krispies which is ironic since I grew up with muri made from the cereal. In the film 'The Namesake', Ashima, recently arrived in the US, is shown making muri with rice krispies.

Lastly Angus directed Rick to Indian sweets made from buffalo milk but I think the sweets sold in Southall and Brick Lane are better than most in Calcutta. Rick sampled the misti doi (sweet yoghurt) which Sue and I both love. Angus commented that the stalls need to be clean and hygienic otherwise they will lose customers in the long run; while I would be tempted next time in Calcutta I have memories of my family suffering the equivalent of “Delhi Belly” on a number of occasions.

I was struck, as in Angus’s film, by the skills of the chefs / entrepreneurs, and also the use of existing materials such as newspapers to wrap food, clay pots for misti doi, and banana leaves as plates. Very little goes to waste in Calcutta. Just watching it again really brought out the skill and resourcefulness of the street food vendors, of a standard rarely seen in the UK.

Then it was back to restaurant food but with a twist - Suruchi, run by the All Bengal Women’s Union for the benefit of destitute women. Stein loitered in the kitchens as the women made a simple curry. I did find the attitude of the manager paternalistic, as she supervised and described the lives of the women. "Lovely girls", she said patronisingly, and Stein repeated, "Yes, they are lovely girls'. 'Very lovely girls', she confirmed. The 'girls' were apparently often lost or abandoned as children and then taken in by the Union. But they 'don't want to be reminded of that, because we love them, we love them very much'. This is all very good and charitable, but, as Sue remarked, the mere existence of the Union and their activities smacked of state failure. Where were the police and social services to find the women’s parents and look after them? Can you imagine if a child was found on the street, lost from its family in the UK? Yes, you need love and charity, but also police investigation, social services and either reunion with the family or court involvement and justice.

But I might criticise the Union too quickly. It seems it is far broader than just a canteen. It encompasses an education system, developing other skills such as dancing, IT, self-defence, and encouraging the women to go out to the wider world. I would urge you to watch the Youtube video about the Union’s activities (link here).

Apart from Bengali sweets Bengalis are best known for their near addiction to fish and in particular fresh water river fish. Stein spent time close to the River Hooghly watching fish being gathered. Then a visit to Kewpie’s, a well-known Bengali restaurant to see rui fish being prepared by the proprietor who said that making a fish dish was a bride’s way of showing off her culinary skills to her husband’s family.

Over two-thirds of the programme was dedicated to Calcutta but then we accompanied Stein down the Coromandel Coast towards Chennai. There a look around St George’s Fort, which was the centre of British military power. In Chennai Stein focussed on Anglo-Indian food preparing a pastiche of a beef curry that would have been made in the UK before curries became very popular – I adamantly refuse to eat beef curry as it’s a British invention, although I love my steak. Then a visit to the Madras Club, reminiscent of the Calcutta and Bengal Clubs which I have visited. There the chefs showed him how to make mulligatawny soup and commented that the club members ask for roast lamb and shepherd’s pie. At the Madras Club there was a spirited Q&A session between the members and Stein trying to understand what curry meant.

The programme ended with a visit to a Coromondel fishing village and a realisation of the hard life of fishermen. Stein was quite taken with the concept of blending wet and dry ingredients.

Of course as one of Bengali heritage I was fascinated by the focus on Calcutta and it was quite pleasing that Stein chose to begin his odyssey there. But there was almost a romanticised notion in the way Calcutta was lovingly filmed and presented. There was also emphasis on imperial history with a look at the Writers’ Building in Calcutta, Fort St George in Chennai, and the visit to the decidedly imperialist Madras Club which did not allow Indian members until the mid-1960s.

My own feeling based partly on this film is that food culture is stronger in Calcutta than in other Indian cities. It has thrived partly because of history, partly because of relative economic backwardness caused mainly by Communist and left-wing governments, and a political culture which made it difficult, for example, for American chains like McDonalds and KFC to open stores. But there is as far as I can see no pure Bengali restaurant in London. If you know of one please let us know. I am certainty more tempted to try local restaurants when I next visit Calcutta rather than confining myself to the major hotels.

Overall 5 stars with my recommendation perhaps slightly distorted by the focus on Calcutta but I shall be watching the rest of the series with interest.

 

Married in Britain - review

If you are British, what was not to love about this programme? ‘Married in Britain’, a programme shown on BBC2 last week, followed 3 immigrant couples about to be married. Everyone was so positive and effusive about Britain it almost made your heart glow. All, undoubtedly carefully selected from many potential interviewees, but nevertheless you could not help but warm to each of them.

In Britain today, 1 in 4 births are to parents who were born outside the country. That makes you sit and think about the huge changes that are happening here, for better or worse.

Firstly there was Fernanda and Clovis from Brazil. He used to have several businesses in Brazil but they collapsed and he came to Britain for a new start. They had 2 daughters here together although she spent the first 6 months crying as she couldn’t speak English and was homesick. She eventually found connection with other Brazilians who were students and through the church. Clovis was the breadwinner, currently working 60 hours / week as a minicab driver. He searched all over for work in Britain then found work cleaning before moving on to washing dishes in a coffee shop and finally to minicabbing. ‘London is fantastic, a wonderful town’ he maintains. For Fernanda, she says that, ‘in London, I learnt a lot more about the world than in Brazil’ – because of the diversity of the population here. She cried as she talked of her brother who had recently died in Brazil, that she couldn’t be there when he died and that she didn’t have the money to bring her mother over for her wedding. Clovis was trying to restrict the wedding budget to £1000 in total – Fernanda had bought her wedding dress off the internet for £154 and her shoes for £14.99. They did the catering themselves- only sleeping a few hours each night for the preparation. And the rain on the day of their wedding did not dampen their joy: ‘We are blessed!’ as Fernanda said, before having their photographs taken in front of the river and Houses of Parliament to send back home.

Then there was Catalin and Cassandra from Romania. Cassandra couldn’t yet speak much English, but among the couples she was the exception – everyone else having acquired a very good level of English since being here. For Catalin, coming to the UK was ‘easy to come but hard to stay’. Asked why, he said, ‘The rent’. Yes, living and housing costs in London are steep and many will rely on government support to supplement their low income.

Finally there was Robert and Agnetha from Poland. They had only known each other for a short time – around 2 months, but Robert was effusive about her. He had previously been an alcoholic in Poland but had come to the UK for a new start. He had work he liked in a packing factory and found strength (and a wife) from the church here in the UK. For Robert, England was great because of its ‘beautiful roads and beautiful motorways’. Infrastructure is clearly one of the UK’s good points then. For Agnetha, it didn’t matter about his past, only what you are now. She wanted a Christian man and found it in Robert. It almost made you believe in marriage and the forever after just listening to them. The simplicity of their wedding in a very basic community hall, with a translator from English to Polish, was actually very moving. And truly I am not the wedding type.

There were other anonymous interviewees as well. I loved the Syrian woman waxing lyrical about freedom of speech. ‘In my house,’ she said, ‘I speak my mind. And my family say ‘Mum!...’. I say, ‘Listen, I come all the way to Britain to have freedom of speech, which I was denied in Syria’.

Then there was Marian, a 17 year old student from Romania. When asked whether he preferred Britain to Romania, his reply was, ‘Hell yes’. ‘In Romania,’ he said, ‘people don’t care about you.’ ‘In England, if you need help, people will help you’. He wants to join the British Army, once eligible. He says he is prepared to potentially lose his life for Britain if necessary – but not Romania. Wow.

Another wedding organiser said, ‘Spain, Tunisia, Ghana – you name it they all come here’. Another, running a banqueting hall, says, ‘We have Somalian, Congolese, Nigerian, Ghanaian, Turkish…..we don’t have British’. The British apparently are not so bothered about weddings these days: we are happy just being boyfriend and girlfriend.

And so, you might ask, where is the Indian presence here? Or Pakistani / Bangladeshi presence? After all, the greatest immigration to London in the last decade has been from India. I did wonder this, and concluded that perhaps it was ‘old hat’. Perhaps the Indian presence had simply been too long here in the UK, and integrated enough into the medical, dental, pharmaceutical professions and restaurant trades. Perhaps the focus here had up until now been too much on the lavish weddings, expensive saris and huge banquets of the ‘average’ Indian wedding – and the producers wanted something different. I did also wonder whether the Indian immigrants recently had already married back in India and were here on highly skilled migrants visas (typically IT), or as students – hence already married, or not looking to marry just yet. It was also interesting that all of the featured couples had married within their own ethnicity and religion. None had inter-cultural relationships – which is not to say they don’t exist (in their hundreds or thousands). But all had seemingly integrated well, learnt English to a good standard (except perhaps Cassandra from Romania) - helped, no doubt, by the similarities in cultural backgrounds: Christian, similar clothes and recognisable cuisine. Granted, a highly selective (and possibility unrepresentative) small sample, of course.

The Indian presence on the programme was there in someone describing what kind of wedding outfits would suit a Hindu or Sikh or Muslim population. The only other interviewee was an Indian man, dressed in traditional dress, saying that, ‘Britain has allowed too many immigrants into this country. Looking at the size and the job opportunities, there are too many, you can feel it.’

So Britain is changing – and fast. We might moan about house prices, travel, weather, high rents, low wages, long working hours (I could go on). But if all newcomers are as charming, hard working and committed to Britain as those featured on the programme, please come and please stay. We need you. Even if it does mean that for the more established immigrant communities from the South Asian sub-continent, it is all getting a little crowded.