Travellers on the Roads of India : Charm and Misunderstandings

Over the centuries, India has always been the object of foreign interest, which has led scholars,
conquerors, missionaries, journalists and travelers to venture descriptions and classifications.
Foreign attempts at depicting the Subcontinent have greatly influenced people imaginaries, causing
the birth of a stereotypical vision of the country, which some how has survived until today, both in
the West – where those accounts were produced – and in India itself.

In the past, sometimes the need of describing India has been suggested by pure intellectual
curiosity, by that unselfish desire of understanding, which is a characteristic of human nature. This
particular approach has been typical – in India – of some missionaries, who tried to register and
underline several aspects of local culture. They were interested not only in “strangeness” and
“diversity”, as other observers were, and generally hadn’t the attitude of dominators, like many
other European residents had, so their researches and curiosity were often free from prejudices. 

This is the case of one of the first European studies about India, written by Italian Jesuit Roberto de Nobili, who lived in Southern India in the 17th century; having a great command of Sanskrit and Tamil, he could take part in Indian intellectual scene of those times, and wrote some authoritative texts about it. A century later, French Father Pons, a Jesuit too, wrote a Sanskrit grammar in Latin, and sent to Europe an entire collection of original manuscripts.

Left:Roberto de Nobili Photo Courtesy -historicalleys.blogspot.com

18th century saw the explosion of European scholars’ interest for South Asia, and India in particular; indological research took its first steps with the publication, in 1785, of the first translation of the Bhagavadgita into a European language, by Charles Wilkins. A year before, William Jones, one of the first English Orientalists and a scholar arrived to India as an officer of the East India Company, had founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which translated several Indian classical religious, literary and juridical texts. Jones had an obsession: coming to know India better than any other European had ever done before. He had drafted a short list of disciplines he intended to study, in order to attain his goal:

                    The Laws of the Hindus and Mohammedans, Modern Politics and
                    Geography of Hindustan, Best Mode of Governing Bengal, Arithmetic and
                    Geometry, and Mixed Sciences of the Asiaticks, Medicine, Chemistry,
                    Surgery and Anatomy of the Indians, Natural Productions of India, Poetry,
                    Rhetoric and Morality of Asia, Music of the Eastern Nations, Trade,
                    Manufacture, Agriculture and Commerce of India.¹

At that time, India was dominated by British colonial power, which sent overseas its officers,
military men and employees, to serve in the army and in East India Company. Back in London,
many were the people who supported the colonial domination of India, and who engaged
themselves in propaganda. Among them was James Mill, author of History of India, published in
1817. His book, which earned him the post of officer of the East India Company, provided British
rulers with a precise and schematic representation of the country. Mill despised all theories in
favour of Indian ancient culture and traditions, claiming Indians to be as low as other populations he
knew, such as Chinese, Japanese, Persians, Arabs.

Mill, who had never set foot in India, did not speak Sankrit, Persian or any modern Indian language,
and did not believe a word of what Indian scholars said about their own culture, depicted India as an
uncivilized country, that badly needed European “help” to be rescued and to access the joys of
civilization.

A few decades later, Kipling would give a name to this “duty”: the white man’s burden.

 Take up the White Man’s burden-
 Send forth the best ye breed-
 Go bind your sons to exile
 To serve your captives’ need;
 To wait in heavy harness
 On fluttered folk and wild-
 Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
 Half devil and half child.²

Photo Courtesy -flickr.com/suniliyer

But there has always existed, over the centuries, a third way of representing India, popular and fascinating: the “exotic” approach. Utilized since ancient Greece times, by writers such as Megastene, this type of describing India looked for and pointed out the most extraordinary facts, thoughts and people of the country.

Indika, which contains a depiction of III century b.C. India, can be considered the first foreign book
about the Subcontinent: its author, Megastene, spent about ten years at the court of Candragupta
Maurya, in Pataliputra (present-day Patna), and filled his book with admiring wonder, magical
events and fantastic elements, so much so that it is now difficult to distinguish between real facts
and inventions.

The exotic approach to India has deeply influenced European Romantics as well. Finding their
world to be a slave of machines and industrialization, a place that had lost its spirituality and was
eternally running after the myths of social success and richness, Romantic writers and scholars took
refuge in the so-called “Orient”, which they considered the cradle of wisdom, religion, erudition,
philosophy and peace.

Among the three different approaches which foreign observers have utilized - like they were
coloured lenses - when imagining and describing India, the exotic trend appears to be the most
enduring: it seems to have survived all fashions and epochs, and has been often resurfacing ever
since, until today.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Beatles : Photo Courtesy - Paul Saltzman, 1968/ morrisonhotelgallery.com

In the 60s and 70s, India has become the mythic destination of young Hippies from Europe and the
United States. It was the country where the Beatles went, in 1968, to visit the Rishikesh ashram of
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru George Harrison had met in Wales, while attending one of his
conferences. Decided to learn about transcendental meditation – and looking for an “exotic”,
“different” experience – the Beatles, together with some friends (Donovan, the Beach Boy Mike
Love, Mia Farrow and her sister Prudence), landed in India in a very special period, the moment of
San Francisco’s Summer of Love, of vietcong Tet offensive, of the explosion of psychedelic
culture, and of American pacifist movement. An event followed by the medias of the whole world,
which earned little Rishikesh a wave of global interest, Beatles’ Indian experience has been
described as the first meeting of western pop culture and eastern mysticism.

Pictures and TV broadcasts show the Beatles wearing garlands, white kurtas and sandals, smoking,
singing and smiling, surrounded by the ashram’s peaceful woods and by guru-looking characters.
Even if this idyll actually didn’t last more than a couple of months, its representations reached
thousands of people around the world, contributing to the construction among western masses of an
imaginary India, strengthened also by the collaboration of the Beatles with Ravi Shankar, and his
participation at Woodstock Festival, on August 15, 1969.

Beginning from the end of 1960s, India has become the destination of hundreds of thousands of
Hippies, who used to reach the country by land, hitchhiking and jumping on trains and buses and
choosing Goa as their favourite place, with its white sand beaches, palm trees, wild ocean waves
and luxuriant vegetation. Young people from all over the world started electing India as a Garden of
Eden where peace and beauty could still be found, away from western metropolis and their frantic
life, and this trend has kept increasing ever since.

After the Hippy period, new generations of India-fans have stepped in. Every single corner of the
country has been inspected by tourists, the Garden of Eden in some places has been turned into a
rubbish tip, wars make it impossible to reach India by land, and Indian proverbial hospitality often
becomes a professional duty, which Indians must serve with chai to travellers in search of human
warmth.

From January to June 2008, India has given hospitality to more than 2 million and 600 thousand
foreign tourists³, which means that, even if times have changed, the number of India-fans keeps
increasing; changed, them too.

Rave parties have replaced full-moon parties on Goa sea shores, and trance music has taken the
place of guitars, becoming a worldwide phenomenon; New Age believers of the ‘80s have
experienced in India all sorts of therapies, said to cure any kind of physical and psychological
problems, and have become the devotees of the most improbable gurus; today, it is the turn of
Yogaholics, western middle-class workers who spend their holidays – and hundreds of dollars per
week! – in ashrams, resorts and Yoga centres, to reinvigorate and to improve the skills they’ve
learnt in their evening Yoga classes, in some gym of their home-country.

Photo Courtesy : devonyoga.com

Backpackers, nostalgic ex-Hippies, global nomads, spiritual seekers, party kids, wannabe ascetics,
hordes of stoned post-military-service Israelis, middle-aged aristofreak ladies… as soon as the
monsoon season is over, all sorts of refugees from real world seem to tumble to India.

In his Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie has said: “Europe repeats itself, in India, as a farce”;
isolating this statement from its original context, we could well place it on the roads of India, where
Westerners perform their never ending research of the “exotic”, sometimes with pathetic results.
This unquenchable thirst of exoticism affects the way India represents itself, when it comes to “sell”
itself to foreign tourism. It then becomes exactly what western imaginary wants it to be: a
playground for adults, a Paradise on Earth, the land of monks, sadhu and gods, of peace and infinite
spaces, of colours, smiles and dances, where anyone can go to forget their problems or – which is
even worse – solve them. A ready-made peace dispenser, where western tourists can pretend
everything – places, people, scenarios, things to do – is there just to fit their desires.

Turning a complex reality into a mono-dimensional, static picture is the major risk of monolithic
classifications: this is what happens to India, every time we try to define it, inevitably doing it a
wrong.

Italian traveller and journalist Tiziano Terzani, who has dedicated his entire life to Asia, has well
described the unexplainable affection for India, felt by those who just love it, and do not need to
search any reason to justify their feelings. After all, India is not peaceful, spiritual, colorful, magic,
mysterious, free… it is much more than that. As another Italian writer has concluded after a journey
to the Subcontinent: “What can I say? India is India.”⁴

Those who love India know it: you don’t know exactly why you love it. It is
dirty, it is poor, it is infected; sometimes it is a thief and a liar, it is often
stinky, corrupted, pitiless and indifferent. Still, once you’ve met it, you can’t
do without it. You suffer when you’re away from it. But this is the way love
is: instinctive, unexplainable, unselfish.
When we are in love, we don’t listen to reason; we fear nothing; we are
prepared to anything. When we are in love, we are heady with freedom; we
feel we could hug the entire world and it seems to us that the entire world is
hugging us. India, unless you hate at first sight, soon leads to this
excitement.
[…] India remains itself, and this is somehow reassuring.⁵

Citations:

                1. Jones, W., Objects of Enquiry During my Residence in Asia, in The Collected Works of Sir William Jones.

                2. Kipling, R., The White Man’s Burden, 1898.

                3. Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, www.itopc.org

                4. Moravia, A., Un’idea dell’India, Bompiani, Milano 2001, p. 5.

                5. Terzana, T., Un altro giro di giostra, Longanesi & C., Milano 2004, p. 153.

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