Introduction: Living or Surviving?

The quest for longevity appears to have been a recurrent theme in the history of human societies, because the possibility of extending life has persistently disturbed and provoked human consciousness. Awareness of our own finitude is a defining characteristic of what it is to be human and provides much of the foundation of religion, art and morality. In both fact and fiction, humans have long been pondering questions about longevity and happiness. Shakespeare's King Lear, in which the elderly king begins somewhat hastily and naively to surrender his sovereign powers to his daughters, may be a lesson about how not to become socially and politically irrelevant. At King Lear's court, the Fool warns the King not to grow old until he has grown wise. Similarly Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, in 1726, offered a humorous if also satirical and bitter account of the disillusion and depression suffered by the Immortals of the Kingdom of Luggnagg who were condemned to live forever. They have no memories of their youth and no hopes of any future release from the treadmill of life, thereby living their lives in a state of envy and moroseness. After his initial enthusiasm for the immortal Luggnaggians, Gulliver is informed that ‘Envy and impotent Desires are their prevailing Passions’ (Swift 2003, 196). Longevity had not trained them in superior virtues, but merely added to the existing list of mortal vices, and hence their immortality was farcical and pathetic.

Traveller, journalist and sportswoman, Maillart travelled extensively in Europe and Russia in the early 1930s. In 1932 she stayed six months in Russian Turkestan living amongst Kirghiz and Kazakh tribesman who she wrote about in Turkestan Solo (1938). In 1934 she went to Manchuria as correspondent of the magazine, Petit Parisien, for which she continued to write during her travels in Iran and Afghanistan in 1937. Forbidden Journey, the account of her travels in the Gobi desert and return journey via the Hindu Kush accompanied by Peter Fleming, was published in 1937. In the early months of 1939, Maillart and her travelling companion Christina traversed Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, as the latter ‘fought a hopeless battle against her addiction to drugs’ (Russell 1986: xiii). Maillart's narrative of the journey, The Cruel Way, was published after the Second World War. She wrote both in French and English and also represented her native Switzerland at single-handed sailing in the 1924 Paris Olympics and later at ladies hockey and skiing.

From:

The Cruel Way (1947)

According to Mary Morris and Larry O'Connor, Maillart was ‘one of the first writers to consider the inner journey’; her distinctiveness as a travel writer lay in her interweaving of ‘political and historical details with the personal and the everyday’ (Morris 1996: 243).

This chapter is born out of an attempt to understand the experiences of oneself and very many similar women as part of a process – the process of ‘selfing’ the city to which we have come as outsiders. These experiences, this apparently ‘personal’ process of adjustment and negotiation is also seen as contributing to a larger process – it is difficult to call it a process of social transformation or even change, though all the signs of such a description seem implicit in understanding the material out of which the chapter is made. Hence at this stage, I shall merely provide an account of the material and attempt to connect these accounts with each other in order to construct a context. Whether this context is the result of a change or is in itself a sign of change can then be speculated upon. The project is an attempt to give meaning to memories of sharing – hostel rooms, confidences, double dates, boyfriend problems, local guardian woes and many such realities that had not existed in the sheltered lives we had left behind in order to chase a dream – the dream of the city. In later years, this was the experience of many students and friends that I could identify with – only now the scene has shifted to PG digs, shared flats, rented accommodation, and the problems could all be classified under the large, loose category of ‘staying or sticking on’.

Bell was the only daughter of a wealthy Durham industrialist upon whose death in 1904 she inherited a fortune. Encouraged by her family – both her father and stepmother (her mother had died when she was three) understood well her precocious talents – in 1888 she became the first woman to take a first in Modern History at Oxford. Family connections also opened doors in her ensuing career in the Middle East. After travelling in Persia she took up climbing in the Alps. More journeys followed: in the cause of archaeology she visited Asia Minor, while Syria provided her with opportunities to demonstrate her mastery of Arabic and to start accumulating knowledge of the different tribes and clans. From the travels emerged more writing – including The Desert and the Sown (1907), The Thousand and One Churches (1909), and Amurath to Amaruth (1911). Acutely aware of the hierarchies of the desert and enabled by the power brought by prodigious intellect, Bell revelled in the freedom from English social restraint such travel brought her. When the Great War began she enlisted in the Cairo Arab Bureau and took her place among the Arabic scholars working for British interests in the Middle East. After the war she became political advisor to Faysal in Iraq, and founder director of the National Museum in Baghdad. Unhappy in her personal life she died in Iraq in 1926 from an overdose.

Introduction: The Demographic Threat

Let us simply assume that by 2050 the average life expectancy in the developed world will have increased by another ten years to around 90 years of age. The life expectancy of Japanese women will by then be well over 90 years. As a result, there will also be a dramatic increase in centenarians. We might reasonably assume by then that modest improvements in geriatric medicine and in the public provision of healthcare will reduce the misery of old age. These modest assumptions appear to be more realistic than Aubrey de Grey's assertions about an indefinite extension of life and rejuvenation. But let us consider the social and economic implications of both modest but continuous increases in life expectancy on the one hand, and a dramatic increase in longevity on the de Grey predictions on the other. How will advanced industrial societies respond effectively to either scenario?

What is problematic about the current prolongevity debate is that its champions rarely discuss the political economy of ageing – who will pay for it, what will be the unintended consequences, and how would it change the balance of power between generations or indeed between nations. One reason for this absence of any serious attempt to understand the social consequences of living forever is that the ideological underpinnings of the Immortalist movement are entirely individualistic and consistent with the values of the Baby Boomer generation that celebrate youth.

Though this is a nation of more than one billion, with reputedly very large numbers of English speakers and users, the catchment area of Indian English novelists seems to be very narrow. A few dozen schools and less than a handful of colleges seem to have produced most of these writers. Of all these institutions, none is as famous or important as St Stephen's College, Delhi, which has been the alma mater of more notable Indian English writers than any other single institution. So much that there has been talk of a Stephanian school of literature. I think this issue needs to be addressed because it goes into the heart of this literature, particularly in helping us understand the kind of elitism that fashions and determines it. As an alumnus of this College myself and a contemporary to some of those who went on to be important writers I might have an insider's view, if not a personal stake, on this question.

The first part of this chapter will address whether or not there is a Stephanian school of literature. In order to do this I shall try to describe, in a necessarily personal way, what it was like being a Stephanian in the late 1970s. More specifically, I shall attempt to try to understand the relationship between the cultural ethos of the college and its effect on the personalities of those who studied there.

‘Clip Joint’ is considered as one of U R Anantha Murthy's most significant short stories. Though better known for novels like Samskara, (1965), Awasthe (1966) and Bharatipura (1973) Anantha Murthy's short stories, some of which are quite substantial in length, are a very important part of his oeuvre. Not only is Anantha Murthy one of India's greatest living novelists, one proof of which is that he has won every major literary award in India including the Jnanpith, but what is perhaps equally important is that he too, like other major Indian writers, has grappled long and hard with the problem of India's response to the West. What is Indian modernity? How is it different from Western modernity? Which aspects of tradition are worth retaining and which must be discarded? These and other such questions, appearing as they do in text after text, constituting the thematic burden of his works. And they are explored more intensely in the short stories as they are in the longer novels. That is why it is important to look at a work such as ‘Clip Joint’. Though originally written in Kannada, it is not only set in England where Anantha Murthy lived as a postgraduate student, but is now available in an English translation. It thus becomes a part of the larger Indian English corpus and belongs to a national or transnational readership, not just to a local or regional one.

Son of Viscount Curzon and Baroness de la Zouche and educated at Charterhouse and Christ Church Oxford, Robert had an uneasy relationship with his parents whose long lives precluded him from entering into his inheritance – the family estate at Parham, Sussex – until three years before his own death in 1873. He first travelled in the Levant in 1833–34 after losing his seat as M. P. following the Reform Act of 1832. His troubled relations with his parents partly accounts for his time in the Middle East, which resumed in 1837 with a visit to Egypt, the Natron Lakes in the Libyan Desert, then on to Istanbul, Albania and Greece where he visited the monasteries of Mt. Athos. His time abroad continued with his appointment as Sir Stratford Canning's private secretary at the Istanbul embassy in 1841. The following year he started out for Armenia where he helped resolve border disputes. Together with A.W. Kinglake and Eliot Warburton – with whom he is often compared – Curzon published an account of travel in the Middle East that can be said to have chimed with the early Victorian public mood. As in the work of the other two writers, the voice of Visits to Monasteries in the Levant (1849) might be characterized as confident and proprietary in regard to the land and peoples it describes. What distinguishes Curzon's writing from theirs is a deeper knowledge of the region acquired through longer stays there.

The twentieth century has witnessed a tremendous reinforcement of the concept of democracy. In a period of about a hundred years, the virtues of democracy have been greatly extolled and the world has witnessed a process of democratization. In Eastern Europe, totalitarian regimes have been replaced by democracies, military dictatorships in Latin American countries have been discredited and one party systems have been challenged by opposition parties. Military dictatorships where they exist have adopted a facade of democracy in an attempt to seek legitimacy and survive. Political analysts like Francis Fukayama have suggested that contemporary reality bears witness to the universal victory of democracy, at least in its liberal–democratic form. Samuel Huntington, the renowned American political scientist, has indicated a ‘third wave’ of democratization, in which authoritarian and military regimes have been challenged by movements of ‘people power’ in developing countries like Philippines, Mexico and Indonesia. Political regimes across the world are involved in furthering the cause of democratic reforms. Nations seek legitimacy by attempting to establish a democratic form of governance. The twentieth century has turned into an age of democratic triumph.

The main alternatives to democracy such as monarchy, hereditar y aristocracy and open oligarchy have declined rapidly. Many of these forms of government were replaced by anti-/non-democratic regimes such as Fascism, Nazism and Leninism. In the Freedom House survey of 2007, over 123 countries were identified as democracies, while 150 countries were categorized as partial democracies.

The impact of caste on Indian politics is now an established theme in the writings on contemporary India, and has moved scholars to search the colonial past for the roots of contemporary phenomena such as the transformation of caste and the emergence of caste-based parties and political movements in various regions of India. Bengal, however, has remained largely absent from this endeavour. The caste factor here has not been taken into account elaborately as a separate subject, with the notable exception of a few studies on marginal or ‘untouchable’ communities, such as the Namasudras of East Bengal in the colonial period, or on the role played by the constitutional categories of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) in the post-independent social and electoral scenario. The largely prevailing approach in works on history and political science focuses on urban politics, ideological confrontations and party struggles, where economic status and education are the really important social variables. These readings seem to imply that caste has (thankfully?) become irrelevant in Bengal society.

Anthropological studies, on their part, have not failed to describe social structures in rural areas in terms of community groups well into the 1980s. We get information on the social status, economic function and political involvement of Brahmans, Kayasthas, Sadgops, Bagdis and other castes in different districts and at different points in time. This time, West Bengal with its specificities does not seem to represent an isolated cluster in the complex mosaic of Indian society.

Burton's writings disclose his exceptional linguistic talents, deep knowledge of Islamic belief and practice, and a scientific accuracy worthy of the professional anthropologist and ethnographer. By temperament and upbringing – he spent much of his youth on the European continent – he was an outsider. Travel for him as for other Victorian explorers proffered the opportunity of escape from modern civilization and search for the primitive. He joined the East India Army in 1842, but upset his superiors by his reports, including one on the homosexual brothels of Sind. Sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society in April 1853 he embarked for Cairo on P.O. steamer Bengal disguised as a Persian, but changed his disguise in Egypt to that of an Afghan doctor, Mirza Abdullah. His account of his visit to the Muslim holy places, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Mecca, was published in 1855. Burton was among the few modern Europeans to visit Mecca – before him the most notable were Ali Bey (Badia-y-Leblich) in 1807 and Burckhardt in 1814. He made much of the danger involved for a non-Muslim and the success of his disguise. Among his many later journeys the most celebrated was his exploration of the East African lakes with John Speke who without Burton discovered the source of the Nile. Like Palgrave, Burton's later career was spent in the diplomatic service. The only time he was able to employ his expertise in Arabic and Islamic studies, a period as consul in Damascus, 1869–71, nevertheless turned out a disaster.

Auditing the workings of democracy and federalism in India is conceptually both very interesting and very challenging. Issues at several levels of analysis need to be examined, from the legal constitutional level where forms of power sharing between the different tiers of government are of relevance, to the political sociological level where the relationship between cultural identity and administrative region is relevant, to the political theoretical level where the crucial relationship between ‘political compromise’ and the ‘public interest’ is of interest. This last level is ignored in the literature on federalism in India which, in large part, is mainly preoccupied with aspects of institutional design. It is, however, of considerable importance to the debates on democracy, particularly those concerned with political processes.

This paper attempts to connect, both tangentially and directly, with some of these questions of political process. When thinking about the working of democracy and federalism we need to ask, for example, whether political compromise promotes the public interest, as some may seek to argue that since it has at its very core an accommodative politics that attempts to forge deals with challengers, even if they are opposed to one's beliefs, does such compromise undermine the public interest as it dilutes one's goals through its strategy of adjustment with divergent beliefs – goals that give legitimacy to one's political agency? Or, looked at another way, is the public interest nothing more than an aggregation of specific interests at any particular time and not some transcendental ideal beckoning into the future?

Critical work on the cultural construction of madness and folly has sensitized us to its gendered dimension. It has demonstrated how the binaries of reason and unreason, wisdom and folly both construct gender categories, and how folly and irrationality are themselves gendered and sexualized. The dichotomies of passion and reason, nature and culture, formlessness and form inflect the male–female binary, creating the stereotypes of irrational, instinctual and unstable women and rational, civil and balanced men. Western discourses of folly frequently conceive it in terms of unbridled female sexuality, just as discourses on women represent them as irrational and foolish.

In classical thought, folly is frequently associated with a feminized sexuality that is savage and transgressive. Christianity reinforces the connections between folly, sexuality and woman in the Fall myth. In Galenic medicine, women's bodies are conceived as cold and moist, controlled by fluids such as menses, milk, ‘female seed’, which make them physiologically and psychologically unstable. Guided by the motions of an unpredictable, ‘wandering’ womb rather than by reason, women are also susceptible to lunar and other external influences, which cause demoniac possession and psychosomatic female maladies such as hysteria and green-sickness.6 In medieval literary representations, Folly is usually represented as a Vice, associated with sexually dissolute behaviour.

The Anglo-Indian community has been most visible in the schools and offices of Calcutta. During the colonial age, viewed by the colonizers either as bulwarks of the colonial elites, or as lurking threats to their power, they were subject to a ‘frequently shifting set of criteria that allowed them privilege at certain historical moments and pointedly excluded them at others’. Scholars have argued that, with the growth of ‘scientific racism’ in nineteenth century Europe, a transformation occurred in the relationships between the British rulers and the Anglo-Indians – ‘the “hybrid” became a trope for moral failure and degeneration, and led to the increasingly negative evaluation and status abasement of Anglo-Indians by British elites in India’. The introduction of technologically modern areas of occupation like the railways and telegraph in India gave the Anglo-Indians a specific social niche of their own. Many of them found jobs in these industries which were entirely new and therefore, unlike almost all other professions practised in India, had no caste identified with it. Their awareness ‘of themselves as distinct from the surrounding Indian population, with a common language (English) and a common religion (Christianity), as well as other shared cultural attributes’ encouraged them to keep themselves to the central parts of the city, where the schools and churches were. In recent years, though, the rising real estate prices have compelled them to move to outlying suburbs of the city, like the Andul and Metiabruz areas.