Mark Tully's "Non-Stop India"

India is a land of dramatic contrasts. We’ve all heard that one before. We, Indians, are completely familiar with our society, a colourful fabric crisscrossed with a patchwork of alternating chaos and sophistication. So maybe you’d just shrug and wave off another book that talks about the myriad issues affecting our country. But not when it comes from India’s “most-loved Englishman”, the indomitable Mark Tully. And that’s perhaps the reason why it sits pretty at the top of the charts for non-fiction bestsellers this week.With a title that sounds a lot like his older No Full Stops In India, Tully’s latest book Non-Stop India charts familiar terrain — for him, that is. For the reader, it is both familiar and surprising at the same time. The book is a collection of 10 essays on subjects ranging from India’s Maoist woes and caste politics to Indian languages and saving the tiger. As Tully writes in his introduction, his book is for a global audience, not just Indians. And that’s where the balancing act is required — as he says, to avoid the “danger of falling between two stools, of writing a book, which Indian readers would find too simplistic, others would find too complicated, too detailed.” The solution that he devised for this — “letting Indians do most of the talking” — has definitely worked for the book.It is written with great clarity and depth, traversing his journeys through the Indian hinterland, and his discussions with Indians of all shapes and colours — from top-notch politicians and educationists to dalits in hamlets around Khurja, a small town in Uttar Pradesh, and the Baheliya poacher community in the Panna forest of Madhya Pradesh.In a lot of places, it just sheds more light on what you already know. In others, it shows you a different dimension of public occurrences. For instance, the second essay, Caste Overturned, shows how the statue-constructing penchant of UP chief minister Mayawati, which is so abhorrent to us, actually serves as a symbol of identity and community pride for the dalits. Of course, they crave actual economic upliftment, but to see their own icons magnificently displayed is a milestone for people historically pushed, quite literally, to the bowels of the village.Then there are the little nuggets of information, which you would scarcely have believed. For instance, you might well remember the countrywide popularity of the two pioneer mythological television programmes, Ramayana and Mahabharata. But what would really surprise you is the fact that people from southern states, such as Tamil Nadu, began to learn Hindi to understand what the characters were saying!The best thing about the essays is their unsentimental and entirely objective way of viewing subjects. In true journalistic spirit, the stories are narrated by the characters themselves, and both sides get to speak out. There is neither the too-bright optimism that is so common nowadays, nor the bleak cynicism of the rich versus poor debate. It charts both the highs and the lows, and, in general, paints a very true picture.What takes the cake is, of course, Tully’s understanding of the Indian ‘jugaar’. While he does acknowledge the role that jugaar has played in pulling India noisily along, improvising all the way, he very aptly warns of the dangers. Just because we have managed to ‘muddle through’ with jugaar, doesn’t mean we don’t need to think up serious, long-term solutions to our problems. After all, we don’t want to remain a patchwork country forever.