0
0
)
Express...Share...Review...
Read it?
Currently Reading
Planning to read It?
YesNo
Own it?
Yes NoWant to Own it?
BuyBorrowRecent Book Review
No Full Stops in India - a book review
Posted by ArjunN on 13 Apr 2008For all those who lived in the pre satellite TV era, Sir Mark Tully was more familiar as Tully sahib, the journalist who served them their daily dose of news on BBC radio. At a time when AIR was better known as All Indira Radio, Mark Tully along with BBC gave Indians a disinterested viewpoint. That was a time when people would say ‘I heard it on BBC’ to give credibility to their rumour mill.
‘No Full Stops In India’ helps you take a plunge into the India of 1980s. Through various chapters, Tully covers a marriage ceremony in a village and the omnipresent caste system, the anglicised Indian elite, the importance of the Panchayati Raj, the awe-inspiring Kumbha mela, the making of Ramanand Sagar’s path-breaking TV series Ramayan, Operation Black Thunder – which put militancy in Punjab on the hold, the Deorla Sati, Communism in Calcutta, Communal riots in Ahmedabad, the rise of tribals and the Fall of the Congress.
What is so spectacular about this book? Unlike other foreign writers, who visit India for three or four years before coming out with a coffee table book on India (which turns out to be caricature on India), released at a celeb-flooded function in Delhi, Tully has imbibed India over the decades of his stay. Mark Tully was born in Calcutta and was appointed as the correspondent in India by the BBC. The result is that he has shown a rare insight... an insight which even the Indian writers, who look down upon India from their Ivory towers, lack. Tully has ascribed most of India’s problems to the New colonialism, which has colonised the minds. Indians, he says, should be rediscovering their roots and look for solutions within India. The colonial masters won the game eventually by successfully instilling a sense of inferiority complex in us about anything Indian.
The book leaves an egg on the face of all the prophets of doom, who visualised a steep fall for India time and again. Indeed India has withstood all tremors, big and small. Starting from the partition, the integration of states by Sardar Patel, the fiasco in Kashmir by Nehru, the division of states along the line of language, the China war, three Indo-Pak wars, Emergency, insurgency in Punjab, the North-East and Kashmir, the bloody riots that shook India in 1947, 1969, 1984, 1993 and 2002, the near-collapse of the economy, Mandal-Mandir politics and to cap it all – the slow and frustrating bureaucracy. But India has moved on and no one can put a full stop to its story for Indians are resilient enough to come out victorious out of every test, though they take their own sweet time to do that. It is interesting to read this book now and look back at the dark days of the 80s. It is interesting to see how Tully maintains his optimism to see India come out of all the lows and says “ ...change takes time, the birth will be slow and perhaps painful. But it will be the birth of a new order which is not held up by the crumbling colonial pillars left behind by the Raj...”
The best thing about this book is that in spite of the fact that I read it a good 15 years after it was written, it still seemed so relevant, so fresh and untiringly riveting. This is a book for all those foreigners who are yet to see India. But most importantly, it is a book for all those Indians, who, ensconced in the ivory towers, are yet to meet the real India. Here is a chance to know THE WONDER THAT IS INDIA!
Advertisement
© 1998-2008 Copyright Sulekha.com., All Rights Reserved.
