IX - "There is good"

Swastika, from the Sanskrit, literally means "there is good (health/prosperity/success/fortune)" - seen here on flats in Jaipur

The swastika is everywhere: on pillars in homestays, the walls of hotels, tiles in houses, weddings: it’s omnipresent. I first saw earnestly drawn swastikas in Germany where the British had taken over NAZI military sites. Most eerie was Church House, the British Army Chaplaincy centre in Lubbecke. Formerly it was the home of Hitler Youth; the thought that children had scratched out this symbol of death is terrifying. But, even here, I find it shocking. I know India had it first (and even Gandhi advocated armed resistance in World War 2), but the symbol has become too much a symbol of evil, of torture and murder, of racism and genocide, of all that is worst in humanity. Ideologically, it’s a reminder of the foreclosure of the hope that our horizon is enlightened liberation rather than a dark horizon of a new mythology. Steven Pinker may be trying to resurrect a vision of progress but the twenty-first century gives no greater ground for an end to mass-extermination, unnatural devastation and the too little resisted rise of popular racism: “Don't yet rejoice in his defeat, you men! Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard, The bitch that bore him is in heat again. Therefore learn how to see and not to gape.”

India has the third biggest military in the world – soldiers are far more visible here as you travel around the country. It’s relationship with fellow-nuclear power and estranged-sibling Pakistan is fraught at a political level, even if on the ground people are friendly. It’s always at the political level people are most stupid, and in line with populism across the world, sabre rattling in that direction achieves votes. Equally on another horizon is a complex relationship with China, which proved its volatility in the 2020 Galwan clash. 

Modern India had incredible promise as it reclaimed its sovereignty. With some of those great souls, India set itself on a path of liberal socialist democracy. But equally entrenched are some difficult attitudes inbuilt in culture and religion. Hindu nationalism is now on the rise. Talking to our Muslim guide in Jaipur, there is an encouragement of marking out your business or shop with a flag as Hindu-run with a national duty to favour Hindu businesses. Differentiation on religious-ethnic grounds has a bad history. 

Hand prints on the gate of the fort at Jaisalmer taken from the wives of a king as they passed on their way to commit Sati.

Rajasthan is, we’re told, one of the most conservative parts of India. Most of the people we’ve spoken with have had and support arranged marriages – though not I think like Gandhi who was married as a child to a child, and deeply regretted it. Caste plays a significant role. Positively, this manifests in the many family businesses we’ve encountered, where even if a man my age has turned to the benefits of business in tourism, he maintains his family-identity as a weaver. There is a genuine fear that with the erosion of caste (which is far more detailed than simply Brahmin, warrior, untouchable etc. but delineates specific professions within families) so the traditional crafts and culture of India will diminish. A man identifying as Brahmin we talked at length with, who owned a restaurant in Jaisalmer fort and owned land outside the city, spoke proudly of how there was very little crime in Jaisalmer and no divorce. To our ears that sounds alarm bells of hidden abuse and deep-seated inequality, but has its positive aspects in terms of social cohesion, identity and place.

Street art in Jodhpur

It was striking as he spoke, for example, of the detailed practices of jewellery worn by women from the point of marriage and intricate religious practices involved in everyday life, that this kind of conservatism is rich in terms of meaning and identity. The sense of what it means to be a Hindu, a Marawi, a woman, your caste and family is deeply embedded with ritual, resonance and identity. One might suppose such a person is much less likely to suffer from the ennui and acedia that affects us drifting Westerners. On the other hand, to not fit in would be, I suspect, an intolerable and inescapable prison, and the limitations and inequalities of power stultifying.

R working with an incredible potter.

On a larger scale, what seems more and more a trend in this century is the proclivity for democracies under pressure to revert to exclusionary policies – defining and dividing unwanted groups. It’s something about where a democracy meets a pragmatic politician. Someone who recognises that fear and anxiety in the majority can be turned into power by targeting minorities, a troubling sign that the twenty-first century might end as the twentieth began. And no symbol better represents this resistable rise than that damnable crooked cross.