"PHANTOM INDIA Reflections on a Journey" "March 11, 6:00 a.m." "A festival at the Kapaleeshwar temple on the outskirts of Madras." "Once a year, this immense chariot is taken from the temple and solemnly paraded around the temple walls and reflecting pool." "It takes five hours to cover the half-mile circuit." "These chariots, found in all the temples in the south, are made of carved wood." "They're extremely heavy and have neither steering nor brakes." "They're also ageless, unchanged for centuries." "Pieces are replaced as they wear out." "Priests ride inside the chariot." "At each stop, they bless offerings hoisted up in baskets, offerings of coconut and fruit." "There's a large peace-keeping force." "Police, soldiers, and some of the faithful too, dressed up like Boy Scouts." "From the upper floors of residences, the parade is doused with water." "It's both a ritual and a welcome refreshment." "Hundreds of the faithful pull the chariot, an exhausting and dangerous task." "It takes a lever and several men to get it rolling." "To stop it, they throw wedges under the wheels." "The chariot slides for 20 yards before stopping, threatening to topple over at any moment." "At first, we're afraid:" "Afraid of the screaming crowd, afraid of this colossus that threatens to demolish a house or crush a crowd of believers." "The hellish, suffocating, humid heat reinforces the sense of collective trance, where everything can be released, where rich and poor mingle, where castes no longer exist, all abandoning their individuality to blend into one mass," "a single body without name or face." "We got caught up in the madness." "We became part of the crowd, shooting reel after reel, jostled like them, drenched like them, joyous like them." "For a moment I forgot who I was." "I was part of something else." "I belonged." "I gave myself up to it, heart and soul." "Obviously, sitting here in Paris, these images seem different." "They can be seen as illustrating medieval India, obscurantism, the exploitation of the gullible, fetishism and the opium of the people." "But that morning we followed our instincts, our senses, our feelings, not our ideas." "We left the crowd at noon, exhausted, completely drained." "For five hours we'd experienced life differently, at a different rhythm." "In the tireless repetition of gestures, in the sea of faces, time had disappeared, completely ceased to exist." "Sunday, March 3." "We saw a comedy in Tamil, the language of Madras." "It was a scathing attack on the New Delhi government, politicians, and the bureaucracy, criticized for its corruption and inefficiency." "Bureaucracy is truly the scourge of this country." "A legacy of the English, a state within a state, it terrified us at every encounter." "Entire days lost in the shuffle from office to office, countless underpaid employees, polite smiles, vacant looks, refusal to take the slightest responsibility, waiting lines filling hallways, piles of paper everywhere, misplaced documents:" "It constantly reminds us of Kafka, and we wonder why the Indians don't have their own Cultural Revolution and send the bureaucrats out into the fields." "The playwright is named Cho." "It's his 13th play, written in two days." "He plays the lead, the Mongolian emperor Mohammed Bin Tughlaq, renowned for his despotism, who ruled India three centuries ago." "Cho's play tells of Tughlaq returning to India today, demanding his throne and being named prime minister." "At the end of the play, we realize he's an impostor out to show Indians the absurdity of their politics." "A few years ago a new political party was formed here, the DMK." "It campaigned for independence for Madras from the rest of India." "In the '67 elections, the DMKcame into power in Madras." "For the moment, they've laid aside their separatist claims, but the facts are telling:" "India, as large as Europe, is a mosaic of populations with only religion and the caste system in common." "The Indians in the south, especially the Tamils, are aware of their regional identities." "They're convinced they're the "real" Indians, those who best resisted foreign influences and preserved the customs, religion, and culture of the past." "Descendants of the first inhabitants of India, they have little Aryan blood." "They're very dark-skinned, which draws the contempt of the northerners." "They accuse the northern Indians of colonialism and exploitation." "One of their major problems is language." "The government plans to replace English as the official administrative language with Hindi, the main language of the north." "The southern Indians absolutely refuse, provoking bloody riots and street fighting in Madras and elsewhere." "The students lead the struggle." "One of their leaders, T. R. Janarthanam, an activist who led a school strike of several months, explains his viewpoint." ""Just 30% of the population speak Hindi." "70% do not." "I can't accept the idea of a minority language replacing an international language like English." "We've spoken English for over 200 years." "It's become the Indian national language." "It's unfair to impose one of the 40 native languages as the official language." "We, the Tamils, are against Hindi and will not accept it in any form." "We'd be forced to learn a third language in addition to English and Tamil, putting us at a disadvantage to native speakers of Hindi." "The central government should realize this and understand our problem." "Otherwise, it will lead to the disintegration of India."" "The Indian government makes a colossal effort at population control." "Everywhere one sees billboards showing a happy Indian family of four- two parents, two children - even in the most remote villages." "We visited the family planning exhibit at the Madras fair." "A mixed crowd files past pictures and statistics while being brainwashed by loudspeakers." "What is this loudspeaker saying?" ""Did you know that in our country, a child is born every 1.5 seconds?"" "55,000 every day, 21 million each year." "India represents only 3% of the world's landmass but contains 14% of the world's population." "In 30 or 40 years, there will be 1 billion Indians." "Until now, population control hasn't achieved the anticipated results." "According to the latest statistics, the population continues to grow faster than production." "Yet the campaign doesn't lack imagination, offering a free radio to any man who agrees to be sterilized." "This is a demonstration booth." "A young man explains how to use an IUD, using 3-D models of sexual organs and not sparing the slightest detail." "Now he's speaking to the men." ""If you want to have intercourse with your wife, don't forget to use this."" "After the demonstration, he distributes Russian-made condoms by the handful." "The audience scrambles for them, especially a 10-year-old boy who lays in a good supply." "Whose fault is it if India is overpopulated?" "Indians answer:" "England." ""They exploited our country, bilked our peasants, raped our economy, and at the same time brought medicine."" "So they lowered the infant mortality rate and suppressed epidemics, which means they disrupted the demographic balance without ever developing the country's economy to allow it support this excess population." "Movies are a real industry in Madras." "In this city alone, there are 15 major movie studios, producing over 200 films every year:" "Musicals of three or four hours, historical epics, detective films set to music, anything that draws an audience." "Comparing these billboards to the people in the streets, we always wonder:" "In a country with such beautiful, delicate people, why are most of the movie stars short, fat and thick-featured?" "They wear heavy white and pink makeup, making them even uglier." "Once again, it's the racist prejudice about skin color:" "To be beautiful, you must be white." "A movie studio in Madras resembles one in Paris or Rome, except for the garland of flowers on the camera." "No one's in a hurry." "Here, a film can take a year to shoot." "This is a blockbuster, a story of thwarted love between a handsome musician and a well-bred and chaperoned girl." "This is the scene of love at first sight." "The film stars Sivaji Ganesan, the Tamil Belmondo, a superstar in southern India." "His career began on the stage at the age of five." "He shoots several films simultaneously and earns astronomical fees." "Indian intellectuals highly disapprove of the cinema of Madras and Bombay." "They condemn its poor taste, stupidity and excess, calling it a synthesis of the worst of Indian and western vulgarity." "But terrible as these films may be, they're the means of expression and sole entertainment for the people in a country in which TV is practically nonexistent." "I admit I liked some of these films, with their incoherence, dramatic plot twists, one-dimensional characters and constant intervention of magical forces." "Thursday, March 16." "Like obedient tourists hungry for Indian culture, we treat ourselves to a performance of Bharatanatyam, the classical dance of southern India." "We're a bit surprised by the chubbiness of the dancer, and also by the cabaret-like presentation." "Though treated like tourists, we're still moved by the extreme grace of the gestures and the beauty of the singing." "Monday, March 11." "We're a few miles outside of Madras at the Kalakshetra School, conservatory for the traditional dances of the south." "The school day here begins with prayer." "Teachers and students sing to God." "The religion and rite don't matter." "God has many names, but there's only one God." "This dance school was an offshoot of the famous Theosophical Society, founded more than 50 years ago by Annie Besant, a European who dreamt of bringing India and the West closer." "It's a well-protected world." "It was difficult to get authorization to film." "The directors of the school kept hesitating, questioning us with slightly scornful suspicion." "Finally, they grudgingly agreed." "There are several courses." "We visited a class in Kathakali, a dance from Kerala, which has a different cultural heritage." "Kathakali is more realistic, closer to mime, and restricted to men." "It's a kind of religious pantomime with many characters." "The young dancers illustrate for us how situations and feelings are expressed in the symbolic language of Kathakali." "This is a bee gathering pollen from a lotus." "Climbing a mountain." "Fear." "Classes begin in the early morning, before the heat becomes overwhelming." "Bharatanatyam is a woman's dance, more stylized and purer than Kathakali." "To be skilled at it, one must train from the earliest age and possess great patience." "These girls will train for 10, 15 or 20 years before giving a public performance." "The movement of the wrist, the nuance of expression, the position of the foot - each has a specific meaning." "Bharatanatyam is a code, an encrypted language that must be known to the audience as well as the dancer." "Otherwise they can't follow the story." "Westerners watching the dance are incapable of understanding, incapable of participating." "From outside, we judge its aesthetic qualities as a performance, when in fact it's a ceremony." "Moving from class to class, nonbelievers lost in a sacred world, burdened by our equipment, we noticed something quite striking:" "No one paid us the slightest attention." "All were extraordinarily concentrated on their exercises." "To them, we didn't even exist." "It almost hurt our feelings." "Bharatanatyam is the mother dance that gave birth to all the others." "It's said to have originated at Tanjore, great temple of the Chola dynasty." "The dancers belonged to the temple and danced only for worship." "Even today, despite its secular appearance, to dance is to relive a tradition, regain a heritage, reestablish contact between the present moment and eternity." "The school gives performances throughout India and abroad." "The students perform major ballets with many characters, but each dancer dreams of becoming a soloist." "Few will succeed." "Others will pass on the tradition, becoming teachers at the school." "There is currently a Bharatanatyam renaissance, which almost died out 50 years ago." "Perhaps this means India is sliding towards folklore." "Perhaps this renaissance is a death knell for the dance, like everywhere that ancient traditions are artificially recreated." "If India forgets Bharatanatyam, there will always be foreigners to dance it." "These two were admitted to beginning classes at the school." "Their touching but pathetic efforts are a bit embarrassing." "The American and the Japanese girl have learned a little of the technique, but it's obvious something is missing." "There is neither truth nor grace in their dancing." "It's a caricature." "Watch them carefully." "They demonstrate in striking fashion how impossible it is for foreigners to fit into Indian culture." "The failure is particularly striking here in its physicality, but it's the same in all domains." "The dancer must forget her body, which is immensely difficult, because perfection is achieved only through absolute control of gesture and memory." "But these dancers have gone beyond technique." "These images clearly show dance as language, or better yet, dialogue." "The gestures are a prayer, an invocation." "The dance is one of the yogas, meaning a path to transcendence, a bridge between here and the beyond." "We filmed tirelessly, several days in a row, as if the dancers were elusive images that would fade away." "There was something uncertain and unreal in the air that tore at one's heart." "This grace, this beauty, this perfect harmony of body and mind is like the idealized vision of India, one that I'd so rarely encountered that I questioned if it really existed." "Mystical India," "India that transcends appearances to achieve unity." "The southern Indians like to represent their great god Shiva in his incarnation as Nataraj, the cosmic dancer, he who orders the movements of the universe." "Dance is the supreme expression of Hinduism." "This is India:" "A worldview we don't understand, a social hierarchy that puzzles us, an economic reality that shocks us, but also the hesitant, fragile grace of two girls conversing with God." "We have to practice every day." "From 9:00 to 11:00 a.m., and often in the afternoon." "She's from Hassan, on the other side of India." "She's light-skinned, with slightly Asian features." "The other is from Madras, a purebred Tamil." "I liked their laughs, their expressions, how natural they were, and how serious." "I told them that classical dancers in Europe also practice every day." "They answer sharply, "We have to concentrate more." "If we're not completely concentrated on what we're doing, we can't express our faith, our love of God." "We must think and concentrate."" ""The heroine is the main character in solo Bharatanatyam performances." "She always venerates the hero, and the hero is always one of the gods in our religion." "Each god is attached to a specific temple, like Tanjore, for example." "The dance we rehearsed yesterday was dedicated to the god Krishna." "Today's is to the god Shiva." "Songs always address one god at a time." "We don't seek innovation." "We don't believe in it." "What we do comes from the distant past, and we always choose traditional songs."" "These are the stars of the school, the best and the brightest, or they will be when they finish, for they still have much training ahead." "Now we've begun to distract them a little." "We're keeping them from attaining the total concentration needed to attain perfection." "We keep filming." "We watch them endlessly." "Time has stopped." "We don't want to leave." "We can't tear ourselves away." "Then we're suddenly thrown out, like slightly suspect characters come to disturb their perfect order." "They sensed something fishy about our presence." "When I think back on it now, I think they were right." "We were indeed thieves, intruders in a world to which we didn't belong." "PHANTOM INDIA Reflections on a Journey" "Wednesday, March 13." "India can sometimes be dizzying." "This man moving through the crowd with faltering steps under a burning sun in the midst of an exuberant religious ceremony is alone." "He bears a complicated framework of hundreds of metal rods, each pressing into his skin." "A long needle pierces his tongue." "He's obviously a yogi practicing some form of asceticism, one of the countless cruel methods to mortify the flesh, to control and dominate it." "There are thousands like him in India, fanatics of the Absolute, determined to escape the cycle of reincarnation, to free themselves from the suffering of endless rebirth." "Saturday, March 9." "Near Mysore, a colossal statue of Nandi the bull, the god Shiva's holy mount." "Highly revered, Nandi acts as intermediary between Shiva and men." "All day long, a steady stream of peasant families visits the statue." "They perform a puja:" "Prayer, offering and ritual ceremony, all rolled into one." "The children's heads are shaved according to ritual." "They're taught their religious duty from infancy." "The sanctuary priests distribute holy water and receive offerings." "Even the poorest give money." "I'm always struck by the fanaticism of the believers, especially the women." "Around Madras, there are huge temples like this one every few miles." "It's here in the deep south that one must seek the living traces of Indian religion." "The heat is scorching." "The faithful nap in the shade of the columns." "I envy them." "Even when awake, southern Indians seem to me drowsy, lifeless, absent." "Perhaps it's the climate." "According to essayist Nirad Chaudhuri," "India's climate, too cold or too hot, too wet or too dry, but always excessive, gave birth to Indians'pessimism, their rejection of the material world." "If so, the living conditions in India created the Indian mindset, and not the opposite." "Wednesday, March 20." "This man, whom we met on the stairs of the Trichy temple, offered to be our guide." "He's used to tourists." "He recites his speech by heart, with expressive faces." "He's a temple employee." "I ask what his job is." ""My job is to draw water from the Cauvery River below the temple." "The water's used in the ritual bathing of the gods, done daily by 18 priests."" "He says he's had other professions." "He traveled across the country, all the way to Burma." "He worked as interpreter, accountant and typist." ""This is the cycle of life:" "One day here, another day there." "Today I work carrying holy water." "That's the way it is."" "Is he a Brahman?" "Is he a priest, or what we'd consider a priest?" "He wears the sacred thread over his left shoulder, the sign of the twice-born, the Hindus of the upper castes." "This thread is magic circle, protective barrier and divine link, all rolled into one." "There are dozens like him in every temple." "The temples are self-managed, with a board of administrators." "They're generally very rich." "The faithful are generous." ""I'm not asking for a lot." "Give five more rupees." "It's not for me." "I'm still young and can climb the temple stairs five times a day." "It's for my daughter's schooling." "She's 15 and learning to type."" "We're fleeced like this at every temple." "The priests'greed knows no bounds." "Tuesday, March 12." "We're at the Tirukalikundram temple, perched on top of a big rock." "Each morning at precisely 11:30 a.m., the faithful make the long and tiring climb to attend the ceremony of the white eagles." "Two eagles come to receive rice from the hands of a priest." "The origin of the ceremony is unknown." "It's taken place every day for hundreds of years, always at the same time." "The remaining rice is distributed among the faithful, who vie for a few grains." "The priests are given money in exchange." "Thieving priests, gullible and generous believers, hands extended to give and receive - the same images everywhere." "It's the dark side of Indian religion." "Who profits from this?" "The easy answer is the Brahmans." "They're at the summit of the caste hierarchy, and their traditional function is the priesthood." "In reality, contrary to what I first believed, priesthood holds no prestige for Brahmans." "It's even seen as degrading." "Brahmans often occupy important positions in society." "Those who become priests are the outcasts, those who didn't succeed elsewhere, incapable of anything else, the poorest and often the least educated." "Many priests can't read." "They recite prayers in Sanskrit without understanding the language of the holy texts." "What's more, many priests aren't even Brahmans, especially in the cult of Shiva." "India is complicated indeed." "Seated before the divine altars like shopkeepers, priests distribute powder for rituals and rake in the rupees." "They present the offerings to the gods:" "Coconuts, rice, butter, incense, flowers, camphor." "Southern Brahmans, whether priests or laymen, always struck me with their arrogance." "Haughty with their privileges, stern, deeply religious, they're strict vegetarians and follow, even today, countless taboos on impurity." "There are special restaurants reserved for them in the cities, and poor Brahmans, if not priests, are often cooks." "In a remote corner of the Tanjore temple, far from the crowd, a believer makes his puja at a small statue of Ganesh, son of Shiva." "Far from the priests and crowds of fanatics, this solitary believer, lost in devotion, reconciles us with Hinduism." "I sense his profound connection with his surroundings, a peacefulness undisturbed by our indiscreet approach." "I later learn he's a minor civil servant who comes every day at the same time to pray." "These children, of the Brahman caste but from poor peasant families, are destined to be priests." "They learn thousands of verses by heart from the Vedas, the most ancient Indian writings." "Tradition says the Vedas were not written by humans." "They existed before the gods." "They are divinity itself." "The Semitic tradition says, "In the beginning was the Word,"" "and the Hindu responds that the Absolute is sound." "The Vedas are made to be recited and listened to." "For a long time, it was even a sacrilege to write them down." "Monday, March 18." "A ceremony honoring Shiva at the Tiruvannamalai ashram." "The phallic stone is purified by dousing it with water, then milk." "It's covered with flowers, offerings and precious objects, and just like every morning, the officiating priest recites the thousand names of this many-faceted god." "It's the first time we've filmed a ceremony like this." "They're performed in the temple's holy of holies, usually very dark, and closed to foreigners." "Shiva is the main figure in the Indian pantheon, along with Vishnu." "His worship is particularly dominant in the south of India." "He's a complex god, with a thousand names and a thousand faces too, which I won't attempt to describe." "Essentially, he regulates cosmic order, simultaneously creator and destroyer." "Through him all beings and things die." "Because he's also the god of sexuality, all beings are also reborn through him." "The phallic symbol of Shiva is called a lingam." "An erect monolith, its base is surrounded by a yoni, the symbol of female genitalia." "Shiva isn't an Aryan god." "He's not in the Vedas." "He's a resurgence of the phallic god of the first civilization in India." "The officiating priest presents the purifying fire to the faithful." "They draw the ritual symbol on their foreheads with a greasy powder made from sandalwood." "The Tiruvannamalai ashram is one of the countless retreats in India where disciples gather around a spiritual teacher, a guru." "This one is named after Sri Ramana Maharshi." "He died a few years ago." "This old man was his first disciple." "He explained a few of the guru's concepts to us in Tamil." "What little I understood of the English translation seemed both simple and vague." ""Each of us must understand the Self, the truth inside us." "We must separate the self from the flesh in order to reach the Self." "The great teaching of the guru, and the principal aim of all the disciples, is the ultimate knowledge of the Self."" "Thursday, March 21." "We arrive at the temple of Madurai, the most venerated in southern India." "It's immense." "Built in the 17th century, it's dedicated to Meenakshi, one of Shiva's wives." "There are 11 gopuram, or towers, in the walls girding the temple, which are also entrances to the temple." "They're covered with statues representing mythological stories:" "A prodigious accumulation of gods, goddesses and animals." "The statues are regularly repainted in vivid colors, to the great indignation of Western tourists, who forget that Greek temples and medieval cathedrals were brightly painted in their heyday too." "Objections are raised to our entering with our equipment." "While we wait between two red-striped walls, the question is debated inside the temple." "The administrators would like to let us film, but only in the afternoon, when the monument is closed to the faithful." "They're surprised to learn we're more interested in the faithful than in the monument." "In the end it works out, as it always does." "It's simply a matter of time and money." "The temple is most active in the early morning." "The citizens of Madurai come early, before the heat becomes stifling." "They mix with pilgrims from across India, beggars, and hermits, all those who live outside of time, without fixed abode, stopping for several days or several months at a temple." "This woman sitting between the double walls was there when we arrived." "Practically immobile, she softly murmurs some unknown litany." "When we leave in the evening, she's in the exact same spot, in the same position, as if she hadn't moved all day." "The faithful perform their ritual ablutions in the temple pool." "Indians are obsessed with water." "When we see how relentlessly they scrub, douse and dunk themselves, we're tempted to label them the cleanest people in the world." "But it's not a question of hygiene." "This water is putrid, swarming with larvae and fish." "They drink it because it's the sacred water of the temple." "Purification by water is an essential element of worship in a religion and culture principally founded on criteria of pure and impure." "Rivers are sacred, and daily ablutions punctuate believers'lives, from dawn till dusk, birth till death." "Indians scoff at hygiene." "Perhaps they think the Western notion of hygiene leads to sterility." "Our practice of hygiene consists of killing life, cutting ourselves off from nature, isolated in a nice, clean world all by ourselves." "That's not the way it is here." "An Indian calmly explained that the water of the Ganges was sacred and thus posed absolutely no danger to the faithful." "Yet during our visit, a tributary near a pilgrimage site became polluted, resulting in an epidemic." "This seemed to prove Mark Twain was wrong when he declared that the water of the Ganges was so dirty that even germs couldn't survive." "Each Indian temple has a holy of holies, the garbagriha, a dark, narrow chamber where the image of the temple's appointed deity is kept." "Non-Hindus are forbidden to enter, as were Hindus of the lower castes until fairly recently." "The rest of the temple is composed of hallways, stairs, walls, colonnades, pools - an architectural composite in the image of this multiform religion, built by architects versed in geomancy." "Crowds of believers and throngs of priests, countless rituals, and intense spiritual life - it reminds us of medieval Christianity when it was a living religion, when the house of God was the house of men, a refuge, a place of rest, a free zone." "Atheism doesn't really exist in India." "No one ever asks if you believe in God." "They ask what religion you are." "When some truckers once gave us a ride after our car broke down, they made a quick stop." "It wasn't for a drink, as I'd thought, but to do a quick puja at a roadside temple." "The adherence of an entire population was even more striking when I realized Hinduism isn't unified, with no central leadership, no supreme leader, like the pope for the Catholics." "The gods, rituals and worship are infinitely varied, as are the basic beliefs." "In a village in Rajasthan, there's a temple where believers worship rats." "They give the rats pounds of grain each day, grain they desperately need themselves." "Everywhere in the temple, at the altars of countless gods, the faithful tirelessly repeat these strange gestures." "Everyone performs their own puja, a personal ceremony to a specific god of their choice." "We stayed there for hours, leaning against the columns, watching and filming without understanding." "These gestures can seem funny, and we could have easily exaggerated their comic aspect and made a sarcastic portrayal of fetishism and excessive piety." "But we didn't want to." "We show them to you as we filmed them." "You decide whether they're ludicrous or admirable." "What I personally found especially striking here was each believer's solitude, which seems so lacking from social life in India." "Perhaps religion offers them an outlet, a chance to finally be alone through worship." "Perhaps prayer is their only moment of freedom." "In any case, these southern Indians, normally so drowsy and dull, are unrecognizable." "In the presence of their gods, they become attentive, lively, dynamic." "Perhaps the key is found in the doctrine of transmigration, the fundamental belief of India." "After death, each soul returns to earth and reincarnates in other bodies indefinitely." "The ultimate aim of the religion is to end this eternal cycle, but failing to end it, the faithful try, through devotion and good deeds, to improve their lot in their next existence, for each new incarnation is a verdict on the previous one." "This belief justifies the caste system." "Everyone has a place in the hierarchy based on the quality of their previous life, and therefore, they must accept it." "Saturday, March 30." "We reach Rameswaram, at the extreme tip of India, where boats set sail for Ceylon." "This colossal temple, with its mile-Iong colonnades, is dedicated to Rama, legendary hero of the Ramayana." ""I left my family and everything behind." "I've been here for three months to cure myself of mental problems." "I've visited many temples since beginning my journey." "I plan to stay here another six months, until October." "I pray to the Lord." "When he has healed me, I'll return home."" "This man, whom we met in the corridors of the temple, speaks six languages." "He was a navy officer and a civil servant on the railroads." "Now he's chosen to be a hermit and beg for his food." "There are millions like him throughout India who, for various reasons, have left everything behind." "Many of these renunciants are old men who married, fathered children and practiced a profession." "At the end of their lives, having fulfilled their social contract, they take to the road, wanderers until their death." "It's a holy custom." "Even more puzzling are the sadhu, who, from earliest childhood, live on the fringes of society." "They're grouped into different sects, each with precise rituals and customs, often extremely weird, a mix of occultism and magic." "This sadhu, whom we met at Tanjore, recited the temples he'd visited all across India." "They're bizarre, sometimes even frightening." "Among them are many social misfits, unstable and abnormal people, as if society got rid of them by sending them out on the road." "And yet the existence of these millions of renunciants is an essential aspect of Hinduism:" "The antithesis of the caste system, a sort of safety valve for such a restrictive world." "A Hindu living by society's rules is oppressed." "His life is spent in a suffocating hierarchy, a straitjacket of rights and duties." "If he seeks escape, a freedom no one can deny him, he becomes a hermit." "He leaves behind society and its rules and chooses to undertake his own salvation." "At the same time, he risks everything." "By devoting himself to religion, he attempts to escape the cycle of reincarnation once and for all, to never return to this world of suffering and illusion, to finally know the ineffable joy of being one with the universe." "This man was one among the thousands we encountered." "I don't know where he came from nor where he's going." "We circled around him with the camera." "He continued on, never even glancing our way." "He follows his path, staring fixedly ahead." "He is elsewhere." "At Rameswaram, at the temple entrance, beggars wait for the faithful to exit." "Among them are many sadhu and renunciants." "Begging is a sacred act, and the faithful are obliged to give alms, like this fussy believer, who counts the beggars before distributing his meager alms." "I've reached a point where this doesn't shock me." "Maybe it's from seeing similar scenes so often." "Besides, that day, I was in no mood to judge." "These beggars, many who beg voluntarily, symbolize the renunciation of the material world and physical reality, a permanent feature of India." "They're part of a whole one must either accept or reject in its entirety." "Though we often saw beggars, we were rarely able to film them." "Someone always intervened, always someone who spoke English, an Indian from the city." "The beggars saw no reason we shouldn't film their everyday life." "But the Anglicized Indians, who'd learned to think like us, were ashamed." "Not ashamed that it existed- because it didn't shock them - but ashamed we were filming it." "Nearby, this woman climbs the stairway of a small shrine set apart from the main temple." "According to the Ramayana, the great Indian epic, this is where the hero Rama returned to India with his army of monkeys after killing the giant Ravana, king of Ceylon." "A footprint of Rama is preserved in this shrine." "This woman is 87 years old." "She travels throughout India from one holy place to the next, accompanied by her family and disciples, who claim she has divine vision, an intimate connection with the hereafter." "I no longer know what to think." "At first, I judged this religion rationally and saw only fetishism and exploitation." "Then, gradually, I started going deeper." "This old woman speaks to the gods - or believes she does." "It doesn't matter." "I look on and listen, fascinated." "PHANTOM INDIA Reflections on a Journey" "You peasants, met at dawn on a remote road in southern India, your life flows imperceptibly to a rhythm different from ours, from the minutes and seconds we consider so valuable." "At this point in our journey we've almost found your rhythm." "It was very hot." "In the period before the monsoons, activity is limited to early and late in the day." "We left the main roads and gave up all itinerary." "Our car became a vessel that had cast off its moorings." "We went where the winds of chance blew us, sleeping anywhere, our only goal to lose ourselves in the infinity of Indian villages." "We became vegetarians, because no one eats meat here." "We lived almost as they did." "Europe was far away." "We received no mail or newspapers." "We'd spend entire days without filming, as if it was no longer what mattered." "Freed from my habitual anxiety and dissatisfaction," "I lived in the present moment." "We wanted to experience things, not understand them." "For instance, these priests officiating on the beach near a temple use gestures we don't understand, but that no longer matters." "We may not understand these people, but we're instinctively connected to them, sharing their link with nature." "Letting ourselves go in their presence, we feel as if we've rediscovered something we'd lost." "Nothing shocked me anymore, for I'd accepted another perspective on the world." "It's not about explaining or dominating the world, but being a part of it, fitting into it." "Watching them perform simple gestures as if they were rituals, strange ideas came to mind." "If happiness is defined as a sense of balance and bliss, being in harmony with one's surroundings, interior peace, then these Indian peasants are happier than us, who've destroyed nature and do battle with time in the absurd pursuit of material well-being," "in the end sharing only our loneliness." ""Man must lose himself in the universe like an elephant in the forest, a fish in the sea, a bird in the sky," says one of their texts." "At the source of the Cauvery, the holy river of southern India, a young priest performs the dawn rituals." "There's something magical in the precision of his gestures." "I came to accept everything in unblinking observation." "One afternoon, we came upon the unreal vision of this man pushing a sewing machine down a deserted road." "In France, this would be quite surreal." "Here, we watch without comment." "As if in a hallucinatory dream, we journeyed beyond reason, and I wondered if fate didn't have a hand in it all." "Monday, April 9." "We arrive in Trivandrum, capital of Kerala." "We came back to mail, newspapers and problems." "Our short spell in the world beyond time is over, and yet, in the middle of the city, another fantastic vision." "These bats have a wingspan of three feet." "No one kills them or shoos them away." "They're left peacefully in their trees in the midst of this modern city." "Respect for life in all forms is a constant in India." "It explains why so many Indians are vegetarians, and also why followers of certain sects refuse to farm the land." "The plow moving through the soil could kill worms and insects." "Tuesday, April 10." "We're still not awake." "On a roadside in Kerala, these piles of railroad cars, a rusty scrap heap reaching to the sky, seems as if it's always existed, a part of the landscape, like ruins of some ancient civilization." "The truth is much plainer:" "It's a freight train that derailed on a bridge." "No one was killed, but it caused serious damage." "Actually, our first impression was correct." "Indian railroads are a vestige of the colonial past, of Kipling and Victorian England." "To consolidate their economic and military control, the English built a vast railroad network that remains the primary means of transportation in India today." "Not much has changed since they left." "The trains are slow and sometimes antiquated, managed by a huge bureaucracy, a state unto itself." "Today, India's rail network is twice as large as China's." "Wednesday, April 11." "Once again we stumble upon the ghost of colonial England." "These young women work in a tea plantation at an altitude of 3,000 feet in the mountains of Kerala." "This 12,000-acre plantation belongs to an English company, who operates it along purely capitalistic lines." "The plantation's employees live and eat here." "Their salaries are meager, but they save every penny for their dowry." "After a few years, they return to their villages to marry." "Each worker has a long rod that's laid on top of the bushes." "She picks any leaves higher than the rod." "The harvest continues year-round as the leaves grow back." "The work is well-planned, the yield excellent." "In the plantation's small factory, the leaves are dried, sorted and cut." "The tea is then sent to a nearby port, where it's shipped to England." "Thus the beauty of the landscape and gestures hides a particularly harsh form of neocolonialism." "As often in India, the scene can be seen in two ways." "It all depends on how you look." "Friday, April 12." "An artificial lake studded with submerged trees, seemingly petrified." "We're in the forest and wildlife sanctuary of Periyar." "There are millions of animals:" "Deer, boar, buffalo, elephants." "We spent several days in this paradise." "It's a wonderful place for a vacation." "Except that it was all fake, and we felt it." "It wasn't real nature, but nature preserved." "Outside of sanctuaries like this one, it's almost impossible to see wild elephants in India today." "On our way to the coast, we filmed other elephants, but they're slaves." "They work in a lumberyard next to a sawmill." "Many work sites like this exist in southern India where elephants are used for labor." "Intelligent, obedient and very powerful, they cost less than a bulldozer or tractor." "Elephants have almost disappeared." "In India, like everywhere, man's destroying the environment, natural habitats and wildlife." "The modern world, demographic pressure and new means of transport all reduce, day by day, the area of virgin forest." "It's slashed and burned for farming and industry." "Men, grown too numerous and powerful, push the animals back further and further, into extinction." "The India of The Jungle Book, a wildlife paradise for so long, can't escape this trend." "Throughout our journey, like naï:" "Ve Europeans seeking the stories of their childhood, we'd hoped to see a tiger." "Reality's cruel joke:" "This is the only tiger we came across." "A well-behaved tiger at the Mysore Zoo who purrs as his keeper treats him like a big kitty." "The truth is there are almost no tigers left in India." "The last ones are killed on a sort of safari called a shikar here." "If you're very rich and have some free time, they'll organize beaters across a large area to statistically guarantee you a tiger to kill." "They'll see to every detail, including all amenities, down to your cold drinks." "Two hundred people will join in and flush the tiger out for you." "They'll even drug him to make him easier prey." "Monday, April 16." "Near the city of Cochin, on the sea, we discover a gorgeous landscape of lagoons and canals." "Water, coconut palms and an infinite number of islands compose a fluid landscape where water and earth blend." "A picture postcard of the tropics, a movie set for a Conrad story, a place tourists dream of, as yet intact, but which certainly won't remain unexploited for long." "We heard them from far off." "They've set up under the trees by a small temple on the edge of the lagoon." "His face is covered with bright green makeup." "Dancer, singer and mime, he tells a story from Indian mythology." "Time to come back to earth." "Kerala, which seems a wonderful place to live, is in reality severely overpopulated." "Population density is roughly 1,200 habitants per square mile, a frightening statistic considering that a great deal of Kerala is practically uninhabited, nonarable mountains." "Industry is practically nonexistent." "The port of Cochin, sheltered by an island, is a natural anchorage that has hosted great navigators throughout history, from the Sumerians to the Portuguese." "Today it stagnates in the melancholy atmosphere of a colonial trading post." "The anchorage of Cochin is surrounded by huge nets, like spiderwebs suspended over the water." "They call them "Chinese nets"here." "Installed on permanent platforms, they're plunged into the sea, then pulled up using big suspended rocks as counterweights." "Men raise and lower the nets tirelessly throughout high tide." "It makes a beautiful postcard." "It will certainly draw tourists, if any appear, but the catch is meager, and the few fish in the net are fought over by birds and fishermen." "Less archaic methods of fishing are used in Kerala too." "The government makes a great effort to promote open-sea trawl fishing." "It's more innovative than it seems, because coastal fishermen seem very reluctant to leave the shore." "Perhaps they aren't cut out to be sailors." "Kerala's farms don't produce enough to meet the needs of the population." "Rice and grain must be imported from other regions of India, which causes considerable political problems." "The trawlers bring in a catch of high-quality shrimp to be processed in this factory." "Sorted, packed in ice and packaged, they're then shipped to Europe by air." "The workforce is exclusively feminine." "With the area's rampant unemployment and overpopulation, nothing is automated." "These young women working shoulder to shoulder are Catholics." "Almost the entire Christian population of India is concentrated in Kerala, almost a quarter of the state's population." "It's a very old community, dating from when St. Thomas the Apostle came to convert the Indians, according to tradition." "Tuesday, April 17." "We return to the lagoons." "In these villages, where little farming is done, the peasants live off coconut palms." "Even the bark is used." "It's soaked for six months, then beaten and separated into fibers, which the women untangle and spin on primitive wheels." "It's not a first-rate raw material, but it serves for string and rough mats." "To take advantage of this archaic industry, one of their main resources, certain villages have joined together in cooperatives, a collective society in embryonic form." "But here, like just about everywhere, production is controlled by the landowners and merchants, who own the coconut palms and to whom the peasants are indebted." "This tropical paradise is also a hell on earth." "Nonetheless, these poor and exploited peasants are the most advanced in India, and the best educated." "Kerala's literacy rate is the highest in the country." "So it's hardly surprising that they're also the most politically aware." "It's here, and in Bengal, that the largest Communist parties in India are found." "The prime minister of Kerala is a Communist." "I had a lot of doubts about the Indian Communists." "Throughout our journey, I interviewed party leaders on their true strength in the country, their tactics, their separation into two large rival parties, which, oddly, are called "Left Communists"and "Right Communists. "" "On this split, which occurred in 1966," "I questioned Namboodiripad, prime minister of Kerala, and a Left Communist." ""The split was caused by the issue of our internal policies." "Some wanted to collaborate with the Congress Party, the party currently in power in New Delhi." "We split with them."" "However, I'd heard that Indian Communists were divided into two camps:" "Pro-Russian and pro-Chinese." "Jyoti Basu, general secretary of the Right Communist Party in Bengal, rejects this explanation." ""I don't think ideological differences in the international Communist movement caused our split." "That explanation serves as anti-Communist propaganda."" "Mrs. Gouri Thomas, food minister in Kerala, is a picturesque example of the split." "She's a Left Communist, while her husband, T. V. Thomas, a minister in the same government, is a Right Communist." "Apparently it doesn't stop them from forming a solid couple." "The Communists aren't the only ones in power in Kerala." "Namboodiripad heads a coalition of ministers that includes Marxists and non-Marxists." "So he often has to compromise." ""The various parties of the coalition have agreed on a basic program to try to solve the most urgent problems of Kerala." "For the moment we've abandoned the revolutionary objectives of our party."" "Mohammad Koya illustrates the paradox of this coalition." "He belongs to the Muslim League, which represents the Muslim minority in the north of Kerala." "The League was previously allied with the Congress Party." "Today, Koya is minister of education in the Namboodiripad government, but ideologically he shares no common ground with the Communists." "After the 1967 elections, nine of the 17 major states in India were led by coalitions like this one." "The only thing uniting them is their common enemy, the Congress Party, which has dominated Indian politics since independence, the party of Gandhi and Nehru, today weakened and divided, but still very powerful." "These anti-Congress coalitions are too eclectic and have met with varying success." "They can contain both extreme right-wing parties and Communists." "This is justified by tactical considerations." ""We must take part in Parliament and participate in elections, but at the same time we must enlarge our extra-parliamentary activities."" "Sunday, April 15." "A large Communist demonstration in Trivandrum, Kerala's capital." "100,000 peasants, trucked into the capital, gather in the rain and parade with impressive orderliness." "The demonstration has two contradictory aims:" "On one hand, to support Namboodiripad and his government - it's practically an official parade, supported by the government - but on the other hand, slogans demand real agricultural reform." "But revolutionary action isn't currently on the government's agenda, and only the Communists support it." "The contradictions go even further:" "Prime Minister Namboodiripad tries by every means to attract new industry to Kerala." "To calm nervous capitalists, he must guarantee social stability." "But Communist Party leader Namboodiripad can't fight the strikes and union actions." ""I don't think we can achieve our goals in the framework of parliamentary democracy." "The day will come when village peasants must organize themselves and collaborate with the urban proletariat." "This communal action is the only way things will change."" "Gopal speaks in the future tense." "But when I see thousands of peasants demonstrating in perfect ranks," "I tell myself the great day is drawing near." "A Maoist-style revolution seems inevitable, but I know that Kerala is an exception." "In general, the Indian peasant class is barely politicized." "However, there are farmers'revolts on a local scale." "One of these, in 1967 in Naxalbari in northern Bengal, caused quite a stir among Left Communists." ""It was really a big peasant movement, no doubt, but we feel this movement was sidetracked by certain of our comrades, who now call themselves Naxalites." "We threw them out of the party because we consider them to be adventurers, smooth talkers who don't truly represent the peasant population." "They would have led our movement into disaster."" "His words remind me of something." "Indian Communists have their leftists too, and they judge them severely." ""You see, the Naxalbari movement could succeed as long as it limited itself to equal redistribution of land and remained a movement against landowners." "Unfortunately, the leaders tried to stage an armed insurrection to seize power." "But in only part of a district, on a purely local level, it's impossible to take power, even with weapons."" "So even though Gopal is a peasant leader, he doesn't believe a Maoist-style insurrection would ever work." "Mrs. Ranjekar, councilwoman in Bombay, is just as categorical." ""At this time, the Indian people don't feel armed insurrection is the solution." "They have faith in parliamentary democracy, and we must respect that." "The peasants aren't ready for an armed uprising." "It would lead to violent repression." "The party would be outlawed." "It wouldn't solve anything." "There's a big difference between India and China." "At the time of the Chinese revolution, China was chiefly agricultural." "It had no industry or railroads, and the police couldn't intervene in the countryside." "In India today, industry and railroads are highly developed." "Each country has different characteristics, and it's impossible to predict the form India's revolution will take."" "Mrs. Ranjekar's statements surprise me." "To hear that India is highly industrialized, when I know that four-fifths of the population live in villages, leads me to believe that the orthodox Communists don't really want a peasant revolution." "Since my departure, a third Communist party has been created in India." "This one is openly supported by the Chinese, whose radio brands the Namboodiripad and Basu camps "imperialist lackeys."" "This third party, born from the split provoked by the Naxalbari uprising, is in favor of an immediate armed uprising." "What happened in Vietnam can happen in India." "Of course we stopped and followed the elephant." "Dressed in ceremonial regalia, it was the holy elephant of a nearby temple celebrating its annual festival." "He goes from house to house, where he's worshipped and then fed." "Here where almost everyone is hungry, each house prepared a bucket of grain." "I'm told this is a Communist village, but the temple festival isn't celebrated any less fervently." "I remember an announcement I saw in a newspaper in Calcutta:" ""Due to the festival for the goddess Saraswati, meetings of the Left Communist Party are postponed until next week."" "It's easy to see why Indian Communists never attack religion here head-on." "I found the festival sad- a subjective impression, to be sure." "After encountering so many contradictions in India, all else seemed trivial to me." "The elephant returns to the temple, where the entire village waits." "Young girls wait along the path to the temple, their faces covered with rice powder." "They're waiting for a minister who promised to attend." "A Communist." "He's late." "Village girls with your fixed stares, what are you really waiting for?" "I still don't understand." "PHANTOM INDIA Reflections on a Journey" ""My name is Thomas Howard." "I'm an American with the Peace Corps." "I've come to India as a specialist in agriculture." "I talk to the peasants." "I tell them, 'Instead of doing a crop in the old method, why don't you try something new?"'" "There are hundreds like him:" "Young American Peace Corps volunteers living for two years in Indian villages." "The Communists accuse them of spying for the CIA." "All's fair in war, even if it's not actually true." "Thomas Howard lives on his own in a village of 800 inhabitants in the mountainous region of the state of Madras." ""The problem is convincing them to adopt several new techniques at once." "For example, when they use a new variety of grain, they must use a lot of fertilizer and insecticide." "I have to be really careful, because if I've convinced someone to invest money in new methods and it doesn't grow the way it should, that's very bad for me."" "The presence of Tom Howard and his friends is largely symbolic." "There are barely 700 of them and 560,000 villages in India." "Everyone tells you, "The villages are the real face of India."" "It's where 80% of the population lives, a life unchanged for centuries." "One passes through these villages, ignoring them, or repeating one of the countless trite remarks about the Indian peasant's sluggishness, fatalism, and refusal to change - the usual clichés expressed by foreign visitors." "At the start of our journey, we stayed in a village in Haryana, about 60 miles from Delhi." "It was a very cold January." "Maybe it was the climate, the landscape, their clothing or the irrigation system, but nothing really seemed exotic to me." "The women covered their faces when we approached, as if in an Arabic country." "Islamic influence is so strong in this part of northwest India that you'd think you were in North Africa or Syria." "No farms or houses stood off on their own." "All the peasants lived in the village, one of the most prosperous in the region, despite appearances." "A village like any other." "Peasant life, with its repetitive tasks and empty stretches of time, wasn't exactly inspiring." "We tried to film in snatches to avoid disturbing the natural order." "But every villager was aware of our presence, and this seeming naturalness is a bit fake." "The women spend hours each morning making chapati, a flat bread of wheat, corn, or millet that is the basis of the northern Indian diet." "It's eaten with very spicy vegetables, a lentil puree called dal, milk, yogurt, and sometimes butter and molasses." "These villagers are vegetarians." "We were often tempted to direct them." "Very basic direction, like trying to get this woman not to look at the camera, to act as if we weren't there." "The woman gets involved in her role." "She watches her child, she watches herself." "It becomes a kind of performance in which she plays herself, a spinner." "We quickly gave up trying to organize or compose their reality." "Like this man and girl cutting mustard leaves for fodder." "I don't direct them." "Between the watchful precision of their gestures and their awareness of being filmed, they're being directed, but by themselves." "At day's end, the villagers put on a performance for us, a real one this time." "As a treat for us, they dust off instruments that haven't been used in years and that need to be tuned." "They're having a great time reconstructing this scene." "After this charming folkloric scene, we left the village at nightfall, followed, as always, by a flock of kids and onlookers." "Over the following days, the villagers gradually get used to us." "Within the villagers' daily routine we'd make discoveries." "Cow dung isn't for the birds." "Children gather it like precious material, and the women mix it with straw to shape it into patties, which are kneaded for a long time before being placed against walls or on the ground to dry." "There are almost no forests in this region." "Wood is rare, and coal unknown." "Cow dung is the only fuel available to the villagers, an excellent fuel that burns slowly and gives off lots of heat." "It isn't used as fertilizer, which would be the best way - but that's not their custom." "Another traditional women's chore is fetching water." "For this village of 2,000 inhabitants, there are about 20 wells." "But the women don't fill their buckets wherever they please." "We quickly notice that the same women always go to the same wells." "Each has her assigned well, which she shares with other women of the same caste." "For the first time, we were seeing a physical manifestation of the caste system." "For foreigners, the caste system is incomprehensible, and even invisible." "It's manifest in every gesture of daily life, yet we hardly ever see it." "Indians don't like to talk about it." "They feel no need to." "Everything rests on a tacit agreement." "From childhood on, women always draw water from the same well." "To them, caste divisions are like natural law." "They're a reflex, not a conscious choice." "The caste system was officially abolished by the Indian constitution, but laws can't erase a tradition dating back millennia." "When the government digs wells in a village, it digs 10 where two would suffice - to accommodate the caste system." "Guidebooks explain that there are four castes in India:" "Brahmans, the priests," "Kshatriyas, the warriors," "Vaisyas, peasants and merchants, and at the bottom, Sudras, who serve the others." "Outside the system are the outcastes, the Untouchables." "This simplistic division bears no relation to reality." "From one region to the next, castes divide and multiply almost to infinity." "Each village has a hierarchy that's both strict and fluid, in which everyone has a role, including the Untouchables, who are also divided into distinct groups and are as necessary to the balance of the whole as the Brahmans." "In this village there are over 20 castes." "After our first contact with the caste system, we saw villagers differently." "We imagined the place each held in the hierarchy, but how to know for sure?" "To our questions, the few villagers who spoke English gave vague answers or changed the subject." "The words in themselves don't mean anything." ""Pariah," "Untouchable,"and "caste"" "are words invented by Europeans that don't exist in Indian languages." "Reality is more complex than terms used to describe it." "One day, passing some houses set apart from the rest, the sarpanch, the village leader who interpreted for us, said nonchalantly, "Those are the Backward Classes."" "It's the expression often used in India to designate the Untouchables." "In newspapers and political speeches, the preferred term is harijan, which means "child of God."" "The term was coined by Gandhi to show his intention of giving equal rights to everyone." "The harijan don't seem any different from other villagers." "The leader of the village seems to have a good relationship with them, a slightly paternal one that implies everyone knows their place, reminiscent, perhaps, of relations between blacks and whites in small towns in the American South." "Sometimes there are articles in Indian newspapers like:" ""Harijan Stoned to Death in Village for Wearing Sandals."" "In certain regions, the Untouchables are obliged to go barefoot." "Or, "In a Small Town in Andhra Pradesh," "Young Harijan Tied Up and Burned Alive."" "Why?" "He was suspected of stealing two copper pitchers." "For the scandal to be exposed, a policeman or civil servant had to break the law of silence." "I notice that the countless Untouchable children never set foot in the village school, even though the government has passed laws promoting education for harijan." "Do they really want them to take advantage of it?" "I was told that peasants of the inferior classes were against change more than anyone else, that they would refuse agricultural reform if it altered the traditional hierarchy, and that thus, regressive thinking and lack of education made the system's worst victims its staunchest defenders." "I'm told this courtyard, quite near the neighborhood of the Untouchables, is the home of an upper-caste family." "What makes this house and these women different?" "We begin to understand that there are invisible - or almost invisible - lines separating neighborhoods, houses and people." "These lines exist in people's minds, not in the material world." "It seems like an everyday scene." "The village leader smokes the hookah with friends in front of his house." "The hookah is the Indian water pipe." "Smoke from very pungent tobacco is passed through a reservoir of water." "The mouthpiece passes from hand to hand, but not from mouth to mouth." "The smoker places his closed fist between the mouthpiece and his lips." "Once again, caste taboos intervene." "Touching one's lips to a mouthpiece after someone of a lower caste would be a source of great impurity." "One doesn't smoke the hookah with just anyone." "These villagers are in the same caste, or in castes close to their own." "It may seem anecdotal, but it touches the heart of the problem." "The caste system is based above all on ideas of purity and impurity of religious origin." "In a small town near our village, this public bath is always filled with bathers." "I ask if the bathers belong to different castes." "As usual, I get evasive answers." "There's been a definite loosening of taboos, especially in the cities, but for many Indians, the essential questions remain:" "With whom do you do this or that activity?" "Whom can you marry?" "With whom can you bathe, eat or smoke?" "In the West, the basic unit of society is the individual." "In India, individual people don't matter." "It's their relationship that matters." "One isn't pure or impure." "One is more or less pure than someone else." "On the roof of the baths, we found a charming little outdoor school." "The children are learning to count in Hindi and English." "Schoolmasters are often of the Brahman caste, as teaching is one of their traditional roles." "How can we expect them to attack the caste system when they occupy its highest rung?" "One of the kids asked in faltering English if I was American." "My negative response troubled him, and he asked," ""Then what caste do you belong to?"" "Wisdom from the mouths of babes." "This child already knows that castes are barriers between people, and for him, nationalities are no doubt just foreign castes." "Every day we spent in the village, we saw this blind camel circling tirelessly from dawn till dusk, dragging a millstone behind him to mix the cement." "Finally we filmed him as a heavy-handed symbol of Indian society." "An Indian of the caste system is caught in a web of rights and responsibilities, absolutely unaware of the concept of individual freedom that we value so highly." "His destiny is laid out from birth, with almost no possibility for free will." "But there is a reward:" "Living interdependently, in relation to everyone else, he's part of a whole, shielded from solitude." "Day after day, we saw the same teams take turns at this well." "The precise division of labor is a direct corollary of the caste system." "This man is a water carrier and nothing else." "It's his dharma, his duty, his place in the hierarchy." "In the past, when villages formed a closed economic system, the 20 or 30 castes of the community were linked by an elaborate and codified exchange of services." "Priest, peasant, barber, water carrier:" "Each carried out his hereditary function, and in exchange received goods and services." "An idyllic vision of agricultural communism where everyone's needs are met, which, even if it did once exist, is lost to the villagers today." "These water carriers are no longer linked to the community but to the landowners who pay their salary." "Today, the division of labor looks more like one person exploiting another." "A few hundred yards from the village, these men and women live in huts in a clearing." "Originally from a mountain tribe, they came down to the plains in search of work." "They live in quarantine." "We never once saw them enter the village." "These are the real outcastes." "Without a place in the system, their lot is worse than that of the Untouchables." "At the nearby river, the village clothes washers attack the washing with an energy that makes up for the lack of soap." "Washing laundry is a particularly impure task and is therefore reserved for the lowest ranks of the Untouchables, called dhobi." "By giving this task to the dhobi, upper-caste housewives avoid defilement." "Dhobi are found all over India." "Here, on the riverbed in Madras, hundreds of dhobi wash the dirty laundry of the entire city." "They're remarkably organized." "Men, women and children all share the work." "The laundry is collected, washed, dried, ironed and returned to the client the same day." "The historical origin of the castes is generally attributed to the traditional divisions among the Aryan people - priests, warriors and farmers - also found in the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome and Germany." "It's said the Aryans, after invading India over 3,000 years ago, integrated the local population into the hierarchy by placing them at the bottom." "But recent discoveries show that castes existed in the first Indian civilizations, before the arrival of the Aryans." "In the modern city of Bombay, washers are cooped up in this enormous washhouse with cement stalls and running water." "Modernization hasn't changed essential facts:" "It's still the dhobi caste, and they alone, in charge of this impure task." "In front of the Red Fort in Delhi, dyers dry long pieces of multicolored cloth that will become turbans." "In the cities, the craftsmen's castes resemble the craft guilds of medieval Christian Europe." "One wonders how castes survive in modern India." "In 1853, Karl Marx prophesied that railroad construction would alter the division of labor in India and, at the same time, destroy the caste system." "It seems Marx was wrong." "Railroads have long crisscrossed the country, yet the castes are still here, even if they don't officially exist." "For example, castes play a decisive role in elections, which completely negates the concept of democracy." "Almost everyone votes according to caste." "Candidates, regardless of party, represent, above all else, a caste or alliance of castes, and the political arena, all ideology aside, is nothing but a power struggle between rival castes." "The caste system has even survived proletarianization." "The southern Indians crammed into this shantytown in Bombay haven't lost their roots." "They regroup according to family, native village or region." "In cities, caste solidarity also plays a part at work." "Certain government administrations only admit members of a certain caste." "That's why, in modern India, instead of disappearing, castes are becoming rigid, autonomous blocks that are no longer interdependent, but rivals and competitors." "The hierarchy remains, but stripped of its traditional framework, it's become a plain and simple form of economic oppression." "We came across this funeral in the streets of Madras." "The musicians play Marlborough." "The flower-covered corpse is carried to the place where it will be burned." "I see no suffering or tears, nor even sadness." "To us, for whom death is so tragic, this aspect of Hinduism is stunning." "The bonfire is prepared." "The older brother will perform the ritual, assisted by a priest." "Balls of rice are held to the mouth and forehead of the deceased." "Death is not an end, nor even a separation." "One lives and dies and is then reborn, over and over in an unbroken chain." "Each life is judged, and the next life constitutes the verdict." "If you're born an Untouchable, it's your fault, because in a previous life you proved yourself unworthy." "You can imagine the social efficiency of the system." "No penalty is permanent, unlike the heaven and hell of the Christians, where residence is eternal." "Hindus are given a suspended sentence, as if books were kept on their conduct from one birth to the next." "This ceremony of propitiation takes place in the days following the death." "The deceased still lingers near the earth, so the last ties to the body left behind must be severed." "The deceased's closest relatives contact him, assure him that he's still respected by the living, and ask him to enter the specially prepared balls of rice." "The offerings include flowers, urine, cow dung, fire and dirt." "When it's finished, the rice balls are fed to a cow, the sacred animal." "The priest invokes gods and demons in alternation, transferring the sacred thread from one shoulder to the other." "Now liberated, the soul of the deceased can reincarnate in another body or disappear forever, because the supreme goal is to one day not be reborn, but to dissolve into the Absolute once and for all, to merge with the cosmic void." "What can the concepts we treasure mean to an Indian believer, concepts like progress, individual freedom, a higher living standard?" "They're taught to live and act without desire, to disregard material reality, to accept the way things are as divine judgment." "The caste system is a logical extension of this worldview." "Modernizing Indian farmers is not a matter of fertilizers and irrigation." "It's a matter of changing what's in their heads." "They'd have to see the world differently." "The villagers don't want us to leave without filming their traditional sport, a mixture of Red Rover and Greco-Roman wrestling." "There are two teams, and each player in turn attacks his opponents." "But no one knows the rules, or they've been forgotten." "The game quickly degenerates into a huge wrestling match, to the great joy of the spectators." "Maybe some hope can be found in this forgetting of rules, a sign and symbol of rejection of the past." "The panchayat is a sort of town council, an elected assembly whose leader is the sarpanch, the village leader." "In principle, it's composed of six members." "Today, our village's panchayat has gathered for a special session, because a villager has lodged a complaint." "A government official from a neighboring village will handle the case." "At first, I was very impressed." "I was seeing Athenian-style direct democracy in action." "There was a large crowd." "The witnesses gave testimony in turn." "The discussion was open and lively." "I'd heard each panchayat must include an Untouchable and a woman." "When I ask to see them, I'm told they're absent from today's meeting." "First surprise." "Second surprise:" "We finally learn the reason for the investigation." "The sarpanch, the village leader, the dignified old man who accompanied us everywhere, is accused of embezzling 2,000 rupees of government money allotted to the village." "I learned the outcome from a disgruntled villager:" "The investigation was unable to reach a conclusion, and the case was closed." "The government official was a close friend of the village leader, who is an important landowner." "I gradually realize that beneath its democratic appearance, the panchayat is just a tool of the rich peasantry." "There aren't any large holdings of land." "In the region, it's exceptional to own 30 acres, but the wealthy peasants, who almost always belong to the same caste, are often moneylenders." "The entire village is indebted to them, which allows them to monopolize production." "They stockpile grain to later manipulate prices." "These shylocks with political clout seem to prove Marx right:" "Castes turn into social classes." "But one must be wary of simplistic analyses, for India's complexity will continue to amaze for a long time to come." "Translation by LYNN MASSEY for SUBTEXT SUBTITLING" "PHANTOM INDIA Reflections on a Journey" "In order to film these women gathering fodder, we drove a whole day over nearly impassable roads and hiked six hours up a mountain." "It's like traveling back in time." "These women belong to the Bondo tribe, descendants of India's earliest inhabitants." "About 15,000 Bondo are divided into a few hundred villages perched at 4,000 feet in the forest at the tip of the state of Orissa." "The Bondo are one of the many aboriginal peoples who've survived until today, conserving their way of life and ancestral religion." "The waves of invaders, and in particular the Aryans, gradually forced them into the most inaccessible mountains with the poorest soil in central India." "The men still hunt with bow and arrow and are extraordinarily skilled." "But game has become scarce." "The bow also serves as defense against the numerous bears living in the forest." "The Bondo language has nothing in common with other Indian languages." "The women and children stand before us with no hint of surprise." "They're used to intruders." "This village, Mudulipada, has the privilege of being the Bondo administrative center, privilege manifest in the presence of a police station, a school and an infirmary." "I'm told the Bondo refuse to send their children to the government school, and indeed, it's almost deserted." "They also refuse to be vaccinated, though it's mandatory in India, and the community is ravaged by smallpox." "The women wear an impressive number of necklaces, which weigh on their chests." "Once made of copper, the necklaces are now mass-produced in brass and sold at the market." "The women weave brightly colored cloth, which they wear low on their buttocks like tiny loincloths." "That and necklaces are their only apparel." "The Bondo ignore Indian taboos on cattle." "They slaughter cows, eat their flesh, and sacrifice them for religious ceremonies." "Near the village, these dreary buildings are the police station, the school, and a shack for the tax collector." "On his annual visit, he often finds the village empty." "The Bondo refuse to pay taxes and hide in the forest." "The next day, we hiked five miles through the forest to move away from the police and visit another village, Kisampada." "This time our arrival provokes a slight panic." "The women and children hide in their huts." "The men of the village are away, except these two, who are building a mud-and-wattle house using a technique similar to African poto-poto houses." "Many of the aboriginal tribes of India are famous for their dormitories." "In these buildings, set apart from the rest, boys and girls mix with total sexual freedom before marriage." "The dormitories also serve as a matchmaking service, a kind of club where they get to know each other before choosing a spouse." "I ask where the dormitory is in this village." "I'm told there isn't one anymore, that it was torn down, and anyway, it's not marrying season." "Anglo-Indian Puritanism has left its mark here too." "We met the leader of the village, an old man who speaks a little Oriya, the language of the plains." "He explains that life has become very difficult for the villagers since the Direction of Water and Forests appropriated their land for reforesting." "Now they're forced deep into the forest, miles away, to secretly burn trees to create clearings in which to plant crops." "The main occupation of Bondo women is making brooms." "They sell these brooms each week at the market." "It's their only means of trade, their only business with the outside world." "I'm struck by the sadness in many of their faces." "Life seems extremely hard here." "Poverty is everywhere in India, but among these forgotten populations that are slowly disappearing, it's heart-breaking." "On this monolithic platform, now fallen out of use, rituals were celebrated, as well as animal sacrifice." "Bondo mythology is very complicated, with a supreme god, who is the sun, and the worship of protective earth spirits." "They burn their dead like the Hindus." "Every Sunday, the Bondo villagers descend the mountain to go to the local market held in Mundigudal." "It's their only point of contact with what we call civilization." "At the entrance to the market, they pay a kind of tax." "Government employees take some brooms from each woman's bundle, but not without arguments and endless discussions." "It seems to be a new tax, which the Bondo fiercely protest." "Then the women deliver their brooms to merchants, who sell them as far away as Calcutta." "The price is set in advance:" "One rupee for 10 brooms." "It takes almost an hour to make a broom, which means they earn 70 centimes for a full day's work." "But it's the Bondos' only means of obtaining rupees." "The Bondo women don't hold on to their money for long." "They use it to buy necklaces." "They take their time, try them on, and discuss them." "To us, all the necklaces seem the same, but to the Bondo women, they're all different." "One of the characteristics of Bondo society is that the women are older than their husbands." "Generally, a 20-year-old girl will marry a 14-year-old." "Marriage follows strict exogamous rules." "It's forbidden to take a husband from your own village." "Divorce isn't a rare occurrence." "If a husband leaves his wife, he sends his in-laws a goat." "If the wife leaves, her new husband gives her ex three goats." "The Bondo don't have writing." "They don't have last names either." "They're all called Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, according to their day of birth, which, obviously, isn't easy on tax collectors or policemen." "At this market, barter is a common method of exchange." "These Bondo women brought some rice, as well as brooms, and trade it for peppers." "The Bondo are under increasing pressure from the people of the plains." "They have great trouble adapting to modern life, desperately refusing to become integrated." "They want to be left alone in the mountains, to live as they always have." "Many Indian government officials despise them and consider them savages." "They want to force the women to wear saris, close the remaining dormitories, and forbid the slaughter of cows." "The Bondos' days are numbered." "Many have begun leaving the mountains to join the working masses." "They find jobs building roads, like these men, or as field hands." "They blend into the anonymous masses and lose their customs and identity." "They dress like Indians and become outcastes at the lowest level of society." "We left the Bondo." "In a nearby village, a red flag flies above a house." "It's the home of a Communist activist who's trying to politicize the region's tribal populations." "He explains how difficult his task is due to the distances, illiteracy, and especially the language barrier:" "Each tribe speaks its own language." "He says the tribes were robbed not only by the Direction of Water and Forests, but also by landowners from the plains, who take advantage of the tribes'lack of land deeds." "The tribes are also trapped by moneylenders, who end up seizing their lands." "A law was recently passed returning some uncultivated government land to the tribes, but it hasn't been enforced." "The Communists try to organize them." "There hasn't been any trouble here yet, but in nearby Andhra Pradesh, there are violent clashes between tribes and farmers." "The police, in the name of the law- the landowners'law- reestablish order by means of massive arrests." "In India, we're always surprised to come across a church." "There are many in Kerala." "It's the only state with a large Christian minority." "Despite a long history of evangelization, it's obvious that Christianity failed in India." "The Portuguese, fanatic converters, had little impact here, despite St. Francis Xavier's visit to Goa." "The English, too clever to attack Hinduism, severely limited missionary efforts at conversion." "The rare conversions occurred at the extreme ends of the caste system:" "Among Brahmans and Untouchables." "Indians who become Christians don't give up the caste hierarchies." "Until the beginning of the century, a church in Madras was divided its entire length by a wall so Catholics of the higher castes could worship without being tainted by the Catholic Untouchables." "Indian Christians are fanatical believers, but they seemed uncomfortable, as if laboring under an inferiority complex in relation to both Hindus and Europeans, as if torn between two cultures, their identity lost." "This is a young Syriac Christian priest." "According to tradition, the Syriac church of Kerala was founded by St. Thomas the Apostle when he landed at Cranganore in 52 A.D." "And converted many Brahmans." "The Christians of Kerala, violently anti-Communist, loyally support the Congress Party." "There are also Jews in India." "Not many, about a hundred, living near their synagogue in a district in the city of Cochin." "We spoke with Simon Coder, community leader and prosperous shopkeeper in the city." ""We've been here for the last 1,900 years or more." "We're supposed to have come to Cochin even before the destruction of the Temple." "We were never persecuted here, except by the Portuguese."" "India is the only country in the world that never persecuted the Jews." ""My father's family came here about 200 years ago from Baghdad." "My mother's family is supposed to have come from Spain after the Inquisition."" "The Jews play an important role in the city's economy." "They like to say that the maharajah of Cochin once had a militia of Jewish soldiers." ""I'm too old and too poor to go to Israel." "I'm 76 years old."" ""The community's always been small, about 300." "Now there are less than a hundred of us." "We get along well with the Indians, but we never intermarry."" "The community keeps to itself, and all the Jews here are more or less related." ""We're very happy here." "Our only problem is that the community is disappearing." "Families no longer have many children, and many have left for Israel or are planning to go." "I might go, but only if the Indian government allows us to take out our money."" "There's something degenerate and sickly about them." "In this country where all races have mixed, the pure bloodline jealously guarded by this tiny community leads to sterility." "In Pondicherry, a former French trading outpost, the entire downtown is painted a uniform white and gray." "These buildings belong to the ashram, a religious community that's growing ceaselessly." "Its spiritual leader is a Frenchwoman who's now very old and who's simply called "the Mother."" "She lives in retreat, and we weren't able to film her but only record her voice." "It never happens the same way twice." "Generally, it happens when we least expect it." "And it's usually... when we've surrendered" "our so-called knowledge, our convictions," "and abandoned all hope that we enter a state where we're able to receive it." "The ashram's founder, Sri Aurobindo, died in 1950." "He was not cremated but buried, as is customary in India for very holy people." "Aurobindo's tomb is the center of the ashram's spiritual life." "His followers come at all hours to pray and meditate." "Revelation is always present." "It's always here." "We're the ones who don't let it in." "Knowledge is always present." "Enlightenment is always present, floating above everything, ready to be received." "It's only because we're so completely blinded by everything we think we know and want to do" "that we can't receive it." "But at the moment we surrender, for whatever reason, it makes us a bit passive and open, and that's when we receive it." "They come from all over the world and all say the same thing:" ""I was seeking, and here I found."" ""I worked in the hotel industry as a chef." "I was in a dozen countries in Europe." "Then I went to Australia, where I spent 13 years." "I couldn't settle down." "I was looking for something." "I needed an inner life, and that's how I came here." "I'm home here, really home." "I'm happy." "I found the answers to the questions of my life."" ""I left Italy in 1964 without a specific destination." "I'd read verses of the Bhagavad Gita that really impressed me, and I'd also noticed the transformation on people's faces when they returned from India." "Their faces were calm, not stressed like typical Europeans." "I'd intended to travel through India up to the Himalayas." "But after a few days of travel, I arrived here and found what I was looking for."" ""I was brought up in Sweden." "Not very much religion - they're Protestants." "I had practically no religious background." "God was not a living presence." "That didn't exist there." "I didn't know I had a soul." "Essentially, it was questions:" "'Who am I?" "Why am I like this?" "Why is the world the way it is?" "'" "Finally, I got to the essential:" "'Why am I here?" "Is there a reason for life?"'" ""God had given me everything a man could wish for:" "Prestige, money, good family, health." "I was president of a number of companies and industries, yet I wasn't satisfied." "Something was missing." "I needed a goal in life." "When I read Aurobindo's book, Synthesis of Yoga, it opened my eyes, not only to problems I was already aware of, but to many others I'd never thought of." "Its answers were so complete that I had no questions left." "I didn't waste a minute coming here to devote myself to the highest ideal to be found today."" "Members who wish to do a solitary retreat stay in this beautiful building constructed by a Japanese follower." "They live in solitary cells and spend several hours each day in meditation." "The ashram has a school with 700 students." "The children are allowed to freely choose the subjects they study." "This very highly regarded school receives students from across India." "Joining the ashram doesn't mean withdrawing from the world." "On the contrary, believers are encouraged to lead an active life and to exercise every day." "The ashram is very active and very prosperous." "The numerous believers who've come to live here brought their fortunes with them." "With this money, they set up workshops, a modern printing press, stores and a farm, all run by qualified European technicians belonging to the ashram." "Today it's the largest business in Pondicherry." "The Indian government has exempted them from taxes." "Disciples here lead a comfortable but austere life." "They must practice celibacy and must not drink or smoke." "Sometimes these rules can be bent." "Every evening, the elderly disciples, those who do office work, come to exercise with an instructor." "The oldest is 85 years old." ""We believe in evolution." "A day will come when the human body will undergo a transformation." "Transcending the limits of reason, the new man will achieve, through inner enlightenment, a state of superconsciousness that will set him free, and all of humanity too."" "Ambu is the ashram's hatha yoga master." "He allowed us to film his daily exercises, the asanas." "The asanas are merely one of eight successive degrees of hatha yoga, which also include breath control, self-restraint and meditation." "Ambu is over 60 years old." ""No, I don't practice every day, because I'm lazy." "But I should practice an hour a day." "'Hatha'means persistence."" "More than the spiritual dimension of hatha yoga," "Ambu stresses its physical benefits." "It steadies the nerves, purifies the system, and relieves rheumatism and sciatica." "The ashram has a large project:" "To build Auroville, a city for the man of the future, a few miles from Pondicherry." "This ideal city is still in the planning stages." "The site was inaugurated by solemnly placing in this monument a bit of earth from every part of the globe." ""Auroville is open to all." "Everyone who seeks a better life, who wants to work for world unity, regardless of their race, religion, nationality, or caste." "No one will lack for anything nor have to work for a living." "Everyone will do the work they enjoy." "Yes, it will be expensive to build, but I'm sure we'll find the financing, as I myself am a man of finance."" "Sri Aurobindo told us - it's the core of his message " "that this evolution is occurring now " "They're annoying, this rich Indian businessman who found his road to Damascus, and this pompous Frenchman." "To my mind, all mystical experience is accompanied by a certain anguish, or at least anxiety." "There's nothing like that here." "They've found happiness, their souls are at peace, and they sincerely believe they'll save the world." "Maybe they're right." "Why are we alive?" "Why do human beings exist?" "Why does there exist a feeling of our own imperfection... that there's something other than what we are and above all, than what we know?" "There's something else to discover and express." "But there are countless paths." "There's a different path for each person." "But we all feel the same thing:" "That something exists beyond what we are, beyond what we know, beyond what we're capable of, something that speaks to us." "So, you'll leave here and take a memory with you." "Those who wish to know, those who feel the need, will always return." "In the Nilgiri mountains, at an altitude of 8,000 feet, we found the ideal society:" "The Toda tribe." "Today, there are only 800 Toda." "For untold centuries they've lived in these isolated mountains, where their solitude was undisturbed until the arrival of the English." "Certain ethnologists claim they're of Sumerian origin." "They're also said to be descendants of Alexander's soldiers." "But the Toda believe their mother goddess waved a magic wand and magnificent buffalo emerged from the river." "Hanging from a buffalo's tail was a Toda." "No Toda girl is a virgin past the age of 13." "Before puberty, they're entrusted to an experienced male to learn lovemaking." "These lessons are part of their education, just like singing and cooking." "Sex is a natural need, and throughout their lives, the Toda practice free love." "The Toda language has no word for sex." "They use the words "fruit" or "food."" "Children don't go to school." "Their education comes from their contact with nature." "They often improvise collective poems like this one, which tells of our arrival in mocking fashion." "Toda houses are made of wood." "The doors are always flush with the ground." "Divided into 16 clans, the Toda are spread across their vast territory in small hamlets of a few houses." "Marriages are arranged from birth, but since there are fewer women than men, it's customary for a girl to marry several brothers of the same family." "Since absolute sexual freedom prevails throughout the tribe, paternity is impossible to establish." "The oldest brother is the legal father." "A pastoral people, the Toda never wanted to farm." "They're vegetarians, subsisting on milk from their buffalo, honey and wild fruits, and grains grown by neighboring tribes, whom they allow to cultivate some of their land." "The land belongs to the community and cannot be sold." "The Toda have never waged war, never had weapons." "They have no laws, leaders, or hierarchy." "If a serious disagreement arises between two Toda, it's settled by a council of elders called for the occasion." "The Todas'buffalo are longhorns, unique in India." "They're sacred and constitute the sole activity and sole wealth of the tribe." "The Toda consider all other animals impure." "All the men, in turn, serve as priest for a year." "The priest lives alone in the temple." "No one can approach or touch him, and he must remain celibate." "Each temple contains a sacred piece of metal, which is revered by the clan." "Every time a Toda woman meets a man from the tribe, she kneels and he touches his feet to her forehead." "When a Toda dies, he goes neither to heaven nor hell." "According to legend, he'll live forever in a wild valley that really exists, not far from their territory." "His body and personal belongings are burnt, and two of his buffalo are killed for company in his new world." "The Toda have contact with civilization, as this ceremony proves." "It's the inauguration of an all-terrain medical van that will bring modern medicine to the villages." "The Toda improvise a dance for the occasion." "But civilization also means restrictions and encroachment." "The English built a mountain resort in the middle of Toda territory, and it has grown." "Indians have moved there from the plains for the richness of the soil." "Industries have been created, and the Toda territory shrinks day by day." "This government official explains that the Office of Water and Forest will annex their grazing grounds to plant terebinth." "It's a death sentence for the Toda." "They'll be forced to abandon their traditional way of life." "The Toda don't make a tragedy of it." "They dance around the medical van as if to exorcise the civilization it symbolizes." "They've seen many others since the English arrived." "They've withstood missionaries, ethnologists, tourists and filmmakers." "But this may be the final stroke." "One might say, "What do 800 Toda matter anyway in a country of half a billion people?"" "But these 800 Toda are the last remnants of a free society that never knew war, hunger, prudishness, or injustice." "Translation by LYNN MASSEY for SUBTEXT SUBTITLING" "PHANTOM INDIA Reflections on a Journey" "Wednesday, April 17." "Bombay, the end of our journey." "It's like being back in the West." "Like Calcutta, Bombay is a port built by the English for colonial needs." "Today it's the economic capital, the city of the future." "In the suburbs here, you feel you could be anywhere." "Monotonous stretches of low-rent apartments, like anywhere else in the industrialized world." "Impersonal construction sites rise next to shantytowns crammed with people from all over the country." "You never get used to the poverty in India, even after four months." "Especially in the cities, where it shows its most terrible face." "But the villages of India, behind their charm and beauty, often conceal even greater economic distress." "That's why many peasants, deeply in debt or without land, leave their villages and come here for work." "Some leave family behind and return home in a few years." "Others bring wife and children, severing ties with village life forever." "Like all industrial metropolises, Bombay has suburban trains that transport hordes of commuters day and night, packed to overflowing." "Many people sleep and eat on the streets." "There's no place for them, because even in the shantytowns rents are high." "Bombay no longer has rickshaws, but goods are still transported by handcart, which are cheaper than trucks." "For those living on the street, often without employment, each day is a new battle." "It takes endless ingenuity just to survive." "The numerous sidewalk vendors are mostly southern Indians." "Craftsmen punch holes in copper stencils for printing patterns on cloth." "One stencil is used for each color." "Certain designs call for a dozen stencils." "These craftsmen are Muslims." "They fill an entire district, where they ply their traditional trades of goldsmith, potter, decorative painter, musician." "Islamic cultural influence dates back to the Mongolian emperors, who ruled here before the English." "It deeply marked the architecture, painting and music of northern India, as well as many aspects of daily life:" "Cuisine, language, clothing and agriculture." "Under Mongolian rule, many lower-caste Hindus converted to Islam." "Near the Haji Ali mosque, this woman prepares garlands of flowers for worshippers." "When the English left in 1947, the Muslims, concentrated in the northwest and northeast, separated from India to form Pakistan." "After a period of bloody turmoil, millions of Hindus and Sikhs left Pakistan to seek refuge in India, while Muslims fled in the opposite direction." "Yet there are still 50 million Muslims in India today, making it, paradoxically, the second-largest Muslim nation." "Sometimes there are local conflicts between religious communities, but in general, Muslims are accepted with remarkable tolerance." "The muezzin's call, broadcast over a loudspeaker, summons the faithful to prayer." "The Haji Ali mosque, on an island 500 yards from the shore, is cut off from land at high tide." "This ultramodern petrochemical factory is located in Thane, a suburb of Bombay, in a large industrial complex." "On the other side of the bay stands the country's first nuclear power plant." "Every sailor in the world knows Bombay's red-light district, just like in any European or South American port." "But for us, fresh from the country's interior, this officially sanctioned prostitution is staggering." "Everywhere else in India, prostitution is secret, invisible, like an embarrassing sore one carefully conceals." "In many cities, it's practically nonexistent." "The women are often very beautiful." "Most are Telugu peasants from Andhra Pradesh." "An old man moves from room to room, purifying with incense." "Prostitution may be accepted here, but alcohol is not." "It's a "dry" city, like many regions of India, for reasons more religious than social." "The Bombay stock exchange displays the same collective hysteria as Paris or Milan." "Outwardly it's the same incomprehensible frenzy and exaggerated gestures." "These men playing at frenzied capitalist games are still marked by tradition." "Before making a trade, many Bombay businessmen consult their astrologer to see whether omens are favorable and which astral period is best." "Industrialist Pashabhai Patel made a fortune in farm machinery." "He's a delegate of the Swatantra, a party of large landholders and capitalists, to the right of the Congress Party, its current opponent." ""We have 50 members in a parliament of 450, but many Congress Party delegates disagree with the current government." "After coming elections, we hope to form a right-wing majority with them." "We're fighting for free enterprise." "It's the only path for our country's development." "What's catastrophic about government policy is the planned economy it imposes on the country." "Enormous sums are invested in state-run industries, which all show huge deficits." "Only one was profitable this year, earning a 1% profit, while private business earns as high as 20%." "The Congress Party has been drifting towards Russia, and that's one of the reasons we oppose them." "To us, the Congress Party is nothing but Communism in disguise." "I know there's more social justice in the US than in the USSR, though some try to convince me otherwise." "India could make a big leap forward if its policies were set right." "We're on the threshold of an industrial revolution." "Twenty years from now, thanks to our cheap and abundant labor force and our philosophical background, we can beat the West just like the Japanese have."" "Gigantic fortunes are being made in India today." "For capitalists like Pashabhai Patel, the future is bright." "But there's another side to the coin:" "A total lack of social laws, the over-exploited working masses, and unimaginable corruption and fiscal fraud." "The Parsi are the pioneers of Indian capitalism." "We attended a wedding of rich Parsi, celebrated according to the Mazdean rite, founded by Zarathustra." "India's few hundred thousand Parsi are concentrated in Bombay." "They came here from Persia to escape Muslim persecution." "The Parsi don't cremate their dead." "They expose the bodies on raised platforms called "towers of silence,"" "where they're devoured by vultures." "These towers are found in gardens in the middle of Bombay, and entry is strictly forbidden." "This tiny community suddenly became wealthy at the turn of the century, in the first wave of industrialization." "The Tatas, a Parsi family, founded India's first steelworks and today rules a gigantic capitalist empire." "Though at the vanguard of modern India, the Parsi fiercely defend their traditions and uniqueness." "A Parsi who marries outside the community is immediately ostracized." "This yoga class in Bombay might appear to carry on tradition, but it doesn't." "Many of the students are well-heeled Parsi, as foreign to the philosophy of yoga as the French." "Strangely enough, the wave of interest in yoga in the West led to a somewhat spurious revival in its country of origin." "There's a new nostalgia for the past." "Bombay's bourgeois will discuss the evils of consumerism with you." "This yoga master, who asks his students to "measure the immeasurable,"" "spends several months a year in Switzerland, where he is Yehudi Menuhin's private instructor." "On a downtown street, a police instructor teaches a young recruit the ritual of directing traffic." "Indian soldiers fanatically perpetuate the traditions of the British army." "One day, an especially spic-and-span officer, crop tucked under his arm and mustache freshly waxed, told me nostalgically, "We're the last of the true English." "There are no more in England."" "The ultimate in Westernization:" "India today has its own left-wing intellectuals." "Vinayak Purohit lives in a beautiful house filled with books and art." "His wife is rich." "He belongs to the SSP, one of four Socialist parties." "When we interviewed him, he'd just finished writing a play on the revolution." ""Don't think I'm exaggerating when I say there are foreign powers who will stop at nothing to destroy India's unity." "India has the potential to be a major power in this part of the world, so they seek to divide it."" "To him, whether it's China, America, or England, everyone's out to get India." "This socialist intellectual pushes fervent patriotism to ridiculous extremes." "He's obsessed with the border of Pakistan." "Pakistan is his pet peeve." ""Giving up even a small part of India threatens the entire country." "We must stop this policy of appeasing the aggressor." "What is Pakistan?" "A puppet country invented by imperialist powers to set up their military bases on the Indian border."" "This extreme nationalism is found in many Indian politicians on both the right and left." "They criticize the government for its "weakness" towards Pakistan." "In this modern textile mill with Swiss machinery, the emphasis is on efficiency and productivity." "It's highly automated, with relatively few workers." "The management takes full responsibility for training its workers." "Unions don't exist." "These workers, still attached to the past by religion and caste, have no class consciousness as yet." "Near Bombay, a brand-new factory builds jeeps under American license." "It was meant to produce 25 a day - nothing for a country like India - but it was reduced to 17 after army budget cuts." "India has insufficient cars." "It produced only 60,000 cars and trucks last year." "To obtain a car for private use, you must be on a waiting list for seven to 10 years." "The May Day parade of Left Communists only drew a few hundred people, despite all the party's efforts after suffering a crushing defeat in local elections." "Communists don't play as important a role in India as we'd expect, because they're divided, they hesitate between reform and revolution, and their ideology is antithetical to traditional Indian thought." "Many of them, formed in the ranks of the English Communist Party following strictly Marxist ideology, seem to be waiting for the complete industrialization of the country to act." "What they lack is a Mao Tse-tung, someone to adapt Marxism and Leninism to the specific conditions in India." "Days earlier we'd filmed these same musicians and dancers at a Congress Party demonstration, where the parade was over a mile long." "The Congress Party is very powerful in Bombay." "The Congress Party, despite recent defeats, still dominates politics." "It may be its own worst enemy." "It's currently caught in a violent power struggle between factions that began after Nehru's death." "Nehru supported a democratic socialist regime, a happy medium between planned economy and private property." "His daughter, Indira Gandhi, currently prime minister, has trouble following this political agenda." "Many of her party's leaders declare themselves right-wing and represent the interests of the new classes of rich peasants, retailers and manufacturers." "A new political force celebrates its victory in local elections:" "Shiv Sena, an extreme right-wing movement serving purely local interests." "It expresses native Bombay residents' desire to defend themselves against the invasion by immigrants from southern India, who are both despised and feared." "Shiv Sena is a mass movement and claims 500,000 members." "Its slogans are racist and xenophobic." "This man, Bal Thackery, is Shiv Sena's founder." "A former cartoon artist, he's a remarkable orator, mixing cynical humor and demagogy." "In this speech, he attacks Bombay's Muslim community for the first time in violent terms." ""If Muslims aren't happy, let them go to Pakistan." "We gave them their own country." "Let them go and leave us alone."" "I interviewed him the next day." "He eagerly defended his cause." ""People living in a particular state must get a preference." "I see nothing wrong with that." "If people from here can't find jobs or housing, where can they go?"" "Thackery favors a strong government." ""Ruling with a firm hand doesn't mean dictatorship." "I'm not talking about dictatorship, just keeping the people in line." "We need order in this country." "Yes, I'm anti-Communist." "If Communists took power tomorrow, I'd be the first to fight them." "I'm not hunting for power." "These people should have preference." "Their rights should be respected." "I'm fighting for justice, nothing else." "Physical violence was there before us." "It would be wrong to attribute it to Shiv Sena." "There might have been individual actions here and there, but don't blame our organization for that."" "Despite what Thackery says, new immigrants crammed into shantytowns like this are victims of systematic violence from Shiv Sena activists." "These southern Indians are Catholics from the state of Madras." "They don't speak the same language as the other inhabitants." "They're marginalized, unorganized, undefended, nonvoters." "The reasons for these conflicts are essentially economic." "We spoke with Rajani Desai, an economist with an Oxford degree." "She's optimistic and speaks of her country with a kind of scientific detachment." ""There is American influence, certainly, but it's limited." "Foreign businesses here don't directly influence Indian politics." "They pressure their governments to do it." "Our weakness isn't that they're here, but that we need them here." "We need their raw materials and technology." "So they can impose their terms." "India is socialist in that the government tries to structure the economy, and capitalist in that businesses are allowed to develop freely within the government's framework." "Are we badly administered?" "Yes, we are." "Nothing can be done at this time." "You understand, in such a stratified society, with such a small elite, one has every reason to act in one's own interests." "And this is what is done."" "What are the reasons behind the economic crisis?" ""Mainly the failure of the monsoons in the last two years." "The drought caused poor harvests, and since the economy is mainly agricultural, grain prices rose." "This was taken as a signal to curb investment, and that led to recession." "We've stepped up grain production." "We still need 15 million more tons a year, but we'll make it." "There's a new generation of capitalist farmers who use modern methods and have investment capital." "They've been very successful." "But we can't expect this to happen all over the country." "There are so many peasants and so little arable land that industrialization is necessary, if only to absorb some of the excess rural population."" "This beautiful young woman who speaks like a technocrat is a living example of Westernized India." "But she only represents a microscopic minority." "An Indian friend told me of a village 35 miles from Bombay where the people weren't even aware the English had left." "After two weeks in Bombay, we wanted to immerse ourselves in traditional India one last time." "A few miles from the city, a small village called Vrajeshwari was celebrating its annual temple festival." "This crowd swept up in religious fervor is the image I'll keep of India." "Everywhere in the world, industrial civilization shatters societies and erases tradition." "Our world is becoming the same everywhere." "But India resists, for its social and religious structures are stronger and more vital than anywhere else." "In the temple courtyard, families from the entire region have come to stay for several days." "We come upon a marriage procession." "We're leaving for Bombay, it's our last day of shooting, and we think these will be our last images of India." "But India will prove us wrong yet again." "On our way back, we came across these salt flats." "In India, we discovered with wonder another way of being, another way of living and seeing the world that made us all feel nostalgic, like a secret forever lost." "But we felt all along it was a world living on borrowed time." "Here, where the population is greater than Africa and South America combined, modern life increasingly takes the form of man exploiting his fellow man." "Translation by LYNN MASSEY for SUBTEXT SUBTITLING"