On the dawn of a June morning, I wait outside the Vasant Kunj residential buildings in New Delhi for a tour bus to the Taj Mahal. It is not yet six but India is never quiet. Nearly a billion people live in this country and need all twenty-four hours to live their hopes, fears, and dreams. The cows from the neighboring dairy farm are moaning wildly in anticipation of being violated to produce milk. Men sit on verandas and read newspapers while women calm whistling tea kettles and fussy babies. On the street a traffic policeman waits to direct the morning commute, fiddling to center his beret and smoking a cigarette from the corner of his wrinkled mouth.
I am waiting for the Regal Taj when another bus, advertising itself as the “premier deluxe air-conditioned Taj Express,” arrives, its seats apparently filled completely with people. I climb up the creaking steps as the driver stretches his hand for a 10 rupee note for the pleasure of this upgraded ride. There is a reason why the bus is “air-conditioned”; two of the windows are broken. A makeshift cellophane sheet stuck with duct tape over the open space keeps coming undone and rattles angrily against the ledge.
This is not a bus for the country club crowd. Men show deep creases of labor and worry on their foreheads and women balance four or five children, on their laps and pressed against their bosoms. But they are Indian, and they have a birthright and an obligation to respect their history. This is the country where spontaneous monuments sprout up in honor of Shivaji, the Hindu warrior who lost his friends, family, and then his life in resisting the conquering Moguls. This is the country where people invoke the name of Gandhi at political rallies, “Long Live Mahatma,” as if his placid face lingers as a ghost on the stage. The Mahabharat, mostly mythical but historically based, was adapted for television a few years ago and remains the highest rated series of all time. So, as overworked and overburdened as the masses may be, the Taj Mahal beckons to reveal the glory of India’s past to them.
The back of the bus has an empty seat, next to a foreign tourist, which I claim as my own.
While it may be easier to persuade yourself that Boo’s published stories are works of fiction, her writings of the slums that surround the luxury hotels of Mumbai’s airport are very, very real. Katherine Boo’s book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” does not attempt to solve problems or be an expert on social policy; instead, Boo provides the reader with an objective window into the battles between extremities of wealth and poverty. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” then, exposes the paucity and corruption prevalent within India.
The bus continues along its route. After several more stops the bus is full. The driver notices that all the seats in the "Whites Only" section are now taken, and that more white people have just climbed aboard. He orders the people in Mrs. Parks's row to move to the back of the bus, where there are no open seats. No one budges at first. But when the driver barks at the bla...
The popular myth of the Native American race vanishing was a popular, yet incorrect myth the circulated in the 19th century as suggested by document 3. The reality was better seen in source 4. The myth of the vanishing Indian was a myth that likely spread due to American interest in proving to other nations that they could indeed tame the wild savages of the Americas; however, this myth, no matter how widespread, never truly reflected the reality of Native Americans in the late 19th Century.
Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi (October 2, 1869 - January 30, 1948) was an Indian political leader. Since Before Gandhi was born India had been colonized by the British. During his childhood, he had witnessed the cruelty that the British had imposed on his people. However he could not do anything, then because as a member of the ruling class of India he was required to attend university in Britain where he was taught law. Once he had returned in 1914 Gandhi made it his goal to end British rule in India. There had been many attempts for self-rule in India before, however Gandhi had a...
James, Lawrence. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
Kumar. "Personal Life, Comfort, Enjoyment in America Vs. India." RedBus2US RSS. Web. 9 Mar. 2014. .
In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo tells the stories and struggles of families living in a slum adjacent to the Sahar Airport in Mumbai, India. Boo details the ways in which the residents of this slum, Annawadi, attempt to escape their poverty, but fail to do so. Despite numerous initiatives sponsored by the Central Government of India to improve the lives of the many individuals living in Annawadi, these programs are ultimately unable to do so due to deep-rooted corruption in the city of Mumbai. Regardless of this, the residents of Annawadi seem to accept corruption as a fact of life, and do little to fight it. As illustrated over the course of Boo’s narrative, this results from the fact that many Annawadians recognize the ways in which the laws of their society allow for the unfair treatment of certain groups of people, especially the poor and religious minorities, and are also cognizant of the fact that they have no real power to change a system that
In order to understand why Whitty’s argument is effectively communicated it must be noted that this article was published in the politically progressive magazine, Mother Jones. The audience of Mother Jones mostly consists of young adults, mostly women, who want to be informed on the corruptness of the media, the government and the corporate world. In order to be fully effective in presenting her points, Whitty starts her article by creating a gloomy imagery through her story of the city of Calcutta and the hard lives which its citizens live. Through her use of words such as “broken down…. Smoky streets” to describe the scene at Calcutta, she is able to create this gloomy image. She ties this gloomy story to how the population of Calcutta is the reason for the harsh living environment and how immense its population density is when compared to cities like New York. Additionally, she discusses how the increase in population has caused harsh lives for individuals in the Himalayas, the rest of India and the rest of the world. Through these examples she ties the notion that the root causes of such hard lives are because of the “dwindling of resources and escalating pollution,” which are caused by the exponential growth of humankind. She goes on to
The Transformation of the “Indian Problem”. In this paper, I plan to examine the marked transformation and the history of the so-called “Indian Problem.” The idea of an “Indian Problem” began with the arrival of white settlers in North America, and for them, it was a problem of safety, security, and land acquisition. Around 1890, the “Indian Problem” became an issue of how to help the Indians go extinct humanely, or to assimilate into white culture.
In order to raise awareness of the staggering injustices, oppression and mass poverty that plague many Indian informal settlements (referred to as slum), Katherine Boo’s novel, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, unveils stories of typical life in a Mumbai slum. Discussing topics surrounding gender relations, environmental issues, and corruption, religion and class hierarchies as well as demonstrating India’s level of socioeconomic development. Encompassing this, the following paper will argue that Boo’s novel successfully depicts the mass social inequality within India. With cities amongst the fastest growing economies in South Eastern Asia, it is difficult to see advances in the individual well-being of the vast majority of the nation. With high
Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children employs strategies which engage in an exploration of History, Nationalism and Hybridity. This essay will examine three passages from the novel which demonstrate these issues. Furthermore, it will explore why each passage is a good demonstration of these issues, how these issues apply to India in the novel, and how the novel critiques these concepts.
The diffusion of innovation theory is a multifaceted tool that can be used for many purposes. It allows for a look at as to why an innovation succeeds or why it fails and it can also tell you how that innovation spread and to who it spread to over a certain period of time. The culmination of a life time of work by Everett M. Rogers who is the leader in the field of innovation diffusion and utilized by many that gathers most of the information needed through surveys. When applied to the field of the spread of media through the internet it can give a picture as to the types of things people find entertaining and it can also map how that media diffuses into society.
(2007). Retrieved Feb 11, 2012, from The Taj Mahal the tear on the cheek of history: http://www.thetajmahalindia.com/tajmahalinformation.html
presenting biased representations of Indian history. India’s identity cannot be discovered without an understanding of its past. interpretation of India’s past as secular or religiously fanatical. will be the possible mould for one of the worlds largest secular. democracies.
Riot (2001), Shashi Tharoor’s third novel is set in the context of a fictitious riot that has resemblance to the riot that rocked Uttar Pradesh in 1989 as an aftermath of the Babri Masjid- Ram Janmabhoomi controversy. Tharoor unravels the history of communal India from the fictional context of the investigation of the death of a twenty-four year old idealistic American girl, Priscilla Hart, who was slain in India in the riot. From its premises, Tharoor also communicates his ideas “about ownership of history, cultural collision, religious fanaticism and the impossibility of knowing the truth” (