‘There is an inner core—the very being of India, nourished by inherent, unseen powers—common to Indians from all corners of the country. These powers have ensured a continuous civilisation for thousands of years. These are India’s Superpowers India. Each superpower is a shared idea, a shared value system and a shared aspiration.’
Every time someone talks about travels across India, I am reminded of the 1983 Bharat Yatra undertaken by Chandra Shekar, not yet a Prime Minister. He was then called a Young Turk who had the audacity to take on Indira Gandhi when in the Congress. Chandra Shekar wanted to understand the nation, its moments of joys, its pains and its poverty. Such was the impact of the journey that the government at the Centre—probably stung by the criticism that poverty levels were rising—asked economists to redefine poverty.
We have planned one journey with Trinankur Bandopadhyay, the grandson of Bibhuti Bhushan Bandhopadhyay, from Varanasi to his ancestral village in Bengal, almost like a reverse journey to Nischindipur by the generation next Apu, the central character of Bandhopadhyay’s Pather Panchali, which translates into the Song Of The Road. But that has not happened, hopefully it will happen soon and Trinankur will travel with us.
Westerners feel the best journey through India is on trains. They get the best service in the cocoon of comfort. And it’s very surreal to see goats and cows wandering unperturbed along the adjacent tracks. About 14 million people travel by trains, which is the world’s second-largest network, stretching nearly 64,000 km.
But now, life is playing out on the highways in India, and many are travelling in their SUVs to explore this fascinating country. And that is precisely the reason why Bhairavi Jani’s tome, Highway to Swades: Rediscovering India’s Superpowers, is a great read. It is like a journey wrapped multiple times around the Earth, she calls its civilisational superpowers. She planned the book in 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party obtained a majority and Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of the country. A new state Telangana was formed. She started writing when Covid-19 wreaked havoc in our lives. As Jani writes in the book: “Today, India is at an important crossroads. There is much to be optimistic about, and yet there is a fear we are transforming the mosaic of our society and polity into a melting pot.”
The writer claims brilliantly that “there is an inner core—the very being of India, nourished by inherent, unseen powers—common to Indians from all corners of the country. These powers have ensured a continuous civilisation for thousands of years. These are India’s Superpowers India. Each superpower is a shared idea, a shared value system and a shared aspiration.”
Lovely, lovely lines, so nationalistic.
So where did Jani travel during her 18,000 plus km journey with her friends? She virtually criss-crossed the nation, visiting Rajkot, Ajanta, Khuldabad, Ferozepur, Amritsar, Sriganganagar, Mcleodgunj, Nahan, Pathankot, Haridwar, Rae Bareli, Shimla, Varca (Goa), Moradabad, Shahjahanpur, Murudeswar, Karwar, Mangalore (all Karnataka), Lungwa, Kohima (Nagaland), Alleppey, Thiruvananthapuram. That’s 22 cities. Throughout the book, Jani finds many differences in terms of diversity but also a lot of commonalities as well. The book, sorry Jani, gives a voice to those commonalities, the book—slowly yet steadily—turns into a narrative of travel while celebrating India’s diversity and also giving voice to the nation’s unity. I remember reading somewhere Jani called the book Highway to Swades because she took a cue from Alia Bhatt’s Highway.
“You can outsource everything, but you cannot outsource nation building,” Jani once said in a television show with Dr Subramanian Swamy, one of the finest politicians in India. I get a sense that the book explores multiple aspects of powers that exist in India, citing examples of power of enterprise, the power of heritage, art and culture that she repeatedly claims in the book is important for Indians to preserve for the next generation.
So what are these powers Jani is talking about?
Let me run through, very briefly, some of these. For example, Jani talks about the power of enterprise by exploring the values of India’s street vendors and, almost in the same breath, she connects them with the techies in Bengaluru. And when it comes to the power of nature, she beautifully narrates stories of bonds shared by the Changpa community who live in the cold desert in Ladakh, the Khasis of Meghalaya and an Oxford-returned woman she found in the leopard-infested Kumaon hills. When she talks of the power of creativity, Jani is confident that India’s inherent superpower of creativity can easily blend with its thriving creative economy using new-age tech and artificial intelligence. There’s tradition, there’s history and there’s modernism laced throughout the book.
The book has hundreds of examples of what Jani thinks are beautiful places in India, a land with some fascinating stories. She wants youngsters to get rid of their WhatsApp chats and Insta posts, to get on the road to travel to every nook and corner and, in the process, understand the country. She has the nation in her heart when she claims that it is a privilege to be born in India. She feels the nation has huge opportunities and these must be exploited by the current generation. The idea is to believe in what she calls the superpowers of India’s people, not just the government or a big company or something. Throughout the book, Jani keeps exhorting the youth to have faith and belief. She feels everyone has their own superpower.
I particularly liked the chapter on Nalanda where Jani walked through the ruins. “I came to a section which had small rooms lined next to each other in a quadrangle. I was told these had originally been dorms for monks to stay; they even had wall alcoves for lamps. Nalanda offered Buddhist studies, a subject of prime interest to seekers like Xuanzang.” Jani says in the same chapter how Indians worship knowledge as a powerful force and why ancient Indians believed knowledge was a divine force.
Indians need to remember this, hints Jani throughout the book.
I get a feeling this book is a lesson for generation-next Indians who need not remember how the Viceroy Lord Linlithgow’s party shot 4,237 ducks in one day in 1938 at the Bharatpur bird sanctuary, but how India’s narrow streets are laced with history, almost like the bathing crowds at a Varanasi ghat where the sun rises over the sacred River Ganges.
Throughout the book, Jani searched for threads that together weave the people of India, the world’s largest democracy and rediscover the nation’s inherent civilizational powers and seamlessly keeps shuffling between the country’s past, present and future.
Look at her words from Amritsar, a holy border town. “Growing from a rich yet turbulent history, is the holy city of Amritsar, that is frequented by devotees, international tourists and the Sikh diaspora from around the world. The Golden Temple or Harmandir Sahib can be seen in its various moods: from the beautiful morning procession of the Guru Granth Sahib to sundown, when thousands of incandescent lamps are lit and the temple emanates a warm glow.”
And then she also writes about the wounds, and life. “Equally evocative are the highlighted bullet marks on the boundary wall at the Jallianwala Bagh, prominent reminders of a dark day, a century ago. The bustling old-city bazaar is another feast for the senses with rows upon rows of vibrant phulkari dupattas and embroidered Punjabi juttis, the spicy aroma wafting from sacks full of the famous papad-wariyan, and the delightful sizzle of butter on a crisp Amritsari kulcha, balanced only by the calming sound of the distant Gurbani.”
I could go on and on but must break here. Buy a copy and have a read. And the Indian government must make it a mandatory read in schools, it will be a welcome break from those Korean comics that fill the libraries of most schools.
No harm in loving your own nation, right?