Soul-searching odyssey

India‚s Unending Journey ‚ Finding Balance in a Time of Change by Mark Tully; Rider Books; Price:Rs. 495; 278 ppOur erstwhile masters who know India can be divided into two broad categories ‚ those who hate the place and those who love it. As for the former category, one can hardly blame them. The squalor, chaos, indiscipline and sheer bad manners which characterise contemporary India are light years removed from the order and splendid uniforms of the civil lines and cantonments of the British Raj. Contemporary India is also the mirror opposite of the neatness, order, tolerance, good manners ‚ and rule of law which is still very much in evidence in little England to which Brits have profitably retreated after the loss of their huge empire. Then there is the other lot ‚ Indophiles ‚ who for some mysterious reasons ranging from the easy availability of household help to the fawning and groveling to which even the most sophisticated Indians succumb when they interact with the somewhat down-at-heel and faintly ridiculous inheritors of the master race which ruled India (with, it must be admitted, considerable style, equity and discipline), love everything about it. The fact that they can transcend the disorder and inequity which is a defining feature of India 60 years on, is projected as broad-mindedness and an ability to look beyond the superficial. Feted and felicitated wherever they go, the small minority of Brit indophiles whose every inanity is received as wisdom, has good reasons to love India and Indians, a substantial number of whom wish the British Raj in India had never ended. By volition and commitment, the highly respected Sir Mark Tully, former BBC television correspondent and India analyst, who seems to have made this country his home of choice, falls into the second category of homo britannicus. Sir Mark is nothing if not sympathetic to the efforts of contemporary India to get its growth engines revving and roaring. Meanwhile he is as mindful of the complexities and diversities of the country, the excuse of selfish, corrupt incompetents who have monopolised the nation‚s political spaces for creating the widespread artificial shortages of food, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare, roads and transport and virtually every accommodation required for the comfort and well-being of the citizenry. Moreover, Tully ‚ who studied theology at Cambridge ‚ is highly conscious and appreciative of the deep spirituality, plurality, spirit of tolerance etc, which in his opinion pervades Indian society even to this day. His inner eye which enables him to look beyond the obvious has compelled him to write several books including No Full Stops in India, India in Slow Motion and the Heart of India, explaining India to the West, and to Indians themselves. India‚s Unending Journey ‚ Finding Balance in a Time of Change, is Tully‚s latest oeuvre, which as he explains in the very first sentence of the book is “about living with the uncertainty of certainty, about accepting the limits to what we can know, and being…