Introduction to China and India AST1ICI 2011 India

LecturesContentsLecture 1: Indian Geography.............................................................5

What makes India India? The monsoon..........................................5Physical geography.........................................................................5

Himalayas: The Northern reaches of India..................................5The Indus river basin: Pakistan, Lahore and Karachi...................6The Ganges basin – Punjab, Haryana, UP, Bihar..........................6Eastern India: Bengal, Orissa, Assam, Mizoram etc.....................7Bangladesh..................................................................................7Peninsula India: Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa..............7South India: Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu.....8Indian Agriculture........................................................................8Transport and communications...................................................8

Demography: The Indian Population.............................................10Income levels.............................................................................11The people: literacy and education...........................................12Language...................................................................................13Religion......................................................................................13Caste.........................................................................................14Contested Identities..................................................................15Tamil and Dravidian Identities...................................................15Sikh Identities............................................................................15The North Eastern States...........................................................16Mahajan Identity and Indian trading communities....................16Kayastha Identity and modernity..............................................17Culture.......................................................................................17

Lecture 2: Indian History..............................................................19The Indian National symbol.......................................................19Third millennium BCE - The Indus Valley Culture......................20First millennium BCE: Vedic period............................................20Sixth century BCE onwards: Ashoka and the age of Empires....21Fourth to sixth century CE Gupta..............................................22Eighth to Twelfth century: Pala Dynasty....................................22The first millennium CE: The Sultanate period..........................23Sixteenth century onwards: Mughal India.................................23The eighteenth century: British Colonialism..............................23The nineteenth century and the Freedom struggle...................25Idealism and Pragmatism..........................................................261947 Nehru and independence.................................................281991 Economic liberalisation.....................................................29The presence of the past...........................................................29

Lecture 3: Indian Politics...............................................................30

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The Constitution........................................................................30The Structure of the Rajya Sabha: the Upper House.................30The Structure of the Lok Sabha: the Lower House....................30State Parliaments......................................................................31Administrative system...............................................................32Local Government.....................................................................32The Police and Judiciary.............................................................32The armed Forces......................................................................32Checks and Balances in the political system.............................33The Main Political Parties...........................................................33

Key Political Issues........................................................................34Economic Development.............................................................34Reservation policy and caste factors.........................................34Centre state relations................................................................35Islamic Terrorism.......................................................................35Hindu Fundamentalism..............................................................35Naxalite Movements..................................................................35Personality Politics.....................................................................35

Lecture 4: The Indian Economy....................................................37Primary Industries: Farming......................................................37Primary Industries: Mining.........................................................38Primary Industries: Power generation........................................39Manufacturing: Steel.................................................................39Manufacturing: consumer goods...............................................40Manufacturing: fabrics and clothing..........................................40Service Industries: banking.......................................................41Service Industries: software......................................................41Service Industries: call centres..................................................42Development and the rural/Urban divide..................................42Conclusion: what trickles down?................................................43

Lecture 5: Gender.........................................................................44Traditional gender roles.............................................................44Family structures.......................................................................45Gender roles and regional/caste/class.......................................45Colonial era interactions............................................................46Imbalance in birth rates.............................................................46Marriage and dowry...................................................................47Education...................................................................................48Social roles................................................................................48Rural/Urban divide.....................................................................49Gram Panchayats and reservation............................................49

Lecture 6: Popular Culture............................................................50What is popular culture?............................................................50Traditional and modern cultural forms......................................50The cinema................................................................................50Broadcast media........................................................................53Print media................................................................................54Music.........................................................................................55Sport..........................................................................................56

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Popular culture as a paradigm for change.................................57Additional Readings......................................................................58

Draft notes by Peter Friedlander for AST1ICI lectures 1-6Last updated: Monday, 25 July 2011

Note these are draft notes, the actual lecture contents will vary, so reading them is not a substitute for attending the lectures.

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Lecture 1: Indian Geography

What makes India India? The monsoonEvery year India is subject to the forces of the great tropical monsoons that sweep up from the South of the Indian peninsular and bring rain to the whole of the subcontinent until they meet the massive mountain ranges of the Himalayas where the monsoon winds and rains paths are brought to a halt. In Sanskrit, and Hindi, the word for country is varsha, which means three things all at once; rain, land, and year. From this you can glimpse the way that for thousands of years what has made India India is the monsoon, it’s the land that flourish within the area where the annual monsoon rains fall.Image: http://www.bigfoto.com/sites/galery/sky/dark_clouds-4.jpgVideo clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CPj0QZCubk&feature=related

Physical geographyIn terms of geography the simplest way to see it is that the southern limit of India is southern tip of the Indian subcontinent and its northern border lies in the Himalayas. In the far west, India is bounded by the deserts of Baluchistan and on the eastern the limits lie in the dense jungles along the Burmese border. I will sometimes talk of India in relation to the pre 1947 borders as well today, and include some discussions of Bangladesh and Pakistan as well as the modern nation state of India.This image is a composite taken by the DSMP satellite of the lights of India at night superimposed on the daytime image, and from it you can get a sense of how densely populated India is and where the main centres are where people live. Image: http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect4/Sect4_4.html

Himalayas: The Northern reaches of IndiaThe world’s highest mountains stretch in an arc for about two and half thousand kilometres from Southern China to Afghanistan. Due to the height of the mountains they act as a natural barrier between India and the rest of Asia. They are not only tall enough to stop the path of the monsoon winds, but also to limit the passage of people. Historically this has meant that whilst India has been frequently in contact with central Asia through the West of the Himalayas, the modern Afghanistan region, it has rarely had major contact along most of the Himalayan range with China directly. Whilst in the East the Himalayas end in the dense jungles on the borders of India, Burma and China which have proved largely impenetrable to travellers until recent times.Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Himalayas_landsat_7.png

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The Indus river basin: Pakistan, Lahore and Karachi The Indus is one of the world’s longest rivers, at over three thousand kilometres long. It rises in the Himalayas in the region of Lake Mansarover and Mount Kailash, now in China, but which also features prominently as the most Northern border of the Indian cultural area in the mythology and traditions of South Asia as the home of one of India’s most important Gods, Shiva. The Indus irrigates the plains of the Northern Panjab, in present day Pakistan, and is the major river system of that country today. The Indus also the origin of the word India itself as it is from the name of this river that the Greeks came to refer to those people who lived beyond it as dwelt in the region of the Indus, which over time came to be pronounced as ‘India’ in Greek, and that is how the modern world ends up knowing of South Asia as ‘India’.Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indus.A2002274.0610.1km.jpgPakistan is also the home of many major cities such as Lahore, with a population of around ten million and Karachi, with a population of perhaps up to around twenty million.

The Ganges basin – Punjab, Haryana, UP, BiharAround four hundred million people, a fifteenth of the world’s population, lives in Northern India around the areas irrigated by the Ganges and Yamuna rivers. The Ganges flows for around two and half thousand kilometres from its sources in the Himalayas to the bay of Bengal where it meets the Indian ocean. Along the way the Ganges is also joined at Allahabad by a second major river, the Yamuna which is about one and half thousand kilometres long. The sources for the rivers are both the melt water from the glaciers in the Himalayas, and the immense amount of water that falls from the Monsoon rains. The level that the Ganges flows at in a city like Varanasi, that lies about half way down its course, varies from winter to summer in height by often more than the height of a five storey building, and the width of the rivers can swell from a few hundred meters to many kilometres wide.Delhi is the capital of India, and with a population of around 18 million people one of the world’s largest cities. It has been the capital of India for the better part of the last thousand years, being the main seat of power of the Mughal empire, and since independence in 1947 it has been the official capital of India.

Eastern India: Bengal, Orissa, Assam, Mizoram etc.Kalkatta (Calcutta) is the capital of West Bengal, the most important city in Eastern India, and a very large city with a population of around 15 million. Geographically Eastern India is also heavily influenced by the presence of the Brahmaputra river which rises in Tibet, near Manasarover, just like the Indus, but then flows eastwards and down into India and Bangladesh. The lowlands of Bengal and Eastern India are densely populated areas and in

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particular the area around the mouths of the river Ganges are some of the most heavily populated non urban areas in the world.

BangladeshThe area which is now Bangladesh was before Indian independence part of India, and then became East Pakistan until 1971 when following a civil war with West Pakistan it became an independent nation. Despite its small geographical size, about 147,000 square kilometres, about two thirds of the size of Victoria, it has a population of around 165 million people. So, whereas the density of population in Victoria, population about five and half million, is about 24 per square kilometre, in Bangladesh the density is about 1,100 per square kilometre.

Peninsula India: Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, OrissaSouth of the plains of the Ganges river basin there is a vast area beyond the Arravali mountains which is central India. Much of the heartland of this area is an elevated plateau, the Deccan, which was formed millions of years ago by vast volcanic eruptions. This is a vast area which is mostly agricultural, with extensive cotton farming as well as food production and forms much of the heartland of India.Image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/South_India_satellite.jpgMumbai (Bombay) is one of the main Indian economic and trading centres, and with a population of around 20million one of the worlds largest cities.

South India: Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil NaduThe four southernmost states of India make up a distinct geographic and cultural region. The languages spoken in these states belong to a different language group, called Dravidian languages, whereas in the north of India the main languages belong to the Indo-European language group. The staple food in this area is rice, where as in much of the north its wheat, and the culture is recognisably different from North India in many ways due to the more tropical climate meaning that people don’t have to cope with seasonal cold conditions. There are also strong connections between Kerala and the gulf, and between Tamil Nadu and South East Asia, and many of the Indians who live in Malaysia and elsewhere in South East Asia came from South India.

Indian AgricultureWe will talk in more detail about Indian agriculture in the lecture on the Indian economy, but its vital to understand that India has a variety of different areas in terms of agricultural production. Broadly speaking you might group these into areas such as the Himalayan regions, where only one crop a year can be raised, the Ganges river basin area where two crops a year can be gown, and the far south of

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India, where three crops a year can be grown. The main Indian staple crops include rice and wheat, and other important food crops include pulses, lentils, oil seed plants, like mustard and canola, fruits and vegetables and sugar, and of course tea and even coffee. There is also extensive dairy farming, which produces the milk, butter and clarified butter, ghee. One of the main cash crops grown is cotton for which India is famous.

Transport and communicationsIndia has been famous as a shipping nation since early times and maintains a position as an important maritime trading nation. In addition before the nineteenth century, river based transport was also an important element in Indian communications. It still remains so in some areas such as Bengal as well where there extensive waterways in the mouths of the Ganges make it impractical to build roads and railways everywhere. Assam steamersRailways started to be built in India soon after the British started building them in the UK, where the first public railway opened in 1829, and by 1853 India had its first public railway, from Pune to Bombay. Today the India railway network is one of the largest in the world, and the state owned Indian railways is the largest employer in India, with over a million employees.Roads also developed during the colonial period in India but it is only since the 1990s that India has started to develop a national highway system, like the system of freeways that criss-cross most developed countries. Travelling along these new highways also points to the ways that India still has a remarkable range of means of transport all moving together, from bullock carts to articulated trucks.Bicycles were an important development in transport in India and there are millions of bicycles in India today. There are also millions of cycle rickshaws, which were invented in Japan in the late nineteenth century and became popular in India after independence. From the 1970s onwards three wheelers, rickshaws etc. also began to grow in popularity and make up a significant proportion of the road traffic in many cities today.Scooters and motorcycles are also found in very large numbers indeed. Since the 1990s the numbers of two wheelers has grown at a high rate due to the availability of easy accessible bank loans and a high demand for transport so that people can make the often long journeys from where they live to where they work.Cars have also been growing in numbers in every greater speed, and now there are figures like one car a minute being added to Indian roads. This has granted more mobility to many Indians and seen major changes in how public urban, and rural, spaces are utilized. The growth in vehicle ownership and usage has also contributed to shocking statistics on road injuries in India, one figure from 2009 is that somebody dies on an Indian road every four and half minutes, or 13 people an hour.

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http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-08-17/india/28181973_1_road-accidents-road-fatalities-global-road-safetyIndia is increasingly making use of internal aviation for travel, with a vibrant private sector providing numerous internal flights. However, this needs to be seen in context, for the majority of Indians the idea of travel by air is still a remote dream. Certainly things have changed immensely from the 1960s where perhaps only a few percent of Indians would have been affluent enough to fly from one city to another in India, but even so the proportion of Indians who can fly internally today is still quite low in relation to some developed countries, such as the US where up to 42% of people travel by air. However, in India growth in travel by train is still in general outstripping growth in travel by plane, but recent efforts by the air industry are moving towards changing this situation. However, Indians, on average, still take 0.1 air trips per year, a figure comparable with Senegal according to Airbus.http://www.ustravel.org/news/press-kit/travel-facts-and-statistics http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/26e2664a-706f-11dd-b514-0000779fd18c.htmlhttp://www.cnbc.com/id/43542876/India_s_Air_Travel_Growth_Spurs_Jet_OrdersCommunications in India include all the modes of contemporary world media, ranging from Satellite TV, Radio and the internet. We will look more at the media in the lecture on popular Indian culture. But, for the moment the key thing to note is that India is the probably the largest democratic country in the world and has to go with a lively commercial media sector. This both generates an enormous revenue in advertising, for instance for sports such as cricket, and takes and active part in campaigns within the democratic process.

Demography: The Indian PopulationIndia covers 2.4 % of the world’s surface area but supports 17.5 % of its population, and its growing fast, in 1901 it was around 23 million, something like the contemporary Australian population, but it has now grown to around 1.2 billion people. The predictions are now that by the mid century India will have a larger population than China and be the world’s largest country by population. There are also three other features of its population that need to be understood, age, the shift towards urbanisation, and gender imbalance.Age distribution in India is heavily skewed towards the young, and more than half the population are under 25, this is not so much a feature of low life expectancy, which is the case in India, but also of the way a rapidly growing population creates a young population.Urbanisation is another vital factor in India today, India was at independence in 1947 largely a rural nation, with perhaps only five percent of people living in urban areas, by 2001 this had grown to around 30 percent of Indians living in urban areas, and by 2011 this

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will have grown considerably. However, this is still way behind countries like the UK which was over forty percent urbanised by 1871, and Australia, which was at around 85% urban by 1991http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/India_at_glance/rural.aspxChart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:India-demography.pnghttp://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011-prov-results/prov_results_paper1_india.htmlhttp://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/DA21C7DB51B68183CA2570FF001A3D38?OpenDocumentGender imbalance in the Indian population is something we will talk about more in the lecture on gender in India, but there is a concerning trend in India towards a gender imbalance and even in rural areas by the 2011 census there was an imbalance approaching something like 900 to a 1000 births of female and male infants. More on this in the gender lecture.

Income levelsThere is no doubt that income levels in India have been rising during the last few decades, but the question is have the disparities between the rich and poor also been rising. Depending on how you read the statistics you can make different arguments, but, most people’s experience in India is that there is an enormous disparity between the rich and the poor. The proportion of poor people in India depends on how it is measured, but at least one figure, that of those who live below the poverty line, if the world bank figure of a US dollar a day was applied, it would be 75% (http://www.wakeupcall.org/administration_in_india/poverty_line.php) However, using the Indian governments figures, which are for earning less that ten rupees, about 30 Australian cents a day, the figure is still around three hundred million. Mani Shankar Aiyar in India today in 2009 wrote on how the number increases to ‘836 million who live on less than Rs 20 a day’ (http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/story/The+politics+of+poverty/1/56564.html).So the question then naturally arises of how many of India’s population are enjoying the fruits of economic growth and have entered the new middle class? The number is clearly well less than a quarter of the Indian population, figures vary, from around fifty million, to as many as three hundred million. A McKinsey & Company report in 2007 estimated around fifty million earned more than five thousand dollars a year. (http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/mginews/bigspenders.asp).More recent figures will no doubt update this considerably, but the basic fact remains that there is a continued inequality between the rich and the poor in India and efforts to alleviate this situation are not yet completely successful.

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The people: literacy and educationLiteracy has rise to 74% in 2011 which is up from 65% in 2001. There is also a trend for the differential between literacy in men and women to be decreasing now. One factor in this must be increasing participation in the education system. However, there are many pitfalls on this road and although in theory India now has compulsory primary education since 2009, in practice how far this has been really implemented is open to question.Some figures suggest that around 85% of Indian children attended primary school by 2006, and attendance at secondary school was around 54%. http://huebler.blogspot.com/2007/11/primary-school-attendance-in-india-in.htmlAbout 12% of Indians go to university (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12597815) in comparison to a million Australians about who attended University in 2007 (out of 21 million in 2007), that is to say about five percent. (http://www.deewr.gov.au/Ministers/OConnor/Media/Releases/Pages/Article_081103_115455.aspx)

LanguageIndia is a multilingual society, and it is common for people to speak more than one language. There are two major language groups, in the North of India most languages are Indo-European, that is to say they belong to the same language group as European languages, such as English. The four major languages in the South belong to a quite different group, Dravidian languages, which are not related to any languages outside of India. Of course as well there are also languages which came to India later, like English, which are also spoken by many people. A break down of languages spoken at the time of the 2001 census is as follows.  (millions)Hindi 551.4English 125Bengali 91Telegu 85Marathi 84.2Tamil 66.7Urdu 59Kannada 50.8Gujarati 50.3Oriya 36.6Malayalam 33.3Punjabi 31.4Assamese 18.9http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Indiaspeak-English-is-our-2nd-language/articleshow/5680962.cms

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ReligionYou can’t understand India unless you know understand something about how life in India is affected by religion, caste and culture. This is because at almost every level these factors are vital to how networks and connections are made in India. Broadly speaking around 80% or Indians are Hindus, 13.5% Muslims and Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists and others make up the remaining 6.5% of the population. http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/India_at_glance/religion.aspx

CasteWithin the 80% of Indians who are Hindus they are also divided into castes, made up of many sub groups which are called jati. These groups all traditionally only married within their own communties and are all arranged in a hierarchy (http://sujaiblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/reservation-xv-obc-issue.html). Hindus, to a great extent still marry within these communities and this helps to maintain the existence of these groups. Exact figures on how many Indians belong to each caste are not available, it has not been a census question since the 1931 census, although controversially it is again for the 2011 census. A very rough estimate of the relative proportions might be approximately like this, although different estimates vary widely depending on how the figures are accounted for.Brahmins 5%Kshatriyas and Vaishyas 20Shudras 40%Untouchables 15%Others 20%See: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/sacl/6ahic/Publications/6AHIC-105_FINAL_Paper.pdfProbably the safest estimates are that 5% are Brahmins the top of the pyramid and around 14% untouchables at the bottom. However, the proportions of shudras in relation to Kshatriyas and Vaishyas is more hotly disputed. Some estimates put the number of Shudras at about 350-500 million, which would make them perhaps 40% of the population, and then Kshatriyas and Vaishyas would make up around 20% of the population.Two linked factors make these figures very significant: affirmative action and the abolition of the practice of untouchability.On independence discrimination on the basis of caste against untouchables was made illegal, but it is still a potent factor in Indian society. To combat prejudice a policy of reservations, in government service and in education was put into place. This was bitterly resented by higher caste Hindus who regarded it as opposed to a pure merit basis for evaluating candidates for jobs and educational places. Then during the 1990s this program of reservations was extended to other sections of the shudra community, for this

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purpose called OBC, other backward caste. This led to massive protests against the Mandal Commission who had produced the report which led to this extension of the policy of reservations. The basic issue remains though, that high castes are still proportionally over represented in most high status occupations in India, so the aim of abolishing the disadvantage experienced in India due to caste has still not been achieved.

Contested IdentitiesAs India modernised, and modernises, individuals and communities also have to negotiate how their regional identities, being Tamil, Bengali etc. relate to being Indian, and group identities such as those of caste communities like the Agarwals and the Kayasthas relate to being Indian.

Tamil and Dravidian Identities. The four Southern states of India have a strong sense of a separate sense of identity from the North for a variety of reasons. They share a common heritage of speaking Dravidian languages, which are a quite separate language group from the Indo-European languages spoken in Northern India. They were also not as integrated into the Mughal empire and do not share the blending of Hindu and Muslim traditions which is typical of Northern Indian cultures. Due to this at various times Southern Indian people sometimes see themselves as having a distinctive identity within Indian culture. However, for many South Indian Hindus they see themselves as having the most definitive views on what constitutes Hinduism and as very much at the focus of what constitutes Indian identity.

Sikh IdentitiesThe Sikh community originates in the North West of India and began in a movement which sought to distinguish itself from both Hindu and Muslim traditions. However, following on from the absorption of the Sikh state into British India in 1849 the issue of whether Sikhs were part of Hinduism or not became a contested issue. From the third quarter of the 19th century onwards the Sikh community association the Singh Sabha movement strongly argued that ‘we are not Hindus’. This has led to a history of contestation of the notion of how the Sikh’s relate to India. This has led to a bifurcation of Sikh views in which some would now prefer to see themselves as having a separate state and others see themselves as part of a united India.

The North Eastern StatesThe North Easter states, in particular such as Nagaland and Mizoram also have had strong debates about their relation to India. Their indigenous inhabitants speak quite separate languages from that of most of India. They were also extensively influence by missionary activity in the late 19th century and early 20th century and converted

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from animistic religions to Christianity. Some groups of people in Naga land contested their inclusion in the India and there has been a history of actual conflict between the central government and the peoples of the North East. This has been exacerbated in states such as Assam by conflicts between the indigenous peoples and Bengali and Hindi speaking groups who have moved into these states. It can also be argued that equally important to understanding what shapes modern India is not just the regional identities but caste, or community, identities.

Mahajan Identity and Indian trading communitiesThe Mahajans are trading communities who are very influential in India. One factor which makes such communities very successful is that their sense of community identity crosses regional boundaries and allows them to maintain trade networks over broad areas. In this way whether a Mahajan is trading in Rajasthan, UP, Bengal, or even in areas outside of India it is quite likely that they will form trade linkages with other members of their community. Such community identity linkages thus cut across regional identity issues in India and add complexity to the issue of how Indian identity is formed. In particular it shows how community linkages such as this often cut across regional linkages and mean that the ways in which communities negotiate their status as modern Indians involves balancing community identity against regional identity.

Kayastha Identity and modernityThe Kayastha community has an ambiguous place in the traditional Indian caste system. Whilst basically a high status community whose main vocation was maintaining accounts they were not formally part of the Brahmin or Vaishya castes and their status remained contested and varied in different parts of India. During the Mughal period many prominent Kayastha families entered the service of the Mughals and absorbed many Islamic cultural features into their orthodox Hindu practices. However, as British administration developed in India the Kayasthas then again took to service with the new rulers and rapidly absorbed British values. This led to a situation in which the Kayastha community had to negotiate an identity that juggled, traditional Hindu values, with Islamic cultural influences and contemporary Western customs and mores. This inevitably leads to complex negotiations of how this community sees itself, and what it means to be Kayastha, and Indian.In this way we can see that the various regional and caste identities which make up modern India are each in a constant process of negotiating how their group identity relates to the notion of Indian identity and due to this one cannot understand India without understanding the dynamics which shape these negotiations.

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CultureThere are also very positive ways that communities in India act in order to preserve their heritages and their cultures. This manifests in all sorts of ways. For instance in terms of traditional knowledge there are Brahmin communities who still learn, transmit and perform the Vedas and associated rituals in the same ways as they have been performed for thousands of years. Or you might think about the way that every community has its own particular marriage rituals, and often accompanying songs and traditions, and these are kept alive by the way that religions, caste and culture are an integrated whole in Indian traditions. Traditionally also many crafts, such as weaving or ceramic production were the preserve of particular caste communities and in this way ancient traditions are still living facets of Indian society. This last point is perhaps in the end one of the most distinctive features of India culture, despite the changes that the modern world has brought to India it is still civilisation that has flourished for millennia and looks likely to continue to be one of the worlds major cultures in the twenty first century.

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Lecture 2: Indian HistoryTo cover five thousand years of Indian history in ninety minutes is no easy task. But its necessary to have some understanding of the history of India, as like China or Egypt, it is a civilisation which has living connections to a heritage which stretches back to the dawn of humanity. What is more India is unique in that in many ways it is the heir to an unbroken heritage which still preserves as living aspects of its culture its ancient religious and cultural traditions.

The Indian National symbolIndia’s national symbol is a good model for how India today is a composite of different elements from the India’s history. Let’s look at some of the elements in its story. To start with it was adopted in 1947 on Indian independence so that part of the story relates to how the modern state of India wanted to depict its relation to the past. The symbol contains two element, a text line and an image, which are both from different sources. The text says, satyamev jayate, which is Sanskrit, the classical language of India, for "Truth Alone Triumphs". That is a quote from a classical Hindu text, Manduka Upanishad 13.6, which probably dates from at least two to three thousand years ago. The statue itself though is from the period of the Emperor Ashoka, who ruled India around 232 BCE and was originally from a monument which was a pillar on the crest of which was the symbol of the Buddhist wheel of Dharma. Two other aspects of Indian history are also implicit in the image, but unstated, the Islamic and British periods. You may say the period of Islamic rule in India is represented in the image, as it was buried when the Buddhist monasteries at Sarnath were destroyed by invaders from central Asia in the late 11th century. Ironically however, this destruction also preserved this image for the better part of a thousand years, until the British in the late eighteenth century noted that Sarnath was being quarried for road building materials by the local king, which they stopped from happening, and this allowed them later in the late nineteenth century to excavate the image. So in the Indian national symbol you have references to over two thousand years of Indian history, which is typical of India altogether I suggest to you today.

Third millennium BCE - The Indus Valley CulturePeople have been living in India since the earliest times, quite how early is impossible to say but certainly for at least the last five thousand years or more. http://www.imninalu.net/IndusValley.htmThe earliest major civilisation to have emerged in India and left extensive remains developed around the Indus river and has left behind the ruins of well planed cities that flourished from around 3000 to 1500 BCE. http://brhectorshistoryworld.blogspot.com/2009/06/indus-valley.html

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From seals found in its ruins, and in the ruins of ancient cities in the Middle East it was also in contact with the ancient civilizations which flourished in places such as Ur in modern day Iraq. There are elements in the story of ancient Sumerian story of Gilgamesh, which dates from around 3000 BCE, which may relate to how voyages from the red sea to India used to be carried out in those days. http://zatma.org/Dharma/zbohy/Literature/AssaultSummit/dharana_2.htmlThere are also seals which depict images which seem similar to later Hindu imagery, sacred trees and the worship of bulls, and even what may be writing. However, the writing, if it is writing has not been translated. If any of you can crack its code you will gain a hallowed place in India history yourself. What’s more it’s a pity it has not been translated as in truth almost nothing is known for sure about what the people of the Indus valley culture believed, or even what language they spoke. All we know for sure is that for some reason their culture declined and disappeared around 1500 BCE.

First millennium BCE: Vedic periodSometime around the first or second millennia BCE the traditions arose whose earliest sacred literature was a collection of oral traditions which were called the Veda (‘knowledge). The issue of whether the Brahminical culture of the Vedic traditions originate in Asia or in India itself has been one which has exercised many minds during the twentieth century. This came about in part as in the nineteenth century the British conceived of a vision in which central Asian nomadic people, who had the Vedas as their sacred traditions, had swept down from central Asia and destroyed the Indus valley culture and settled in India. However, this vision almost certainly does not reflect the ways in which many cultures, such as the Vedic cultures, spread. It is more likely that gradually over many generations cultures associated with the Vedic traditions spread into India. A process more akin to modern Western culture has spread around the world, the people living in different areas don’t change, it’s the culture that changes. However, whatever the truth of the matter is its an emotive issue, and the opposite view to the idea that Vedic culture spread into India is now held by some Hindu fundamentalists, that all world cultures spread out from India.

Sixth century BCE onwards: Ashoka and the age of EmpiresBy around the sixth century BCE much of Northern India was settled by people who used iron tools and began to open up more areas of the forests for cultivation. This led to the developments of economic surpluses and the developments of cities and the use of coins and currency in trading amongst the new city states. Gradually this also led to the rise of kingdoms which swept away the earliest republican states and laid the ground work for the first great empires of Indian recorded history. In particular the figure of Ashoka Maurya (ruled ca. 304-232 BCE) is now remembered as the first great Emperor of

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Indian history, whose empire stretched from Andhra Pradesh in the South to Bengal in the East and up to the Punjab in the West and whose influence extended as far as modern day Afghanistan. This period saw a great expansion of Indian culture and merchants and traders both up into central Asia and via maritime routes into South East Asia. Moreover, the period of the Kushan dynasty in the first and second centuries CE India was part of an economic system which included both Central Asia and India and had strong trading connections with the Middle East. This was also the period in which Buddhist merchants and monks were active in central Asia and began to introduce Buddhism in China.Two characteristics of this era were its rapid progress in economic and cultural spheres and the way in which India was linked into a growing Asian and world economy. However, India was not a unified empire during this period, and in a manner somewhat akin to today it normally consisted of associated independent states which shared common cultural traits, however what it lacked was a central federal government as it has today.

Fourth to sixth century CE GuptaOne of the greatest of the Indian empires was that of the Guptas who ruled in central North India during the period from the fifth to the eighth centuries. This period saw a flourishing of the arts and trade. It was also a period when many Chinese Buddhist pilgrims came to India. These pilgrims, such as Xuanzang who came to India around 600 CE not only brought back Buddhist teachings to China, but also technological developments. Notable was that Xuanzang saw the recently developed Gupta techniques for making white sugar in India, sugar cane itself also being a plant which originated in India, and took back sugar cane and Indian craftsmen who knew white sugar making skills with him to China, which led to the establishment of the sugar industry in China.This was also a period in which the Southern Indian kingdoms, based around modern day Tamil Nadu were intensely involved in sea born trade with Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms in South East Asia, which was known in India as the Suvarna Bhumi, the ‘golden lands’.

Eighth to Twelfth century: Pala DynastyDuring this period India continued to be a loosely associated group of states within which there were a variety of powers of different sizes. One of the most powerful of these was the Pala dynasty which ruled from modern day Bengal and had trade linkages not only with the rest of India but also with South East Asia. Thus during the Pala dynasty people and trade went on throughout an area which stretched from central Asia as far as China and Java and Sumatra. Thus rules from Sri Vijaya in modern day Sumatra which flourished from the sixth to as late at the thirteenth century left land grants in India recording their patronage of the Buddhist monastery at

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Nalanda and Indians would travel to Srivijaya to study. A striking example of this is the life of Atisha Dipankara (982-1024), a Bengali from the Pala Empire, who went to Sri Vijaya to study Sanskrit and Buddhism before then going to Tibet where he was influential in the second transmission of Buddhism to that country.

The first millennium CE: The Sultanate periodTrade linkages between India and central issue began to be disrupted by the Arab expansion into central Asia in the eighth century and by the start of the first millennium Turkish people settled in Afghanistan began to conduct raids into Northern India. These raids gradually changed into permanent settlements by new central Asian communities in India which brought with them new cultures associated with Islamic traditions. This was a time of great upheaval in India, as the previous rivalry between Indian states had rarely resulted in whole sale changes in belief systems of economies. For the first three or four hundred years of this phase of Indian history the pattern of small states continued, but now in the form of Islamic sultanates.

Sixteenth century onwards: Mughal IndiaIn 1526 India came under the rule of a new dynasty, the Mughals, who gradually spread their kingdom over most of India, and in particular of the North of India which became known as Hindustan. Unlike their sultanate predecessors, who were mostly influenced by Turkic cultures the Mughals, who also originated in the Afghanistan area, were influenced by Persian culture. Their period of rule also saw a new spirit of rapprochement between Hindus and Muslims. This was at its strongest during the reign of the Emperor Akbar (1556-1605) who promoted harmony between all religions in his realm. This period also saw trade with the Middle East, and now with European powers grow. It was also marked by the introduction of new technologies such as silk production and weaving which whilst it may have been present in India earlier seems to have flourished at new level during the reign of Akbar due to a fusion of Persian and Indian skills and artistry.

The eighteenth century: British ColonialismThe British and other colonial powers had begun to contact India from around the time of Akbar. However, it was in Bengal that the British East India Company trading company got its most significant foothold, establishing a trading station and forming treaties with the Mughal Empire and the Bengali ruling dynasty. Gradually the role that the British took in government expanded and the most significant moment in this was in 1757 when in a dispute with the Nawab of Bengal they defeated him in a battle at Plassey and this lead to them being granted in 1765 the status of diwans, or agents of the Mughal government in India with the right to collect land revenue in Bengal. Gradually the East India company then extended

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its economic influence from Bengal itself further into India. In a similar way the British centres at Madras and Bombay acted as centres for growing British influence in India. This also involved conflicts with other European powers, notably the French and the Portuguese who both had ambitions to incorporate India into their realms. However by the mid nineteenth century the British East India Company had consolidated its rule over almost all of India.It should also be realised that the only reason that a relatively small number of British people could take over India was that they were supported by groups of Indians. To some extent this was the kind of power politics which go on around the world all the time, one group seeking advantage by allying itself with another in order to challenge another. However, there were those within the people of India who also saw new possibilities in the British expansion in India.The colonial period has also left a significant impact from the interaction of India with the British. Notable amongst these influences are the embracing of English as a link language in South Asia and the establishment of a Western educational system.The adoption of English as an Indian language dates back to the time of the Bengali reformer Ram Mohan Roy (1774-1833) who advocated that Indians take up English as way to modernise India. There were initial British attempts to foster Indian language developments such as the college at Fort William in Calcutta that offered instruction in Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Bengali and Urdu. However by the 1830s the influence of those who advocated a system of education based on English came to predominate and a famous minute issued in 1835 by Thomas Babington Macaulay heralded the widespread adoption of English amongst the Indian elites who sought service with the British.The decennial census of India from 1871 onwards developed census surveys by which the people of India could be categorized and catalogued in ways that allowed comparisons with other parts of the British Empire and accorded with modern ways of seeing the world. The survey of India, which was founded in 1767, began its great trigonometrical survey of India in 1802 which led to the eventual mapping of the whole of the subcontinent.Infrastructure development also advanced rapidly from the mid 19th century onwards with the first passenger railway line in India opening in 1853 between Bombay and Thane and by 1880 there were 9000 miles of railways in India.Telecommunications in India date back to the first electric telegraph line which was started in 1851 between Calcutta and Diamond harbour.Improvements in shipping also saw the time it took to get from Britain to India cut from sailing voyages round the Cape Of Good Hope lasting at least three months, if not more time, down to a matter of days in steamships travelling via the Suez canal to India.

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The nineteenth century and the Freedom struggleIn a sense no sooner had Britain taken control of India, with the last major piece being the Punjab which was taken in 1848, than the Indians began their efforts to cast off their new colonial masters. A significant moment in this was when in 1857 a struggle broke out to liberate India. Whether you call this the first independence war, or the Indian mutiny, is largely a matter of time and perspective. What is crucial though is that this marked the end of the legitimacy of the control of India by a commercial company, which was liquidated in 1858. Then in 1877 the British declared Queen Victoria to be empress of India as part of the British Empire.However, in 1885 a group of colonial officials, such as the Theosophist A. O Hume, and Indians established the Indian national congress with the aim of increasing Indian involvement in government, which gradually changed into the aim of establishing home rule for India. It was in this organisation that many of the early struggles for how a free and independent India could be established were worked out. There were both militant leaders and those who argued for co-operation in order to seek autonomy. Nationalism was a significant factor and from the 19th century onwards Indian nationalists have helped to shape India today.The notion of India, as an India that corresponded with the modern borders of India, developed during the 19th century. In the 18th century the notion of India, as Hindustan, had related mostly to the area of the old Mughal empire in Northern India, and it was only slowly that the idea of India as a single political and geographic entity came to be part of national consciousness. The idea that India could be imagined like a mother, bharat mata, also developed during the 19th century. Although there are ancient Indian sources that imagine India as being like a mother, the notion of a India as a political entity called ‘mother India’ gained significant impetus with the works of Bengali intellectuals such as Kiran Banda Upadhaya whose wrote a play called ‘Bharat mata’ first performed in 1873 and in the novel by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya ‘Ananda Math’ which was written in 1882. A prominent theme in the notion of India as being like a mother was that just as somebody would shed blood to protect their mother, so to India’s inhabitants should be willing to shed their last drop of blood to protect India. The growth of such ideas also interacted with other forces and can be seen as prefiguring the trauma of partition in which millions died in the creation of independent India and Pakistan.

Idealism and PragmatismThe ideas of the Indian independence movement were diverse. Early idealistic visions such as those of Harishchandra gave way to a search for the truth through idealism as promoted by Gandhi, and benevolent socialism as favoured by Nehru. On the other hand there were also Hindu nationalistic views like those of Gangadhar Tilak and visions of an Islamic India as promoted by Syed Ahmed Khan. I

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shall consider here a variety of nationalist thinkers as they study of the range of ideas they espoused helps to foster understanding of ideas in contemporary India which echo these formative notions in the Indian nationalist movement.Bharatendu Harishchandra (1850-1885) was a writer and publisher from Varanasi who is remembered today as a leading figure in the development of modern Hindi and a prominent thinker on what Indian nationalism stood for. For Harishchandra the main imperative was to free India from what he saw as economic exploitation by the British, but what exactly was meant by India was still a contested issue during his lifetime.Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920) was an immensely influential Marathi leader. He is often remembered today as a staunch Hindu and an authority on Vedic tradition and for his coining the slogan “Swaraj (self-rule) is my birthright and I shall have it.” For many he also typifies the development of activism in favour of nationalism based around agitation and protest. Balkrishna Gokhale (1866-1915) was a prominent member of The Indian National Congress, which was founded in 1885, and typifies another side of the Marathi contribution to nationalist thinking. He is often remembered now as an advocate of the idea of a negotiated independence agreement with the British. By the 1906 Congress convention Gokhale came to be regarded as the leader of the moderate (in Hindi naram ‘soft’) faction in Congress, whilst Tilak was the leader of the activist (in Hindi garam ‘hot’) faction of Congress.Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-1898) was an outstanding leader of the Muslim community in India during the 19th century. Some authors have argued that whilst he and the Islamic elites advocated a separate struggle from that advocated by what they saw as a Hindu dominated Indian National Congress, the ‘Ulama in India, who represented the non-elite Muslim community in India always supported the Congress. This led to the development of two sides to Islamic nationalism in India, one favouring a separate state, the other continued involvement in the broader Indian National Congress movement. The separatist faction in the independence struggle was the Muslim league (founded 1906) under the leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah(1876-1948). This movement took up the goal of a separate state for the Muslims of South Asia which eventually led to the partition of British India into India and Pakistan.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) was, of course, the outstanding figure in the nationalist movement. His ideas are reflected in countless aspects of modern India. However, despite lip service being paid to him often there is a gap between ideals he stood for and what has actually taken place in India. Gandhi was a strong advocate of an India in which hand made goods and the Indian village would be central to the nation. Neither of these ideals

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has actually come to pass as he expected. He was also a strong advocate of a spiritual attitude to life and moral views which reflected an austere and ascetic view of life which has also not been accepted as a dominant view in modern India.Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (1869-1964) is also remembered as along with Gandhi one of the leading figures in the independence movement and as the first Prime Minister of independent India an immensely influential figure. In sharp contrast to Gandhi Nehru advocated a policy of state organised economic development along lines which were similar to Soviet notions of a planned economy focusing on industrialisation. His ideas on morality and spirituality were also very different from Gandhi’s and Nehru was staunchly in favour of science and espoused the view that science was the only hope for liberation for India. The two figures of Gandhi and Nehru represent a significant dichotomy in how India sees itself today, the idealisation of spirituality and India’s past greatness, and the idealizing of India as a secular modern economic state and major power in the world.

1947 Nehru and independenceOn independence India faced the task of building a modern independent nation. Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), India’s first Prime Minister (1947-1964), adopted the solution of developing India through a soviet style planned economy. However, he refused to join either the supporters of the US or the Soviets and was one of the co-founders of the non-aligned movement in 1961. This policy continued through the careers of his major successors, notably his daughter Indira Gandhi (1917-1984), who ruled India from 1966-77 and 1980-1984. However, by the 1980s India was facing new challenges, from separatist movements, such as that of the Khalistan movement in Punjab, and economic problems due to the difficulties of maintaining a soviet style planned economy.

1991 Economic liberalisationThe late nineties in India saw a new direction being taken in economics which resulted in a policy of economic liberalisation from 1991 onwards. This involved the removal of many constraints on international trade and foreign investments in India. This led to the entry of major international businesses into the India market, and also allowed Indian corporations, like TATA and Birla to expand into global markets. This has led to a great increase in economic growth in India, however, it has not solved many of the problems that India faces. In particular it is notable that as in much of the world economic liberalisation made the position of rural population, the farmers, of India more difficult, and as almost 80% of Indians still live in rural areas this has been a major issue.This was also coupled with the deregulation of markets meaning that it was possible for people to move to cities in unprecedented

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numbers this has meant major challenges for India in how to deal with this urbanisation.Graph: https://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/urbanAge/10_cities/07_mumbai/_reflections/india_Kundu.html

The presence of the pastA broad overview of Indian history reveals how India is a multi-layered society, in which the past of the country is still present today. Even in an age of a globalised modern economy this is very evident. On the one hand Indian society is able to preserve age old cultural traditions which encapsulate all that is best about Indian civilisation, and on the other India still faces the challenge of how to overcome longstanding problems. The stark contrast between the different worlds is very evident in places like Gurgoan, the call centre capital of India, where next to gleaming office blocks serving the world’s call centre markets, are shabby shanty towns in which migrant construction and service workers live. The gap between the India of the new

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Lecture 3: Indian Politics

The ConstitutionAt the time of Indian Independence on August 15th 1947 it was decided to draft a constitution for India which was then drafted and accepted and came into effect on January 26th 1950, republic day. India is a democratic union of states, with a President, who serves a five year term, elected by the members of the Parliament as the constitutional head of state. In the introduction to the constitution this system is described as a “Sovereign Socialist Democratic Republic with a parliamentary system of government.”Website: http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/welcome.htmlIndia is made up of its constituent states, and other kinds of administrative divisions, such as union territories, as described in the first lecture. It has a multi-tiered system of government, with an elected central federal government, which sits in the Parliament which contains two bodies, the Rajya Sabha (‘Council of States’) and the Lok Sabha (‘House of the people’). It also has elected state governments, each of which has its own Legislative assembly. In addition at a second tier of government there are administrative institutions which are likewise divided into a central administration, and state based administrative systems. Also like most western countries it has a separate judiciary, legal system, and police and military forces.

The Structure of the Rajya Sabha: the Upper HouseThis has 250 members who are elected by the members of the various state legislative bodies. The members are elected every six years. Like the Australian and British Upper houses its powers are limited and while it represents the interests of the various states it cannot propose some forms of legislation, such as monetary bills, which is similar to the Australian model.

The Structure of the Lok Sabha: the Lower HouseThis has up to 552 members who are elected by the people at an election which can happen up to five year apart. Voting in India is non-compulsory and the minimum age for voting is eighteen. The Prime Minister of India is always the leader of the party, or coalition, which forms a government in the Lower or Upper House of Parliament and is then asked by the President to be the Prime Minister of India. The Prime Minister is the leader of the cabinet and within it the main ministers will also have control over different ministries of the government, such as defence, foreign affairs, etc.There are also a number of important bodies called commissions whose members consist mainly of serving, or ex, IAS members, seen below. In particular there are two vital commissions, the planning commission and the finance commission. The first prepares five year plans for developing India, and the latter proposes how to

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distribute the revenues and finances of India between the centre and the state. In part these were developed after an Indian team visited Australia and looked into the role the Commonwealth Grants Commission in Australia plays in planning and distributing revenue in Australia.The main sources of revenue for the central government are centrally administered taxes, such as income tax and sales tax.Website: http://finmin.nic.in/

State ParliamentsEach state also has its own parliament which is called a legislative assembly. In a few states this consists of two houses and in most only one house, the lower house. The upper house, where it exists, is mostly called a legislative council, and the lower house is called the legislative assembly, which is directly elected. The number of members of each state legislature depends on the size of the state, in terms of population, and varies from as little as 32 in Sikkim to as many as 404 in UP.Like the central government at the state level there is also a constitutional head, the State Governor appointed by the central government. There are also elections at a maximum of every five years, after which a Chief Minister is elected who forms a cabinet and the ministers and the ministries of the state governments play a key role in the administration of their states. Website: http://legislativebodiesinindia.nic.in/The main source of revenue for the states governments are property taxes, public utility charges, intra-state trade taxes, and liquor taxes etc. There is however a constant debate, as in Australia, about how revenue is split between the centre and the states. The current proposal is to abolish all local sales taxes and cross border transport taxes etc. and replace them with a two tier GST, with a portion set by the centre and in each state a portion set by the states. However, the implementation of this policy is proving difficult to put into place so far in India.(For state based taxes see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_India)

Administrative systemThe Indian Administrative system (IAS) is the administrative arm of the central government in India and has around five thousand officer in it. Website: http://india.gov.in/knowindia/pub_services.php

Local GovernmentEach State government also has its own administrative system which has names like the Rajasthan Administrative Service (RAS) etc. This operates at two levels, at the centre of each state, and at a local district level. At the state level, this acts to put into force the directions of the state ministries. At a local level it supports the

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district administrations. However, there is a central ambiguity in the Indian system, as at a state and local level there are also IAS officers working who are seconded to the states for periods. Thus a district administration is normally headed by an IAS officer who as a junior in his, or her, career is filling a role such as District commissioner or District Magistrate.

The Police and JudiciaryThese are also key element in Indian governance and are also organised along a system that incorporates both centrally run bodies and state based institutions.

The armed ForcesUltimately India’s existence is safeguarded by the existence of a massive military force. This consists not only of an army, navy and air force, but also of various separate divisions, such as the Border Security force (BSF). There is also some degree of overlap at times between the civil police force and sections of the military such as BSF who are in some instances deployed in a policing role.

Checks and Balances in the political systemBehind the somewhat bewildering system of bicameral houses and divisions between federal and state based powers and multiple divisions in the security forces lies perhaps one simple idea. For a successful democratic state to survive it’s necessary to avoid too much centralisation of power. The states act as a check and balance on the centre’s power, and vice versa. The division of responsibilities at a state level between different administrations also tend to act as a control on excessive policies being followed by any state government, plus like Australia the Governor can dismiss a government if the central government is convinced it must do so. With the military the existence of so many parallel forces means that the chances of the army staging a coup has been minimised. This system of checks and balances has ensured that India is today, as it was in 1947 the largest democratic nation in the world. For whilst a federal system may not be the most efficient form of government it is remarkably resilient and allows India to maintain a balance between domination by the centre and the possibility of the states fragmenting into individual states.

The Main Political PartiesThe Congress Party is perhaps the oldest Indian political party in parliament today, as it was founded in 1885. It was the party of Jawaharlal Nehru and of Indira Gandhi and has ruled India for the majority of the period since independence. It currently leads the Indian government in power under the leadership of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (b. 1932). The Congress party currently holds 205 seats in the Lok Sabha.

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The BJP (Bhartiya Janta Party ‘Indian People’s party’) is currently the second biggest party in the Lok Sabha with 116 seats under the leadership of ????. Founded in 1980 it came to prominence in 1998 when it won the elections and formed a government which ruled until 2004.BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party “”) is another key party in India and is an example of how a regional party, it is based in UP can have national importance. Its current leader, Mayavati, is also a controversial figure as she comes from a low caste background and is not popular with some sections of society.There are also many other small regional parties and parties which represent particular interests, such as the Republican Party which is the party of the ex-untouchable supporters of the late B. R. Ambedkar.Web: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15th_Lok_Sabha

Key Political IssuesAt every Indian election a number of key issues dominate politics. However, like all democracies at times issues of personalities and emotive issues also come to the fore and push to the background some of the key challenges facing India today.

Economic DevelopmentThis is a key issue, and one that has often led to changes in government. In India this was notably the case when the BJP government fell in 2004, that it was painting a picture of a glowing Indian economy in its ‘Indian Shining’ election campaign, but rural voters in particular did not feel that they were taking part in this new prosperity and voted the government out.Regional security is also an emotive factor in Indian politics, and in a large part this relates to India and Pakistan who have fought a number of significant wars with each other since independence and are still technically at war in the disputed state of Kashmir. Although no other South Asian nation poses a military threat to India the possibility of another war with China as occurred in 1962 haunts Indian politics. For whereas for most Chinese the Indo-Chinese war of 1962 is a distant memory for most Indians it lies at the heart of the Indian view of China, that it needs to be treated with great care.

Reservation policy and caste factorsAnother area which is often the focus of contention is whether the policy of reservations for schedules castes, tribes and OBC groups is a valid policy. This often spills into anxiety over caste issues and in UP gets mired in the issue of whether the BSP government is a positive force for the development of the state or not.

Centre state relationsA number of new states were created in India in 2000, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand. There are now movements for the

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further splitting of states, such as for a new state of Rayalseema in Andhra Pradesh. The issue of centre state relations is one that times runs hot, such as when in the 1970s and 1980s Sikhs were involved in a movement to establish a separate Sikh state in the Punjab of Khalistan.

Islamic TerrorismEspecially since the 2008 attacks on Mumbai India has seen the threat from Islamic terrorism, both home grown and waged as a kind of proxy war by Pakistan. This has lead to an increased tension between Hindus and Muslims in South Asia which had already been strained by a series of earlier events in the 1990s.

Hindu FundamentalismThis has been an equally potent feature in Indian politics and the riots following the 1992 demolition of the Babri Mosque by Hindu activists have been a defining moment in modern Indian development. The relation between the 13% or so of Indians who are Muslims and their fellow Indians is often exploited by some Hindu Fundamentalists who have at times preached a message of disharmony and hatred which has tended to polarise Indian society.

Naxalite MovementsEqually threatening to Indian security is the role that Communist Guerrilla movements have been playing in Eastern and Central India. Named after the Naxal district of Bengal where the movements began in 1967.

Personality PoliticsFinally no political system can escape personality politics. Symptomatic of this was an extensive debate over whether Sonia Gandhi, who was born an Italian, could legitimately be a politician in India, and whether her children, and in particular Rahul Gandhi can be truly ‘Indian’. Such discussions have more to do with rhetoric than reality in some cases but illustrate the way that in India, like everywhere its not just policies but people who count, and the influence of the Nehru Gandhi dynasty still looms large in Indian politics where everybody expects that one day Rahul Gandhi will be the leader of the Congress party and of India itself.

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Lecture 4: The Indian EconomyDevelopment in India is linked to how rapid changes in types of industry are effecting economic growth. Like most economies it is possible to see the Indian economy in relation to primary industries, manufacturing industries and service industries. In the last of these India has seen phenomenal growth since liberalisation which has been a powerful force in economic growth. Along with this growth has come more urban employment and the development of a market driven consumer economy which has also led to growth in the manufacturing and primary industry sectors. However, unlike Australia which is sometimes spoken of as having a two speed economy, India has a multi speed economy, in which while some sections like the middle class in the major metro cities have powered ahead, others, like the rural poor and migrant labourers are still struggling survive, let alone take advantage of the new opportunities that liberalisation has offered. What we will do today is look at nine areas in which there are key developments taking place. I am also going to concentrate on issue here, rather than figures, which you will be able to access elsewhere.

Primary Industries: FarmingFarming was a key plank in the Nehruvian vision for the development of India. It provided both employment for the vast majority of Indians and also the staple foods which supported India. The key problem with the farming was that during the colonial period, and before, farmers had been locked into a vicious system whereby money lenders lent them capital at exorbitant rates which kept the farmers in penury. In addition a long standing problem had been that the state extracted unrealistic amounts of the crop, or its cash equivalent, in taxes from the farmers. These factors were seen as being the causes of rural poverty.Nehru’s solution was to institute a system of government provided loans, through the gramin bank ‘village bank’ system, and to buy the crops through the Food corporation of India which was responsible for buying at fixed prices the crops the farmers produced, and then storing and distributing them. There were then allotments, rations, of basic staples which were available to all Indians as well. By the nineteen eighties it was apparent that this system was not working perfectly, money lenders were still present, and the FCI often allowed the crops to rot in warehouses rather than selling them. The solution in economic liberalisation was to scrap the low interest gramin bank loans, as the new international banking corporations which had entered India objected to having provided such loans, and to abolish the FCI and open the whole system up to the free market.The outcome has been that to a great extent the major agri corporations have now become the money lenders and the farmers

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although in theory empowered by the internet are still facing difficulties selling their crops for a fair price. The extent of the problems became apparent in the early 90s when many farmers in central India had been encouraged to shift to cash crop cotton production, but their crops then failed and they were ruined. Due to this a horrifying history of rural suicides began which has continued to this day due to the shame that farmers feel at their situation. It is not clear either how the present governments of India propose to solve this problem, which is similar to the crisis in agriculture in many developed countries as well as in developing countries.Even the cash crops of India have gone through troubled times, and while India is still the largest producer of tea in the world its tea industry has suffered many reverses since the 1990s. Likewise new cash crop industries, like renewable energy crops and tree planting to offset carbon have been plagued by problems and questions about whether shifts to cash crops are endangering India’s ability to feed itself with staple foods. There have also been several instances where particular problems, like the excessive export of onions has led to a rapid increase in the price of onions, due to which onions have had to be imported, which surely makes little sense.

Primary Industries: MiningMining has traditionally been an important part of the Indian economy, since ancient times India has been known for its rich natural resources, and some of the largest diamonds in the world come from India, and it also had rich gold fields. Nehru’s soviet model for the Indian economy saw the creation of heavy industry as a priority and coal and steel mines in Eastern India were developed where there were the best resources and today India is the seventh largest steel producer in the world.

Primary Industries: Power generationPower generation is a key issue at the moment, this is immediately obvious when you are in India as there are frequent power outages and scheduled ‘load shedding’. The majority of Indian power is produced from thermal and hydo-electric sources. thermal (mostly coal, some gas and oil) 65%hydroelectric 22%nuclear 3%Renewable sources (wind, solar etc.) 11%There has been considerable discussion about developing a large scale nuclear program to counteract the energy sources. However, the record of safety of the nuclear industry in India is not perfect, and following the Fukushima crisis in Japan the question of how India is to develop its power resources is again at the forefront of debate.

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Manufacturing: SteelLike all heavy industries steel faced great challenges on economic liberalisation, however, the Indian companies involved in this industry have not only survived, but in many cases become global businesses. Tata, is now the sixth largest steel producing company in the world and is now looking at joint ventures with Bluescope Steel and others.See: http://www.dfat.gov.au/fta/aifta/Australia-India-Joint-FTA-Feasibility-Study.html The Indian coal mining industry is also flourishing and there is also extensive collaboration between the Australian coal mining industry and the coal industry in India. However, at the same time as what you might call the regularised coal sector is advancing so is the less regularised coal mining industry and, as in China, this is leading to immense problems, but while India’s fatality rate in its mines is far lower than China’s, it is still an issue.

Manufacturing: consumer goodsThis area of the Indian economy has boomed since liberalisation. For instance before 1991 there were only basically two types of cars available in India, the Ambassadour, based on a 1960s British design, and the Padami, based on a 1960s Italian design. Waiting lists for getting one of these cars could be several years, and when the cars finally arrived it often cost as much, it is anecdotally said, to fix the problems in it as the cost of buying it to begin with. Now this has all changed and India’s roads are crowded by an array of cars from manufacturers from all around the world. Indian industry has also gone out into the global market and bought brands, like Rover, which is since 2008 has been owned as a brand name by Tata. Of course the increase in sales of cars is related not only to greater employment opportunities and incomes, but also to the availability of loans due to the opening up of the banking sector. It has also had the consequence of creating a crisis on India’s roads, which cannot cope with the increased traffic loads on them. The is also compounded by corruption in getting licences, which are often basically bought by people who cannot drive, and erratic enforcement of road rules by police forces. This is a great illustration in fact of how no single factor in India’s economic development can be seen unless you consider multiple factors.

Manufacturing: fabrics and clothingIndia has since the dawn of time been a major centre of cotton production an remains so today. It is also a major centre for weaving and likewise remains so. There has also been a constant progress in this area, from handlooms, to Jacquard looms, a system for producing woven designs from the early nineteenth century to the power looms of the later nineteen century and today. The modern fabric industry of India is centered around Surat in Western India

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and there are thousands of companies producing fabrics. Cotton and fabrics are in demand not only for consumption within India but also as a major export industry, as India is still the second largest producer of cotton in the world today. See: http://www.agrimoney.com/news/indian-cotton-exports-to-recover---but-not-by-much--3013.html

Service Industries: bankingIndia has a long history in the banking sector. It is in fact one of the countries in which banking first developed and in ancient times it was possible to take a hundi, a form of cheque from one end of India to another and cash it at your destination. Banks in India before economic liberalisation were remarkable institutions where it was often necessary to see three or four people to make a transaction. A clerk would note your request and then an official would deal with the written part of you enquiry, which would then be passed to a manager who authorised the transaction and then you were issued with a token which you exchanged for the processed paperwork with a cashier who finally issued the payment. All of this was swept with automation and economic liberalisation. The Indian banking sector modernised and grew after economic liberalisation and today Indian banks operate much like other world banks, and not just in India but around the world. Likewise world banks operate in India and are now part of a diverse range of ways in which money is handled.

Service Industries: softwareThe software industry has seen phenomenal growth in India and grown from nothing to a major factor in the Indian economy. Partly this is due of course to the talents of Indian programmers and their ability to deliver products at lower prices than their competitors. Also like call centres, India’s familiarity with English has helped to ease this process along. Another common factor with the call centre industry is the globalised nature of the world economy has meant that India was ideally positioned time zone wise to service many world markets. Australian companies like Telstra can develop the front ends to software at offices in cities like Melbourne and then in their ‘back offices’, in places like Bangalore, over night do the computer coding to speed the process of software development along. This kind of development has led to India being a world leader in the provision of software developing and processing services. Another instance I remember being told of was Swiss Air who at one time centralised the issuing of tickets, at a time before the e-ticket took over, in Mumbai. They then processed ticket orders around the world at different offices, but the central process for issuing and printing them was in Mumbai from where they were sent back out around the world to be given to customers. Another similar instance of a cross over between traditional and e-technologies was in Medical transcription services for the USA. These twenty years ago were done by housewives and others with

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prior medical training in the USA working part time who would be sent by post micro-cassettes of doctors notes to transcribe and then sent back typed versions of the notes. Then businesses in India saw the opportunity to set up medical transcription services in which the doctors micro-cassettes, or the digital equivalent were sent at the end of the day to India via the internet, and then transcribed at specialist centres and the files of the transcribed notes sent back to the USA so they were in the doctor’s in trays in the morning. Countless examples like this could be found, and all are examples of how India was able to use its skill base, cost advantages, and knowledge of English to capitalise on previously unimagined business opportunities.

Service Industries: call centresOf course one of the most iconic of these developments has been the Indian call centre industry, where the skill, time and linguistic skills advantages of India have allowed it to become a major source of outsourcing in the world today. There have been many excellent studies of this phenomena done, and films as well which have drawn on this as their inspiration. Its also another remarkable example of how its not just the economic change of liberalisation that has propelled India forward but also India’s nimbleness at adopting technological innovations.

Development and the rural/Urban divideAlthough economic development is often cited as a panacea for all of India’s problems, it itself can be a major problem. For instance displacement of poorer sections has been caused by development in some cases. The creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) as industrial enclaves and the building of major dams have affected vast numbers of the rural population who have been forced to abandon their traditional way of life. In cases of schemes such at the Namada dam project the promise that the displaced poor would be rehoused and given access to new livelihoods was hotly contested, and it is still to be seen to what extent this actually happens.

Conclusion: what trickles down?A central paradox remains at the heart of the Indian economy, it is growing fast, and its rate of growth continues unabated, but what ‘trickles down’ to the less well off in India still leaves them poor. You can see this wherever metro India intersects with the India of those live on ten rupees a day or less. This is the problem that India faces, how to develop an economy that benefits not just the .2 of a billion who have attained a middle class life style, but the other billion people who live in India in the twenty first century.

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Lecture 5: Gender

Traditional gender rolesWomen in India have played a major role, but like most pre-modern cultures this role has also been circumscribed and limited in many cases. However, unlike some world cultures there are many examples of how women have played a very prominent role in India thought and society. Most Hindu traditions emphasise that both male and female forms of the divine are to be worshipped, and the pairing of deities such as Shiva and Shakti illustrate the way that the goddess is revered. Likewise, there are female goddesses who act on their own, such as Durga, who was granted the weapons all the gods in order to defeat a demon terrorising the world. But this last story points to one of the anxieties of ancient India thought, women acting on their own can be very dangerous, and so normally their powers are contained by them being balanced by their male partners. However, the role that women can play in spiritual life has been a contested issue. So for instance there are two branches of the Indian religious tradition called the Jain tradition and both believe there were twenty four figures who revealed, one after another, the Jain tradition. However, whilst the Shvetambara Jain tradition holds that one of these was Mani a woman, the Digambarara Jain tradition believes that Mani was a man, as women cannot be full renunciates. Likewise amongst Hindus there is some ambiguity about the roles that women can play, and so there are less women saints and these tend to be more amongst followers of Shiva, such as the Kashmiri saint Lal Ded, and less amongst the followers of Vishnu. But, even there were famous women saints like Mirabai who challenged the conventions of family life and dedicated themselves to spiritual enquiry. Amongst Buddhists there were, and are, also disputes about the roles that women can play, and the vexed question of full ordination for women as nuns in Buddhist societies.However, despite these disputes it is clear that there are in India strong role models for women as both active partners in family life, and as renunciates seeking spiritual realisation.

Family structuresKey to understanding gender roles in India, is understanding Indian family and kinship structures. The main issue here is that traditionally India has had what it calls a joint family structure. In this when a marriage takes place the bride moves into her husbands home which becomes a joint family in which all the brothers live together with their parent and their wives and children. Of course this is not always the case, sometimes for work purposes a brother may move away from home, and nowadays sometimes families fragment into nuclear families. It is however, still the norm for people to think in terms of joint families. Within such families there

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is a great deal of interaction between the wives who function as a social community in their own right, while the men continue to socialise with their male siblings and kinsfolk. Due to this the issue is not so much whether women are equal within their marriage couples, but how they fitted into the overall social hierarchy of the family. In this there is a also a dual role played by women, on the one hand they are seen as lesser in status in terms of dealing with the outer world, but they play the central role in preserving tradition and custom within the family. This can be seen for instance simply in clothing, whereas normally women maintained traditional dress standards, men, due to going out in the world, have been adopting western dress styles for generations now. This points to an important aspect of the roles of men and women, women uphold the family life while men make their way in the world.

Gender roles and regional/caste/classThe kind of picture I have just sketched of the overall structure of the family in India has several important dimensions in which it varies, principally regional and caste/class dimensions. There are significant regional variations, the most extreme being Manipur and parts of Kerala that have matriarchal family systems, where women have greater inheritance, and in the case of Manipur overall, rights within society. The main variation though is to do with caste and class. There is to some extent a degree to which the more high caste and class you were in India the more the women were secluded from the world. This division between home and the world though is differently drawn in the low castes and amongst the poor. Partly simply because they can’t afford to separate the two worlds, the women must work just as the men do, and partly because the joint family system was traditionally very strong amongst poorer lower class communities. This was, and is, accentuated by the way in which people live together as communities. In many cases this results in a whole area of a particular low caste settlement being inhabited by members of the same community and extended families. In such a context the women also therefore are much more able to interact with each other as a community. However, in the higher caste/class situations women in individual families are much more likely to be isolated to some degree from their kinsfolk and live lives in a sense secluded from the world.

Colonial era interactionsTwo factors which also influence women in India are related to the colonial period. First, the belief that the tendency for women to remain within the home was due to what the dangers of the changing values in public sphere. This is sometimes also attributed to the result of the Islamic phase in Indian history. Whatever the explanation might be in reality the idea of danger to women in the

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interaction between Indian and colonial, and Muslim, cultural values is one that is sometimes raised. The second factor though is much more clearly an actual result of the colonial period and that is that during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there were many self help style reform movements that sought to raise the status of women through education and social reform. The impact of this was not only that it has changed some values related to women in society, but it also imported many nineteen century western values which mixed with Indian values to produce a kind of moral puritanical attitude.

Imbalance in birth ratesSince statistics on Indian birth rates started to be compiled in the nineteenth century it has confirmed that there are normally fewer female births than male in India. This is at heart because as a society India values male children more. To die without a son is a dishonour; as traditionally it must be the son who officiates at funeral rites, as well as continuing the family lineage.Sons were also seen as desirable as they would have greater earning power, and bring wealth to the family. Women, however, would go off to live with their husband’s families and therefore not directly contribute to family incomes.There is also a degree to which women are disempowered by moving in to joint family homes, for they lose their daily contacts with the networks of relatives they have grown up with in their own parent’s homes. Thus, until they are able to become accepted into their new family, often by means of having a son and gaining seniority in the eyes of their mother in laws, they may experience difficulties. This is also a factor in how its hard for women perhaps to even argue that having a girl child is a desirable thing for a family, as its having a son that results in the most significant improvement in status. Indian fiction, films, and every day life is full of stories of the joys, and more so the perils, of joint family life. It is still to a great deal the ideal that most Indian’s also aspire to, even if they cannot realise it in a rapidly modernising world.

Marriage and dowryThe cost of marriage, weddings and dowry, is also very high, as many weddings involve at least hundreds, if not thousands of relatives attending. For many families the marriages of their daughters may be the most significant expense they ever make, and the more daughters in a family, the more the cost will be.Furthermore, at some time in the past, I am not sure if it is really known when, the practice of giving dowries began. The word dahez, dowry is from Persian, and is a possible indication that this custom grew up in the medieval period some say. Whatever its origins though it became much more significant in the twentieth century when the size and demands for dowries grew with the development

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of economic prosperity in India. It is a burning issue amongst middle class and affluent Indians, as the demands for dowry are often now accompanied by threats and violence. This then adds further to the cost of marrying a daughter off.All this has led to a traditional preference for sons. There have been issues with female infanticide in the past in some areas and communities. In addition infant mortality, which is in any case still very high in India, has traditionally been higher amongst female children. A strong factor in this is that when food is distributed traditionally it is served first to the men of the house, then the sons, and then only does the mother feed herself and her daughters. Thus women are often the least well nourished. Now, however, there are also issues with the abortion of unborn babies as there has been widespread misuse of ultra sound and other tests in order to find out the gender of unborn children and then abort them if they are girls. This has now according the latest census of India even spread into the rural and some more backward sections of society, indicating that as anti-natal care becomes more widespread, so does this problem.

EducationOne of the strongest linkages between lower birth rates, and lower levels of gender imbalance is education. The more educated a family is the less likely it is to be a large family now as the cost of educating a large family is seen as prohibitive. However, whether education also mitigates against the differential in birth rates is not so clear to me, as in this case the middle classes are exactly those who are most resorting to aborting female unborn children to avoid the costs of marrying them off.It is clear though that increasingly women are taking more and more prominent roles in public life.

Social rolesWith all of the factors which seem to be against gender equality in India the way that women actually play such a prominent role in India seems almost a contradiction. Despite all their disadvantages they still often manage to get to the top in many professions. There are countless examples of prominent women, in politics, industry, business and professional sectors. The discrimination that women face, whilst substantial, is less than that which the low castes and untouchables face in Indian society. Anecdotal evidence for this is not hard to find. For instance in literature on journalism in India you will find that India has had, and has, many prominent women journalists, and a fair proportion of Muslim and other minority religion journalists, but when editors are asked about whether they have any scheduled caste, i.e. Dalit journalists responses have been reported like ‘no suitably qualified’ candidates have ever applied. Which is evidently a kind of

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euphemism for they are not wanted, and don’t exist. So whilst I am not in any way saying that gender inequality is not a significant issue in India, it is, I am saying that it is only one of a number of equity issues which pose challenges for India.

Rural/Urban divideIn Delhi, or any metro city, a woman can normally now walk down a street in jeans and a tee shirt, and be regarded as properly dressed. In smaller towns, and rural areas this would simply not be possible. Even to be dressed in a traditional salwar and kamiz suit, but not to be wearing a dupatta, a kind of shawl, is regarded as the equivalent of being naked I was told by somebody once in Bihar. In other words if we are talking about gender equality in India, the metros and the moffusul, the areas which I guess in terms of Australia we might equate with the bush, are worlds apart today. This means you need to remember that over seventy percent of Indians still live outside of urban areas and the trend towards gender equality in urban areas is not developing as fast in rural areas.

Gram Panchayats and reservationThere are many efforts being made to try and remedy the disadvantages that women face, and particularly in rural areas. An important example of this is in the gram panchayat system, a village level an administrative system which is being set up all over India. In this women are guaranteed at least one third reservation, and even up to fifty percent is proposed in Andhra Pradesh.However, all forms of reservation policy in India are highly contested. Some people object to reservations for scheduled castes and minorities in employment, education, or political representation, and others object to reservations for women. However, in both cases what it is important to realise that the debate represents India’s dedication to engaging with the question of how to address and combat gender and equity issues in India today.Web: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/50-reservation-to-women-in-panchayat-raj-in/773578/

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Lecture 6: Popular Culture

What is popular culture?What is popular culture? I remember trying to work out with the editor of a Hindi language magazine how we might translate this term into Hindi. The problem is if we think of meaning it as meaning like ‘liked by the people’ it sounds like the Hindi word that means ‘folk culture’ (lok sansrkriti). So what is that we mean by popular culture? It’s actually I suggest culture which deals with contemporary cultural issues, like pop music, cinema etc. in a way that appeals to a mass audience.

Traditional and modern cultural formsActually there is no sharp line between traditional and modern cultures in India. Folk and classical music, largely deal with traditional subjects, love, spirituality, seasonal festivals, and all these are still current issues as well as traditional issues. So when you go to see a modern Indian film it often incorporates traditional folk forms within a modern story. Likewise traditional art forms also keep to some extent incorporating new ideas. So a song which is in a form of traditional Bhojpuri folk format, might also include references to mobile phones and their impact on life. Its also important to realise that the Indian film industry began as an outgrowth of a form of nineteenth century staged drama, called the Parsi theatre, that was in itself a modernised form of earlier folk and classical dramas. So when we look at a Hindi film, full of singing and dancing as well as a, often melodramatic, story you are looking at a popular culture form which draws on both Indian traditions as world cinema’s repertoire of ideas.

The cinemaThe Hindi film industry needs little introduction these days anywhere in the world it has become so well known. In Australia nowadays Hindi films are shown in the major cities on a regular basis and the audience includes not only Indians but also Westerners. The origins of Indian cinema go back to the earliest days of moving pictures and in 1896 films by the Lumiere brothers were shown in Bombay. Then in 1913 Dadabhai Phalke made the first Indian film which was based on a Hindu mythological story and called ‘Raja Harishchandra’. The first Indian talkie was made in 1931 and was called ‘Alam Ara’ ( ‘The light of the world’). It was based on a Parsi play and is a sort of historical romance about an imaginary kingdom called Kumarpur. However the golden age of Hindi films is generally reckoned to be the post independence era in the 1950s and the 1960s. Films such as Shre 420 (‘Mr Dishonest’ 1955) Mother India (1957) and Mughal-e-azam (‘the splendour of the mughals’, 1960) are all regarded as classics of this period. Then in 1975 with the release of Sholay (‘flames’) Bollywood films entered a new era

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with the arrival of the tough hero, in the shape of Amitabh Bachchan as an angry youth. Family oriented films made a comeback in the nineties with Ham apke hain kaun? (‘Who am I to you’ 1994). More recently there have been successes for films such as Salam Namaste (‘greetings’ 2005) which was set in Melbourne, and partly filmed at La Trobe university and Rang de Basanti (2006) which is notable for showing in a sympathetic light a Western woman as capable of awakening in her Indian friends a sense of recognition of what is is valuable in today’s world. Also very notable amongst recent films has been Three Idiots (2009) staring Aamir Khan with a story which is partly about the competitiveness of the Indian higher education system and partly about how creativity can triumph against all odds.As well as the Bollywood film industry going global, global media is entering the Indian market. A good example of this is Disney. Its first significant arrival in the Indian market came with dubbed, or subtitled, versions of its High School Musical franchise from 2006 onwards. The message of the High School Musical films, if they have one, is that despite our differences we are all one. Set in the context of an American High School this refers mainly to the idea that geek, jocks, populars, emos, etc, the different sub-cultures of imagined American schools who can all in the end stand united. When these films are then seen though in India, China and the rest of Asia it’s not so clear how we are to take this message really. To be honest it looks rather like saying we are all different, but we can all participate in the American Dream, an attractive message perhaps, but a suspect one. Thus the ‘popular’, but ultimately good girl figure of Sharpay, in HSM3 in a song with the refrain ‘I want it all’ sings that she wants ‘Paris, Rome, New York, Bollywood’, thus adding the resurgent Indian economy to the list of other economies accessible to global thinking. But its also striking how Disney’s attempts to market HSM in India was linked to getting Indian artists to re-create ‘inspired by’ versions of HSM themes. This was followed by a ‘The Cheetah Girls’ in India movie in 2008. The Cheetah girls franchise, two movies, and touring as a musical act ‘grossed over $26 million on their first two tours with over $17 million earned in revenue from merchandise and other related entities’ (Joszor, 2008). In this a group of aspiring pop star/actress girls from New York who have in their previous movies tried to make it big in New York and then Spain, now travel to Bollywood to try and become stars. In the promo spots for this movie shown on Star hub in Singapore it was notable the way that some of the people involved in this were Indians based in the US. Also the leading Indian love interest actress in it said that she had gone over from India to the States and within a month been recruited to come back to India to shoot the film. This film too, like the High School Musical films, ends up with a song celebrating that whoever we are, we are ultimately all one people, one world as in the title of the film. However, in that this song is now

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sung by a largely Indian caste in Rajasthan its message reads apparently better in an Indian context. The figures on US viewership for the ‘One World’ movie were only around 6.2 million, which made it the least successful of the Cheetah Girls franchise movies (Seidman, 2008). However, this points to one of the problems that Disney faces, what might appeal to a market in India, potentially, might not appeal to US audiences.However, the latest attempts to crack the Indian market are quite different again, and in 2010 the film ‘Do dooni char’ marked a new approach, where the whole of a Disney film was re imagined in India, using Indian actors caste and issues, and the result was probably Disney’s best effort to get into the Indian market so far, it netted Rupees 4.5 crore at the box office, which only rated it being ‘below average’ according to box office India.Web: http://boxofficeindia.com/showProd.php?itemCat=366&catName=MjAxMA==

Broadcast mediaThe history of broad cast media in India is one of relatively recent and rapid development. Radio was heavily controlled during the British period and remained so under the Nehruvian model for development. Radio was firmly under state control for many years. Programmes on topics like farming techniques and traditional literary genres restricted the appeal of radio. Although radio performances provided a platform for folk artists and classical musicians, its main broadcasts consisted of Hindi film songs. It has only been since the nineteen nineties that radio broadcasting outside of state control has begun, and state radio itself got more interesting. Due to this radio has remained a much less powerful media form in South Asia than in many developing countries, such as Indonesia.Television was a similar story for a long time, and the state TV broadcasting company, Doordarshan, was almost a byword for ‘boring’ in many people’s eyes up to the nineteen eighties. Although TV transmission officially began in 1959 in a few cities, growth of TV in India was inhibited in the early years by government control and the monopoly of the state-owned Doordarshan. National programming and colour transmission were introduced only in 1982 to coincide with the holding of the Asian Games in Delhi. The critical issue was not just state control, but also that up till the nineteen eighties most people had no access to TV. This began to change in the eighties with the building of broadcasting towers in provincial cities, and then exploded in the nineties with the arrival of satellite TV. This allowed an explosion in the growth of TV production, broadcasting and distribution. India now has hundreds of channels which reach millions of homes in both urban and rural areas.By the late 1980s, independent production companies were allowed to make programmes for Doordarshan and several new shows marked the beginning of TV’s new-found popularity.

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The screening of the 78-episode serial Ramayana, directed by Ramanand Sagar, between January 1987 and July 1988, was a crucial step in the growth of TV in India. It was so popular that entire neighbourhoods watched the epic together. The Ramayana telecast was an example of a two- fold response to modernity; the new media of TV was used to show traditional ideas but, to the extent possible, they were based on a modern interpretation. Sagar made a conscious effort to include distinctive elements of regional versions of the Ramayana in his version and to exclude elements that might offend any groups. Still, some believe that the re-imagining of this religious tradition on TV created a new sense of a Hindu public sphere which was one factor in aggravating inter-communal politics that led to the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 and the Hindu-Muslim riots that followed.By the early 1990s, TV became a powerful force in Indian society with the arrival of cable and satellite channels. Western serials and programmes found an increasing audience, but not without “localisation” of content. This included simple dubbing in the vernacular to Indian remakes of foreign shows. International trends were ‘Indianised’ and interpreted in ways that the public could relate to. The most popular programmes, however, were those with a distinctive Indian focus and related to Bollywood (the term commonly used for the Hindi film industry), cricket and local politics.There has also been a radical shift from the ‘boring’ style of old Indian TV to extremely highly paced programming. This has included a great deal of investigative journalism and organising stings to reveal corrupt officials. This was parodied in the 2010 film Do duni char (2x4) in which a school teacher’s son watches a show that reveals corruption and then the, honest school teacher, gets tempted by corruption and imagines himself being the centre of a TV expose. Such stories are based on reality of course.

Print mediaAlong with the increasing popularity of TV and cinema, the reach of the press too has widened considerably. Barring a brief period of censorship in the 1970s, the press in India has remained free of government control after Independence. (During the colonial period the press was circumscribed by what the British authorities would allow but even so a strong nationalist press developed). As in TV, the early 1990s saw major changes in the press. Computerization and other technological changes facilitated the simultaneous printing of several regional editions of newspapers and magazines in different Indian languages. Mass printing became a viable financial proposition due to increasing advertising revenues as Indian industry took off. Readership of vernacular newspapers now outstrips that of the English press with about 40% of the readership for the Hindi press, 10 % for the English press and the remaining 50% for all the other regional languages of India,

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Unlike many Western countries, India traditionally had only a serious ‘broadsheet’ press and no populist ‘tabloid’ press but today content and coverage of most publications has shifted from education and information to entertainment.

MusicThe development of Indian popular music is a good example of how it’s impossible to separate social, cultural and economic factors when trying to understand India. India has many ancient traditions of folk and classical music. During the Islamic period in the north of India these blended with Central Asian, Persian and Middle Eastern influences to produce the classical Hindustani music tradition. However, the South continued to patronise a nore indigenous classical tradition called Carnatic music. With the arrival of Europeans Indian traditions also were influenced by Western musical ideas. Modern Indian popular music draws upon all these influences.In terms of patronage its also important to look at how music is influenced by how its performed and who its patrons are. Pre colonial music was largely folk music patronised by the broad masses or classical music patronised by aristocratic elites. With the arrival of the theatre and then the cinema many folk art forms began to move into an area between folk and classical traditions. Film music became a blend of all previous styles patronised by the new mass audiences for the cinema and due to this music and cinema became inseparable in most people’s minds. Moreover, a tradition of ‘playback’ singers developed, so despite the audience looking at young and lovely stars on the screen, the songs were actually being sung by famous singers, many of who, naturally, gradually became older and older. The content of Hindi songs is also heavily influence by traditional Indian cultural values, and in particular the angst resultant from the clash between traditional family structures and romantic love. However, this has always been a theme in Indian songs, as far as I know since the medieval period at least the romance that tells the story of star crossed lovers has been a leading genre of Indian lyric. So whilst the beat may be modern, the music right up to date, the song lyrics are more than likely to be about the feelings generated by living in a world where the joint family system and romantic love live side by side.However, from the arrival of satellite TV in the 90s this coupling of music began to be challenged. Particularly influential in this were the channels, such as V who were broad casting pop videos. This led to radical changes in how music videos were conceptualised, both on Satellite TV and then in the cinema. It also meant that for the first time a ‘hit parade’ could be imagined in India that was separate from the top film listings. There were also important influences from the global Indian Diaspora. A good example of this was that in the 1980s Bhangra, a Punjabi folk dance, was modernised by Sikhs in

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the UK who blended it with pop music. This new form of Bhangra was then popularised back in India and in Bollywood and has since become immensely influential all around the world wherever Bollywood is watched, or listened to.

SportThe Indian love of sport is well known, after all for a long time the only thing it seemed that Australia and India shared was a common love of cricket. It is also a good example of an area of culture where there has been an unlikely alliance between culture, mass media and commercialisation. Just as in Australia where sport is big business, so it is in India, but perhaps even more so. The advertising revenues from ads during prime time cricket in India are enormous. Economic liberalisation unleashed an almost unholy alliance where a manufacturing industry keen to shift its consumer products saw opportunities through advertising on TV, and in print media etc. during or in relation to sporting events. Thus the alliance of consumerism, mass media advertising and India’s love of sport propelled sport to new commercial heights. Today the Indian Cricket Board is I have heard it said the most valuable sporting body in the world today.

Popular culture as a paradigm for changeFrom the examples of popular culture like cinema and music you can see how when you look at almost any popular cultural phenomena in India today what you are looking at is a multi-layered construct. The roots of almost all popular cultural phenomena are embedded in the Indian situation, the joint family, caste, community, tradition and how individuals negotiate their identities in this context. Yet the driving forces that allow these popular cultural phenomena are linked to commerce and the public sphere. The shift has been from the patronising wandering singers in the market, and royal patrons, to downloads on a mobile phone and corporate sponsorship.

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Additional ReadingsIndian ‘geographyKremmer,.Christopher, Inhaling the Mahatma, Australia, Harper Perennial, 2006.Jaffrelot, Cristophe, Hindu Nationalism: a reader, Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 2007. (‘Introduction’ pp. 3-25.)Dalrymple, William, City of Djinns : a year in Delhi, London : HarperCollins, 1993.Chak De India [film] Yash Raj Films: Singapore, Yash Raj Films International Ltd, 2007.

Indian HistoryKeay, John, India: A History, New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000.Flood, Gavin, An Introduction to Hinduism, New York : Cambridge University Press, 1996.Robinson, Francis, Islam and Muslim history in South Asia, Delhi ; Oxford University Press, 2000.Omvedt, Gail, Buddhism in India : challenging Brahmanism and caste, New Delhi : Sage Publications, 2003.McLeod, W. H., The Sikhs : history, religion, and society, New York : Columbia University Press, 1989.

Indian EconomySainath, P, Everybody loves a good drought, New Delhi : Penguin, 1997.

Gender Jaffrey, Madhur, Climbing the mango trees : a memoir of a childhood in India, New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

Popular CultureTelevision in India : satellites, politics, and cultural change / edited by Nalin Mehta. New York : Routledge, 2008.

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