A CHINESE WHO HELPED INDIA FIND IT’S LOST PAST

Indians take history for granted since perhaps they have a surfeit of it. New Delhi, started as a showpiece of the British Empire, is itself nearing a century. A trip to Delhi University inevitably takes one past the Old Fort and the Red Fort, both hundreds of years old. But rarely does one stop to think about their builders or the role that they played in making the past that brought us where we are now. The sceptic asks, how does the ‘dead past’ matter now? If Shahjahan built the Red Fort, in the 17^th century, what of it? Today’s builders (who are in trouble these days due to a slump in realty) are much more relevant to us because we buy and live in the houses that they build. 

My response to those asking this question is: why is Hitler’s holocaust kept alive to this day though more than 70 years have passed since it happened? None of the people who committed the atrocities are alive any more so why not forget and forgive? The Vietnamese say that while they have forgiven they have not forgotten and they keep alive in museums memories of their sufferings of decades ago when they became victims in a clash of ideologies during the Cold War. Why is the anniversary of Second World War, the most destructive war in history is observed every year though a good 70 years have passed since it came to an end? The simple answer is that these events help us to locate ourselves in the present. A quarter of a century has passed has gone by under the looming shadow of economic liberalization and phenomenal growth in India. For those it has touched but slightly it sometimes looks like a curse. But can we understand what’s happening without knowing that the Cold War was a barrier to globalization? And going back a little, can we explain the Cold War without knowing about the Second World War. The single-word answer is ‘NO’.

THE CHINESE PUZZLE

To return to the mystery of the Chinese and India’s lost past, let me begin by saying that much of India’s ‘historical’ as against ‘mythological’ past was discovered and recorded in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. As civilizations became literate, greater authenticity was attached to written records rather than to oral traditions, a category to which mythology belonged. And Indian mythology embodied in the ‘Puranas’ (or stories of times past) had nothing relating to Lord Buddha and Buddhism though it was later found that he belonged to the sub-continent and his followers occupied a prominent place in Indian culture for more than a 1000 years before mysteriously disappearing from the collective memory. Two men were instrumental in reviving that memory – a seventh century Chinese religious tourist Huen Tsang (Xuanzang according to modern phonetics) and many hundred years later by General Alexander Cunningham, a British army man with an interest in archaeology.

How did this happen? To start with how do we know that the Buddha was a virtually forgotten figure in India? Well, there is a painting of the Mahabodhi Temple made by a British official in 1799 with the caption ‘East View of Hindu Temple at Bode Gya’. The painting shows a dilapidated temple with some stone idols with some Hindu worshippers of Lord Vishnu (the preserver) and the Brahma Pipal that devotees believed had been planted by Brahma (the creator). This has been mentioned by a modern Chinese scholar Sun Shuyun in her book ‘Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud – An epic journey – One woman’s search for her roots’ published in 2003. It is Sun’s account of her 1999 travel in which retraced the 25000-km journey of Xuanzang (Huen Tsang) who travelled through China, central Asia and India over an 18-year period. It is interesting to note that the name of the town mentioned in the caption of the painting was Bodh Gaya, an obvious reference to the Buddha though well before this he had been installed in the Hindu pantheon as an incarnation of Vishnu.

However, doubts arose in the minds of a number of people including the British who had gathered from accounts of many people from countries where Buddhism was a major religion that the birthplace, enlightenment and death of the Buddha was in the Indian subcontinent. The crucial turning point came around the middle of the 19^th century when travelogues of the Chinese pilgrims became available in the English language. Cunningham for example took the help of the record of Xuanzang (Huen Tsang) whose writings went under the title ‘Record of the Western Regions.” From the descriptions of Xuanzang the British archaeologist could conclude that the Brahm Pipal tree at Bodh Gaya was the one under which the Buddha attained enlightenment while the Mahabodhi temple at Bodh Gaya was not a Vishnu temple but was the one built by a king called Ashok to commemorate that event about three centuries later.  

KASHIPUR

A view of the remains of the Panchayatna temple, Kashipur

Here I must reveal that what led me to Xuanzang (Huen Tsang) and Cunningham was a recent visit to Kashipur in the foothills of the Himalayas near Corbett Park. Kashipur is a typical small town whose claim to fame is of recent origin. For one thing a little more than a decade back it was earmarked as an industrial zone by the newly formed state of Uttarakhand and for the other it has become the site of an Indian Institute of Management (IIM) which was started in 2013. But I found that Kashipur had an even older reason for being famous (much older in fact than even when it acquired its current name) and this was that it was one of the places where Xuanzang (Huen Tsang) stopped during his travel in India. The name of the place (which today is Kashipur) has been given as Govisana in the ‘Record of the Western Regions’. Cunningham zeroed in on the place by following the directions given by the Chinese traveler and even found a mound described by him. Excavation of the mound was carried out well after the death of Cunningham, revealing the remains a 7^th century temple complex built during the reign of Harshavardhan whose capital was Kannauj. This complex, known as a Panchayatna temple, is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India but its existence is not very well known even in Kashipur itself.

However, to conclude, we must thank history for our proud present since two important symbols of our nation – the national flag and the official emblem – contain symbols that originate in Buddhism. They are the wheel in the white strip of the flag which is the Buddhist dhamma chakra and the four sided lion capital of Emperor Ashok which is known as the Ashok pillar and is the official seal of India. And all this thanks to a 7^th century Chinese traveler and a 19^th century Scotsman. 

LITTLE KNOWN FACTS ABOUT DELHI

Over the next few months I plan to write a series about little known facts of Delhi. As William Dalrymple writes, its a city full of Djinns. And where there are Djinns there are stories. The sum of these stories constitute the heritage of the city inherited by its inhabitants. Happy journey.

DOES DELHI HAVE SOMETHING TO LEARN FROM QUITO?

A view of Quito with Andes mountains in the backdrop

When I mention the name ‘Quito’ few of my students and friends can tell whether I am talking about a person, place or thing. Many of my younger friends have heard of Ecuador, though, but mostly because of their prominence in football and of course because of Julian Assange, the Swede of the Wikileaks fame who has been given asylum at the Ecuador embassy in London. For the others who may not be quite as sports or leak minded Quito is the capital of Ecuador, a country located in the north-western tip of South America which I had the good fortune of visiting last winter, officially to attend an international conference of academics but in reality just lured by the attraction of a chance to see a Latin American country.

We (my friend, his wife and me) arrived in Quito late in the night on a flight from Atlanta (USA) and it was well past midnight that we were able to complete the airport and visa formalities. We hired a taxi and as we drove in the night the people on the roads and the houses made me feel as if I was home in Delhi. The same haphazard off-white and white buildings with flat concrete roofs and dark windows staring at us through the darkness. When we were close to the hotel where we had booked our stay, the taxi driver wanted to take a turn that we thought was an attempt to fleece us (like taxi and auto drivers often do in Delhi). But later we discovered that the driver was right and we had entered the street to our hotel (Sol De Quito or the ‘Soul of Quito’) driving the wrong way on a one-way-street.

We stayed in Quito for just under ten days but during the entire period I could not but help compare the city with our own capital Delhi. Unlike Delhi which is just 500 feet above sea level, Quito is at an elevation of a good 9000 feet. So when I was planning my trip, I had expected that Quito would be very cold. At comparable heights in the Himalayas in India, (say Harsil near Badrinath) it is much colder even during the summer months. And I was visiting Quito during only the beginning of summer there. But to my surprise I found the weather to be very comfortable even at that height possibly because it was located right on the equator. In fact, the zero degree line is a major selling point for tourism, a big business in Ecuador. If you look at the photograph of the city, you will find that it resembles any large Indian hill town - the same somewhat haphazard arrangement of houses painted in myriad colours.   

Another view of Quito 

A STUDY IN CONTRAST

But coming back to comparing the capital of Ecuador with Delhi, the most noticeable thing is that it is much cleaner. Perhaps we could learn a thing or two from the people of this small South American country who put their best foot forward to welcome tourists, one of their major foreign currency earners. Ecuadorians seem to have learnt the self-discipline of not littering. Unlike Indians they do not consider the whole outdoors as their toilet. So one is not overpowered by the stench of urine at crowded street corners. Clean toilets are provided the city’s main business and shopping areas unlike the ones provided by the municipal authorities that are simply unusable as they are never cleaned. To make matters worse, Delhi’s municipal toilets are covered so that anyone wanting to use them need clothesline clips on their noses. Much like tourists in Bikaner who are forced to tie up their noses with a scarf while going on the heritage walk of havelis (traditional houses of the wealthy) to keep out the stink from open sewers!! Someone said during preparations for the Beijing Olympics that the champion spitters of the world were the Chinese. I think it’s hard to beat pan (betel leaf) chewing Indians who leave no public wall or staircase unscathed from red stains. People sticking their heads out of luxury cars to spew out betel. By contrast, in Quito they paint graffiti on public walls. In fact the BMX tracks on which youngsters perform acrobatic stunts on special bicycles are also covered with spray painted graffiti. (photo attached). For the uninitiated, BMX stands for Bike Motor Cross.

Karol Bagh? No, a middle class neighbourhood in Quito

If some figures are compared the contrast becomes starker. Quito’s population is more than 2.5 million, not small for a town situated among high mountains. While the per capita income or gdp of Ecuador is double that of India (12000 dollars as against 6000 dollars), our country is not only much bigger but has an economy and society with a much larger variety. Petroleum, bananas and cocoa are its major dollar earners in addition to tourism. Many expatriate Ecuadorians also send remittances from the US and Spain. Ecuador has no manufacturing or services sector to speak of. It got out of monster inflation about a decade-and-a-half back by making the US dollar its official currency. But overall the position of Ecuador in the world can be said to be much humbler than that of India in terms of numbers, area and complexity of every nature.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

The other remarkable feature of Quito is its most efficient public transport system consisting of trolley buses and bus rapid transport, the famous BRT which received an unceremonious kick from Delhi. Like I mentioned before, the people of Ecuador are more disciplined and have better self-control than the people of India. What is more, the staff that manage the bus system are also way more efficient and are not prone to skipping the rules. So the BRT buses only stop at the stops meant for them unlike in India where drivers have no qualms about opening the hydraulic doors to let passengers board buses or alight from them at any old place including traffic lights. Though the car population of Quito is not small, automobiles usually leave the BRT corridors alone for the buses. Not so in Delhi where these corridors are the preferred routes for the VIP minded Indian car drivers who feel that their prestige has been shattered just by waiting their turn in the traffic.

These observations I made by actually using the BRT services in Quito. They are as crowded as in Delhi but in our capital I am really scared to use buses mostly because of the free-for-all that one cannot avoid while boarding even though the vehicle might be completely empty. And of course they are much cheaper than taxis. A dollar will carry you a long way. And let me tell you there is no better way of getting to know a city than by travelling by its public transport. The Delhi metro rail will prove my point. And by the way, to strike a positive note, there is nothing like the Delhi metro in Quito!! But in any case I think Delhi has given up a good thing by discontinuing the BRT.

Quito also has trolley buses which is a cross between a tram and a bus. Simply speaking it is a bus which runs on rubber wheels but is powered by overhead wires. It has a larger carrying capacity since it is two buses joined in the centre which consists of flexible bellows. Such buses are known as articulated buses. 

However, I am convinced that India and particularly Delhi has a lot to learn from Ecuador. And of course, I dare say Indians will find South American countries way more interesting than the United States. And therefore a must visit.