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In Light of India

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"In Light of India" is a book-length, multi-part essay in which Mexican poet Octavio Paz discusses the complex political, religious, and artistic worlds of India. Paz, who had served as his nation's ambassador to India, writes with insight and obvious affection for his subject.

Paz is a masterful prose writer. His style is smooth and clear, and full of sage-like statements. Consider this observation: "Dialogue between a poet and a saint is difficult because a poet, before speaking, must hear others--that is to say, the language, which belongs to everyone and to no one. A saint speaks with God or with himself, two forms of silence" (p. 118).

Paz covers many topics: India's ancient history, the conflict between Hindus and Muslims, the caste system, classical Sanskrit poetry, and more. But, as he notes, the book is not meant to be an exhaustive scholarly treatise. Rather, it is a very personal view of India: "this book. . . is the child not of knowledge but of love" (33). And as such, the book is rich in interesting anecdotes and fascinating insights, from Paz' account of his meeting with the guru Mother Ananda Mai to his reflection on the influence of Rabindranath Tagore upon Pablo Neruda.

"In Light of India" is a marvelous companion volume to Salman Rushdie's "The Jaguar Smile": in that volume of essays, a writer from the Indian subcontinent reflects upon a Latin American country (the reverse of Paz' project). But on its own, Paz' book is a wonderful volume both for fans of Latin American literature and for those interested in India.

A welcome change to see things through a great poet's eye. Brilliant comparisons of the cultures of two great countries Mexico and India, a culture that died and a culture that still lives and is thriving.

Kudos to Paz for discoursing on India's nationhood, religion and caste. Uncertainty is the underlying theme in this book. Unlike Mexico, India proves to be a bigger (and alien) challenge to Paz's analytical and intellectual ability and at the start of the book the reader wonders - will this be the Indian Labyrinth of Solitude?

Paz's love for India and his desire to find answers to (paradoxical?)questions engages him in a duel that is serendipitous for him and cahallenging yet enjoyable to the reader. His bafflement is typical in a land where `one man's ceiling is another man's floor'. You can contest every assertion he makes - but wait! A few paragraphs later he himself is left questioning his earlier assertions. What starts out as an exercise in `jnana yoga' (comprehension through knowledge) in the end turns out to be a discourse without conclusions. But as Paz mulls and ponders, his vexations and observances transform itself into a wonderful literary offering of bhakti- an expression of love and admiration for India and its richness and complexity - an offering of devotion that supersedes comprehension.

Paz's comments on Indian literature are eminently enjoyable. His commentary of ancient sanskrit poetry is very entertaining.

His opinions on politics and nationalism seem to indicate prejudices formed from other Western interpretations of India. A country which may have some amusing aspects, but which is by and large populated by the ignorant and the poor. And if at all there is anything good in India, it must have come from Europe. Paz too recites the same idiocies. Gandhi is portrayed more as a product of Western thought, than of Indian philosophy. While Indian nationalists are likened to religious fanatics, Tamils (of whom I am one), Paz says, "are separatists." The only thing I would like to be separate from are such pathetically ignorant statements.

Misinformed commentaries on the Gita can be classified into two --- those that insult the reader's intelligence and those that reflect the writer's ignorance. Paz's comments on the Gita probably fall in the latter category. While he accepts Krishna's words that the Self neither kills nor dies, he seems to worry about the "suffering" that war brings. Paz seems unable to comprehend that the Self which cannot die or kill can also not suffer. Gita is about "save himself, not how to save others" for Paz, because he fails to see the underlying Advaita. It is surprising that someone as perceptive as Paz missed the point about how "himself" and "others" are really the same.

In reading foreigners write about India, too often you see them get caught on the horns of the complexities and contradictions of India. Invariably their real subject is not India, but how foreigners perceive India. What makes Paz's book special is that he is really writing about the Indian mind, and like an Indian he is able to wrap his mind around the contradictions without attempting to resolve them. This book is now my top recommendation for anyone trying to get past castes, dust, and buses falling over cliffs to begin to understand India.

Octavio Paz, winner of the 1990 literature Nobel, for his Spanish poetry,
served as Mexico's ambassador in New Deli from 1962 to 1968. IN LIGHT OF
INDIA is a set of Paz's essays on his personal experiences and observations
of the country's cultural history: My education in India lasted for years
and was not confined to books....It has markd me deeply. It has been a
sentimental, artistic, and spiritual eduaction. Its influence can be seen
in my poems, my prose writings, and in my life itself."


In the opening essay, "The Antipodes of Coming and Going," Paz gives his first
impressions of Bombay and Delhi. Arriving, first, in 1951 as the cultural attache
to the Mexican embassy, Paz saw Bombay's Taj Mahal Hotel as "the English dream of
India at the beginning of the century, an India populated by dark men with pointed
mustaches and scimitars at their waists, by women with amber-colored skin, hair
and eyebrows as black as crows' wings, and the huge eyes of lionesses in heat." On
Delhi's Qutab Minar: "The reddish stone, contrasting with the transparency of the
air and the blue of the sky, gives the monument a vertical dynamism, like a huge
rocket aimed at the stars....the orginal construction was the work of Prithvi Raj,
the last Hindu ruler of Delhi. The tower was part of a temple that also
housed the famous Iron Pillar, which has an inscription from the
Gupta period (fourth century)."

In one of his most illuminating essays,"The Apsara and the Yakshi," Paz
expresses great admiration of Hindu philosophy, literature, and music.
He quotes a verse from the Rig Veda's "Hymn of Creation":

"The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdom
know that which is, is kin to that which is not."

Paz comments: "All that can be said about being and nonbeing
are in those enigmatic and sublime lines."

Paz assesses the enormous influence of the "Panchatantra" tales on the
development of Arab, Persian, and European literature: "Many of La
Fontaine's fables come from Indian sources, and the massive collection
"The Ocean of Story" was the prototype for "The Thousand and One Nights."
Although Western cultural historians have long acknowledged that Hindu
philosophy and religion had a "profound influence on the West...examples
of Schopenhauer, Nietzche, Emerson, Whitman, even Mallarme," Paz wonders
at "the neglect of Sanskrit poetry as almost inexplicable and certainly
unjust." Paz cites exquisite verses of Dharmakirti, Kalidasa, Amaru, and
others. For example, the philosopher-poet Dharmakirti as philosopher,
notes Paz, "reduces all rationalizations to absurdity; the poet
Dharmakirti, facing the body of a woman, does the same to his own
dialectic."

PROOF
Her skin, saffron toasted in the sun,
eyes darting like a gazelle.
That god who made her, how could he
have let her go? Was he blind?
This wonder is not the result of blindness:
she is a woman, and a sinuous vine.
The Buddha's doctrine thus is proved:
nothing in this world was created


Paz finds classical Hindu music enchanting: "Ragas are soliloquies and
meditations, passionate melodies that draw circles and triangles in a
mental space, a geometry of sounds that can turn a room into a fountain, a
spring, a pool."

In "Rama and Allah," Paz, hailed by "The Washington Post"
as "this century's intellectual conscience,"
regards Islam in India as "more than a historical paradox,
a deep wound":

"Between Islam and Hinduism there is not only an opposition, but an
incompatibility....The separation had existed since the founding of the
Delhi Sultanate in 1206. With the exception of Akbar, none of the Muslim
rulers, for seven centuries, made any real attempt to transfoem coexistence
into a genuine reconciliation. Their religion would not allow it: idolaters
must be either converted or exterminated."

Paz's observation accords with Sri Aurobindo's, who, before the
partition of India, posed the question about Islam: "You can live with a
religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live
with a religion whose principle is 'I will not tolerate you'? How are you
going to have unity with these people?" Sri Aurobindo cited the Koranic
injunction (chapter IX, verse 5): "Slay the idolaters wherever ye find
them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each
ambush. But if they repent [i.e. convert to Islam] and establish worship
and pay the poor-due, then leave them free. Lo! Allah is forgiving,
merciful."

In the same essay, Paz traces the origin of Sufi thought to Ibn 'Arabi
(1165-1240), whom he labels "the Spaniard." Ibn 'Arabi had been deeply
influenced by the Buddhist concept of the void expounded in the writings
of the renowned philosopher Nagarajuna. Ibn' Arabi's ideas reached Akbar's
court in the sixteenth century, where, however, they were fiercely
countered by the leader of the Naqshbandi order of Sufism, Ahmed Sirhindi.
In Paz's words: "The greatest and most determined enemy of Akbar's
ecclecticism was Sheik Ahmed Sirhindi, who was vehemently opposed to the
Sufi pantheism of Ibn 'Arabi and his followers, and to the idea of a point
of convergence for Hindu and Islamic mysticism." After Akbar's death,
Sirhindi, the Sufi leader, urged Emperor Jehangir to force the Islamic
conversion of the great Punjabi poet Guru Arjun Dev, the fifth guru of the
Sikh. The Sufi's letter exhorted: "Honor of Islam lies in insulting Kufr
and Kafirs... They should constantly remain terrified and trembling."
Under the influence of the Sufi's cruel exhortation, Jehangir ordered
public torture of Arjun Dev to death in 1606. Jehangir, in his
autobiography, "Tuzuk-i-Jehangiri," wrote the following about Arjun Dev
(pp.72-73): "He was noised about as a religious and worldly leader. They
called him Guru, and from all directions crowds of fools would come to him
and express great devotion to him. This busy traffic had been carried on
for three or four generations. For years the thought had been presenting
itself that I should put an end to this false traffic, or he should be
brought into the fold of Islam...I ordered that his property should be
confiscated and that he should be put to death with torture."


During his ambassadorship in New Delhi, Paz met Nehru and Indira Gandhi.
Like many other political analysts -- such as Arun Shourie, Khushwant
Singh, and Mark Tully -- Paz blames Indira Gandhi for creating the Punjab
problem: "It seemed clear that Indira, spurred on by the devil of
politics, had lit the fire that cosumed her."

Some of his other observations are surprising and erroneous. For example,
Paz states that "India lacks a tradition of thinking critically." Paz
needs to account for the development of the six classical systems of Hindu
philosophy and the Buddhist critique of Vedanta. Paz also seems to be
unaware of the tradition of Indian democracy, which has a long history. As
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar pointed out: "Indian democracy was as old as its
ancient village republics. India had political assemblies with elaborate
parliamentary rules of procedures at a time when most of the rest of the
world suffered under despotism or anarchy." This ignorance is curious
since he was serving as a cultural attache in New Delhi in 1951 when the
new constitution of India was very much in the news.

Despite its faults, Paz's IN LIGHT OF INDIA makes charming reading.

-- C.J.Singh

Octavio Paz is clearly a deep thinker. His essays tend to be very philosophical, although for the most part, they aren't difficult to understand. His writing ranges widely. His comparison of Indian and Mexican food is fascinating. His discussion of the caste system and it's origins is enlightening. His examples and discussion of ancient Sanskrit poetry will leave you hungry for more.

Paz looks beneath the surface of everything he writes about. You get a very strong sense of a man who is an original thinker. No supericial skimming or surface descriptions here.

I found his Mexican background particularly beneficial. It gives him a different angle from that of an Anglo. This a very thought-full book.

This book is a lyrical remembrance of the time spent in India by Octavio Paz, a celebrated poet, who served briefly as an attaché in the Mexican embassy in India. It is a fascinating exposition of the country's landscape, history and the rich tapestry of culture. In spite of being caught between two worlds, his native Mexico and India, which assumes mythic proportions, he notices such a plethora of details.

"The Antipodes of Coming and Going" is a poetic journal of his days in India. He notices with such clarity the extraordinary richness of sight, sound, smells and effect of India. "Religions, Castes, Language" gives an overview of India but has some factual errors. The occassional factual errors like "The British Empire, for the first time in Indian history, united all the people under its domain, something their predecessors-the Maurya, the Guptas, the Mughals-could never achieve" doesn't bother at all.

"A Project of Nationhood" is where Paz compares Islamic,Hindu and Western civilization in their relation to India. This and the last section "The Full and the Empty" where he celebrates the soul of India - these two sections reveal the genius of Paz.

His last question "In what time do we live"? is ever relevant in India.

Octavio Paz has recorded his experience in India in a great way. I simply call it poetic. Because of the great distance between Mexcio and India, there has been very little interaction between these countries. The linguistic difference has not helped either. Therfore a book by Paz on India from his eyes as a Mexcican, is welcomme addition to the literature. It is definitley a book to have and cherish.

I find Paz's observation's of India to be delightfully accurate. His role as an Ambassador was not to be critical but to recount his observations at a level of serindipity. That he does superbly. Perhaps this may be the reason why President Bill Clinton who on March 1, 1999 bought this book while vacationing in Utah and while examining his soul after the Lewinsky crisis.