Customer Reviews

Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond

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The problem with journalistic sketches such as these is that they are forever becoming obsolete. Since many of these essays take the reader only to 2004, one is left wondering, for instance, what is happening today in Bollywood, with India's BJP party, in Kashmir, in Musharref's Pakistan, and in Nepal and Tibet. Events in these parts of the world are moving faster than Mishra can write about them. But the great value added here is Mishra's untangling of the tortured web of historical events and personalities from which India, Kashmir, and Pakistan stumbled their painful way into their current predicaments. Often one is left trembling with despair. For instance, Mishra gives us a detailed retelling of the decades of ubiquitous injustices and murders rampant in Kashmir. And the deeply solidified hatreds and passions that have emerged from the power-hungry ambitions of men throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, from the British on, leave one feeling hopeless for any reasonable resolution to the India/Pakistan Muslim/Western miasma engulfing us today. Indeed, one wonders at the subtitle of this book, "How To Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond." It seems to be something of an ironic joke, since Mishra is never at a loss to point out the hypocrisy of corrupt Indian "modern" politicians who live in a self-imposed bubble and ignore the suffering of millions. He also gives us an insider's look at Bollywood's lightweight "modern" movie stars and movie makers whose financial backing comes from criminals. And in general he sees the cup here as definitely more than half empty. Perhaps that viewpoint is from his many interviews at the ground level, with the suffering masses, the pathetic, powerless victims, and the poverty-stricken illiterate.
I recommend this book for those naive Westerners, like Thomas J. Friedman, who think "shining India" is the focal point of the modern world. Not quite.

If you don't care about the title, then this is a very readable book and, Mishra is a good writer. It informs you about the people and places that Mishra visits; albeit in a somewhat cynical way. The problem arises when you start dissecting the book. You wonder if Mishra really has any expertise to write about places like Nepal, Tibet, Afghanisthan, Pakistan etc. It seems that his expertise is really in the underdeveloped Hindi belt, and surroundings of North India, an area which is quite removed from the modern world. Then what is this title all about? To find real stories about the temptations of the West, shouldn't one be digging in South India?

Coming back to the book, Mishra raises some soul searching issues about the failure of Democracy on one hand, and the tendency of the emerging Hindu middle classes to mutedly tolerate violence against minorities. Both of these issues are heavy topics that need to be covered thoroughly, with the one-on-one perspective that Mishra has.

Pankaj Mishra writes like he is having a long and detailed conversation with you. After spending a few weeks reading this book, I feel that he is a close member of my social circle. He is a true journalist - he does not preach, he allows you to draw your own conclusions. His facts will knock your socks off. This is stuff we never hear in our world of Fox News.

I loved The End of Suffering, Mishra's previous book, which looked at the progress of the historical Buddha in northern India 2500 years ago. Mishra effectively intertwined autobiographical details with that story, and he does the same, to powerful effect, in this closely observed look at nationalism, extremism and modernity in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Afghanistan. Mishra conveys what it feels like to be a citizen of the countries he visits, whether it's the aspiration and anxiety of movie industry hangers-on in Bombay or the bleak outlook of a family in the crossfire of Afghanistan.

This book is at the standard of the best non-fiction by VS Naipaul, though I find Mishra's take on Hindu nationalism to be more accurate than the Nobel laureate's.

This travelogue/reportage is extremely well written with very deep analysis of the social forces that rule these places of geopolitical importance. Mishra has invoked the history in brief for each place to explain why the society there is turning the events in some particular way. He also explains how the hegemonic powers are causing tension in the lives of the people living there. However the title is a total misnomer, and does not convey the true value of this book. This book does not give a list of "what to do's" if you travel those places. It reports what the author saw happening in those places, tried to get interviews of some key players and explains the socio-historic background of the regions.

Mishra is an Upper Caste Hindu Journalist who tries to show us the conditions of the States of the Indian Subcontinent as a result of Globalization and Modernization through his eyes and experiences. We follow him as he interacts with people in different castes, politics, Bollywood Entertainment, the Police, the Military, Militias, education, and simple peasants.

We get a history of Indian/Pakistani Politics since 1948 from his experiences. We get a simple understanding of how India has florished while Pakistan has floundered. Of how the Congress party of Nehru and the Gandhi's have been overcome by the rise of Hindu Nationalist parties like the BJP.

He visits the Kashmir and we can see how it became India's Northern Ireland with the exception that both sides are armed with nuclear weapons. The Troubles there are similar but the killing is magnified 10 fold as no human rights groups manitor the Indian nor the Pakistani armies for human rights violations.

We get a glimpse of the Bollywood scene in Mumbai. How it is similar to the Holywood Studio system of the 40's(maybe the 30's as each film seems to have a song and dance number). We get an understanding of what is acceptable on film in that culture and why there was such a hue and cry recently over Richard Gere's kiss in public.

Mishra's strength is that he lets his subjects tell the story of their lives and how the World has changed around them. His most compelling sections are where he relates his own life experiences. I recommend the book as an excellent glimpse into the cultures of South Central Asia.

In this book of essays, travel reports, and opinions, I'm not quite sure just what the word 'Modern' means in the sub-title. The places he visits and upon which he reports don't seem to fit my definition of 'modern.'

India is, of course, a world of contrasts, just as is the rest of the world. The places he describes in this book are a long way from the high-tech world you talk to whenever you have a problem with your computer. It's much the same as comparing the fishermen in South Louisiana with down town Manhattan.

Here we see India (and surrounding countries) as a place of dirt streets, mud houses, and a collection of hatreds between tribes and religions that go back centuries. At the same time, he reports on some progress as a middle class begins to emerge, but also a religious militancy with inter religious warfare. The pull of the material aspects of the west are matched by nationalism.

Mostly I come away from this book knowing that I know less about that part of the world than I thought. That I will probably never have a good understanding, and a feeling of some dispair in looking towards the future.

The title appears to derive from André Malraux's 1926 The Temptation of the West, though I'm not sure why. Regardless of its provinence, the title (especially the subtitle) is inaccurate, and has confused better and more educated readers than I. It would more accurately be titled Essays on Strife in the Subcontinent. This would have the virue of accuracy, as well as alerting the reader that this is a collection of essays that are not well-integrated. The 1-page preface promises something the book doesn't deliver, and is highly inadequate as a device to unify the book. Mishra's overall project would have been much better served by a chapter-length preface that provided contexts for each piece and showed how each fit into and supported his contention. I still might have disagreed that he had demonstrated his point, but I would have had a better sense of what he thought he was demonstrating. This doesn't mean that the essays aren't sometimes interesting or useful, but that they neither fit the title nor cohere; as such, Mishra does not reach the audience he intends.

I was expecting a more socioanthropological text, but this a largely a collection of essays on politics. Mishra says these essays "seek to make the reader enter actual experience: of individuals ... and of the traveler" (i), but this goal is not realized by a number of the essays, which often offer page after grueling page of facts about Indian political history, for example, with no subheadings, no citations, no index, no individual or traveler narratives, and a certain amount of jumping around and repetition. The lack of an index is particularly annoying and makes the book useless as a reference should one want to use it for background when reading other authors of the subcontinent (Jhumpa Lahiri, for example). The lack of citations makes it impossible to evaluate Mishra's contentions or to understand where they fit in the broader discourse of Indian-Pakistani relations, for example.

I am troubled as well by the notion of "temptations of the West" as ostensibly illustrated here. Histories of other Asian countries demonstrate considerable strife, brutality, abuse of power, corruption, and lack of respect for others' welfare emanating from and enacted by the colonial powers of the East long before Western colonization and influence. I am willing to be convinced, but Mishra does not take up the argument that this is a Western phenomenon rather than a universal one. The question of how to modernize in a way that integrates two cultures rather than subsuming one is vital and fascinating. However, Mishra generally does not address it, which was my greatest disappointment in a book that I thought would have this issue as a major focus.

The only "temptation" I can spot is Mishra's often-repeated concern that colonial powers offer education but there are then no jobs for the people who have been educated. This is an important and realistic concern, but one that might have been best served by an historical comparison, if one exists, to the relationship between education and vocation under colonial China, for example. As it stands, and without context, Mishra's complaint sounds like an indictment of providing education to the prolitariat. I assume that this is not what he intends, but that is how it reads without further elaboration.

Each essay in and of itself is interesting (though some are long, dry slogs for a reader who was not expecting 10-page recitations of historical facts between encounters with "individuals" or "the traveler"), but suffers from the reader's ongoing question of what each has to do with "temptations" or "the West." I am sure that I am missing a great deal here; Mishra's writing is highly regarded and taken seriously enough that he is the focus of some bitter disputes. For a reader with no or little background, however, it is hard to see what is special or interesting about Mishra's ideas. Though I read a great deal of history, and am conversant on several broad topics in Asia's political history, I cannot help but think that had this book's marketing been more accurate, I would not have picked it up. Having picked it up and read it in its entirety, I am incredibly frustrated by Mishra's lack of an orienting frame. By all means, read this if it looks interesting to you, but read 20 pages before you buy it to be sure it's what you think it is.

Other reviewers have justly criticized the book's title and subtitle. Giving Mishra the benefit of the doubt, it is possible that the title was conjured up by the publisher, and, more likely, by someone who had not read the book. Reading it, I suspected that the publisher failed due diligence, as it apparently did not even assign an "editor" who was competent at the sentence level.

Such objections aside, the book provides a provocative insight into the complexities of the Indian subcontinent, with some helpful historical background and some fascinating first-person encounters with people involved in the events of the period during which the author did the journalistic investigation that was built into it.

As the events of the area are even today matters that should concern U.S. citizens, Mishra's book, for all its faults, is useful background reading, since much of what he describes is STILL being played out, disastrously for all concerned.

The author, an upper caste Indian, spends the book traveling throughout South-Asia from India to Pakistan to Nepal and Tibet. While he travels to some of the world's most exotic places, the book lacks a central point, beyond the fact that these countries are changing as a result of increased contact with the West, which is hardly a new concept. The author's stories of growing up and attending university in post-colonial India were the best part of book, since the author had a unique story to tell. His travels into the Kashmir are also worthy of merit for their detail.

Many of the early chapters go deep into sub-details of Indian politics and were a bit hard to follow for those without extensive background on the subject.

The rest of the book he travels around searching for a story but he never really finds one. While nothing he wrote was wrong, it was not very original either. I had the feeling he was trying to be an Indian Robert Kaplan, who articulates commentary on politics and culture through detailed first hand experience, but the book really never measures up. The title is also misleading.