All American
A weekly conversation on some topics that were on @HT_ED's mind.
What’s the thread that links apples in Himachal Pradesh, Dravidian politics, and the Mahatma’s global image?
The answer may be easier if the same question is broken up into three and asked differently.
Who introduced apples to Himachal/India?
Who made the first film in which the late MG Ramachandran acted?
Who was the journalist whose coverage of the Salt March made Gandhi a global figure?
The answers are Samuel (Satyanand) Stokes, Ellis Dungan, and Webb Miller — all Americans who affected India in fundamental ways (that’s the answer to the original question).
As the US turns 250 (today), it’s probably worth mulling over these little-remembered connections between the two countries. For its hard to imagine Himachal without apples or Dravidian politics without MGR. And it’s equally hard to map the trajectory of the Indian freedom movement in the absence of Miller’s coverage, and the international pressure on Britain that came in its wake.
To close the loop, Gandhi inspired Martin Luther King Jr — the latter penned a heartfelt tribute in Hindustan Times on Gandhi’s 10th death anniversary — and it was MGR’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam that accelerated the privatisation of engineering and medical colleges in Tamil Nadu, a move that provided the manpower for India’s IT boom, which saw (but wasn’t the sole reason for) the exodus of engineers and managers to the US (and eventually gave many US companies, Indian CEOs). Indeed, back in the 1980s, when I was in school in Madras as it was then called, the joke was that every family had to give one of its children to Uncle Sam. That resulted in Madras becoming a “city of parents” as the late RK Narayan once described it. (It’s also, because of a very different reason, why The Namesake truly belongs among the Great American novels).
As an aside, the self-selection inherent in being admitted to an engineering college in India — even a non-IIT — back then, and sheer volumes are probably better explanations of why so many Indian immigrants ended up in the corner rooms of US corporations. I once wrote a column on this for Mint that I can’t seem to find on the website, but its essence was simply that there was a very mundane reason to a phenomenon which people were attributing to exoticism (“Indians can handle chaos and turbulence,” being one; wait, someone said this again recently?)
Did you know that the architect who designed the US embassy in New Delhi, also designed Radio City and MoMA in Manhattan, and Stanford University Medical School, and the Kennedy Center for Arts in Washington DC?
Maybe the US ambassador to India should underwrite a trivia night?
Several of my colleagues, across the newsroom, have been weighing in (and will continue to do so, over the coming week), on the anniversary of American independence.
In Wknd (tomorrow), our columnist Kashyap Kompella writes about the American Dream, and how it endures.
The data team headed by Roshan Kishore started on Friday, a three-part series on the US (it will end on Monday with a break on Sunday). The first part looked at the US’ economic might, how it will be difficult for China to catch up especially in terms of per capita income, but of how growing financial and demographic leverage could be the US’ undoing. The second part (which appears today) looks at growing polarisation in the US. And the third part, which will appear Monday, looks at the India-US relationship. The data I’d really like to see — it would take some doing, though — is on the US’ cultural exports.
And my colleague Dhrubo Jyoti has put together some extracts from HT’s archives of the past 102 years (the paper was founded in September 1924) on the US and India.
Anyway, here’s wishing the US a happy semiquincentennial birthday.
The US’ real uniqueness — and the fact that explains its cultural and technological dominance — is simply that it ranks 9th in the world in terms of per capita income, and third in terms of population. The countries richer than it are also smaller, much smaller in terms of population. The two countries with a higher population rank 70th and 140th in terms of per capita income. The US is also large geographically — it ranks fourth in terms of this.
Will India ever catch up with the US in terms of per capita income? I think the more pertinent question would be when India will have a cohort of around 100 million people whose per capita income (at that point in the future) will be what the US’ is now? I think this could happen in my lifetime — if I get to live as long as I want to.
The US’ success shows why money is important — just as Punjab’s troubles do. As Roshan and his colleague Abhishek Jha wrote this week, “the average Sikh is now poorer than a non-Sikh in Punjab”. This is likely a consequence of unsustainable and unremunerative farming in the state; “80% of those employed in agriculture in Punjab are Sikhs”, write Roshan and Abhishek. All of Punjab’s troubles can be traced back to this.
Per capita income is definitely a sign of development, but so too are walkable pavements. Most Indian cities fare poorly on this front. The Supreme Court may have said walking on clearly identified footpaths is a fundamental right, but this is observed more in the breach. I live in a really good neighbourhood in Delhi, and the pavements are non-existent: they’ve been taken over by ramps, private gardens, street vendors, and parked cars. My colleagues in the Metro team have gone to war on behalf of walkers with a video series on the walkability of various neighbourhoods in the Capital.
But to return to America, I’ve often wondered how a new Rabbit series would deal with the country as it is now. The last Rabbit book by John Updike, set in the 1980s, is Rabbit at Rest, published in 1990. It was preceded by Rabbit is Rich (which dealt with the 1970s), Rabbit Redux (the counterculture movement and Vietnam), and Rabbit, Run (the 1950s). You could say the same of works by Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Roth, Vonegut, and Pynchon, but, especially because of its range, the life of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom captures the evolution of America in a way that few histories can.
Finally, what is the sound of America? I hesitate to say The Grateful Dead, but only because previous editions of this newsletter have devoted a lot of space to them (they deserved it, just as they deserve more!).
In one of those ironies, I believe the sound of America is actually Canadian.
The Band pretty much invented (or reinvented) the Americana genre, and four of its five members were Canadian. I’d recommend Music From the Big Pink for anyone who hasn’t heard them before.
And if you are looking for an individual, I’d pick Neil Young, born Canadian (now has dual citizenship). Start with After the Gold Rush.
Must read gem 💎
Very informative and incisive, sir. Tom Hanks produced docuseries, The American Experiment, is a must see to better understand the trials, tribulations and evolution of American democracy. Offers a compelling look at its resilience.