Footloose in Budapest

The iconic river Danube is central to Budapest’s identity and it runs right through the centre of the city dividing it into two parts, Buda and Pest, which were actually two cities united to create Budapest in the 1873. The most imposing structure by the river is the Buda castle which dominates the river front, especially if you are on the Pest side. The river is full of life, especially tour boats going up and down the river with tourists enjoying the view of the magnificent buildings on the riverside. It was summer and the peak tourist season, and there were the larger cruise boats with cabins and decks which took tourists on a longer tour on the river. The most imposing building on the Pest side of the river is undoubtedly the Parliament building. It is best viewed from the other side, because walking below it and taking the grand sweep gives you a crick in the neck. On the river bank, close to the Parliament building is an iconic installation of Shoes on the Danube. This installation of 60 pairs of metal shoes of different sizes put up in 2005 is a memorial to the victims who were shot into the Danube by the Nazis in 1944 -45. It’s a reminder of the excesses that we humans are capable of, and a lesson that we still haven’t learnt.  

On either side of the Danube is the heart of the tourist district, lined with statues, walkways and cafes. The Pest side is of course is more lively as it is flat, has more shops and markets, while the other side has the Buda palace perched upon a hill. The hillside is now an open park and a climb up to the palace is gentle though there is a funicular railway for those who are so inclined. The palace has extensive gardens and walkways littered with statues and other objects d’arts. The view of Pest from the gardens is spectacular with the St Isteban Basilica and the Parliament buildings being the most noteworthy.

Europe is currently in the grips of a refugee crisis and Hungary is right in the middle of it as a stream of refugees from Syria and other places are travelling through the country to reach Germany. When I was Budapest the flood of refugees hadn’t started, but there were many signs of a troubled past – not so long ago. Last year the Government had built a monument to mark the occupation of Hungary by Nazi Germany. Unfortunately this didn’t go down to well by the citizens, who saw it as an effort to rewrite history. Hungary was a collaborator, and not a victim of the Nazi’s and thousands of Jews had been sent off to the concentration camps. This was a history the people didn’t want the Government to forget, and so they had started their own installation of every day bric a brac and mementos of those times around the Government monument and had stopped it from being officially inaugurated.

This was my second visit Budapest, and unlike the last I had a little more time to explore the city. I visited the Jewish quarters, home today to one of the largest synagogues in Europe. The Nazis had walled in the entire area, and over 70,000 people lived in the Budapest ghetto. Some of the building still bore the bullet marks of the firing so many years ago. I felt a distinct chill as I walked down those streets. Behind the Synagogue was a modern monument – the Garden of Justice with the sculpture of a large tree with small silver leaves. Each leaf bore the name of one victim of the Holocaust and the trunk bore the names of others who supported them. Clearly Budapest was a city which was still coming to terms with its past.

Another place I had to go this time was the Varosliget or the City Park where I was told were a number of historical monuments and palaces. My hotel was next to the St Isteban Cathedral and right behind it started the grand Andrassy Ut (or Avenue), which went straight up to Varosliget. Andrassy Ut was a broad avenue with a grand history, and stately buildings on both sides. Seeing a Metro station at the corner I went down. The Budapest metro was quite unlike anything I had seen before. Everything was on a smaller and a more intimate scale. The wood panelled stations, the yellow toy-trains, with compartments of 16 seats looked quaint. I later learnt that it was the oldest underground railway of continental Europe and had been built specifically to take people to the Varosliget without disturbing the stately Andrassy Ut.  Four stations later I got off at Hosok Tere ( Heroes Square) and walked the short distance to the Millennium Emlekmu (Monument). The City Park, the Andrassy Ut and the underground railway were all part of the Millennium celebrations in 1896.

While the Millennium Monument in the Hosok Tere was the grand centre-piece, scattered all around were a number of museums, a castles, the zoo and the Szechenyi Medicinal Baths. All these monuments were built around the celebration of the Millennium Exhibition celebrating a thousand years of   Magyar conquest of the Carpathian basin leading to the establishing of a Hungarian nation. The monument consists of a central cenotaph with two arrays of statues on either side depicting Magyar chiefs on the one side and Saints who are revered in Hungary on the other. From what I could make out that the Millennium celebration was a grand affair within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it seems that the countries and cities of Europe and USA of those times were trying to outdo each other in grand celebrations. Paris had its own Exposition in 1889, celebrating a hundred years of the Fall of Bastille, with the construction of the Eiffel Tower. Like the Eiffel Tower the Heroes Square continues to be mega a tourist attraction, though Europe of today is probably much chastened after its colonial excesses and brutal World Wars.       

I didn’t have much time as I was leaving in the afternoon, so I rushed to the Vajdahunyad castle which was right behind. It is a copy of different historical styles including a Transylvanian castle. It was originally made of cardboard and wood it is reconstructed with brick, and today houses the Museum of Agriculture. I was keen on visiting this castle because I had read an announcement that there would be free folk music concert here at 10.30. When I walked into the castle I was disappointed because there seemed to be no arrangements for a concert, and no keen audience either. I was studying the carving on the door of a Chapel when I suddenly heard the sound of bagpipe. Turning around I saw a long haired man walking in the compound playing his bagpipe which seemed to be made from the leather of one whole sheep or similar sized animal. The interest of the visitors was piqued and as he walked into the museum building a folk band started playing from one of the castle galleries. We stood around below the gallery enjoying the music, but I didn’t have much time on hand I left after a while.

I was not prepared for what I saw next. Right outside the castle, on the lawns of the City Park, an open air exhibition and stage was a Hare Krishna event. On the stage a woman was dancing to the rhythm of a mridangam, and ranged around were stalls selling books, music and clothes. All the devotees were Caucasian. I had seen the Hare Krishna devotees in many places in the US and the UK but I hadn’t thought that the movement started by a Bengali from Kolkata Abhay Charan De (subsequently Swami Prabhupada) had spread so far and wide. While our current ruling party is worrying about battling cultural invasion from the west, I wonder what they feel proud of this Indian religious movement that seems to have a visible global following. Something tells me that it may not be the case because the Hare Krishna devotees seem very passive and gentle when compared to the Bajarangi bhais.

My next destination was the Szechenyi Medicinal Baths, famed to be the largest public medicinal bath in the world. The building housing the bath was so grand (like most Budapest buildings) that for a minute I couldn’t believe that these were indeed public facilities. Unlike the image of public swimming pools that I have in my mind- the building was more like a palace or a concert hall – very ornate and completely covered. I walked in with trepidation – the foyer was truly like that of a palace, with elaborate statues and carving. But there were two ticket windows discreetly placed on either side of the semi circular space. People had come with their small backpacks and were buying tickets the very reasonably priced tickets. I looked at my watch – I simply didn’t have the time to take dip. Resolving that I must come back again I rushed out and went down to the Metro station right outside, a little anxious that I would make the taxi which was to take me to the airport wait.

Here is a short film of this trip     

Diasporic Connect

Our Prime Minister has just returned from another international tour – this time around the islands in the Indian Ocean – including Mauritius and Madagascar that have a strong diasporic presence. In fact the diaspora has been a matter of great concern for our PM. His visit to the US included a film star like appearance at the Madison Square Gardens in New York City. Following this he soon changed the rules for the PIO programme making it initially a life time validity programme, and then merging it with the OCI programme, granting all PIO automatic quasi-citizenship status. Clearly the diasporic Indian is very important in the scheme of things especially at this point in time. According to recent estimates over 2 million people of Indian origin live in the US and about 1.4 million in the UK. Even though the numbers are high they are miniscule. However their friendships and opinion counts high, at least for the Indian Government.

I have recently made two visits to the UK and the US and during this period met with some of the diaspora. Indeed I know many. Many among my friends and family opted to go and live outside India, an option thousands of Indians seek even today. For the first time in years I took time out to meet old friends. I was very warmly welcomed and felt very comfortable. With some friends one could carry on the conversation as if you were meeting them only after a few days and not a few decades. Old memories became vivid through their retelling after many years. The food too was familiar just like the conversation. Just the vistas were different. It was no longer College Street or Esplanade in Kolkata. And I think I will continue to seek and meet old friends as my work takes me around the world.

However I doubt that the reasons I felt nice and warm with old friends and family are the same reasons for which the Indian government seeks their friendship. These are the same people who left India for better employment opportunities in mills and factories as the industrialisation rebooted in UK after the Second World War. They also include the crème de la crème who left as part of the brain-drain, after receiving subsidised education in the IITs or Medical Colleges. A recent newspaper report said that the majority of H1B visas would benefit India and the 60,000 or more places would be filled within a few days. Clearly the thirst to go to the US is still far from over. In the US I was told that the waiting time for getting a green card was about 8 years for an Indian. Regretfully I was told, the quotas are the same for all countries, and more Indians seemed to be applying than anyone else. Migration to the UK saw its heydays in the 1950’s and 60’s when due to labour shortages England actively encouraged migration from its colonies as a result of which there are more sub-Continental foodstuff available under one supermarket rood in Manchester or Birmingham than anywhere in the sub-Continent.  

While the living conditions, including the food available at the local supermarket, are better in the UK and the USA, I wonder whether it was that alone that drew the millions who left India under different conditions at different points in time. They must have seen problems in their past lives in India, and probably the Government would like to consider their opinion and support to correct those specific issues. Consider for example the doctor of Indian origin in the UK. Such a doctor practices rational medicine, doesn’t know what cut practice is, attends regular and ongoing training even when she or he is a consultant and gets their practice audited and doesn’t drink and drive. These doctors would serve as excellent role models for Indian doctors who have been known to call for revision of the still to be implemented Clinical Establishment Act calling it too restrictive. However even though I am familiar with health policy makers, I don’t know of any such plan to engage the diasporic doctor, and we seem to be taking our healthcare related advice from other sources.

One area where the NRI appears to be contributing economically is in inward remittances. According to estimates India is the world’s largest receiver of inward remittances and is upward of 70 billion US dollars and exceeded the total FDI in 2012-13 by a large margin. However the remittances are highest from West Asia and probably from the skilled and unskilled migrant worker rather than from the settled white collar person of Indian origin. I am not sure our PM has too much of an interest in the interest and opinion of such a person about India.

One thing that has always struck me is the Indian-ness of the Indian diaspora. Most if not all their friends are Indians, they celebrate Indian festivals with great gusto, they are also familiar with the Bollywood gossip.  They care deeply about India and being Indian, and above all they have strong opinions about what is wrong with India. I don’t grudge them their opinion, after all it was strong enough for them to leave. Many of these people however now think our PM will be deliver the goods, make India into a better place. I have however not been able to clearly understand what this actually means. India has corruption, but the current government is not the one which has sung any different tune on this issue. India is crowded and dirty, correction, Indian cities are crowded. I know villages in UP which are getting emptied as people move out in search of livelihoods.

The Indian education system sucks. Yes the public educational system is getting progressively eroded due to lack of investment, the best minds are out of the country and because people in positions of power never send their children to these institutions. But even then a few excellent schools, colleges and universities exist, those from which many of the diaspora graduated. The same works for the public health system which has contributed a large number of doctors to the NHS in England and to the health system in the US. Today it is increasingly becoming a second class health system, and an option only for the poor, as the corporate hospitals are luring patients and profit through practices which in any other profession would be called racketeering.

My cousin who has left India over 30 years ago said to me recently that we Indians in the US are stuck in the same day we arrived. She was very wise. The diasporic Indian’s imagination of India remains frozen in time while India itself moves on. Many things that were out of kilter 15, 20 or 25 years ago remain out of kilter today, but many things have changed as well. For one the very idea of ‘imported’ has disappeared with all things foreign jostling on the shelves alongside their desi counterpart, both having been probably manufactured in China.

Historically migration has been one of the strongest economic and cultural influences anywhere. What the Indian government may not fully appreciate is that the influence is stronger in the country of immigration, thus intrinsically India does not stand to benefit much from this community. India itself is a result of human movements over the millennia. It may sound bizarre now but the north west frontiers of  Ashoka’s Buddhist kingdom which less than a hundred years earlier was the site of the showdown with Alexander the Great, is today in Afghanistan. No wonder the Taliban did not appreciate the Bamian Buddhas, and the Gandhara school Buddha figurines do not probably represent a person from the Terai region of UP. Similarly the historical Taxila University ruins lie close to Peshawar. However to disabuse any friend who would use such evidence to build a larger pan ‘Hindu’ legacy of Akhand Bharat I would like to point out that these are Buddhist examples. Moving a few centuries we find that the delectable Biriyani may have travelled from Persia to Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad and Kolkata or that it came from the steppes of today’s Kazakistan. India, many say is the result of successive waves of in-migration both across the Himalayas as well as from the sea. And then there are the many indigenous people who often get missed when we count Indians.

People from India too have moved out over the ages. Examples from South East Asia abound with Hinduism and Buddhism being strong influences across the region. European Roma people are also said to have moved out of India about a thousand years ago. And then there were British indentured labour ( girmitiya) distribution which took place between 1830’s and 1920’s and transported 3.5 million Indians across the world from Mauritius to the West Indies. Clearly movement of people both into and out of India is part of our history and heritage. But that historical India is no more, and the contemporary geo-political India was born on August 15, 1947. It was not, at least in my mind, the most auspicious birth.        

Clearly our PM has a vision for the Indian diaspora, and having seen him have one I too have the glimmer of one such image shaping up in my mind. While a person of Indian origin rooting for an imagined India in the global North, does boost the global image of India, I think the diasporic Indian can do much more.

My first call to the diasporic India is to re-imagine India. India is much more beyond the political boundaries that were defined in 1947. I find it difficult to reconcile with a situation where the Bengali speaker of Indian calls the Bengali speaker of Bangladeshi origin Bangladeshi and not Bengali when both hold a US or British passport. I think it is a tragedy that we hold our linguistic identities high in India, and our nationalist identities high when outside. A large problem in India and this holds true for most of the other South Asian nations as well, is that we tend to define ourselves by excluding part of our own past. Thus as an Indian of Bengali speaking origin, I am alienated from Chittagong district in what is now Bangladesh where my grandfather grew up. It is only as an adult that I learnt that the many familiar place names I grew up hearing of, were actually not in West Bengal but in a foreign land. Worse still is the religious identity, which has now become a ‘normative’ Hindu for the Indian passport holder. As a Bengali speaker I find it hard explain to other Indian Bengali speakers that there are many more Muslim Bengali speakers in the world. First I call on the diasporic Indian to imagine the diversity of India rather than the nationality of India.

I agree with most diasporic Indians that much is not right in what we could call the re-imagined India. I also believe that that disengagement of the ‘capable class’ with the local political processes has much to do with the current situation. Today the diasporic Indian is expected to have no interest in the political processes, since they are not an immediate stakeholder. Also their own response when they were direct stakeholders, was not one of engagement but withdrawal. So I would request them to stay disengaged with the direct politics. However they should engage with the social and economic processes of their re-imagined India. In most cases the diasporic Indian has benefitted from the atmosphere of opportunity provided in the new country. While they may have suffered from some xenophobia, they must also realise that their own efforts and opportunities available outweighed the constraints. I ask the diasporic Indian to introspect both on their efforts and opportunities which helped them survive if not flourish in a new land. Armed with this insight of a new value system, I call the diasporic Indian to support the creation of such opportunities for the not so privileged back at home. It would a reversal of the brain drain, when we have our diasporic cousins supporting us for developing innovative solutions for deeply entrenched and hierarchical systems which constrain the growth and opportunities for the underprivileged including women, here in India. I know of people who have done it, but not enough.

The home country person always looks in awe at the migrant. They have new stories, new encounters in a new land. The migrant on the other hand while appearing suave and ‘on top of it’ is often struggling to balance their own identity with the culture shock of coming to a new world. Increasingly Bollywood films are gathering more and more money in their foreign territories as the diasporic Indian uses it to affirm their own identity. I ask the diasporic Indian to not use Indian film or television shows as form of second hand cultural affirmation and seek their own experience of diversity in their realities. I don’t mean that they should disavow Indian art and culture, but it should be a part of a multicultural experience that their current lives are. I call such diasporic Indians to come and share with us their stories of integration and diversity. As a country and as a people we need to know that the world outside is beautifully multi coloured and multi-cultural and not get drawn by monolithic imaginations of stunted and short-sighted leaders.