On the political incorrectness of being

For a living I design irrigation systems, survey ditches and drains, study and manipulate rivers, and in general meddle with nature. Naturally (oops, pun), the kind of projects that me and my cohorts take up are located in remote places where nobody lives.

That doesn't mean, though, that nobody lived there. On most jobs of significant size, state and federal laws assert that after our facilities are designed but before any construction begins, we hire a team of archaeologists to go out to the proposed site and dig test-pits to investigate the presence of 'cultural resources'. The term represents evidence of Native American presence in the form of buildings, artifacts, or human remains.

If cultural resources are found, as it happens often, the matter is statutorily presented to designated representatives of the local tribe who decide if the find is important enough. If yes, the options are to change the location of the facility, recover the resource, or 'cap' them (bury them under a layer of fill for the future).

It is not surprising that folks like us who do this kind of work rarely ever use the words 'Indian' or 'native American' to describe any finds, having being programmed by professional practice into using the genteel 'cultural resource'. Me and a couple of my delightfully cynical colleagues often engage in self-depreciating humor about our own misplaced and misdated political correctness. However, nobody dips as low as me - when asked if I am Indian, taking advantage of the wonderful polysemic opportunity I reply with a straight face: "No, I am a cultural resource...".

A story to tell

One of the more memorable books I read in my youth was Quiet flows the Don by Mikhael Sholokov, which traces the life of an ordinary Cossack farmer-soldier through the Russian Revolution. The novel is historically accurate and outstanding in its realistic portrayal of rural life in the Don valley. I seemed to have taken to the bottom-up view of bygone times and cultures, given that many of my all-time favorite novels I read around that time had the similar approach - Trotter-Nama (Allan Sealy - colonial Uttar Pradesh) and The Glass Palace (Amitav Ghosh - Indians in the British army in WWII), to name a couple.

It was years later, however, that I came to realize that the bottom-up view of history in fiction also had a parallel stream in historical academic circles. It happened accidentally when, while browsing the Seva Mandir library in Udaipur, I stumbled upon the complete compilation of essays in the Subaltern Studies series. Completely unaware of the subaltern notion of history at that time, I was stunned and thrilled to read essay after essay of various events from India's colonial history - most of them non-landmarkish events I had never read about in my history textbooks - narrated from a perspective I had never encountered before.

The Subaltern Study Group is a group of South Asian scholars who are uncomfortable with the prevalent narrative of history, which fails to encompass the complexity and plurality that history is made of, and believe in "history from below". Subaltern studies look at history through a study of the subaltern - rather than the elite - that lived and constituted those times. A 'subaltern' is the individual agent of history - the farmer, the clerk, the laborer, the insurgent, the soldier. I have always wondered if there is a term to describe the genre in fiction that does the same - subaltern fiction?

Anyway, the reason all this comes to mind is because the StoryCorps was in my town the past month. StoryCorps is a nonprofit dedicated to documenting the lives and histories of everyday Americans, thus contributing to the overall narrative of history. Their format of operation is simple - they have a mobile van (pictured below on my way to work) which camps out in different cities around the year. Anyone who wants to is welcome to enter the van with a friend/relative and narrate their life-story or some particular aspect of it in an interview format. One copy of a CD is given to the narrator/s, and another copy is sent to the Library of Congress to be archived for future generations.



















The documenting of subaltern history doesn't get any easier than this!

Endnote 1: One other outstanding aspect of Sholokhov's Quiet flows the Don is the portrayal of uncertainty and equivocalness that mark historic processes in real time. For instance, while the Russian Revolution may seem in retrospect to be a clear-cut story of the power struggle and confrontation between the Bolsheviks and the loyalists/White Army, the process was much convoluted for the individuals who made the life-changing choice about which side to back. The protagonist, Gregory Melekhov, and his family frequently swing between being loyalists and Bolsheviks during the course of the war, only to face much misery as a result of each decision. In the end, Gregory's family (or what remains of it) integrates into the Soviet system, while he remains a pariah.

I have often wondered if the same was true for events I am much more familiar with. How did native tradesmen, civil servants, and those with occupations and social connections vested in the British empire in India feel about the independence movement?

Endnote 2: If you have read The Glass Palace, you may find it surprising that I describe it primarily as a documentation of Indians in the British Army rather than the dismantling of the Burmese royalty which occupies a good part of the books. From the subaltern point of view, the story of Arjun, an British-Indian Army officer who deserts the British to fight on the side of the Indian National Army, is a lot more engaging than that of the king of Burma.

On another note, Arjun also illustrates the nebulousness of historic processes nearly as brilliantly as Gregory Melekhov. At one point, Arjun's men (of the INA) capture Kishan Singh, Arjun's beloved ex-batman, who is still loyal to the British. After much mental turmoil, Arjun decides to execute Kishan Singh, and does so himself. The Kishan Singh execution remains the most touching sequence I have read in literature.

Malthus, not Boserup

Avinash makes a quick assessment[link] of who rising food prices will affect the most, and why. Take the time to read it. Original and unprejudiced analyses like these are going to get harder and harder to find as the issue of food becomes politically rabid.

This land is your land

The Sacramento Bee carried an unusual story on its cover page a couple of days ago - it was about the murder of Michael Wentworth, aka Michael Tinius, a free-roaming spirit, aka homeless man. Tinius lived on the American River Parkway, a 23-mile long sliver of protected riparian habitat and recreational corridor that traverses the city of Sacramento. He refused to call himself homeless, calling the Parkway his home.

Tinius is reported to have two passions - his dog 'Boy' and the US Constitution. He carried a weathered copy of the Constitution in his pocket, and often furnished it as an argument against receiving citations for illegal camping.

"I am not illegally camping," he would say. "That is a public place, and I am part of the public, and it is my constitutional right to be there."

The story of Tinius highlights two peculiar phenomenon in American culture. One is that of the frequent occurence of the Constitution in public discourse and in the lives of everyday Americans. It never fails to impress me how often citizens and media evoke the Constitution on a wide range of topics from gun control to Guantanamo to gay rights. Widespread familiarity with the constitution has an extreme political manifestation in the form of constitutional conservatives, represented by institutions like the Madison Forum, who cling to the words of the Constitution as dearly as the evangelical right clings on to the words of the bible. They stand out as the loony streak in the Republican and Libertarian political establishments, and have been much reviled during the presidential campaign of Ron Paul. Some of the criticism is well-deserved, as you will realize when you see this video of a couple of constitutional conservatives accusing their local police of treason for entering their property.

The other cultural strand is that of the hobo, the much-celebrated free-ranging individual, glorified in popular culture through books like Jack Kerouac's Lonesome Traveller and the music of Woody Guthrie. Strictly speaking, the hobo is defined as an individual who hitchhikes on freight trains and travels widely in search of temporary work, but Tinius and his friends on the American River Parkway do share at least some characteristics with hobos (interesting note on the difference between 'hobo' and 'tramp' is here).

My daily commute on the light rail takes me through the Parkway, and many of my fellow travellers are Parkway-dwellers on their way to or from Loaves & Fishes, a food and shelter charity. Apart from some occasional chutiya characters, I find most of these hobos/tramps to be peaceful, friendly, well-informed and well-travelled individuals. I have had many an engaging conversation with them, and possibly shared a ride, if not a seat, with Tinius at some point.

To sign off, here is a video of This Land is Your Land by Woodie Guthrie, one of the finest celebrations of the roaming lifestyle (thanks to Chandra for reintroducing me to Guthrie and America). Lyrics follow (video does not include all stanzas). Note my emphasis on the last stanza. These are the lines I immediately thought of when I read about Tinius' insistence on the legitimacy of his condition. This song is for you, Michael Tinius!


Click here if video doesnt display in Firefox.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

When the sun comes shining then I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The voice was chanting as the fog was lifting
This land was made for you and me

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!