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Eric Eggleston
India
February 2004
There Are Few Road Signs on Footpaths
There are few road signs on footpaths. The feet that traverse them regularly do not need such indicators-we did. We wandered blindly, hoping to stumble upon the Arabian Sea, wash off a coating of sweat and find a place to rest our heads for a few days. As luck would have it, 'the world's strongest man' came by and served as our guide; he walked with bare feet over jagged rocks and while carrying 50 kilograms of fruit upon his head. His paan-stained grin and monstrous burden made our packs seems lighter as we communicated in sentence fragments and laughter. As we wound our way through green hills, dried-up rice paddies and over dilapidated fences to our journey's end, I turned to my companion and said, "Yeah, we're in India."
Most of my time in India is spent far from that secluded beach area in Karnataka; I live in Delhi and have many an adventure in the ordinary workings of this megalopolis. With roughly 15 million people in the metropolitan area, there is no shortage of individuals who would like to treat a stranger to a cup of chai or Kashmiri tea and ask what wanderings brought me to their neighborhood.
However, my journey did not begin there, nor did my efforts at creating mutual understanding that are so integral to the Fulbright program.
"You're going where? To study what?" My Fulbright began in my hometown when I attempted to answer the questions people posed to me about the place that would be my adapted home for nine months. The misperceptions I confronted at home were staggering; people told me that India was full of disease, utter poverty, religious violence and terrorists. They spoke in absolute terms, and were even more perplexed as to why I would go there to study Islam when they knew it as a Hindu or Buddhist nation. I learned before I departed that coming home would involve confronting these exaggerations and misconceptions once I had the experiences to relate directly to their inquires and statements.
In preparing myself to live in India, I came to the conclusion that I had no idea what to expect despite avid preparations and the open frame of mind I developed to ready myself for the realities of living in Delhi. At first, I stumbled at every turn. In the US, things are always "fixed price" and my haggling skills were weak, which resulted in my getting overcharged at every turn. The traffic looked like a rugby scrum and crossing larger streets was a perilous journey. Things that I thought would take twenty minutes took two days, and I often laughed to myself about how I would answer those questions posed before I departed. But as the first few weeks and months passed, I found something odd happening-I realized I was falling in love with India.
Coming to India to study Islam, with its rich traditions of religious plurality and challenges there, from centuries of Muslim rule blossoming under the Great Mughals to the mysticism of great Sufi masters (whose shrines were a short walk from my apartment), has been a joy and challenge. My project focuses on the educational and theological ideas of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), a reformer who believed there was tremendous value in the educational system of the English colonizers, and that the future of the Indian people, especially the Muslim community, depended on modernization of their practices and ideas. The debates I have encountered between Khan, his supporters and his critics are comparable to discussions going on currently, centering on issues such as the relationship between religion and science, human rights, government, modernization, 'Westernization' and women.
In addition to the texts available at Jamia Millia Islamia, where I am affiliated, and the Aligarh Muslim University Islamic Studies Department, both professors and student, have been exceptionally open to my inquires. The major challenge is keeping within the parameters of my project as my time in Delhi is limited; it is the girth rather than scarcity of resources that tests me.
Perhaps the most wonderful part of the Fulbright program, and the one I consider the most important during these challenging times, is the emphasis on "mutual understanding." I thought I knew what these words meant before I left, but truly I only had a rough idea. Thus far, it has meant having tea and engaging in dialogue with people I have come in contact with. It is an eye-opening experience for those on both sides of the table (or curb, as the case may be).
I am often asked about life in the States and offered all sorts of ideas about the culture, economics and politics in America, and I do my best to reciprocate their interest. There is a mixture of awe and reverence for all the US stands for, and intense apprehension about how we use our power in the world. I believe there is a tremendous amount of hope for the mutual understanding advocated by Senator Fulbright; however, person-to-person contacts can have only so great an impact on the perceptions of the US abroad when the cultural aspects of America that receive the most emphasis are pop culture icons and foreign policy decisions. Such are the challenges of this American in India.
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