Once I was passing by a village in Mauritius, and I saw something pretty odd. It was a ceremony to say farewell to an elderly British couple, who were involved in the co-operative movement, and had come to visit a local association. The man presiding the ceremony was well known as vociferous, aggressive leader of some Mauritian Hindu organisation. He heaped praise upon praise on the old couple, and put a garland of flowers around their neck. Then someone else put a garland around their neck. Then someone else, and yet another person. It went on for about ten minutes. They were garlanded about 30 times. Then the praise continued, effusive, lyrical. Then the tearful farewell.

Sometimes, I catch snatches of Bollywood songs playing on television screens, in bars or at people’s homes. The fashion these days, it seems, is to have white people participating in them. Blonde girls, preferably. It also looks like there is a great deal of emphasis on European settings – London, Paris, glamorous towns of the West. When I see this, I think back of that scene in the village.

I’m not sure about it, but I have the impression there is something a bit twisted in our Indian view of the West. Of course, you can’t realistically expect any culture to have an objective view of other cultures. It would be pretty boring if they did. Some people don’t like the idea of orientalism. But where is the fun, if one doesn’t have some stereotypes, within certain limits , about the Other ? Seduction is a drama, a role playing game.

But even if we make allowance for that, still, I do find , sometimes, something odd in the way Indians behave with Westerners. Abject servility sometimes, a strange moral contempt ( “their women are all sluts”) at other times.

Part of it, I guess, comes from the fact that most Westerners happen to be white. There was a big fat chunk of racism in Indian culture long before Vasco Da Gama set foot there. We may thank our Aryan ancestors for that. I guess it also explains the way some Indians talk about “the chinks” – there is some kind of impatience, or disdain, when they talk of the Chinese, rooted in a disbelief that yellow people can do anything good, and made worse by the fact that the whites are giving them so much attention.

I keep thinking of that article by Pankaj Mishra in the New York Times on Kiran Desai’s “The Inheritance of Loss” ( see my May post about it). What fit of fever made him write that monument of hypocrisy ? His article on R.K. Narayan (“The Great Narayan”) was wonderfully nuanced, and showed such a deep understanding of the social mentality which prevailed at the time when Narayan started writing. All that bla – bla about being “wounded by the West” was so childish, as if the (impressively talented) Mr Mishra had been refused some bauble, and had gone to sulk in the gloomy forest of Post Colonialism ( Ah , the dark valleys of Gender and Identity studies, in which roam so many of the frustrated spirits of our times).

These flashes of Indian anger at the West… in “A Sahib remembers”, P.J.O. Taylor describes how he once came upon an old manor deep in the English countryside, which turned out to be the castle of Maharaj Duleep Singh, the last king of the Sikhs. After being defeated in the Anglo-Sikh wars of 1848 ( I’m sorry if there are some slight mistakes here, as I can’t find back the book, but I think I’ve got the main facts right) , this king was sent to exile in England, where he bought the manor and married a German woman with whom he had many children. According to Taylor, Marahajah Duleep Singh was a good friend of Queen Victoria and accompanied the Prince of Wales in the latter’s infamous escapades to Paris. Yet, in his later years, it seems that the Maharajah fell out with the British royal family, on the delicate matter of his pension, and again proclaimed himself King of the Sikhs. He sent a letter to Queen Victoria, declaring himself her implacable foe ( “The poor fellow’s gone completely mad !” was the Queen’s reaction) and died somewhere on the Continent.

So childish… Indians can behave strangely, in the West ( of course, so do many Westerners in India). Once I saw an interview of Zakir Husain, the tabla player. It was made by an Indian channel, and there was a long interview of him in Hindi. I understand very little Hindi, but I could sense that his Hindi was very slangey, a fast-talking , urban style, with rapid-fire jokes and asides ( the interview was sliced by shots of Zakir in his Bombay environment). Then suddenly the scene changed to somewhere in the US. Zakir was giving a course in some American university, and he was sitting cross-legged near a fountain in a sort of Zen- Disneyland setting, surrounded by a group of wide-eyed Americans, long haired, with cloth handbags, and sandals, the Ashram types. Zakir was mouthing horrendous platitudes about Eastern mysticism, acting out the role of the guru for that awful crowd. He looked pretty scared of being found out and was looking around nervously at the students. Then, thankfully, the programme moved back to Zakir in Bombay, more relaxed, still fast-talking. The Muslim guy who gets paid to act as the Oriental sadhu for a crowd of wealthy hippies… it reminds me of a friend of a friend of mine, a young Frenchman of Algerian descent who fled the racism of French society and went to Australia. Once there, he found himself playing the role of that bizzare creature of the Anglo-Saxon imagination, the French lover, with a beret, a baguette and a Gauloise in the mouth, to a crowd of adoring Australian girls.

There is something murky in the way some , or many ( I don’t know) Indians view the West. Some racial fantasies , an obsession with Hitler, especially, because of the Aryan-and-Swastika thing. I even knew an Indo-Mauritian man who took himself for a German. Naipaul, cruel Naipaul dived his hands deep in that muck with his character Ralph Singh in the "Mimic Men", and the latter's fantasies of snow and white nomadic ancestors. (1) There is also an obsession with the sexual mores of Westerners. The West is seen as one vast permanent orgy.

It’s really sad, because you would have thought that an ancient civilisation like India would have taken a subtle look at the West (2). The way the Chinese look at the West seems to me pretty more dignified, if slightly boring. It’s a layman’s opinion, but when I was in China, the representations I saw of Western people in Chinese films and television series seemed to me rather more acceptable, if a bit stiff. The usual Western characters would be the well-meaning adventurer in the 1920’s Shanghai story, or the businessman in modern China. For example, there was a television series about a group of French experts working with the Chinese on the construction site of a nuclear plant. The French were shown as rather cold and severe, but then the Chinese side was sometimes unprofessional and prone to do things the easy way. The main idea was that problems are due to different cultural attitudes, and can therefore be solved by mutual comprehension and adjustment.

I have the impression that the Chinese view of the West has a more emotionally stable basis. It is true that there can be serious bouts of xenophobia in China, but these would be linked to specific events. For example, a few years ago, the clash between an American spy plane and a Chinese jet led to fierce anti American feeling for some time. But this died out after a few months. Maybe I am wrong, but I haven’t really felt the Chinese to be racially insecure towards white people. During the last Olympics, I heard some Chinese say that yellow people were not as big and strong as blacks or whites and could not beat them in contact sports. On the other hand, they said, yellow people were quicker and nimbler, which made them good at gymnastics and other sports requiring skill, such as archery. But it didn’t seem to be something over which they spent sleepless nights. In the streets of Beijing, there was none of that ogling at white women which is so shamefully common in India ( when it’s not worse). Among mixed couples, there were far more white man- Chinese woman couples than the opposite. But then I had the impression the Chinese men were not terribly interested in Western women. According to an article which appeared in a local English-paper magazine during that period, the perception ( not backed by any official study, as far as I remember, but more based on “conventional wisdom”) among Chinese men was that white women were rich ( at that time, foreigners in Beijing were generally wealthy expatriates, I think it’s changing now) and would not be interested in a relationship with a Chinese man, whose salary would be comparatively modest. Also, there was the perception that Western women were pretty independent and would not fit in the Asian family mold. (Interestingly, as an aside, my neighbour at one point in Beijing, was a Frenchwoman married to a wealthy Chinese businessman. I must also say that Beijing girls seemed , to me, rather independent in their lifestyle).

Among Western women, the general perception was that Chinese men were a bit tied-up and conservative.
“They look better with long hair” was the usual statement made about them ( the typical Chinese boyfriend for a Western woman in China was the artistic type). Yes, there was also the stereotype of the nerdy Chinese man which worked against them. The latter cliché is interesting because it is one field where the traditionally even-tempered Chinese man could get seriously upset, if word about it spreads in China (any man, anywhere, would get cross at that kind of insult). Like many other stupid clichés, it comes from the US , that country that can never get it right when it comes to judging foreign people. They give arms and training to Muslim extremists to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan , and then find it strange that they should turn against America ( What did you expect Muslim extremists to do against Israel’s main ally?) They have this idiotic belief that the French, the most militaristic, bellicose people in European history, are effeminate and bad at warfare (3) . In the past 60 years, they’ve fought three wars against yellow people. They won the first one, against Japan, but it was pretty tough fighting. The second one , against the North Koreans and the Chinese, was a draw. Everyone knows what happened in the one against North Vietnam. On top of it, they watch Bruce Lee movies, and a lot of them do Karate and Kung Fu. So, you would guess they know where these martial arts come from. Well, well, after all that, what do they come up with ? The stereotype of the nerdy yellow male.But that stereotype is so stupid that it won’t last for long.

On the whole, I think that the way the Chinese look at the West is healthier than the Indian view (4). I’m afraid we’re in for a few more years of blondes jumping around in Bollywood songs. Before the inevitable backlash sets in. Mother India giving us yet another lecture about her ancient civilisation , transcendental spirituality and impeccable moral standards (5).

(1) I guess some readers could object that Indo-Mauritians and Indo-Trinidadians are probably a bit more racist than mainland Indians, having lived in smaller, more densely colonial societies than in India, where Englishmen were thin on the ground ( 20 000, at the peak of their power). It is an interesting point. In his partly autobiographical novel "L'Etoile et la Clé", Mauritian writer Loys Masson creates the character of Ramdour, an Indo-Mauritian politician , probably based on some real person (s). Ramdour “hates everything which is thick-lipped” and openly desires a racial alliance between Whites and Indians. But then “L’Etoile et la Clé” was written in 1945. Also, a large part of the population of both islands is part-African, part-Indian, in spite of everything. Actually most Indians, anywhere, are racially mixed, that is true. I would say that the racial fantasies in both the mainland community and the diaspora tend to be the same: no thick lips, please. Fair and lovely, fair and lovely.

(2) For example, our parched lips ask for more of that wonderful chapter in Mr Anantanarayan’s novel “The Silver Pilgrimage” in which an ancient Indian trader tells of how he landed in a foggy island ( which, the reader quickly understands, is Elizabethan England) and gives us his impressions of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Hamlet. Why can’t more Indians see the West the way Mr Anantanarayan sees it, as a civilisation, with its good and bad sides, instead of panting at it in a half-craving, half-disgusted manner.

(3) During the founding years of the European Community, a French minister somberly remarked that " in the course of the past centuries, France has been at war with every nation in Europe, except Danemark. The latter omission is probably due to negligence, rather than peaceful intention. It is time for peace in Europe"

(4) That doesn’t mean the Chinese mind is exempt of racism, far from it. There is occasional contempt in North China towards their darker skinned Southern compatriots. But the traditional insult made by Northerners against the Southerners ( normally when the latter are well out of earshot): “Nan man ren” ( Southern barbarians) is interesting: it seems that the Chinese tend to evaluate people on what they judge to be civilised behaviour, rather than the colour of the skin. They have a profound abhorrence, for example, about eating with one’s fingers, which they feel to be a revolting , primitive practice. I would say that it helps the Westerners, in the eyes of the Chinese, that they are fair-skinned. But that is only a bonus point and not the main criterion. Strangely enough, Hong Kong, which is ahead of mainland China in so many respects, seems to be beset by the problem of racism. Indians and Africans there complain of virulent racist behaviour against them. I wonder why that is the case- Hong Kong was a British colony, but it was not a slave society. It was a trading outpost and its Indian community is full of prosperous businessmen. Also, Hong Kong is one of the true economic and cultural hubs of the world. It is hard to understand – maybe, Hong Kong being a high-pressure, economically unequal society, with great difficulties for the common man to find decent, affordable lodging, and to make both ends meet, the average Chinese lets some steam off by picking on dark-skinned people.

(5) The reader will maybe have noticed that in the course of this, obviously amateurish, reflection on India's view of the West, I have not mentioned Nirad Chauduri's book "The Continent of Circe". I have not done so because I feel that there is a nuance between what I am proposing and what Mr Chaudhuri is saying. I am saying that many Indians seem to look at the West through the lens of some unfortunate racial and sexual fantasies. Mr Chaudhuri on the other hand, says that the whole of Indian civilisation is built on the wrong foundations, a thesis he defends with formidable learning and immense anger.