Mr Tully: Lucid & doubtful

Increasingly it seems to me that book reviews in newspapers are an impertinence forced upon readers by publishers looking for free publicity and editors with an eye on god knows what. After all, there's the author, who has written at least a 100,000 words, if not a great deal more. And there the reviewer is summing it all up in about 800 words. I think a notice is all that should be printed, so that the reader can decide for himself or herself. That way, more books can be covered as well, which ought to please publishers.

This book has reinforced this belief because it really is truly impertinent to attempt a 750-word review of such a lucid exposition of what India is about. Mr Tully is as well-known as any famous Indian who is not a celebrity. He has a long and distinguished record as a fine journalist who served Indians well when they needed such service (e.g. during the three wars with Pakistan and the Emergency). He is fluent in Hindi and Urdu. He has written several books in the last few years. His understanding of India is as good as any Indian's, and as this book clearly shows, perhaps better in some ways (such as where its inclusive spirit is concerned and which the BJP and the RSS regard as its main weakness).

Moreover, this book, written in exactly the same way as he speaks, in a gentle murmur, and a degree of self-deprecation that is not easily encountered these days. Indeed, in that sense it is hardly a book; it is more a long chat on a balcony during the monsoon. It is an experienced man's periodic mixture of melancholy and hope, a firm endorsement of the sensible and, above all, a clear if understated exposition of all the things that foreigners (at least those with a bit of brains) should want to know about India.

There are, of course, many such things. But, says Mark Tully, to start with it would be enough if they understood that India's driving force is the quest for balance in all things big and small. It is, he says, a bit like a tightrope walk. You have to keep on at it because even though you have it, it can be lost in a split second. So you keep on trying because you can't afford to stop trying to balance.

What comes as a surprise is his seeming belief in God, or at least his non-belief in the "there is no God" proposition. The bits on this topic are fascinating for their basic message: don't be too sure of either this or that because both are possible and we just don't know which is true and which is false. Or, as the young say, just chill, man.

One thing is surprising, however. One would have expected Mr Tully to have read the well-known essay by A K Ramnujan about the importance of context in the Indian way, called "Is there an Indian Way of Thinking". Perhaps he has, but although he cites Ramanujan it is not this particular piece of prose. The central message of that essay was that Indians don't think in moral absolutes as Westerners are taught to do and they therefore tend to put the morality of an action in its context, whatever it might be. This relativism was seen by the Victorian missionaries as fecklessness, low cunning, unreliability, shiftiness, etc.

Not for Mr Tully the opposite view stated with great precision by John Le Carre in one of the Smiley books, that the done thing is to accept certainty as the guiding star for moral action. Rather, for him "doubt is a legitimate philosophical posture", something Le Carre debunks. Some of our economists are like Smiley""doubt simply does not enter their minds when they warble the virtues of globalisation. Mr Tully duly expresses his doubts over the certainty that globalisation is a good thing.

The idea that everything is possible""because everything should be viewed in the proper context""perhaps flows from that view. No better example can be found of it than the one cited by Mr Tully himself. When the bomb went off in the Sankat Mochan temple in Varanasi, it was the mahant of the temple who kept the RSS and the BJP at bay; and it was the main maulvi who helped him keep the peace.

Mr Tully admires India's ability to absorb. It is nice to see him as a victim of that ability.

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India's Unending Journey
Finding Balance in a Time of Change
Mark Tully
Rider
Price: Rs 450; Pages: 278