One Man's India

THE HEART OF INDIA (332 pp.)--Alexander Campbell--Knopf ($5).

What is India? By the judgment of the Indians themselves--from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru down to an unemployed factory manager in Gwalior--it is an empty tomb, a looted dustbin, the shadow under the lamp; it is four parts filth and one part hypocrisy, a cow-dung country inhabited by people with a cow-dung mentality. Cries one Indian youth: "There's no depth of superstition to which Indians won't sink. We worship cows and cobras. We have eight million 'holy men,' most of them naked and all of them mad. Everything of any value was taken long ago by the conquerors .. . They took the strength from the soil, the virtue from the women, and the will power from the men. The gold is gone, the jewels gone, nothing is left but hones and a bad smell.'

Leeches & Tigers. This despairing India is not the only one seen by Author Alexander Campbell, a 45-year-old Scot who did an 18-month correspondent's hitch in India and Pakistan for TIME (and now covers Japan). But it dominates a highly personalized book that makes bitterly clear how far Indian intentions outrun Indian performance, how even the monuments and pastimes of the imperial past are decayed in the ineffectual present. The Taj Mahal is here, naturally by moonlight--but so are the leechlike guides, making the night hideous as they clamorously offer to show visitors around for 10 rupees--or to go quietly away for 5. There is a tiger hunt, but also its backstage management: the twelve-year-old boys, armed with clay hand grenades loaded with gunpowder, whose job it is to flush the frightened cats from their grass-filled ravine. Vividly, Author Campbell makes the reader experience the suffocating, insect-filled heat of India, the pervasiveness of religion and sex--often in combination--the desperation of the poor and the rapacity of the rich.

Forbidden Temples. In this sort of land all but a handful of the most fervent idealists turn cynical, and only Communists consistently rejoice. Sett Rao. a hardworking, intelligent government official, who once dreamed that independent India would be "a decent country where decent people can live in decency and some dignity," now says: "I shrug; I laugh; I work. What else is there to do?'' Campbell traveled with Vasagam. another government agent, who was trying to implement the Gandhian ideal of equality for the untouchables. In a typical village he saw the higher castes stand sullenly by as Vasagam led untouchables into temples and restaurants. The next day he also saw that all utensils touched by the untouchables were cast away and broken, all places they had entered were scrubbed with milk and purified. Campbell agrees with Vasagam's sighing comment: "We Indians are a remarkable people."

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