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Bosnia Israel religion Sri Lanka

Jewish Terrorism, Christian Terrorism, Hindu Terrorism

Jewish Terrorism

It is said by some that the first terrorists in history were a first century Jewish group opposing Roman rule called the Sicarii (“dagger men”), who directed attacks and assassinations of Jews, including priests, who were collaborating with Roman authorities. Some of the most active and notorious terrorist groups in the 20th century were Jewish Zionist groups in now Israel: Irgun and Lehi. Irgun was formed in the 1930s by Zionist Jews who believed that Jews had to be more aggressive in their self-defense in order to support the Jewish Zionist enterprise. In the 1930s, most Irgun actions were retaliatory–conducting “eye for an eye” type campaigns in response to Arab violence against Jews–but by the end of World War II Irgun had begun engaging in actions against the British authorities, who they believed were managing Palestine against Zionist interests, including by limiting Jewish immigration. Irgun attacks included bombings of British government buildings, such as the immigration, tax and police offices, the bombing of the British Embassy in Rome and a car bombing of a British officers’ club. The three most infamous terrorist attacks by Irgun were the 1946 King David Hotel bombing, the 1947 Sergeants affair and the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre. On July 22, 1946, Irgun operatives bombed the King David Hotel, a luxury hotel in Jerusalem used by the British authorities as a headquarters, resulting in 91 deaths. It was one of the deadliest terrorist attacks of the 20th century, allegedly in part because warnings to evacuate the buliding were unheeded. In 1947, in retaliation for recent executions of Irgun operatives by the British administration, Irgun kidnapped and hanged two British sergeants. Their bodies were then booby-trapped with IEDs and hung up in trees, and a third British soldier was injured trying to recover the bodies. The deadliest of the three, however, was the Deir Yassin massacre, an attack against an Arab Palestinian village. The attack was so heinous that prominent Jews in the west (including Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt) wrote a letter to the New York Times condeming Irgun as a “terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization” and described how “terrorist bands attacked [the] peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants – 240 men, women and children – and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem.” Orphans were left at Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City.

The Deir Yassin massacre was conducted by Irgun in coordination with a second Jewish terrorist group called the Lehi. Lehi’s politics were so confused that it actually proposed joining the Nazi cause in World War II in order to weaken British control of Palestine. A Lehi newsletter defended its acts thus:

Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: “Ye shall blot them out to the last man.” But first and foremost, terrorism is for us a part of the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a great part to play: speaking in a clear voice to the whole world, as well as to our wretched brethren outside this land, it proclaims our war against the occupier. We are particularly far from this sort of hesitation in regard to an enemy whose moral perversion is admitted by all.

Just as some Palestinian organizations have taken an ethno-national cause–the cessation of the occupation of Arab Palestine–and turned it into a religious conflict, with violence activated by faith, Lehi justified violence in the nationalist Zionist agenda with a virulent reading of Jewish religious texts. Lehi was also responsible for the assassination of a British minister in Cairo and a UN mediator in Jerusalem.

Leaders of Irgun and Lehi went on to powerful positions in the State of Israel. Menachem Begin, the sixth Prime Minister of Israel, was head of the Irgun from 1943 to 1948. Seventh Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir was among Lehi’s leaders. Although both Irgun and Lehi have been labeled terrorist organizations by the State of Israel, in 2006, Natanyahu and former Irgun members celebrated the King David Hotel bombing’s 60th anniversary, and Lehi members have been honored by the Israeli government as martyrs of the state.

Christian Terrorism

There have been many Christian terrorists of various stripes, but the two groups that come to mind are anti-abortion terrorists in the United States and Serbian troops and their assistors in Bosnia.

Anti-abortion terrorists in the U.S., angry with the constitutionally protected (though circumscribed) right to abortion, have waged a terrorist campaign for decades against abortion clinics and doctors, justified by their own religious beliefs. Since 1977 in the U.S. and Canada, there have been 8 murders, 17 attempted murders and hundreds of death threats, as well as hundreds of bombings, arsons and bomb threats.

The Bosnian War was to a large extent an ethnic war among the different ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia, but it took a decidedly religion-based terrorist slant in the massacres of Muslim Bosnians in Srebrenica, where about 8000 defenseless Bosnians were slaughtered by Serbians and other Christian “volunteers” from countries such as Russia and Greece.

Hindu Terrorism

The most widely publicized terrorist attacks in India have been those in Bombay by Muslim groups, but there has also been substantial violence by Hindus against Muslims, as in the 2002 Gujarat riots, in which almost 800 Muslim Indians (and 200 Hindu Indians) were killed, aided by local Hindu authorities and political leaders. (Hindu-on-Muslim violence was memorialized in the movie Slumdog Millionaire.) Some Muslim-targeted bombs have also been attributed by some to Hindu “Saffron terror.”

Although the Tamil Tigers primarily represented an ethnic struggle rather than a religious one–the Tamils were both ethnically and religiously distinctive from the majority Sinhalese–some of the attacks of the Tamil Tigers against Tamil-speaking Muslims could be said to be religious terrorism perpetrated by the Hindu Tamils. As far as I am aware, however, the attacks were not justified on religious grounds.

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India photo religion

Reuse of Religious Sites III

This is the third in a series of posts on reuse of existing religious sites by new/different religions. Please read my posts of 2008.11.10 and 2009.02.01 for additional background and examples from Europe and the Middle East.

Religious sites tend to be converted according to whoever is in power, of course, and religious sites in the Middle East often went from pagan to Christian to Muslim, while religious sites in Spain went from Christian to Muslim back to Christian. In India, religious sites generally went from Hindu or Jain to Muslim, and in some cases back to Hindu again after independence. The reuse of religious sites is an extremely controversial topic in India, because it touches on Muslim/Hindu rivalries which are fraught with tremendous historical weight.

The single most controversial (in recent years) temple-to-mosque conversion was the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. Built by Mughal Emperor Babur in the 16th century, Hindus claimed that it was built on the site of a Hindu temple commemorating Rama’s birthplace (while Jains claimed that it was built on the site of a Jain temple). (Indeed, the destruction/conversion of “heathen” temples has been a favorite activity of Abrahamic faiths–the zeal with which medieval Christians destroyed and converted pagan temples is well-recorded in literature. Similarly, some of the Muslim conquerors from the west arrived in India and felt compelled to wreak havoc to the native polytheistic faith.) Controversy over the site raged through the British Raj. In 1949, a couple of Hindu idols were furtively erected in the mosque, and in the 1980s the mosque, which was previously under lock and key, was opened to Hindu worshippers. Finally, in 1992, a crowd of Hindu extremists known as the Kar Sevaks gathered outside the Babri Mosque and formed a rampaging crowd that completed destroyed it. A Muslim mob retaliated in 2002 by attacking a group of Kar Sevaks heading back from Ayodhya, killing 58 aboard a train, after which horrific mob violence resulted all over Gujarat State, resulting in over a thousand deaths, largely Muslim. The violence was said to be aided by local Hindu nationalist authorities–post to come.

Especially given the destruction of the Babri Mosque, but even before its destruction, the most famous temple-to-mosque conversion, for tourists, is the Quwwat ul-Islam Mosque next to the Qutb Minar in southern Delhi. The Qutb Minar and Quwwat ul-Islam Mosque were built by India’s first Muslim ruler and the founder of the Delhi Sultanate, Qutb-ud-din Aibak, in the late 12th century. According to an inscription, the mosque was built by parts taken from the destruction of twenty-seven temples, believed to be Jain.

The Qutb Minar, as seen from the columns of the ruined mosque, and a second image of the columns. In the first picture, note that the head of the small figure on the corner has been defaced, a common occurrence given Muslim prohibitions on representations of human forms. The elaborate carvings on the columns are clearly non-Muslim, and are said to be from preceding temples or created by local (non-Muslim) artisans.

Near the lower right corner of this picture, an empty space where there would have been a figure of a Hindu or Jain deity.

One of the most famous objects at the Qutb Complex is the “iron pillar of Delhi,” cast in the 4th century, centuries before the arrival of Aibak. The pillar is celebrated for its astonishing purity of 98% and its resistance to corrosion for all of these centuries.

We were quite struck by the resemblance of some of the ceilings at the Quwwat ul-Islam Mosque to ceilings in the Pamirs and Hunza, as well as Timbuktu.

Ceilings in the Tajikistan Pamirs and Pakistan’s Hunza Valley

Ceiling in Timbuktu. This ceiling was at a market, but I believe references another famous structure in Mali.

Another conversion by Qutb-ud-din Aibak is the Adhai Din ka Jhonpra, or “Two and a Half Day Mosque” of Ajmer, the Muslim city located in otherwise Hindu Rajasthan. The name of the mosque references the supposed (and astonishing) story that it was built in two and a half days–I imagine this can’t be wholly accurate, but certainly time was saved by reusing an existing Jain temple. Again, the columns are a dead giveaway.

I mentioned in my post of 2009.03.13 Deogiri or Daulatabad Fort, a fortress believed to be have been built in the late 12th century that was captured by the Delhi Sultanate about a hundred years later and starting in 1317 briefly was used as its capital by Delhi Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq, who marched all of the citizens of Delhi to the city hundreds of miles away. The principal mosque of Daulatabad was a conversion from a Jain temple, as is visible not only from its columns, but from blocks of non-Muslim carvings nearby. In the twentieth century, locals placed a Hindu idol inside, effectively converting the mosque ruin into an active Bharat Mata (Mother India) temple.

Mosque overview, with detail showing the multi-armed Hindu idol in the place of the former mihrab

Blocks of stone found at the site, showing Jain and tantric carvings

The 15th century Adina, or Friday, Mosque of Pandua, located some 250 miles north of Calcutta, incorporates parts of a Hindu temple. (See post of 2009.03.13 on Pandua.)

The bases of the columns are lotus-shaped, while the mihrab uses the swastika, both motifs associated with native Indian religions. Note that the pattern near the top of the mihrab is broken, suggesting that the stones were not originally cut for their current placement/arrangement.

Outside, more obvious clues. The entrance contains carvings with clear (but now empty) niches for Hindu deities while the outside wall incorporates decorated blocks from an older structure.

Malik Mughith’s Mosque at the ruins of Mandu in Madhya Pradesh also reveals reuse, in the empty niches of the column bases.

I do not want to defend the Muslim conquerors/rulers of India, who in any event were alive hundreds of years before ideas of historic preservation or cultural sensitivity had fully developed, but I do want to note that, to a medieval monotheistic outsider, especially one from such an austere tradition as Islam, certain Hindu
shrines must surely have seemed particularly evil and befitting destruction. Not only were the Muslims establishing their authority, but in an age before pluralism, they thought that they were doing everyone a favor by ridding the world of pagan shrines.

Shrine to Hindu Deity Chinnamasta in Gour, West Bengal, near the ruins of Pandua

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India photo

Indian Matrimonial Ads

A female friend of mine in her mid-thirties once told me that she felt that the Western scheme for finding mates had failed her; she thought that she would have much preferred that her parents had arranged a partner for her instead. And, I believe, some statistics have shown that arranged marriages are just as likely to last as “love marriages.” In India, of course, arranged marriages are still extremely common, but, India being a modern country at least in some respects, arranged marriages are not so much about matching up infants among family friends, but about using modern tools, including mass media, to find an ideal spouse.

The Times of India, India’s premier English language daily, regularly runs matrimonial ads. How are they different from, say, personals ads in the United States? First, they are placed from the perspective of the parents rather than the individual, since it is the parents who have the ultimate responsibility for arranging a young person’s marriage. Second, and more importantly, since the ads are focused on finding the right marriage partner, rather than a romantic date, they dwell more on material compatibility than points of physical or emotional love. In fact, one might even say that they are horribly shallow and materialistic–but perhaps those are the kinds of factors that make marriages work (in India and elsewhere).

In this post, some typical and slightly funny (more so to the non-Indian?) matrimonial ads from one edition of the Sunday Times of India.

GIRL v.b’ful smart 28/5’2″ conv MBA CFA wkg MNC Bombay 13 Lack Anum Parents Doctor reputed f’mly. Cont: 09935134932 mailgarimanow@gmail.com

MNC means multinational corporation, and a Lack (usually spelled lakh) means 100,000 (meaning that the woman makes 1.3 million rupees, or about USD 26,000). I’ve heard that men in the U.S. sometimes include their salaries in online personals profiles, but it’s fairly common for both men and women in India. This may seem rather materialistic, but in a country where class divisions are so great, perhaps a coupling bridging a large income disparity would be unlikely to be successful, in terms of lifestyle compatibility. This ad appeared under “Vaish,” an Indian caste designation. The headings for Indian matrimonial ads are highly specialized, and range from geographic region and caste and religion to some odd categories indeed, such as “Doctors” and “Business.”

Suitable match Punjabi, Hindu or clean shaven Sikh of high status family background, for 1984 born Sikh girl, Class 1 Officer, posted at Mumbai. Father Senior Class 1 officer in Railways. Central Govt./PSU well settled at Mumbai, age 26-29 years will be preferred. Contact: paramjit84@gmail.com

This ad appeared under “Punjabi,” and indeed the familiy is open to varying religious backgrounds from that region (as long as not a hairy Sikh).

NRI North Indian father is looking for professionally qualified boys settled/willing to settle in USA for fair, beautiful girls. Elder 24, 5’1″ completing post graduation in 2011 in Pharmacy. Younger 22, 5’3″ working in Biotech firm at L.A. Father in India till March 3. Caste no bar. Response invited with Biodata & photo: justaudio@gmail.com

This was under the NRI/Green Card category. NRI means “non-resident Indian,” or an overseas Indian. The NRI/Green Card category is used not only to find partners from India for children overseas (i.e., a green card opportunity for the suitor and perhaps a way to get a step up in marriage partner for the advert placer), but also for NRIs to find other NRIs, such that parents will post an ad, in the Times of India, looking for Indian boys living in Michigan for their daughter based in Michigan. Three more things of note in this ad. First, the efficiency in posting an ad for two girls at once. An Indian-American friend we know, who grew up in New York State, traveled to India on a trip that was partially intended for finding a husband for her older sister, when suddenly the tables were turned on her and it was suggested that she too try to find a mate in India (which started with a trip to the fortune teller). The father here is in India on a temporary basis, and wants to kill two birds with one stone. Second, the reference to (“fair”) skin color. Finally, the “caste no bar” line. The Times of India actually provides a 25% discount for “caste/religion no bar” or “no dowry” ads, in the spirit of social progress.

South Delhi based Very Affluent Socially Very Well Connected and Sophisticated Punjabi Family of High Repute involved into Exports Business Seeks Suitable Alliance for their Very Handsome Dynamic and Sober Son 33/5’10″/Schooling from MODERN/Done B.E. from U.S./Engaged into the Flourishing Family Business. We are Looking for a Smart, Tall, Convent Educated Extremely Beautiful Family Oriented Girl hailing from a Cultured Respectable Broadminded Similar Status Family. Caste no bar. Respond with Bio-Data and Recent Photogaphs at luckymatch4u@yahoo.in

This was under “Business,” which I assume to mean that the marriage is intended as much as a family business alliance as a domestic partnership. The level of socioeconomic puffery in this ad is fairly astonishing, and would certainly be a huge turn-off or no-no in most other countries. It kind of makes you wonder why they need to place a newspaper ad, if they are so very well connected. None of the ads that I selected listed a street address, but we have also been told that people seeking marriage partners will sometimes stay at and use the home of a relative or friend instead of their own in order to have a more prestigious address for the search.

In reading the matrimonial ads, we were puzzled by the relatively frequent appearance of the word “manglik.” Ads would say that a girl or boy was “manglik” or “slightly manglik,” as if it were some sort of disclaimer, while some ads would seek out “manglik” spouses. Before doing a bit of research we thought that it might refer to being overweight or dark-skinned (often an undesired trait), but learned that it was actually an astrological condition related to a person’s birth. People born manglik, it is said, are likely to have disastrous (perhaps even fatal) marriages, unless there are certain mitigating factors or they marry another manglik person. Manglik-ness is a big enough factor for some that “manglik” even has its own category heading.

Categories
India photo religion

Pre-Mughal Muslim India

As I have mentioned in previous posts (see posts of 2008.03.28 and 2009.03.06), Islam in India is not at all synonymous with the Mughals, who were really the last in a series of Muslim powers to arise in India. In this post, I wanted to go over some of many Muslim rulers of India that existed prior to the Mughal rulers, and to show some of their grand architectural remains.

The story of Muslim rulers in India starts with Mohammad Ghori, who invaded from now Afghanistan into now India and Pakistan in the 12th century. Muhammad’s general, Qutb-ud-din Aybak, established the Delhi Sultanate, which through various dynasties lasted until the arrival of the Mughals in the 16th century. The most notable of the Delhi Sultans included Shams ud din Iltutmish (1210-1235) and Muhammad bin Tughluq (1325-1351). It is during the rule of Sultan Mohammad bin Tughluq that Ibn Battuta landed in India, acting as a waqif, or judge (see post of 2009.01.23).

Qutb-ud-din Aybak ordered the construction of the Qutb Minar (in now southern Delhi) as a symbol of his establishment of Muslim rule in North India. One of the most spectacular architectural ruins anywhere, and said to resemble precedents in Afghanistan, it is perhaps the greatest symbol of the Delhi Sultanate. The Quwwat ul-Islam Mosque in the Qutb complex is said to be a conversion from Hindu or Jain temples–post to come.

The Qutb Minar

The Quwwat ul-Islam Mosque, with the Minar in the background

Tomb of Iltutmish, in the Qutb complex

Ruins of Tughluqabad, located to the south of New Delhi

Daulatabad, or Deogiri Fort. In 1327, Tughluq forced the entire population of Delhi to move to Daulatabad, thousand of miles away in the Deccan, a horrible and failed experiment.

Some of the tombs of the Lodi and Sayyid dynasties of the Delhi Sultanate are in an undervisited Delhi park known as the Lodi Gardens.

The Delhi Sultanate held on to power in the core northern areas around Delhi for most of its duration, but conquests outside of Delhi often split off into other sultanates and kingdoms, resulting in a great number of other Muslim rulers in the Subcontinent.

The Bahmani Sultanate, founded by a governor of Tughluq, ruled over much of the Deccan from 1347 to 1527, but then splintered into various smaller kingdoms, the most important of which was Golconda/Hyderabad. The Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda was originally founded by a minister for the Bahmani Sultanate, and at its height built the new city of Hyderabad nearby. Hyderabad was eventually conquered by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, but then restored to independent rule under the Nizams, when Mughal control grew weak. For more information on the history of Hyderabad, see my post of 2008.03.28.

Golconda Fort. One of Golconda’s great claims to fame is as the origin of most of the world’s most famous diamonds, including the Koh-i-Noor, now part of the British crown jewels, the Darya-ye Noor, part of the Iranian crown jewels and the Hope diamond, now part of the U.S. Smithsonian collection.

Qutb Shahi Tombs details. Note the Iranian influence of the glazed tiles in the second picture below.

Hyderabad’s famous Char Minar, built in 1591

Jaunpur, located near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, became an independent state controlled by the Sharqi dynasty after the 1398 sacking of Delhi by Tamerlane substantially weakened the Delhi Sultanate. Mughal Emperor Akbar incorporated Jaunpur into the Mughal Empire in 1559.

Atala Mosque, Jaunpur, built in 1423

Friday Mosque, Jaunpur, built in 1470. The Sharqi dynasty developed its own particular architectural styles, as seen in the Atala and Friday Mosques.

Medresa student, Friday Mosque, Jaunpur

The Ilyas Shah dynasty was created in Bengal in 1338, during another period of Delhi Sultanate weakness, and had its capitals at the cities of Gour and Pandua, located in West Bengal some 250 miles to the north of now Calcutta. Mughal Emperor Akbar incorporated the region into the Mughal Empire in 1576.

Adina, or Friday, Mosque, Pandua, which was built around 1430 and is said to incorporate parts of a Hindu temple (post to come). It was at one time the largest mosque in what is now India.

Bara Sona, or Big Golden, Mosque, Gour, built in 1526 by Sultan Nusrat Shah

Qadam Rasul Mosque, Gour, built in 1513 by Sultan Nusrat Shah and said to house a footprint of Mohammed

A contemporary of the early Mughals, Sher Shah Suri was a Muslim ruler who founded the Sur dynasty in 1540, based out of Sasaram in now Bihar. Sher Shah Suri was able to defeat Humayun, leaving him to retreat and seek assistance from Safavid Iran (see post of 2009.02.16), but was killed in battle after a reign of only five years.

Tomb of Isa Khan Niazi, an Afghan noble in the court of Sher Shah Suri, located near Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi

The Ghuri Kingdom, or Malwa Sultanate, of Mandu (now Madhya Pradesh) was established by Dilawar Khan, then governor of Malwa, when Delhi was sacked by Tamerlane. First Humayun, and later Akbar, added it to the Mughal Empire.

Mandu’s Jahaz Mahal, or Palace of the Winds

Malwa Sultan Hoshang Shah’s Tomb at Mandu is said to be a precursor to the Taj Mahal

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Ethiopia Iran Mauritania Morocco Uzbekistan

Nonverbal Communication

I have previously said on the blog that you can get by nearly anywhere in the world using just English, but of course that’s not wholly accurate–yes, you can get by, but you’ll still find yourself in situations where you or a local will want to say something that the other will not be able to understand. Fortunately, for those instances, there are unlimited possibilities in circumlocution and pantomime, in order to communicate. I thought that it might be fun to note some of the more amusing examples of nonverbal communication that we have encountered on our travels–if you have any you’ve enjoyed, be sure to add them as comments.

The Moose Call. Traveling in Muslim countries, one often (but perhaps not as often as one might think) runs into people’s prayer schedules. Our passenger train, in Iran, stopped for the evening prayer so that people could alight, properly orient themselves, and pray. We have had buses and share taxis do the same, although not as often as we might have thought. Or, a shop may be unattended for a few minutes, while the proprietor or employee is praying. In order to convey to us, the foreign infidels, what exactly is going on–why the bus is stopping or why the counter is empty–locals will raise two hands, palms open, to the sides of their heads, sometimes with their thumbs in or very near their ears, and make a small bowing gesture. Of course, this is intended to mimic the act of bowing for prayer, but to us it looks like a moose imitation, which is why we call it the moose call. It can also be used to find a nearby mosque.

Anticlerical Gestures of Iran. Discontent with Iran’s government, or more generally Iran’s system of government, is rife in Iran, and we encountered several different gestures used to mock or criticize the religious hierarchy used by Iranians eager to communicate their grievances to us. The most common was a hand tracing an imaginary turban on one’s head, a symbol for the theocratic elite of the country. Repeatedly, people would make the gesture, sometimes accompanied by the other hand stroking an imaginary beard, when trying to signify that it is the mullahs who have control and are mismanaging the country and restricting freedoms. The second was the throat-cutting gesture, hand across the neck, which was used surprisingly often not only to describe what would happen to you if you tried to exercise a freedom that was not provided under local law, but also as a general symbol for the government–nowhere else have we seen people associate their government so closely and so repeatedly with execution/murder. One person told us that the only thing stopping the Islamic government from restoring stoning as a form of punishment is international pressure. (We were also once given the throat-cutting gesture as a sort of threat in Nizwa, Oman–surprising given the highly respectful and hospitable treatment we otherwise got from the Omanis.)

Cluck of Approval. We first noticed this from our hoteliers in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, who would click their tongue against the roof of their mouth to signify approval, in our case appreciation of our photographs. Once we noticed it there, we heard it over and over again, particularly in Turkic regions from Turkey to Xinjiang, China.

Picture Please. People around the world vary an incredible amount from wanting their pictures taken to not wanting their pictures taken. In parts of West and North Africa, people can act like you’re trying to steal their soul; in Turkic countries and India, people will chase you for a photo. Especially in the Subcontinent, but elsewhere too, we frequently saw an odd gesture for “Take a picture of me, please”–something like a person looking through an imaginary pair of binoculars formed by their thumbs and pointer fingers.

Mixing Tea. Mauritania and Morocco (and the Tuareg parts of Mali) have a tea tradition that is somewhat peculiar, especially in the way that it is prepared. The tea leaves are boiled on a fire for a very long time, and then sugar is mixed in by pouring the tea back and forth from the pot to a glass, until long after the tea is blended, frothy and ready to drink. In those countries, this mixing gesture–that of pouring a liquid between two vessels repeatedly–was used to indicate tea (whether we would like to drink tea, that someone is about to make tea, etc.).

Sex. There is of course no shortage of hand and other gestures that one can use to mean having sex, but we find that the most common one–used all around the world from an Uzbek explaining Ramadan’s many restrictions to a Moroccan boy apparently selling sex services (!)–is a closed fist pounding the air, with the thumb toward the body (so that it’s somewhat different from the usual masturbation gesture).

Diving Gestures. We learned to dive a couple of years ago before a trip to the island republic of Palau, and now occasionally use diving gestures–a standardized system of underwater and surface communication for when words are not an option–to communicate with each other nonverbally. We find the “surface” versions of the “ok” and “not ok” gestures (arms forming a large circle or a large “X,” respectively, above the head) quite handy when we are distant from each other, because they are highly visible from far away. Diving gestures also constitute a nonverbal language that people around us are not likely to understand.

Wind-Induced Headache. This is a rather odd one that we encountered in Ethiopia. Although it can get quite warm in parts of Ethiopia, locals do not like to open windows on buses because they seem to believe that the wind pressure on their ears causes some sort of pain or headache. If you try to open a window, they will ask you to close it by placing the palms of their hands a couple of inches from each ear and shaking them a bit.

Hunger. Now, you’d think that putting your hands on your stomach or putting imaginary food into your mouth would be a pretty simple and effective way to demonstrate hunger, right? It’s certainly worked for us in the past, but when we were in Khiva, Uzbekistan in 2008, a cab driver took us not to a restaurant but to a clinic, thinking that we had gotten some sort of food poisoning! Imagine our confusion and then amuseument when we pulled up to an unmarked building we thought would be a restaurant and all of the servers were wearing white hospital coats.

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food India photo religion

Food of Muslim India

Muslim restaurant, Fatehpur Sikri (786, on the wall, is a somewhat controversial mystical number in Islam)

How distinct are the Muslim and Hindu cultures of the Indian subcontinent? As we know, Indian Muslims eventually felt that their culture was different enough to warrant an entirely separate nation state, that of Pakistan, but of course Muslim and Hindu Indians have lived together for centuries and are indistinguishable in many respects. Some Muslim Indians/Pakistanis may think of themselves as ethnically distinct, tracing their family’s origins to Iran, Central Asia or even Arabia, but a quick facial read suggests that most Muslim Indians are of the same genetic stock as their Hindu bretheren. The languages of Urdu and Hindi have sadly diverted since Partition, but they are still mutually comprehensible enough that India and Pakistan constitute one market for Bollywood films.

But one argument in favor of distinctness of identity is cuisine. Most Indian foods are consumed by Hindus and Muslims alike, but there are clearly certain dishes that are more frequently served and eaten by Muslims or have definite ties to other parts of the Muslim world. (Dietary rules–such as Hindu vegetarianism–may have contributed to the development of such distinct foods.)

Restaurant just outside the Friday Mosque in Agra

The single defining characteristic of Muslim food in India (and, to an extent, Muslim food all over the world), is meat. It might have to do with the fact that many Muslim societies were pastoralists, but meat is much consumed in the Muslim world, often in the most basic grilled form–kebab. (Note, however, that while beef is consumed by Muslims outside the subcontinent, it is almost never eaten in India, even by Muslims, perhaps following the advice of Babur, see post of 2009.02.16.)

Muslim butcher in Crawford Market, Bombay

Meat on the grill, Old Delhi

Meat on the grill, Uzbekistan

One of the most famous categories of Indian food is Mughlai cuisine, which is served at some of the top restaurants in the country. Said to be the food of the Mughal court, Mughlai food is not dissimilar from the Punjabi fare that most people are most familiar with, but particularly rich and meaty.

Khyber, Bombay, one of our favorite restaurants in the world

Seekh kebab at Karim’s in Old Delhi, one of the most famous Mughlai restaurants in India. The founding family of Karim’s is said to have worked in the kitchens of the Mughal court, and some of the dishes bear the names of Mughal emperors. (Read this hilarious post on Karim’s on a great expat Delhi blog, Our Delhi Struggle.)

In addition to rich Mughlai cuisine, there are certain dishes that are especially associated with Muslims in India. Foremost among these, and perhaps one of my favorite dishes anywhere in the world, is biryani. It is said that the Nizams of Hyderabad had a biryani recipe for every day of the year, and had different dinner outfits to go with the various recipes. To this day, Hyderabad is the capital of biryani, and no biryani we have had anywhere else (and trust me, I order it often) comes anywhere close to the texture and fragrance of Hyderabadi biryani (and this, despite our not having been to the most famous of Hyderabadi biryani shops, Paradise). Muslim Indian Biryani has also become one of the most common foods in the Gulf, due to the large number of restaurants run by workers from the Subcontinent (and perhaps in some cases because the local cuisine isn’t very good!).

Biryani, served in a Muslim restaurant in Cochin, Kerala

Other dishes are even more closely tied to the religion. Haleem, a paste-like dish of slow-cooked meat with wheat, is a food that is commonly eaten for iftar (the breaking of the fast) during Ramadan, and can be found in Muslim areas in the Subcontinent.

Finally, sweets. Sweets can carry a great deal of cultural meaning and identity–desserts are often some of the most elaborate dishes of a cuisine and are tied to festivities and ritual. Traveling throughout Muslim India, one frequently encounters sweets that have connections to other parts of the Muslim world, sometimes making one scratch one’s head wondering in which direction the recipes traveled.

Rice pudding, in the form of kheer, is of course a very common Indian dish, prepared mostly for festivities but also featuring heavily in overseas Indian buffet menus, but baked rice pudding, called firni, is found particularly in Muslim restaurants. Here, a very standard form, in nice clay pots, sold in a Muslim neighborhood of Calcutta. (Similar clay pot firni is available at Karim’s in Delhi.)

Firni sutlac served in Turkey. Both in India and Turkey, one of my favorite desserts.

The first time we saw faluda, in Iran, we were somewhat puzzled at this odd, noodle-y dessert. We found faluda in both Delhi and Bombay, in somewhat different forms.

Faluda, at an Old Delhi restaurant

Faluda, at famous Badshah Cold Drink House near Crawford Market in Bombay. The red flavor, with rose water, was called the Shirazi.

Faluda, from a shop in Esfahan, Iran

Can a fruit have a religion? I hesitate to call the pomegranate a Muslim fruit, but it is definitely seen more frequently in Muslim countries. Pomegranate juice was a delightful streetside treat in the Levant. The Quran does say that the fruit is a gift from God!

Pomegranates, sold in Hyderabad

Pomegranate seeds adorn Turkish ashure, or Noah’s pudding

The Ghantewala Halwai on Old Delhi’s Chandni Chowk is said to have served the Mughal court. (To be honest, not all that tasty.)

Categories
India photo

Indian Dysfunction

People often compare India and China, the two being the billion plus population nations that are on the fast track of development and wealth. Now, of course, as anyone who has visited the two countries knows, the level of development in the two countries, at least in the most visible areas, is not at all comparable–China appears to be decades ahead. In this post, I want to identify certain aspects of modern India that appear to be simply broken. As I said in my post about Varanasi (2009.02.24)–how do they live this way??

Filth. Sometimes it feels like different cultures and societies have different attitudes toward cleanliness. It’s not only about wealth and the availability of sanitation services, but the tolerance that people develop to clutter and piles of garbage. No country is dirtier than India.

Alley in Varanasi

Why, oh why, is India so dirty? Some of it is that they have a certain acceptance of organic waste–such as animal dung, which is used for fuel–but nowadays much of the garbage is the standard consumer waste, largely plastic, that one sees everywhere else. Other countries have their dirty moments, but none come close to India. In Pushkar, Rajasthan, the holy lake became so polluted that it reached the tipping point. In a matter of days, hundreds and hundreds of huge fish died all at once, causing a stench so severe that it was difficult to pass within 50 meters of it. It had to be completely emptied out and they’re still trying to figure out how to refill it.

Children playing in the slums of Bombay and Madras

Cows eating garbage outside Madurai, Tamil Nadu

Scams and theft. This might be somewhat controversial, but there is no doubt that India has a higher rate of scams and theft (albeit non-violent) than the vast majority of other countries in the world. It is definitely not poverty alone–plenty of poor countries in the world pose no risk for the traveler in this regard and the worst Indian perpetrators are not the worst off (the actually poor are generally, as everywhere, extremely honest). Perhaps it’s the sense of competition that comes from living in such a crowded country (although the same could be said about China), or perhaps there is some cultural force at work. The absolute worst story we’ve heard, and probably the most famous, is that of an Agra restaurant that deliberately poisoned its customers in order to collect a commission from the clinic that treated them (eventually resulting in a death). We’ve been told by a fellow traveler that rickshaws immediately come to the assistance of the injured in order to collect clinic commissions. There are definitely some depraved, industrial-sized schemes in China–such as adulterated baby formula–but scams in India seem far more common.

A public safety campaign

Bureaucracy. I blame the British for this one. The level of (quite useless) bureaucracy in India is comical. Our best example of this was the time we left behind an item on a train car, which was somewhat useful to us but of almost no resale value. Immediately recognizing that we had left it on our berth with our bedding, we tried to find the laundry section or lost and found to try to recover it. We ended up in the office of the railway police, writing down a bizarrely formal letter that was dictated to us (“Dear Sirs…”) and included such useful pieces of information as our parents’ names and professions. This letter was then translated into Hindi. Anyone who has been in the backroom of an Indian office has seen the ridiculously dusty binders, piles and bags of forms and other documents that accumulate, for no use at all.

Form for buying train tickets. As I described in my post of 2009.03.05, buying train tickets in India can be bizarrely complicated, with long lines and byzantine quotas and concessions.

Infrastructure and logistics. Of course India is a third world country, but it is in many respects quite a modern one, and so some of the things that cannot be taken for granted are astonishing. Power routinely cuts out in some of India’s biggest cities, including such supposed gems of modernity as Bangalore. In one of the busiest train systems in the world, the Bombay suburban rail, there are said to be up to 3500 deaths a year. Parcels sent by mail must be sewn up in fabric and then sealed with wax, for security. One feels that, in other countries, these kinds of problems would be solved–in India, such faulty systems seem to continue year after year.

Commuting in Bombay

Mail service

Miscellaneous. I’m not sure how to categorize the rest of these items, but they are things that, in other countries, simply would not be.

A body floating in the Ganges, Varanasi. I understand that the Ganges is a holy river, but should people really be bathing in and drinking water into which dead bodies (some with infectious diseases) are tossed?

Again holy, but should cows really be free to roam downtown Bombay? Even rickshaws aren’t allowed!

Dhobi Ghat, Bombay. In a city as modern and wealthy (in many respects) as Bombay, it is bewildering that it is still more efficient to have an entire village of people doing laundry by hand than to use washing machines.

Women-only car, Bombay suburban rail. Many countries have a sexual harrassment problem, but we’ve definitely heard more stories of unwanted touching (both man on woman and man on man) from India than elsewhere.

No other country has electrical wiring like India.

Categories
India photo religion

Islam in India

Prayer at Nakhoda Mosque, Calcutta

The title of this post is somewhat over-general, but I did want to make certain broad points on Islam in India, as I have done in previous posts (see post of 2008.08.16 on Indonesia and 2008.11.14 on the Balkans).

India has the third largest Muslim population in the world. This is an oft-cited fact and one you’ve perhaps already heard. The Indian Subcontinent taken together has almost a third of all of the Muslims in the world, and India has just about as many Muslims as Pakistan or Bangladesh. These three countries and Indonesia are, by far, the greatest countries in terms of Muslim population–no Arab or Middle Eastern country even comes close. They are, in one sense, Islam’s center of gravity.

The history of Islam in India goes way back. Perhaps because Hindus make up the majority of India’s population and because Hinduism is by far the more ancient religion, Islam is often thought of as a relative newcomer, an alien seed taken root in the subcontinent. However, Islam is no newer to the Indian Subcontinent than it is to almost anywhere else outside of the Arab world. Parts of now Pakistan were conquered by Arab armies as early as the 8th century and parts of now India were conquered by Muslim invaders as early as the 12th century. Islam came to India as early or earlier than it came to such places as Turkey, Central Asia or West Africa.

By the time Babur, the first Mughal Emperor, arrived in India in the 16th century, Muslim rulers had been in charge in Delhi for hundreds of years, and Muslim rulers were already installed in other parts of the Subcontinent, including as far south as Golconda/Hyderabad. (post on pre-Mughal Muslim rulers of India to come)

Tombs of the Qutb Shahis of Golconda, near Hyderabad

While Islam came largely from the North (generally through conquest), it also arrived on South Indian shores (generally through trade). It is easy to think of the Delhi Sultanate or the Mughals when thinking of Muslim India, but one often forgets the significant Muslim populations of South India, some of which arose even before northern Muslim conquests as the belief washed ashore with Arab traders following the monsoon winds. Some Urdu-speaking Muslims in the North may with varying degrees of credibility associate themselves with Greater Iran/Central Asia, even going so far as to say that they are Iranian or Mongol rather than Indian, but South Indian Muslims are very much the same as their Hindu brethren–just of a different faith. (Orthodox Hinduism and harsh adherence to the caste system incentivized some Keralans to convert to Islam and Christianity.) It has been said that because of the different history, religious tension does not exist in the south as it does in the north.

Alimood Mosque near Varkala, Kerala

Sufism played a huge role in the extension of Islam in the Subcontinent. In my post of 2009.02.21 on Akbar and Fatehpur Sikri, I mentioned sufi saint Salim Chisti. Sufis played a principal role in spreading Islam throughout the subcontinent, far greater a role than direct contact with Muslim invaders from the north or Arab traders from the sea. The most famous of these is Muin-ud-din Chisti, buried in Ajmer, who hailed from now Iran and studied in Bukhara and Samarkand before arriving in now India with Mohammed of Ghor. Sufis appealed to Indians not only through personal holiness and piety, but by incorporating certain Hindu forms and practices. Sites related to sufi saints, such as the tomb of Muin-ud-din Chisti in Ajmer and the tomb of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi are by far the most venerated Muslim religious sites in India, and sufi practices such as the use of music are widespread. (Compare to the orthodoxy of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, who is said to have forbidden music altogether, for both Muslims and Hindus.)

Shrine of Khawaja Muin-ud-din Chisti, in Ajmer

Qawwali music played at the Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi, in the direction of the tomb

Itinerant sufis are perfect analogs of Hindu sadhus, and Indians sufis often adopt a sadhu-like form, with a different color palette (green instead of yellow or saffron).

In its expansion, Islam in the Subcontinent adopted Hindu forms and practices. Syncretism is a natural development of religion, and Islam adopted certain (relatively superficial) aspects of Hinduism in its spread across the Subcontinent. I imagine that these practices were adopted not only by sufis seeking converts but also by recent converts continuing past practices. In addition to music (which is admittedly of a totally different style than Indian Hindu music), there is the use of flowers and the importance of pilgrimage. Of course, pilgrimage exists in Islam around the world–including the all-important hajj–but it is practiced with a particular intensity in the Subcontinent. (I should note that one can see Hindus visiting Muslim sites in India, just as Muslims visit Christian sites in the Middle East.) All in all, the end result is a form of Islam that is somewhat less austere than in many other parts of the world.

Flowers for sale at the Nizamuddin Dargah

Categories
India photo trains

Trains in India

Varkala Station (VAK, to friends)

Especially with decent sleeping arrangements, rail is by far my favorite mode of travel. There are many reasons for this. One is simply nostalgia for the days when it was the fastest mode of travel, with the sound of the engine and the uniforms of the conductors giving one’s trip the sort of glamour seen in North by Northwest or Murder on the Orient Express. Perhaps more important, the sense of journey and distance is tangible on a train. You see the land pass by next to you, you feel the constant forward motion and the gentle swaying motion of the car. The views are far superior to the sides of highways or the blankness mostly seen outside airplane portholes. Finally, there is the sense of luxury, in terms of time and space, that it offers. Air travel feels frantic and is filled with much queueing and stress. Train travel offers far greater space, freedom and flexibility than even first class air travel, the ability to get up and walk the length of the train, have a proper meal in a dining car, and interact with other passengers.

Other than perhaps Europe, taken as a whole, or China (see my post of 2008.07.28), India is the greatest country/region in the world to explore by train. The network is extensive, covering almost all parts of the country other than the far north, and service is fairly frequent and reliable (although subject to delays at times). Especially given the relatively greater chaos and danger of Indian roads, the train is definitely the way to see India.

To the bottom tip of the peninsula

That said, Indian trains are far from problem free. Yes, I acknowledge that the Chinese system has its problems, largely in the procurement of tickets (queues can be truly horrendous and the ticket agents impatient and at times surly), but Chinese trains are, largely, clean, fast and punctual. The Indian Railway has its own set of problems with ticket purchasing, and is, in addition, a bit dirty, somewhat slow and often delayed.

Late, late, late, late

Your first step in any Indian rail journey is, of course, buying the ticket. Ticket office, Calcutta Sealdah Station (SDAH)

Nowadays, most tourists probably opt to buy tickets online, or through an agent that is connected to the online system. Although the system seems to have improved greatly from 2003, when it was something of a joke (we ordered tickets online only to discover when picking them up in the Delhi office that the order had been handwritten into a large ledger), we have had problems getting our credit cards to work on the somewhat confusing multiple “payment gateways” and have at times had to resort to more traditional methods, in particular to access the all-important “tourist quota” (more on this later), which is not available online. That said, online ticketing is generally extremely convenient (and can be done overseas, in advance of an India trip), and it is a service that is not even available in, say, China.

International Tourist Bureau, New Delhi Railway Station (NDLS)

The most traditional method, for a foreign tourist in India, is to use one of the “International Tourist Bureaus” located in the principal Indian railway stations, such as Delhi, Varanasi and Bombay. Now, these ITBs are pretty good, and are able to access the tourist quota, but there are significant queues of foreigners and service can be very slow. Also, the ITBs cannot solve the principal ticketing problem with Indian trains, which is that tickets are often unavailable. The oversubscription of transit in India is a bit of a puzzle to us, having visited many developing countries; Indians, however poor they are statistically, seem to have time and money to travel a great deal. Now, part of that is because people migrate into cities to work, as in China, and also because people travel to go on pilgrimage, an important aspect of Hindu religious culture, but I think the main reason is simply because they can, because tickets on Indian trains can be absurdly cheap. For example, the base fare for a 1000 km trip in Second Class (unreserved) is 175 Rupees (3.50 USD), or 295 Rupees (6 USD) in (non-AC) sleeper class (compare to 2420 Rupees (49 USD) in first class on a fast Rajdhani train). Another part of the Indian Railways ticketing puzzle is the quota system. There are numerous “quotas” for which spaces are reserved on the Indian train system, not only for foreign tourists but for all sorts of other categories of people (ladies, defense, parliament house, handicapped, etc.). Indeed, guidebooks suggest that there is *always* some sort of space available on an Indian train, if you can just persuade someone to dip into the right quota. Perhaps the most important quota, in addition to the tourist quota, is the tatkal quota, which reserves a block of seats until five days before the travel date for individuals who are purchasing tickets from the origin to the terminus of a given train. Almost as complicated as the quotas are the concessions (discounts) that are available for various classes of people, including people with various different handicaps, patients traveling for treatment, widows of wars and acts of terrorism, artists and athletes traveling to performances and competitions, etc. It is all quite byzantine. But perhaps the most bewildering aspect of Indian train ticketing for the foreign traveler is the ability to buy tickets without a reservation, in something called RAC (reservation against cancellation, which allows you to board the train and await placement into a berth) or WL (waitlist, which requires you to keep checking your status, up to the point of departure, to see if you’ve been confirmed a seat). Now, given the quota system, and cancellations, a person with a small waitlist number is almost certain to get seat/berth in the end, and we’ve relied on this system with some confidence that we will clear. But waitlist numbers seem to go into the hundreds! How can people buy waitlist tickets numbering into the hundreds for, say, a train trip that will last two days? Are people’s schedules really so flexible that they can just keep checking and show up to the station each day, to see if they’ve cleared?

Checking the list, New Jalpaiguri and Malda Town Stations (NJP and MLDT, respectively)

* * *

The complexity doesn’t stop there. Perhaps indicative of the stratified social structure in India, with huge gaps between poor, middle class and rich, long distance trains can have more than five different classes of travel, including unreserved general seating or Second Class, (non-AC) Sleeper, AC 3 Tier, AC 2 Tier and AC First (compare to Chinese trains, which only have three classes–soft seat, hard sleeper and soft sleeper).

Even the waiting rooms are divided by class (and sometimes gender).

Second Class is a fairly horrifying prospect to the foreign traveler, at least for distances of any length. If the train is not a particularly popular one, however, Second Class can be quite comfortable, and offers the very best travel companions–friendly, down-to-earth and interactive. (Our very first time in an Indian railway station, we saw an extremely overcrowded Second Class car roll in, and were horrified, until we realized that we had better tic kets, that those were the conditions we would have to face.)

Queueing for a seat in Second Class

Sometimes, plenty of room (and can always lay on the luggage rack, if not)

As long as it’s not too hot, Sleeper class is a good way to go, with windows that open and just as much room as AC 3 Tier, at less than half the cost (though do keep in mind that Sleeper class can get dusty, especially on desert runs through Rajasthan). Most of the cars on a long distance Indian train (other than the special Rajdhani trains, which are all AC) are Sleeper class, as this is the way most Indians travel.

If it’s hot, AC 3 Tier is the natural first choice. We think that AC 3 Tier offers great travel companions as well, often middle class Indians traveling with their families or well-educated younger people. Second Class riders may be the most entertaining, but AC 3 Tier riders probably offer the best conversation. AC 3 Tier comes with bedding (clean and comfortable, 2 sheets, a pillow with pillowcase and blanket), unlike Sleeper class, but is otherwise pretty much the same configuration (though with windows that don’t open).

To go a bit more upscale, one can go AC 2 Tier. While AC 2 Tier offers more room (and, sometimes, more privacy in the form of curtains that separate each set of berths), we found that AC 2 Tier is often full of overweight, snoring, middle-aged men traveling for business–our least favorite travel companions.

Finally, AC First, which comes in two- and four-person compartment configurations.



To be honest, AC First is something of a mystery to me. Yes, the first class compartments do offer more room and privacy, but when booking AC First you are not assigned a berth until you show up for the train. This means that you have no control over whether you get a two-person cabin or a four-person cabin, and I’ve even had a three-person party split up between two cabins. I would certainly be willing to pay the >50% premium over AC 2 Tier if I were assured a private cabin for me and my travel companion, but if we end up being stuck with two strangers anyway, what’s the point? Although, I should note, that AC First doesn’t seem to have the problem that AC 2 Tier does–instead of overweight businessmen, you tend to get somewhat wealthier Indians on holiday. Enough about the various classes.

* * *

New Delhi Railway Station

Indian railway stations really deserve a separate post altogether–many horrible and amusing stories come to mind from our travels, the favorite of which is probably standing, right after having arrived on a redeye flight, on a NDLS platform with all sorts of cargo and sadhus performing morning ablutions while looking across the tracks and seeing a bunch of be-suited Indians on their morning commute–but a few things deserve mention. First, many Indian railway stations (especially those in the main cities built during the Raj) are architectural wonders.

Bombay’s Victoria Terminus (CST) and Churchgate (CCG) Stations

Second is the availability of cheap porters (get over any shame and give them some work, and tip well). 15 Rs (0.30 USD) for 40 kilograms–not a bad deal!

Rajput porter at Bombay Central Station (BCT)

On left, a porter at New Delhi Railway Station

Third is the sometimes incredible number of people sleeping in stations awaiting their next train. The first picture is from New Delhi Railway Station, while the second is from Calcutta Sealdah.

Indian railway stations have all the modern conveniences, including urinals, lighting, fan and timetable display.

* * *

I already mentioned the different entertainment provided by one’s carmates, but there are many other ways to entertain yourself on an Indian train than conversation, comfortable sleeping and eating the surprisingly quality meals. The first is, of course, enjoying the outside scenery. Not only are there wonderful natural landscapes, but passing through rural and urban areas one sees all sorts of things that are not otherwise visible (including, especially in the early morning, unfortunately, many people’s rears, as people like to defacate near train tracks, facing away).




And, especially in Second Class, there is also the stream of people walking through the cars to sell and beg. As I did with my China train post of 2008.07.28, a selection of these: Most importantly, chai chai get ’em chai. Every once in a while, you will still see Indian milk tea being sold in disposable clay cups–but plastic is much more common.

Some chaat (snack mix of sorts), freshly assembled

Peanuts, by the weight

Saris

Toys and appliances?

Bootleg DVDs

Now, I may have just called them beggars, but the way that hijra (traditional Indian transgendereds (see post of 2008.08.29)) operate, they’re hardly begging but rather demanding money as if by right. Fear of their powers made nearly everyone we saw give them money, although they often left us alone.

* * *

Before ending this post, it would be negligent of me not to mention that Indian trains are notorious for theft and sexual harrassment. Lock your bags in the area near you or under the bottom bunk, and keep your most important valuables with you in your bunk (and never leave them unattended). On our very first train ride, we met a Canadian couple with a decade of India experience that had some of their most valuable be longings stolen by a well-dressed, articulate man who was “helping” them. (He tried to “help” us, too, but we were luckier.) Also, from what we hear, ifyou’re a woman traveling alone, there is a chance that you’ll wake up with a man’s hand somewhere you really don’t want it to be. Traveling in a higher class probably reduces this risk, but should you find yourself in this situation, be firm and shove away the hand and yell whatever comes to mind as loud as you can.

* * *

To end this post, some pictures from the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Toy Train. The narrow gauge train that goes up to Darjeeling is one of three famous hill station trains, the others being to Shimla in Himachal Pradesh and Ooty in Tamil Nadu. One of the daily Darjeeling runs is by steam and a charming (if slow) experience. (I should note that I found the second class seats on the Shimla train almost unbearably crowded for the five/six hour ride.)


* * *

Please note that this post focuses mainly on long-distance trains. On shorter daytime routes, such as that from Delhi to Agra, or suburban/commuter trains, there is a different arrangement of classes (generally, any class is fine). I will discuss the chaos of the Bombay suburban rail in a future post.

* * *

Awaiting the train at Delhi Cantonment (DEC)

Categories
India

What Things Cost in India

As I remarked in my post of 2008.12.18, some poor countries have the benefit of having a dynamic market for goods and services, where even the relatively poor can afford a great deal of market products, while many of the poorest countries suffer from a near total lack, in both supply and demand, of affordable consumer goods and services. India definitely belongs in the former category. Whether it’s because of the unusually large size of the country as a whole and its growing role in the international economy, or more likely the well-established and growing middle class, who are educated and have a place in the formal market economy, India is, both for the traveler and for the local, I believe, one of the most affordable countries in the world.

India is crazy cheap. Quality generally may not be as high as Thailand or Bali–where even quite cheap food and lodging can be truly first rate, even by international standards–but prices get even lower on the bottom end than those countries, while still well satisfying minimal expectations of hygiene, comfort and taste.

Some examples of prices in India:

Subway, Delhi – 6-9 Rs (USD 0.12-0.18)
Cycle rickshaw, Old Delhi – 15 Rs (USD 0.30)
Car hire for a day – 700-900 Rs (USD 15-20)
Taxi to Delhi airport – 250 Rs (USD 5), or twice as expensive in a radio taxi
Train from Delhi to Varanasi in 3 Tier AC – 861 Rs (USD 18)

Streetside somosa in a small town – 1-2 Rs (USD 0.02-0.04)
Upscale thali – 100 Rs (USD 2)
A dish at Khyber, an excellent high end Bombay restaurant – 300 Rs (USD 6)
Bottle of soda in a shop – 12 Rs (USD 0.25)

Cheap but clean room with bath in a smaller town – 150 Rs (USD 3)
Reasonably comfortable hotel with AC, etc., in Delhi – 1400 Rs (USD 28), in Fatehpur Sikri – 650 Rs (USD 14)

Qutb Minar admission – 250 Rs (USD 5) for foreigners, 10 Rs (USD 0.20) for Indians
Taj Mahal admission – 750 Rs (USD 15) for foreigners, 20 Rs (USD 0.40) for Indians

On foreigner pricing for admissions, see my post of 2008.07.24.