India: Pride & Reality

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"Just Craze for Foreign." Against rural resignation stands the excitement of India's great metropolises. Each of the country's major cities—Bombay, Calcutta, New Delhi and Madras—has its own similarities and its own distinctions. Calcutta and Bombay are linked in their visual splendor and their vicious slums; wealth and poverty exist cool cheek by grizzled jowl. Madras, with its burgeoning Hindu evangelism (backed by Shastri's strongman, Congress Party President Kumaraswami Kamaraj), is less metropolitan but more leisurely. Where Bombay is sparked by its Parsi businessmen (descended from 8th century Persian fire worshipers), Madras is tempered by Tamil intellectualism. New Delhi—founded in 1911 by the British —is the youngest of the nation's great cities, and its least distinctive. Dust swirls through its broad, beige streets; beggars sleep on its sidewalks beneath gaudy murals; and pallid politicians occupy center stage.

In all four cities, the upper classes scurry for status. Top status symbol: a foreign automobile. In one fantastic series of deals, a year-old Chevrolet Impala imported by a diplomat for $1,680 was ultimately bought by a Bombay movie star for $16,800. Import restrictions have made any foreign item desirable, including electric mixers, irons, refrigerators, hair dryers and record players. West Indian Author V. S. Naipaul, visiting India for the first time, records in his book Area of Darkness the xenophile plaint of a Delhi housewife: "I am just craze for foreign, just craze for foreign."

"Stale Experiment." The cry reflects the changing nature of India's upper middle class, a social role that demands the best of two contradictory worlds.