BackDéjà View | Tales of a young-old country
What happens when a country decides to become more accepting of its faults and less defensive?
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Once upon a time there was a country. It was a very large, complex country with many millions of people.
This country was both young and ancient. It was young because it had only become a nation around 70 years ago. But it was also ancient because it had a unique, distinctive culture of cultures that dated back to antiquity.
In the early years the country liked to use some easy stereotypes to engage with the world. It gifted elephants to other countries, used tigers to promote tourism, and even used a maharaja to promote their national airline. (The country didn’t even like maharajas!)
Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of people belonging to the country began to move to other places all over the world in search of work, education and a better future. After all, this new country was quite poor. Wherever they went these immigrants slowly built an identity for themselves.
They especially became famous for their food, clothing, song, dance and films. Oh the films. From Boston to Baghdad to Bali, everyone loved these amusing films.Meanwhile the nation continued to engage the world with these simplistic stereotypes: tigers, elephants, maharajas, saris…but also food, song, dance, marble monuments and, once colour photography was developed, a festival of colours!
“Oh those nice chaps," foreigners said referring to the people of this country, “with their songs and dance and food and tigers and elephants and saris and non-violence! Oh what culture they have! How exotic they are!"
All these foreigners made plans to go there on holiday. To see the elephants and tigers.
In reality there were many other things happening in the country besides the elephants and all that. They were building good engineering colleges, constructing large dams, making satellites, eradicating diseases, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor and, most of all, getting very good at conducting elections. They didn’t do all of these things perfectly and made so many mistakes. But then who doesn’t?
Yet for some reason they didn’t seem particularly keen on telling these stories to the world. “How is that our problem?" said important people in the country. “If they want to know more about our country, let them come here and find out."
Little did they realize how lazy the rest of world is in such matters.
Many years later this country decided to open up its mind and markets to the world. The economy boomed. Industries changed. Livelihoods improved. The country began to transform in countless ways in countless places. Of course, things don’t change overnight. The country was much too big for that.
Once it was crawling on the floor, and now it was strolling along with the occasional stumble. Soon it got even better at the song and dance and food and films.
“Look at us now world!" said a new generation of important leaders. “We are awesome!"
“Oh yes you are!" said the world. “We love your songs and dance and films and the food and especially the elephants. But you really do need to take better care of your women."
“Yes there is a complex problem there. But things are not all bad you know. Look at the women who work in our space programme…," they replied with some anger and outrage and defensiveness.
“You have a space programme? Why are you wasting money on that when you have starving poor?" the world retorted.
That is when the country realized its mistake. For far too long it had sat back and let its international image waste away. Of course it had problems. But there was much more to the country than just a list of shortcomings. It wasn’t some magical jungle kingdom with scared women and elephants.
So the country decided to do some things. First it decided to clean up its tourism sector and welcome more visitors. (After all even tiny Morocco was getting more tourists than this huge country.) This meant improving airports, cities, railway stations, monuments and public safety. It was very hard work.
Then it revamped its museums and began to work closely with museums and galleries all over the world. It even organized a travelling international exhibition on its space programme and its impact on the life of its people. “Oh this is interesting," said the world, “we had no idea all this was going on there."
The government also overhauled its public relations philosophy. It would get more professional, more modern and less defensive. Sure, foreigners would still criticize it about many things. But under this new philosophy they would respond not with petulant, insecure outrage, but with dignified grace.
“Yes we have problems," they would respond, “but we are working on them and welcome all help and suggestions from anywhere."
The people of the country were happy because they got safer cities and better museums and felt they had many new solid things to be proud about. The world was happy because it suddenly discovered so much more about this huge, young-but-old country.
And everyone lived happily ever after. Including the elephants.
Every week, Déjà View scours historical research and archives to make sense of current news and affairs.
Comment at views@livemint.com. To read Sidin Vadukut’s previous columns, go to
www.livemint.com/dejaview
Follow Mint Opinion on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Mint_Opinion
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