A brief sojourn through the channels on Indian television provides an excellent insight into India's modern culture. I made a quick scan of the channels, while sitting at my hotel room in Mumbai. The most prominent commercials that dominated the channels was skin lightening creams. Multiple iterations of skin lightening, show how it lightens the skin, how much it lightens it. Every 5 of 10 commercials were for skin creams. The generally light skin of the actors in these commercials (and all other commercials and most television and movies for that matter) shows an increased preoccupation with this feature. Of course, traditionally, the Brahmins, the highest Hindu caste often have lighter skin than the lower castes, so this is perhaps a capitalist reflection of such an attitude. A way of showing superiority in this new Hindu-capitalist society. The rest of the commercials is the same frivolous commerciality that one might find in the Franco-British Union. Commercials for health products, health foods, perfumes, laptops, hair products. The same sort of bourgeois pap that is common across the AFS sphere. The shows in between the commercials aren't much better. Mostly dull soap operas, absurd over-extravagant musicals, and channels dedicated to international shows, primarily British or Australian soap operas. The musicals have some charm, I must confess, and many people living in socialist nations have an affinity for them, but the rest aren't worth more than a mere mention. I did come across a news program briefly covering Colombo police arresting members of the "terrorist" organization "The Tamil Tigers". They were apparently responsible for a series of bombings in Ceylon and the area around Chennai, with the stated goal of seceding from the Greater Commonwealth, and forming a Tamil majority state in Southern India and Northern Ceylon. They are but one of many different seccessionist movements across the country. Possibly protesting both supposed British domination of India, and Indian domination of them. Bengali and Kashmiri separatists have become popular due to the increased Hindutva domination of the country, which threatens the majority Islamic populations in those places. The "Khalistan" movement from the north-eastern state of Punjab was also growing in popularity in response to "Sikh persecution", and have also begun responding with terrorist attacks. I also saw a political speech by striking worker in Uttar Pradesh. Here, I saw representatives of the Indian socialist movement speaking out against the systematic poverty that reigns across the nation, and the repression of venacular tongues in favor of English, "the imperialist tongue." The potential of such groups to achieve much was very clear to me.
The next day, I took a general tour of the city. The driver kept describing various buidlings, famed hotels, other luxurious landmarks. However, I instead was focused on the poverty. The people here live in such abstract poverty, it is astounding. It did live up to its reputation of the "beating heart of capitalism". I saw many well-dressed Indian walking the streets with their modern gadgets and the like, along side poor Indians who came to the car door, begging for food, wearing scruffy, dusty clothing. The modern skyscrapers contrasted with the road, which was poorly maintained, and the graffiti laden walls. Some of the buildings were somewhere around 30 to 40 years old, according to my guide. Apparently, the local government had little money to maintain or renew many buildings. He also admitted that the social safety net that capitalist nations like the Anglo-French Union had was ill-equipped to deal with the number of people in poverty. He said that there were many factors to this, including the caste system, which keeps certain people in occupations, and the capitalist wages, which barely keep people in decent living conditions It was at that moment when I saw the disease slowly eating away at the so-called "Heart of Capital". The systematic poverty that prevedes every city as I later learned from my travels, the feverent ethnic nationalism, the large wealth gap, which favors the rich, and the aging infrastructure are just symptoms of the rampant capitalism that has dominated this nation since the 1980's. However, if, as some predict, India becomes the leader of the Capitalist world after the inevitable fall of the FBU, these problems will actually increase greatly, eventually exposing themselves, and India might find itself in the same fate as all capitalist nations.
Outside of the loathesomely decadent landmarks, I really wanted to visit the Mumba Devi Temple, from which the city initially derived its name. As I walked through the temple, with its various depictions of Hindu gods and various events from the Hindu epics, I came to admire the architectural talent that the ancient Indians had, and the morals of their stories. That of peace and understanding, but with sometimes devotion and fight to preserve that fate. I wondered if such a violent fate as revolution was truly India's destiny. After all, the Indian scriptures seemed to emphasize peace and forgiveness. Perhaps a movement might one day take the elections, and perhaps take the nation to socialism, and finally fix the problems that lie within its heart.
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