For a land riddled with contradictions, a landscape that challenges wordsmiths to coin new epithets to capture its double-facedness; the hugely uplifting success of the first ever Formula 1 event held in India in striking contrast to the humiliating mess of the Delhi Commonwealth Games (CWG) is testimony to the continuing paradox that is India.

Chairman of the Organising Committee Suresh Kalmadi languishes in jail and his bearded face with eyes glazed over stare at us to remind us of our predilection to snatch defeat from victory, a peculiarity associated until very recently with our cricketing fortunes. Through a stroke of luck and an audacious spirit of can-do, this penchant has since been re-jigged to grab victory from the brink of defeat.

To say there are many Indias out there is common place, yet events force us to grapple with incongruities. Begging for answers, our infirmities like barnacles attached to us rein us in, dooming us to underachieve. Corruption leeching into our blood stream taints every success that comes our way, the terrible curse of apathy besets our exertions to reclaim that lost inheritance and our feeble rise to the top opens up fresh wounds to old injuries. Yet only a die-hard Cassandra would predict dire happenings to this nation that is on the move.

The CWG failure versus the sensational triumph of Formula 1 is in some sense a case of private versus public initiative delivering dramatically different outcomes. Proof to those who argue, government is the problem and not the solution. Big government is at the heart of the many fractious debates around the world and this ideological squabble is unlikely to be resolved soon. Flushes that do not work, showers that malfunction, all badges of public sector sloth!

The two events represent the new India and the old India. The new India, brazen, over-confident and brash as it rises to the top and an old India stuck in a time warp of Nehruvian civility with a Hindu rate of growth. The Buddh International Circuit — the new Taj Mahal of a shining India as opposed to the fading beauty in Agra, withering in the degrading eco-system surrounding it ; a stark reminder of the great divide between the two India’s.

One can also see the Formula 1 circuit as a symbol for the upwardly mobile dalits of India, for Mayawati is as much a part of this success as Jay Prakash Associates Ltd [JAL], the king among infrastructure builders of the new India. Mayawati, notwithstanding her obsession with objects that have an unremarkable likeness to her is the queen to JAL’s king in this fairly tale of a new India. Without her active involvement and support at every stage of construction this facility would never have been completed in record time.

The Formula 1 circuit has some unique features that makes it stand apart from other circuits. It is the one of the most challenging track for drivers, with the circuit rising 14 metres within the first three corners alone and a banked double-apex bend on the far side of the course. The multi-apex turns and the 10–11–12 sequence tests the skill of the drivers to the extreme due to the high tire loadings generated at these bone- shattering curves.

Ergo, when Vettel sings paeans to India and the Buddh Circuit it was not meaningless courtesy to a host but a well-deserved critique by an outstanding racing driver who knows what he is saying. He judged it as one of the best and said the circuit with its uniquely profiled elevation, purpose-designed to attract TV audiences was a path breaker.

There are many other outstanding features about the circuit as well but Formula 1 needs to be paired not with the CWG but with new and disturbing tendencies in our social and cultural life, dangerous cracks creeping into our communal edifice, the mental infrastructure threatening to come apart; a descent into our ancient fissures. An aggressive assertion of identity is afoot mutilating and mangling our distinct multicultural heritage.

Thus a corrosive debate is raging within the Delhi University academia; at the centre of this fracas is the seminal essay by linguist, poet and polymath, A. K. Ramanujan called the 300 Ramayana’s. This brilliant exposition, compulsory reading for students of history and literature until now has been banned on the grounds of it being defamatory. A precipitous fall indeed for an India on the move!

It is this false dogma and narrow definition of our identity that one has to beware of and not Kalmadi and his cohorts who caused a national scandal by their substandard workmanship. Cultural wars are fatal. The CWG’s leaking toilets can be fixed but not the subversion of our precious beliefs and canons. The acculturation bequeathed to us by our forefathers is under siege and this has to be thwarted forthwith.

Unity in diversity is our creed and none, not even the Delhi University worthies can be allowed to play fast and loose with it.

 

Ravi Menon is a Dubai-based writer working on a series of essays on India and on a public service initiative called India Talks.