A Book Launch in India

By Bouthaina Shaaban

27 June, 2008

          As I was in a business trip to India, an old friend of mine there invited me to accompany him to a book launch. With some hesitation, I accepted because lingering in my memory is the embarrassing book launches I attended in tht Arab world where only few friends of the author turned up. The surprise was when we approached the big hall in Taj Mahal Hotel and we saw tens of young men and women standing outside the widely open doors of the hall that cannot take one more person. The seats were all occupied and the young men and women who could not find anywhere to sit filled every possible space on the sides, in the front and the rear of the hall as if they are attending a press conference about the hottest and most pressing issues in the world. With great difficulty, I had a glimpse of the host who was directing questions to the author and a glimpse of the author Amitav Gosh and a poster of the cover of his book "A Sea Of Poppies".

After an hour of discussion, I again found myself in an impossible position to be able to buy the book. There was a long cue snaking thorough the room with every one carrying a book and heading for the signature of the author. Are we on a different planet, I thought to myself from what I experience in the Arab world for the last twenty years? How did Arab people convince themselves that this is not the age of the book and that reading has receded all over the world? Or has the habit of reading subsided only in the Arab world?  And in order  not to do anything about it phrases were coined to give the impression that this is what is happening all over the world.

This event triggered in my mind what I see in Europe or Australia or any other part of the world. I see people and children reading, and friends always start by asking what are you reading nowadays. Does this mean that most countries have come to grip with reemphasizing their education and culture in the face of sweeping globalization and only the Arabs are not doing what needs to be done to preserve their language, their literature and their identity? This educational scene in India is only one facet of the economic, industrial, agricultural and technological rise of India. All this is coupled with absolute humility and an exemplary tolerance of all people from different religious and ethnicities formulating a beautiful country that is a semi-continent.

What I admired most in India is their deep awareness of the necessity to keep their ancient identity and yet open up to the latest technologies. In order to do that they focus on educating and training their young people, whereas the young people in the Arab world today face a crisis of identity. They learn foreign languages, but, often, at the expense of the Arabic language and they catch up with modernity but only at the expense of crafts which their ancestors did for thousands of years. India, China. Malaysia and Turkey are brilliant examples of preserving culture and excelling in technology and science. Why can't the Arabs do the same thing?

My answer to this question is that the Arab countries today have a very poor educational system – with various shades in Arab countries – a system that is not producing inventions and creative thoughts but only degrees which are not enabling the graduates to be employable any way. There is a rift in the Arab world between ancient Arab culture, that, until recently, constituted the backbone of Arab life, and between an imported modern culture that is not adapted and accommodated to the needs of our society in a way that preserves the best of our heritage in all domains and adds to it the best produce of the human mind. The successful adaptation of the countries I have mentioned above to modernity without losing their identity proves that it is not true that globalization is bound to sweep all of us no matter what we do. Many countries in the world have solved the dilemma of identity versus modernity. But due to the extreme poverty in research in the Arab world, we have not even begun to do so. It is an urgent call to start and time is of the essence.