Mystery candidate
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Little, Brown ￡20, 400 pages
I declare an interest. For all its terrible and terrifying contradictions, I have a passion for India. I have seen no topography more dramatically majestic than that of Rajasthan, no urban squalor to match Mumbai or Kolkata. I have admired Indian pluralism (not to be confused, as Edward Luce notes, with liberalism) and been appalled by manifestations of the caste system. I have admired Indian democracy and been shocked by its casual criminalisation.
To reverse the order, I have been deeply suspicious of Hindu nationalism, most savagely on display in the planned slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, while greatly admiring a nationalist BJP politician, Jaswant Singh, former external affairs and finance minister. Despite his perfect manners and old- world style ("I don't do breakfast meetings - can't leave the barracks before my morning tea"), I always felt, with him, just a smidgen as though I came from a developing country. The last time we met was in the Secretariat offices at the heart of Delhi, the Baker and Lutyens buildings that always bring a lump to my throat. They are a handsome manifestation of an idea and an age. How extraordinary that our (once) damp and green island was associated so intimately with this great Indian civilisation.
I am proud not of imperialism itself but of some things it left in its wake. The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, certainly the most economically literate and personally humble head of government I have met, made a remarkable speech in Oxford last year in which - controversially - he noted that it was proper for an Indian to be hostile to the British Empire but enthusiastic about some of its treasures, such as the English language (adorned by Indian usage) and the rule of law.
Luce, the FT's former South Asia correspondent, has written a book about this wonderful, annoying, incomparable country that he will have every reason to be proud of however much else he writes over the years. In Spite of the Gods is, as an Indian friend of mine at Balliol would have said, a real corker. Luce writes with affection, humour and great perception about India. I learnt a lot about the country from this book and got the impression that I was learning quite a bit about Luce too.
He is the best sort of foreign correspondent: sensitive, well- informed and humorous. Luce is not judgmental, but does offer judgments which seem pretty fair to me. He deals with the dark side of India, above all the poverty, which is a reproach to a state and politicians who seem to cut down the needy in the "friendly fire" of bullying, incompetent and corrupt government action. "To the poor," he argues, "the state is like an abusive father." While India is home to one third of the world's chronically malnourished children, its elites defend a mindset "that could be described as modernity for the privileged, feudalism for the peasantry".
Travelling to Bangalore in the spring, I encountered the schizophrenia that now afflicts every observer of India. You honk and lurch through the bullock-carts and the painted lorries to the Infosys campus outside the city, the starting point for Thomas Friedman's discovery that the world was flat (well, sort of flat). The campus is like a new Ivy League university, home to 14,000 Indian software engineers of the 46,000 employed by the company. And some Europeans worry about the competition from Polish plumbers.
It was Manmohan Singh who began to dismantle the "licence Raj" which held India back, welded forever it seemed to a sluggish "Hindu rate of growth". Jawaharlal Nehru's commitment to secularism and democracy did India proud, but his enthusiasm for the sort of socialism written into the preamble to the Indian constitution prevented the assault on poverty only growth can make possible.
But now India is everywhere, growing in high-ish single figures, with the possibility of even better to come if more reform can be delivered in a system where, alas, communists still believe in communism. India now trains a million engineering graduates a year (against 100,000 each in America and Europe) and stands third in technical and scientific capacity - behind America and Japan but ahead of China. Now when we play the geopolitical game of who will dominate the century to come, we add India to the stand-off between America and China.
I suspect that this will prove an old-fashioned way of looking at history, but of course I recognise the growing interest in whether we should - businessmen and politicians - place our bets on China's authoritarian model of development or India's democratic approach. The question is given more edge if you accept (which I don't) the old Chinese adage, "No mountain can accommodate two tigers."
Americans today would presumably put their money on India, for good democratic reasons, and even seek to build India as a counterweight to China. The Indians are too smart to play that game, and recall that it was not long ago that President Nixon and Henry Kissinger were prepared to look the other way if China decided to smack India down.
Luce answers the "fight of the century" question by noting the issues that India still has to tackle: poverty, Aids, the environment and the deepening of democracy. But, on balance, he remains a believer in India's strengths and virtues. So do I. And I also finished this book believing in Luce's.
Chris Patten is a former governor of Hong Kong and former European Commissioner for external relations.
现代印度的奇怪崛起
《
不顾诸神：现代印度的奇怪崛起》(In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India)
爱德华?卢斯(Edward Luce)著
小布朗出版社(Little, Brown)，20英镑，400页
我得先做个说明。虽然印度存在着这样那样糟糕而可怕的矛盾，但我热爱印度。我从未见过哪里的地貌比拉贾斯坦邦更加壮丽，也没见过哪个城市的破败景象能与孟买或柯尔喀塔相比。我欣赏印度的多元文化（如爱德华?卢斯所指出的，不要与自由主义混淆），又为种姓制度的种种表现感到惊骇。我敬佩印度的民主制度，又震惊于它漫不经心的犯罪倾向。
倒过来说，我一直对印度民族主义深感怀疑，最野蛮的是2002年古吉拉特邦有预谋的穆斯林大屠杀，同时，我又极为钦佩印度人民党(BJP)民族主义政治家贾斯旺特?辛格(Jaswant Singh)，他曾任印度外交部长和财政部长。他举止完美，有一种老派气质（“我不开早餐会议――在早茶之前不能离开营房”），和他在一起，我总觉得自己有那么一点点像来自发展中国家。我们最后一次见面是在德里市中心的政府办公楼里，那些贝克(Baker)和鲁琴斯(Lutyens)设计的建筑总是令我哽咽。它们是一种观念和一个时代的体面展现。我们这个（曾经）潮湿而青翠的岛国，与伟大的印度文明如此紧密地结合在一起，这是多么不同寻常！
我不是为帝国主义本身感到自豪，而是为它留下来的一些东西。印度总理曼莫汉?辛格(Manmohan Singh)绝对是我见过的最有经济学头脑、为人最谦逊的政府首脑。他去年在牛津做了一次出色的演讲。他在这次演讲中有争议地指出，印度人不妨对大英帝国怀有敌意，却热衷于它的某些财富，如英语（添加了印度用法）和法制。
曾任英国《金融时报》南亚记者的卢斯著书描写了这个奇妙、恼人而又无与伦比的国家。不论这些年他还写过多少其它文章，他都有充分的理由为此书感到自豪。正如我在牛津大学贝利奥尔学院(Balliol)的一位印度朋友所说的：《不顾诸神》非同凡响。卢斯行文幽默，富有感情，对印度有卓越的领悟。我从书中了解到许多关于印度的知识，而且感觉自己对卢斯也有了相当多的了解。
他是那种最棒的外国记者：敏感，消息灵通，有幽默感。卢斯不太做评判，但他做出的一些判断，在我看来非常公正。他触及的是印度的阴暗面，尤其是贫穷问题，这是对政府和政治家的责备，他们通过欺凌弱小和腐败无能的政府行为，“误伤”了最需要帮助的穷人。“对穷人来说，”他指出，“政府就像一位虐待他们的父亲。”尽管全球三分之一慢性营养不良的儿童在印度，但印度的精英阶层却在死守一种心态，“那可以被描述为特权阶层现代化、农民阶级封建化”。
今年春天去班加罗尔时，我遭遇到了折磨着每一位印度观察家的矛盾。你按着喇叭，艰难地穿过牛车和卡车组成的车流，前往信息系统技术公司(Infosys)城外的园区，正是从这个地方开始，托马斯?弗里德曼(Thomas Friedman)发现世界是平的（好吧，是有点平）。这个园区就像一所美国常春藤盟校(Ivy League)，公司聘用的4.6万名印度软件工程师中有1.4万名在这里工作。不可思议的是，某些欧洲人还在担心波兰水管工的竞争。
开始废除“许可证制度”的正是曼莫汉?辛格。这一制度阻碍了印度的发展，让它陷入“印度特色的发展速度”。贾瓦哈拉尔?尼赫鲁(Jawaharlal Nehru)致力的世俗主义和民主，曾为印度增光，不过，他对载入印度宪法序言的那种社会主义的热衷，阻碍了印度消灭贫穷。只有经济增长才能使脱贫成为可能。
不过，印度现在无所不在，经济增长速度接近10%，如果能够进行更多改革，印度经济增长率甚至可能会更高。印度现在每年培养100万工程学毕业生（相比之下，美国和欧洲各自为10万），科技实力居于第三位――在美国和日本之后，但领先于中国。现在，在谁会主宰未来世纪的地缘政治游戏中，我们需要在美国和中国之间加上印度。
但我怀疑，这将是一种过时的历史观，当然，我承认，人们越来越感兴趣的是，我们――商人和政治家――应该把赌注押在中国的威权发展模式上，还是印度的民主方式上。如果你赞同（我并不赞同）中国的古谚“一山难容二虎”，这个问题就更尖锐了。
出于支持民主的理由，美国人大概会把钱押注在印度身上，甚至希望把印度建成与中国抗衡的国家。印度人非常聪明，不会参与这个游戏。回想一下，就在不久前，如果中国决定把印度打倒，尼克松总统(President Nixon)和亨利?基辛格(Henry Kissinger)还准备故意视而不见。
卢斯回答有关“世纪之战”的问题时，指出了印度仍需解决的一些问题：贫穷、艾滋病、环境和民主深化等。不过，总体上，他仍然相信印度的实力和长处。我也如此。而且，读完这本书，我也相信了卢斯的观点。
彭定康曾任香港总督及欧洲委员会外交委员
