Father India

Alexandra Lange

His premise is grand —Father India proposes to be a resolutely anti-imperialist history of how India influenced the West. . . .Paine. . .bounces about among psychology, literary criticism and a creative retelling of biographical fact. . . .[and] also occasionally lapses into prose worthy of a romance novel. —The New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Reformers, artists, intellectuals, oddballs, kooks, seekers and lost souls have long left the West to search out psychic relief or enlightenment in exotic, chaotic India. In his witty, well-written book, Paine (former literary editor of the Wilson Quarterly) examines the influence of this East/West interaction on various 20th-century figures. E.M. Forster, conflicted over his homosexuality, was comforted by the muddle of the place and channeled his brilliant insights into A Passage to India; Yeats borrowed concepts of meditation and reincarnation, though he never actually traveled to India. Not all visitors there found instantaneous enlightenment. In 1938, Carl Jung went looking for a psychic renewal that would counter Europe's destructiveness but got dysentery instead ("I could not digest India"). Christopher Isherwood, after staying in a Hindu ashram, reflected that his best experience in India had been reading Willa Cather. Contrary to the title, Paine's capsule biographies often reveal more about Westerners and their influence than about India. For example, Annie Besant, Theosophist and Indian independence leader, never cast off the manner of a British memsahib. Viceroy George Curzon passionately worked to improve Indian institutions, before unwittingly becoming "the bastard father of Indian independence." If Paine's final section, tracing a philosophical line from Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr. through Gandhi and back to Thoreau and the Upanishads, is a little less convincing, what precedes it is a smart demonstration of the mix of expectation and experience that cross-fertilized many fascinating private lives. (Nov.)

Alexandra Lange

His premise is grand -- Father India proposes to be a resolutely anti-imperialist history of how India influenced the West. . . .Paine. . .bounces about among psychology, literary criticism and a creative retelling of biographical fact. . . .[and] also occasionally lapses into prose worthy of a romance novel. -- The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

In these sketches of a dozen Westerners who visited South Asia, ranging from intellectuals of global renown to sociopaths and sexual misfits, Paine, formerly literary editor of the Wilson Quarterly, contemplates the pull that Indian culture has exerted on outsiders of various sorts. The earliest camp included such die-hard missionaries of Western progress as the British viceroy Lord Curzon, who tried unsuccessfully to shape India in Europe's image, and theosophist and president of the Indian National Congress Annie Besant, who viewed India as a laboratory for the synthesis of Eastern spirituality and Western politics. A second and much larger group of travelers consisted of those seeking self-transformation. E.M. Forster, the author of A Passage to India, came to terms with his homosexuality while serving at a provincial maharajah's court. Another English novelist, V.S. Naipaul, sailed to the land of his ancestors to find his ethnic identity. His quest remained largely unfulfilled as he battled to adjust to the Hindu fatalist mentality and unsanitary living conditions prevalent in India. Sex-crazed homosexual screenwriter Christopher Isherwood interspersed his debauchery with visits to the Hollywood Vedanta Center. The inevitable result of these lost souls' superficial forays was the vulgarization of Eastern religion, confirming Carl Jung's sensible statement, volunteered after a brief trip to India in 1938, that the Westerner is sure to make an inappropriate or misguided use of the Indian legacy. With the possible exception of his discussion of Martin Luther King, who adapted Gandhi's theory of nonviolence, Paine falls short of his stated goal: to show how Indianthought transformed the modern West. At most, his book demonstrates how several eccentrics misappropriated and misrepresented Indian culture. While readers shouldn't expect a coherent picture of Indian spirituality, Paine does offer a fresh perspective on various 20th-century personalities, enlightening provided that one is somewhat familiar with them already.