I am only three working days away from leaving the National Law School in Bangalore. It has been a far too brief experience in India, a mere nine weeks including travel experiences prior to setting foot in the south of India. I had the good fortune of experiencing India's Independence Day celebrations on Saturday, August 15. India at 62 years of independence. The national paper saw fit to take a representative sample of Indian intellectuals and ask for their reflections on India at 62. The commentary I find very interesting as it reflects some of the debate that I have had within the Centre for Social Exclusion. There is no lack of pride, self-analysis, or self-deprecating humour when it comes to Indians reflecting on their (relatively) young and monstrous democracy. In the Centre there is open debate about how little progress has been made in the fight for equality amongst all citizens and the pervasive blemish of the caste system. The debate tends to centre itself on the validity of perpetuating the very language of caste in the fight for equality versus removing such language from the Indian lexicon and moving forward in a manner that, I feel, has been advocated by the United States - the notion of race blindness. But in India's case, caste blindness. As my research has recently taken me into American law, my limited knowledge suggests that race blindness fails to account for the complex and lengthy social narrative that underlies the very existence of African Americans in the USA. Whilst the theory behind all men created equal is good (in theory) in practice the disparities of social and economic empowerment are perpetuated without redress when one holds fast to the idea of pure individual meritocracy. Unlike the USA, India has been explicit in identifying and addressing, historical social inequities and moving forward to even the stakes in public life. Debate continues on the merits of identification politics.

But back to the representative sample of Indian intellectuals. Some of the more interesting observations came regarding the pride of place that India has within liberal democracies in the world. It is by far the largest, and perhaps by far the most unruly, but as one commentator observed, it has recently proved itself to be an informed, working democracy with an enormous voter turnout and a degree of political savvy that should be praised in such a youthful country (youthful from the perspective of 1947, not youthful in the historical capacity). Many comments criticized the continued high numbers of poor and illiterate people and remarked that Ghandi's objective of Antodaya (welfare of the last citizen of India) is not a priority in this country. Gandhi said, "the best test of a civilized society is the way in which it treats its most vulnerable and weakest members." The rapid rise of a middle class in India is both praised and lamented. Lamented, in part, for its rush to consumerism. A surprising number of comments in the paper included reference to law and various laws that came to represent India's aggressive attempts at distributing opportunity and creating equality across religion, caste, language, and ethnic barriers. I found invocation of the law surprising as most of the comments were drawn from authors, artists, scientists, and professors. Clearly, as I have seen and heard elsewhere, India's constitution and legislation are visible within the national psyche.

There is a common thread of discussion here regarding the balance between economic power (a la the west) and spiritual and mental well-being and the necessity of not losing sight of the latter in the quest for the former. A French ex-pat living in the hills of Tamil Nadu remarked that she felt India will guide the world in a new way of living prosperously with each other and with the planet. She was adamant that no better example existed for co-existence amongst species, flora, and fauna than the enlightened parts of this country.

It has been an interesting couple of months in this country. It appears to defy laws of physics in its day-to-day chaos and yet there is an underlying serenity that I hope never fades away.