The book launch took place, appropriately, at the India International Centre March 17, just two days before President Clinton’s visit.

At the book launch and in the book, Crasta suggested numerous countermeasures including establishing an Eastern Nobel Prize (with the money from our new and ultra-generous Indian billionaires), the secession of Indian Catholics from the Catholic Church (because the Pope is white!), universal multiple citizenship, and ensuring that in our list of book purchases, at least half the books are by authors who have NOT impressed the whites.

In this book, Crasta argues that we Indians, as well as most Third World nations, have made white into the color of power and black into the color of inferiority, darkness, and evil. He sees the West as increasingly ruling the cultural agenda of India: particularly at its commanding heights—the minds of its brightest and wealthiest, its urban young, its intellectuals, its English-language media. He sees this as a continuation of imperialism and colonialism at a more sophisticated level: the colonies have been established inside the former subjects’ heads. They are now slave to their Inner White, and they make every effort, in their behavior and in their goals, to impress and please the Outer, Real White, who now runs the colonies from their home base.

The guaranteed formula for success in today’s world: The Twelve Commandments of Nonwhite (Male) Success in the West

• The political, economic, and philosophical implications of Monica Lewinsky’s underwear.
• Why the idea that color doesn’t matter is a black lie, and what to tell your children about their color
• Why colored people worship white people, and want to get patted on the back by them.
• Why milking the West is a major Third World industry.
• The phenomenon of Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, and Arundhati Roy, and what it means.
• The New Spiritual Colonialism
  

The International Dynamics of Race Today

It was a nippy, late-August evening in magical Edinburgh. I was puffing uphill towards Edinburgh Castle and the setting sun, my tired feet trudging over the thousand-year-old stone-paved road called the Royal Mile, my mood anything but regal. Then I saw a sign that lifted my sagging spirits. "Indian brasserie," it said, which I first misread as "brassiere."

Proceeding bravely in the direction of the sign, I little suspected that in this pub-rich Scottish capital, where I was winding down the low-profile publicity tour for my novel The Revised Kama Sutra, I would be the beneficiary of semi-divine Enlightenment—even if it were not in the same class as the one that had greeted my countryman Buddha at the end of his eight-year stay in the forest. For in this Indian "brasserie," or curry shop with atmospheric enhancements, I met an Indian immigrant, a butterfaced businessman whom I will call Ashok the Hun. Having noticed that Indian trinkets and the usual quasi-spiritual merchandise glittered attractively behind the large display window of his trinketry-cum-eatery, I decided to get to know him a bit. This would be a prelude to my gently suggesting that he help promote my novel, a subversive and politically provocative novel which had not even been reviewed at that point, let alone burned, banned, or stomped on by jackbooted skinheads or tophatted relatives of Winston Churchill or even the odd, miscast guided camel jockey. If there had been the slightest intention in my mind to try to suggest to him that he display five copies of my book in his store window, to lounge in the odd company of joss sticks and bottles of Ayurvedic snake oil, then it must have been a product of extreme fatigue.

Pleased that I had introduced myself, Ashok the Hun began telling me his life story, or rather, his Amazing Success Story.

"Three years ago, I came here, I was sweeping floors. I went hungry for three days, I lost three pounds!"

Really? You probably needed it, you ghee-fed prick.

He continued: "Sweeping floors! In India, I was a Chaudhury. I had eleven servants! I didn’t even touch my own shoes. And then I came here and one day, I was using a Hoover machine! I, a Chaudhury, using a Hoover machine like a chaparasi, you understand?!" He paused dramatically, and smiled. "Now I own this!"

"Own this?" I asked, impressed. You fat cat, you.

"I manage the entire building."

"Oh, I see." He had the authority to kick someone out for peeing in the elevator. Delicately changing the subject, I asked the little tycoon, shyly, "Er, what would you think of investing in my novel?" I showed him my British hardcover. Dominating the center of its revisionist front jacket, a tiny and semi-demurely semi-covered but giddily ecstatic Marilyn Monroe was absorbed in a somewhat passionate and improbable pelvic embrace with a pleased-looking Mughal gentleman, their middles tightly wrapped in loud-colored clothing, possibly to prevent the transmission of social diseases such as miscegenation.

"I’ll tell you what," he said after a minute, conspiratorially, as if he were buying a consignment of damaged potatoes on the cheap. "You print ten thousand copies, and you have my name on the jacket to say I sponsored it. And I’ll sell the book through my contacts. We’ll make a huge profit."

At this point, his soul partner and business buddy, Ahmed, who had been listening to us, interjected, "No, no, have his photo on the jacket." Breaking out into laughter, he continued, "Arre, have the photo of his big thing on the jacket!"

I smiled and barely restrained myself from asking Ahmed how he had ascertained the size of Ashok’s thing, or how big was big.

"Well, my name and my photo," continued Ashok the Hun, quite seriously. "How much you charge for ten thousand copies?"

Surprised by this sudden question and the unexpected direction of the conversation, and making a hurried but inaccurate mental calculation—seven pounds per book—I said, "Seventy thousand pounds." It seemed a fair offer, for I wasn’t well acquainted with the business end of book production. I reckoned the production would cost forty thousand, leaving me with thirty thousand as minimally acceptable remuneration for my six years of unpaid slave labor.

His eyes popped. Seventy thousand pounds could purchase a heck of a lot of Hoovers, or cheap handloom shirts, or brass ashtrays from Chandni Chowk, after all.

"I’ll tell you what," interjected Ahmed, who seemed to be on a roll. "You have to add twenty pages of photos. Without photos, people will be disappointed. I tell you what: you write about gays and lesbians making love. It will be a big seller!"

I laughed, realizing that my brief fantasy of a business deal was over. Still, I decided, purely as an intellectual exercise to occupy a dull evening with, to give him a bit of my spiel: the importance of Indians being able to publish courageous books, how this whole affair was a matter of our dignity and manhood as Indians, our right to express ourselves without censorship or inhibition in any style or form we wished—goals that were beyond monetary valuation.

"If you have to talk to us about it, then you don’t believe in the book," said Ashok, not entirely without logic. "You impress the whites, then you have made it. In this country, miracles can and do happen. In India and Pakistan, miracles never happen."

Impressing the whites: a crudely expressed formulation, perhaps, but one that he, and others before him, had doubtlessly expressed before in their private circles, where there was no need to hold one’s tongue and circumcise one’s speech—because there was no need to, ahem, impress the whites. Not only had this thought been expressed, but it had most certainly been the formula that fueled the lives of thousands, millions, perhaps nearly a billion darker-skinned earthlings—the last number including those who practiced it unconsciously.

Nothing, nothing, nothing at all is quite wasted on a writer, or need be. Without quite realizing it, Ashok the Hun, or rather Ashok the Rough Diamond, as I renamed him over the next few months, had more than helped me with my literary career. He had laid the foundations for an entire new book, been midwife to an understanding that had been growing within me. It was a book that would hold me in its thrall through rewrites, more rewrites, and false starts over the next five years as I consciously pondered a phenomenon that was lodged deep in the heart of brownness, of darkness of skin, of the international order of melanin.

Impressing the whites. Impressing the whites even to prove our manhood. Impressing the whites, period. The story of our miracle-starved lives, of too many Indian and Third World lives, whether we be like the culturally barren Ashok the Huns yearning for materialistic success and emigration; whether we be Bombayites trying to put on Oxford accents and fake a knowledge of cheeses and wines; or whether we be Delhi literati striving to make a favorable impression on Delhi’s Western diplomats—minor potentates who have, either by their power to throw parties and patronize locals and soak ’em up with Scotch and grant them visas, favors, or cultural junkets, or by their personal charm, become resident reminders of the superiority and the power of the white race. Having stubbornly held onto my Indian passport all these years, I am not immune, as no brown skinned person trying to function in the larger world can be: I have to occasionally "impress the whites" to get my passport stamped with short-stay European tourist visas.

How pervasive is this phenomenon? So pervasive, in fact, that a cursory examination of Indian bestseller lists suggests that virtually no literary book by an Indian writer working in English will make it really big in demi-white enclaves such as Bombay unless it impresses the hell out of the whites in London or New York. That’s the new destiny, the new Promised Land, the new karma of the favorite sons of Mother Ganga—and has been, particularly since the mid-nineteenth century, when Lord Macaulay, smuggling in white supremacist knowledge and Occidental arrogance in the guise of educating the natives, dealt the coup de **gräce to an already battered Indian self-confidence. Indian poet and **Mahatma Rabindranath Tagore complained that Indians noticed his existence only after he had won the Nobel Prize (and then they became insufferably, intrusively sycophantic). Even Gandhi was accepted as an Indian leader only after he had impressed the whites in South Africa, and as a world leader only after he had impressed the whites in America and England (a pity that he didn’t impress those on the Nobel Committee, as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin didn’t, but Salman Rushdie might). What a yogic feat, what a giant leap for one of the world’s oldest, greatest, and philosophically exalted cultures: from becoming one with Brahman, from escaping the cycle of maya and rebirth, to impressing the whites in our lives—the live ones who wear suits and skirts, as well as the White Superegos inside our heads.

* * *

Inside our heads? Yes, I suggest that this impressively powerful virus has taken control of our internal command centers, that perhaps hundreds of millions of us Indians are guilty of going blue in the face trying to impress the whites. Indeed, I will go further and say that we have surrendered our souls to white worship—and also to black hatred and self-hatred, which are the other side of white worship. Inside our heads, Indian civilization has been defeated by Western values and materialism. Yes! Inside our heads! That is why, nearly half a century after independence, Indian editors nervously awaited the results of Britain’s Booker Prize as if these were the results of India’s sovereign national elections rather than of their ex-colonial oppressor Britain’s appointment of the Literary King-Emperor of India. Even though Vikram Seth did not ultimately win the prize, his emperorship was assured by a million-dollar advance and the British media hoopla that he had already received. And most Indians, despite internal doubts and prompts of "This is worth a million? This is our best? You must be kidding!" responded with cries of "Hail! All Hail King Vikram!"—with the gray-haired doyen of Indian journalism, Khushwant Singh, leading the chorus like a dutiful vizier. Like many nonwhite former colonies that continue to allow Her Majesty the British Queen to appoint their Governor Generals, we in our curious snootiness still prefer British rule, not willing to give as much credence to the upstart Americans, who have given their imprimaturs to Dinesh D’Souza and Bharati Mukherjee. Our white worship, our genuflection before the Color White, is betrayed by the matrimonial advertisements in Indian papers ("Wanted fair-complexioned groom for very fair-complexioned bride"), and by the anxious efforts of many "successful" Indian immigrants in America to "become" white by making derogatory racist remarks about American blacks and joining the covertly racist Republican party. Sometimes, the darker the relative color of our own skins, the harder we strain to reinvent ourselves to impress the whites. As a result, India is not just the world’s largest democracy, but the world’s largest producer of coconuts: persons who are brown on the outside, but white on the inside. And its GNCP (or Gross National Coconut Production) increases far faster than its GNP.

This wacky leucoderma, this Michael Jackson sickness, is not entirely the fault of our ex-rulers, the British, but partly the understandably human result of centuries of political, economic, and social domination by foreigners, starting with the devastating Muslim raids and conquests of the eighth century onwards, and perhaps even marginally in the Aryan conquests of 2,000 years before Christ. As for the Hunnishness of modern-day India, which betrays its spiritual and artistic heritage by unashamed pursuit of materialism and discouragement of artistic endeavor, we are all affected by it.

But selling out, aping Westerners, and pandering to Western expectations is what we Indians have been told we need to do to get ahead ("Don’t fire your pen-guns until you hear the Ayes of the whites" is the golden rule of Indian writers writing in English). And we Indians, children of Kautilya, the Indian Machiavelli, have become so adept at doing this that we can easily give lessons to other Third World races who may not be as sharp. Laughing at my mention of the title of this book, and instantly understanding the book’s essence, a Bangalore computer specialist I had just met on a domestic flight said to me, "It’s something Indians are very good at." He added, almost as if the logical connection was obvious: "We have a huge inferiority complex."

One brilliant illustration of how powerfully this principle operates: the novels of the late Indrani Eknath Gyaltsen, an Indian woman who plagiarized two little-known British novels, changing only the names and the settings, were gobbled up by Western editors ravenously hungry to fill up their "Women and People of Color" quota—a Double Whopper for the price of a single! Other Indian writers play more shrewdly to the white race, sometimes cultivating specific white godfathers, knowing that their lives could become very sweet indeed—million-dollar contracts, BBC-TV deals, invitations to writers’ festivals, even the French treatment. I refer here to the treatment the French are in the habit of giving to visiting African dictators and cabinet ministers: an occasional sweet young thing lying naked on their beds instead of the chocolate mint under their pillows, a goodwill gift from a civilization rich in blonde sexpot goddesses to the starving representatives of the goddess-disadvantaged.

This Western carrot of acceptance and riches is accompanied by a stick: Do not cross the boundaries. Always remember your place. When my novel was circulating in the U.S. in manuscript form, I was warned against its insolent tone. I was advised by Western publishing insiders to simply take out a few provocative sentences and paragraphs—and perhaps, if I could, a chapter here, a naked editor there—and Fame would be mine. My manuscript had made it into the posh offices (and occasionally, the residences) of the famous and the powerful. I had received generous praise from some of them. All of this had swollen my head and made me feel stubborn and unstoppable. I never realized that most Indian writers never even get to my stage of receiving discreet warnings, because the carrot and stick are so discreetly transferred by Third World writers onto their internal censor that they are often unconscious of their own self-censorship. Foolishly inspired by all those Western literary martyrs who died starving for their principles (and subconsciously by the One who died on the Cross), I refused to edit out the daring parts, which I saw as making a political point for Indians. The result, as any Third World writer who has tried to take such risks will tell you, is that you will rarely get any appreciation or thanks from your fellow Third World writers, who are too busy at their own game of impressing the whites, and are irritated by any fellow-nationals’ attempt to try something different.

* * *

At least the lower rungs of Indians in India have other Indians to strive to impress: their Indian bosses and the Indian rich. But upper-middle-class Indians have had white worship subtly ingrained in them. A senior **Delhi-based Indian editor confessed to me, with frustration in his voice: "The foreigners [white Westerners] who are posted here [come on diplomatic or media assignments] are often very decent people when they arrive. But one year after they have been here [with Indians scrambling and fighting each other to please them and serve them because of the color of their skin]—they get spoilt." Meaning: they gradually begin to take their royal treatment and free multi-course meals for granted, socialize mostly with upper-class Indians, and after a while are even indignant when this special treatment is denied.

Even Indians in India know that in the larger scheme of things, it is the West that makes the rules. And they are pretty much resigned to it, as they are to summer and winter, day and night. Thus, when I first made the rounds of Delhi publishing houses asking if my novel-in-progress might interest them, their automatic advice was: Publish it in the West first. Once you impress the Westerners—by being an immaculate ape of their best, safest writers, with Indian spices occasionally blended in for authenticity and local color—Indians will worship you. If you impressed them, you really must be good. Thus it is that even in India, it is the West that makes and breaks reputations, just as African filmmakers must depend on Western companies for distribution, affirmation, and survival.

* * *

It is understandable, then, that many a serious Third World writer with a message setting out to write in English will discover, at some point, that he has no choice but to come to London and New York to "make it" as a writer, to find his potential audience, a large chunk of which exists in other Third World countries, where they can only be reached through media of international reach such as Time, The Observer, and The Times Literary Supplement, all controlled by Westerners. We in the Third World have gotten ourselves into such a mess, our heads and our distribution and financial systems so enslaved, that we can talk to each other only if the Sultans in London and New York permit us; even the Irish are honorary members of the Third World in that they too need to impress the London establishment if they are to make it in the U.S. and other international markets.

If this serious Third World writer writes without censoring his voice, however, he won’t reach his potential audience, for the white gatekeepers will not let him. This is the new colonialism, the Nineties’ way of subduing weaker people.

"A brilliant and sparkling writer." - The Hindu

"A humanity divided against itself cannot stand." Richard Crasta's amplification and modernization of Abraham Lincoln's chief message aptly captures the essence of his new book, Impressing the Whites. [This new book] gives us something to think about. Not attempting to preach . . . suggests viable solutions. Controversial, eloquent . . . goes where no man has gone before.- Asian Age, New Delhi (Book Pick of the Week