The past two decades or so have seen the beginnings of a shift in the power base of the world from the West to the East. Japan has of course been an economic power almost since the end of World War II and South Korea came on strong in the 1970s. When oil was discovered under the sands of the Arabian Peninsula, formerly impoverished sheikdoms became movers and shakers through petroleum power.
But the country that has captured the most attention in the past ten years has been India. Always one of the world's most populated countries, it has been lumped into the category of "developing nation" since the end of British rule in the late 1940s. So for most of the West, India's entrance onto the world stage as one of the most vibrant economies in the last few years has been like the emergence of a new popular star from nowhere.
Like all supposed "overnight sensations" that have appeared out of "nowhere," India has always been there. But for most outsiders, the country has been synonymous with poverty, spiritualism, and not much else. It was the country the Beatles went to and where George Harrison learned about the sitar.
It sounds ridiculous saying that now, but such was the chauvinism of people in the West that they were able to distill a culture thousands of years older than our own down to those base elements. Now that has started to change and we are beginning to learn a little about the people and the country that has become a world player.
One of the happy results of this his been the interest in novels written by Indians about India. The Peacock Throne by Sujit Saraf, just released in the past month in Canada by McArthur & Co, is one of the most recent examples of this excellent phenomenon. If you haven't heard his name before now, that will change with the publication of this book.
The Peacock Throne is set in the Indian city of Delhi. Specifically in one street – Chandi Chowk, in the district around the historic Red Fort - the former seat of Power for the Mogul's and the British, and the former home of the Peacock Throne. It was from the walls of the Red Fort that the British hung participants in the uprising of the 1860s and perhaps because of that, the Prime Minister of India makes a speech from the walls every independence day.
But Saraf's story is about modern Indian history and concerned with the people who are the power of the neighbourhood and the street, not the past or the country itself. But even modern history can be violent and chaotic especially in such a divided country as India. The book opens on the day that Indira Gandhi's Sikh bodyguard shot and killed her in retaliation for her sending the Indian army into the Golden Temple, the most sacred of Sikh temples in all India, in an attempt to evict anti-government forces.
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