6664 travelandleisureindia.intravelandleisureindia.in
BEYOND
Travel Deeperjust as keen and
sensitive perspectives
on life as our English
language writers,
but their horizons
are necessarily more
limited, and a national
perspective often
eludes them. They are
doubly discriminated
against—for being
young and being
outside the scope of the
English language press.
Creating a national
programme that
funds young writers
to travel the country
and write about it in
their local languages
is a useful step
towards our collective
cosmopolitanism.
The unseemly and
pointless controversies
about language could
be diluted if we came
up with a course
of travel and study
linked to studying
a new language from a diff erent part
of the country. UP bhaiyyas could be
hosted in Tamil Nadu for a three-week
intensive course in Tamil along with
visits to Mahabalipuram, Madurai, and
Kanchipuram. Their Tamil counterparts
could be off ered a total immersion
experience in Hindi along with visits
to Lucknow, Allahabad, and Kashi.
The resources for all this do not all have
to come from the State. But the Government could establish
a National Endowment for the Discovery of India that is
open to private tax-deductible contributions and that can be
used to fi nance these ideas. If we are to grow into a country
that is open-minded, we must learn to not just leave the
windows of our homes open to the world, as the Mahatma
advised us, but also step out and engage with the world.
The best place to start is in India itself—large, multiple,
diverse, and in many ways unknown to its own citizens.
To encourage young Indians to travel through their own
land would reify the idea of India for the next generation.
It would be a journey well worth undertaking by all of us.
If we do this, The Discovery of India need no longer be
a 70-year-old title in libraries and bookstores, but a core
mission of every Indian. Can we, as a state and society,
rise to this challenge?Let the Kashmiri children learn
about the vast oceans, while
Malayali children learn about
the snow-clad mountains.
diffi culty of obtaining visas. But why not promote
travel within India?
Our Government sets up so many schemes—
why not one to make India more accessible to young
Indians? We could, for instance, have a centrally
facilitated nationwide school children’s exchange
programme. Let children from Srinagar come and
spend two weeks in a year in Thiruvananthapuram
and vice versa. Let the Kashmiri children learn
about the vast oceans, while Malayali children learn
about the snow-clad mountains. Let them interact
and play, fi ght and make friends. This could create
friendships that might last a lifetime. But it would
need organisational support and subsidies, which
the State can provide.
Or take our young writers in Indian languages,
who are rarely able to venture beyond the prisms,
and the prisons, of their vernaculars. They have