Two things happened after I stayed home last weekend, enjoying the respite from the heat and the advent of rain in Johannesburg: Diwali, and my acquisition of Salil Tripathi’s recently published, elegant portrait of the community to which we both belong.
Diwali’s significance lies in celebrating the victory of light over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance, involving rituals such as Lakshmi Puja to honour the goddess of wealth. It is seen as a time for a fresh start, including the beginning of new financial years or ventures. I dare say we need to take this to heart.
Tripathi’s magnum opus — it is 730 pages long — asks Gujaratis to embrace their better selves, their tradition of tolerance, nonviolence, compromise and enterprise. It also traverses the paradox of Gujaratis, who produced three politically diverse prime ministers of India, the founder of Pakistan, Mahatma Gandhi and a string of global economic powerhouses from Tata and Reliance to Wipro and scores of others — yet another point of reflection.
Likewise in SA, Gujaratis count among themselves traders of substance, significant faith-based leaders and a long line of politicians, from Yusuf Dadoo to Pravin Gordhan, who have made their mark on the social, political and economic landscape. They include Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Parsis and their role — like their forebears in India — has been disproportionately impactful across the board. Their contribution speaks for itself and their names, too many to mention.
Make no mistake, with 55-million people who consider themselves Gujarati in India and another 6-million abroad, they have their fair share of conmen, swindlers and rioters among them. However, in what Rachel Dwyer (a professor at my alma mater, London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies) calls a huge thali of a book, Tripathi explores “how they earn, politick, pray, create and make merry”.
For South Africans, what would the main takeaway from the book be? Perhaps the Gujarati instinct not to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, when to cut losses, how to spend less and get more.
Even Gujarati trade unions favour compromise over confrontation. They don’t want the mills to close — which reminds me of a time, many years ago, when I was in the family business and former cabinet minister Ebrahim Patel (another Gujarati), who was then a firebrand trade unionist, threatened a crippling strike.
My father, who had spent the best portion of his life fighting for our collective freedoms, simply handed him the keys and said “you run the business then, son”. The strike evaporated and any grievances were amicably resolved — Gujarati to Gujarati.
In the spirit of Diwali’s renewal and the ethos of Gujaratis, which embraces risk and reward, the filling of bellies and ends that justify the means, Tripathi’s Portrait of a Community makes essential reading. It is generous, frank and deeply informative.
As he says towards the end of the book, “Gujaratis don’t need to know who they are; they need to learn from them, how to live with one another”. He consciously says, perhaps for the first time, “they” and not “we”. He adds the rider, “what has become of Gujarat is not my idea of Gujarat”, but remember, he says “I am an insider looking out, but also the outsider looking in”.
His words are telling — for all — as we wrestle with communalism, corruption, change and the need to cater for “their” respective countrymen and women. They speak beyond Gujarat. They speak to SA too — of the duty to feed not only ourselves, but our fellow citizens.
• Cachalia, a businessperson and management consultant, is a former DA MP and public enterprises spokesperson, and chaired De Beers Namibia.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.