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Summary: Father India engages on so many levels I couldn't stop...
Review: Father India engagingly describes how India has impacted and transformed some of the West's most unique minds. Paine writes with an intelligence and compassion rarely found today. Whether your interests lie in literature, spirituality, history, or the Third Way, this book will touch you.
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Summary: Father India, Mother England (usually)
Review: Father India is a very evocative and thoughtfully written book about the experiential travels and tribulations of the visitors that form its chapters.I enjoyed reading the non-religious, non-philosophical, historic account thoroughly...
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Summary: An Indian answer?
Review: I found this a fascinating, thought-proving book. The author takes takes various people who were in their various ways influenced by India, and tells of the real effect India had upon them. They range from the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, through the authors Isherwood and E M Forster to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jnr. The common thread is that each sought something out of India, either something that their Western societies seemed unable to give them, or the culmination of their ambitions. The question is, were all of them expecting too much of India - did they, like V S Naipaul, have an "idea of India" which, when tested against reality, would lead inevitably to disappointment? I thought that this book was very well written, and I learnt of lives of which I was largely ignorant. The main interest for me was those people who felt disatisfaction with Western society. For example, Christopher Isherwood, who was steeped in the Western Cartesian tradition of doubting everything, ended up being "so cultivated and yet so directionless". Many felt that the West had entered a phase of "despiritualized hypermaterialism". Society had moved (and indeed is still moving) beyond religion as the underpinning prop, yet has found nothing to replace it. Could India provide an alternative way forward? Gandhi appears as something of an anomaly in the book, and yet the author holds the view that he created a synthesis of Eastern and Western thought. I was interested in the fact that Gandhi felt that the Raj had injured both Britain and India - a theme perhaps not fully explored by historians. What struck me at the end of the book was that each of the subjects in it asked a lot of Indian culture, perhaps too much. Also, I reflected on how times have changed since the homosexual Forster felt freer in Indian society than in Britain (has the situation been reversed since Forster's time?). An end thought - is the on-going globalization moving Indian society into the same "despiritualized hypermaterialism" experienced by the West? I don't know the answer to that, but it's an interesting question to ask.
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Summary: Interesting tales, but a third-hand view of India
Review: India, some might say, offers up maternal images, those which nurture and guide a soul to new discoveries. Jeffrey Paine re-defines paternity in a rather nice way, along those lines, showing us in vivid portraits how several key Western thinkers were transformed by this rich South Asian country filled with remarkable images and ideas. Perhaps in one of his previous incarnations Paine _was_ a portrait artist, for the general character of each individual is rapidly brushed in and then the significant details which formed them are carefully drawn, episode by fascinating episode. Paine restructures time so that it becomes possible to imagine the full weight of social constriction and obligation which each individual suffered through, and he offers glimpses of what each found when they disembarked in India, far different from the scene one might come upon today. Because of his fluent knowledge of literature of all countries and of the philosophical currents which carry along many fictional thoughts, Paine is able to weave a complex cloth ---a whole suit, (not just the trousers or vest), full of all the nuanced colored threads of ideas. I cannot recomend this book more highly to anyone, whether they profess an interest in India or not. It draws one into to worlds faraway, intimate, spiritual and illuminating. What soul could want for anything more...
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Summary: An eloquent and engaging portrait of the influence of India
Review: India, some might say, offers up maternal images, those which nurture and guide a soul to new discoveries. Jeffrey Paine re-defines paternity in a rather nice way, along those lines, showing us in vivid portraits how several key Western thinkers were transformed by this rich South Asian country filled with remarkable images and ideas. Perhaps in one of his previous incarnations Paine _was_ a portrait artist, for the general character of each individual is rapidly brushed in and then the significant details which formed them are carefully drawn, episode by fascinating episode. Paine restructures time so that it becomes possible to imagine the full weight of social constriction and obligation which each individual suffered through, and he offers glimpses of what each found when they disembarked in India, far different from the scene one might come upon today. Because of his fluent knowledge of literature of all countries and of the philosophical currents which carry along many fictional thoughts, Paine is able to weave a complex cloth ---a whole suit, (not just the trousers or vest), full of all the nuanced colored threads of ideas. I cannot recomend this book more highly to anyone, whether they profess an interest in India or not. It draws one into to worlds faraway, intimate, spiritual and illuminating. What soul could want for anything more...
Rating: 
Summary: A lively and entertaining collection of stories
Review: Jeffery Paine is an engaging writer, and this book, Father India, is a nicely crafted set of stories about the the journeys to India taken by a half-dozen travelers. Each of these travelers had some expectations about Inidia and some goals aligned with those expectations. Paine tells us what the visitors found in India, and how the fact of India changed their lives. The reader should not expect a sober recital of history here. What we have instead (in large part) is a succession of stories in which the main characters experience in varying degrees transformations in their ways of seeing the world. The details of these changes are not documented; Paine's genius is in telling the story of the visitors' psychological progress (or regress) on the basis of what can be inferred from observed events. But again, it is not history -- that's not the genre in which Paine operates. What the author does is to masterfully paint pictures of these men and women who went to India to find X and emerged from the experience with Y. Paine handles prose so very well! I think I'll read more of his work. The only objection I would make of Father India is that his rather complete ignorance of Christianity, which defect was a bit unsettling. I think he has Christianity confused with some sort of New England Calvinistic cult.
Rating:
Summary: A lively and entertaining collection of stories
Review: Jeffery Paine is an engaging writer, and this book, Father India, is a nicely crafted set of stories about the the journeys to India taken by a half-dozen travelers. Each of these travelers had some expectations about Inidia and some goals aligned with those expectations. Paine tells us what the visitors found in India, and how the fact of India changed their lives. The reader should not expect a sober recital of history here. What we have instead (in large part) is a succession of stories in which the main characters experience in varying degrees transformations in their ways of seeing the world. The details of these changes are not documented; Paine's genius is in telling the story of the visitors' psychological progress (or regress) on the basis of what can be inferred from observed events. But again, it is not history -- that's not the genre in which Paine operates. What the author does is to masterfully paint pictures of these men and women who went to India to find X and emerged from the experience with Y. Paine handles prose so very well! I think I'll read more of his work. The only objection I would make of Father India is that his rather complete ignorance of Christianity, which defect was a bit unsettling. I think he has Christianity confused with some sort of New England Calvinistic cult.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on India
Review: Jeffrey Paine has done a masterful job in this refreshingly new and yet thought-provoking work. His insight into the "real" India is surprising given India's diversity and the propensity for even Indian authors to miss the subtleties of the subcontinent. What comes out clearly is Gandhi's lifetime of effort from a bird's eyeview, and what Gandhi was trying to accomplish in India and in the world in general. The effect India has had on "outsiders" in the form of invaders, visitors or missionaries has been to transform them into individuals who saw something greater in themselves than before. In effect India "converts" people more successfully than scripture thumping missionaires or cannon/sword-carrying members of the barbarian party. No small wonder that Gandhi, whose life exemplifed the principle of turning the other cheek and in loving one's neighbors rejected Christianity on moral grounds! This book also offers insight into why Christianity could not spread in India like it did in Latin America...India intoxicates its visitors, either with conversion to "Indianism" or into revulsion...either way you are transformed forever. Fundamentally, all approaches to the Truth have been tried in India, from hero (messiah) worship to heroin worship and even Heroin (drug) worship in the form of either Vedism or Tantrism. People just don't find anything new in foreign religions. And this fact is amply brought out in the authors examples of Aurobindo's effort in Pondicherry, Annie Beasant work in Madras, and in Gandhi's own "ashrams". A corrolary benefit of this book is that these facts are illuminated in a masterful manner.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on India
Review: Jeffrey Paine has done a masterful job in this refreshingly new and yet thought-provoking work. His insight into the "real" India is surprising given India's diversity and the propensity for even Indian authors to miss the subtleties of the subcontinent. What comes out clearly is Gandhi's lifetime of effort from a bird's eyeview, and what Gandhi was trying to accomplish in India and in the world in general. The effect India has had on "outsiders" in the form of invaders, visitors or missionaries has been to transform them into individuals who saw something greater in themselves than before. In effect India "converts" people more successfully than scripture thumping missionaires or cannon/sword-carrying members of the barbarian party. No small wonder that Gandhi, whose life exemplifed the principle of turning the other cheek and in loving one's neighbors rejected Christianity on moral grounds! This book also offers insight into why Christianity could not spread in India like it did in Latin America...India intoxicates its visitors, either with conversion to "Indianism" or into revulsion...either way you are transformed forever. Fundamentally, all approaches to the Truth have been tried in India, from hero (messiah) worship to heroin worship and even Heroin (drug) worship in the form of either Vedism or Tantrism. People just don't find anything new in foreign religions. And this fact is amply brought out in the authors examples of Aurobindo's effort in Pondicherry, Annie Beasant work in Madras, and in Gandhi's own "ashrams". A corrolary benefit of this book is that these facts are illuminated in a masterful manner.
Rating:
Summary: Good synthesis of Indian influence on 20th C.West thinkers
Review: Jeffrey Payne has eloquently drawn a picture of India's influence on Western thinkers in the 20th Century. Most readers would be familiar with the effect India had on the Beatles, some the experience of Joseph Campbell, but I had not been exposed to these thinkers (except Gandhi, by way of civil rights) and their legacy on the West. I agree with the author that Tibetian Buddhism today has a level of celebrity that Hinduism once enjoyed. But the reality is that more of us know Indians than Tibetians and it is refreshing to see a book expand on our understanding of their culture. A worth while addition to the dialogue of human diversity.
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