By Deepa Majumdar
This world has always had its share of nomads, who stand in stark contrast to settled communities. Whether pastoral or peripatetic, some are traditionally nomadic. Others are so for spiritual reasons – like the mendicant monks and nuns who refuse to stay more than three days in any one place, for fear of attachment. But the most impoverished of all nomads, perhaps, is the tourist – a strange phenomenon of modernity. Anything but a traveler, he is often a dilettante and voyeur, who visits different places to assuage his extreme emptiness of soul. Materialism, the deracinating passions, plus the rootlessness endemic to modernity, make him roam restlessly, seeking vicariously and in vain for roots in a rooted community. Often, his first prey are indigenous communities, given their relative rootedness, and resistance to modernity.
To blame also are capitalism and the sexual revolution – given the havoc they have wreaked on the ancient virtue of hospitality. Up to my pre-television generation and a few younger ones, visiting was the primary form of entertainment, with chatting the main form of communication. Hospitality was lavish, not just in the home, but also in the public sphere. Indeed, the guest was God. Restaurants felt like home. In this child-friendly India of yore, waiters bent low to ask child visitors, “May I give you some more”? Thus, even restaurants prioritized hospitality over profits.
The so-called sexual revolution has destroyed home-based hospitality. Lust destroys love and therefore, hospitality, which is a form of love. Today, the barbarism caused by avarice is so great that very few people even know how to enter a home with good will and blessings. I have known guests to admire a material object before they have greeted their host. Under conditions of capitalism, even heaven is for sale. Hence, we should not be surprised that capitalism has yanked hospitality out of the home and reified it into a marketable commodity. Indeed, hospitality is for sale, like everything else. This includes chatting. The “chat” has become a commodity in digital communication. But given its contrived coziness, it cannot diffuse the alienation inherent in the digital world. When we reify and sell something spiritual, we strip it of its inherent moral worth. Having lost their inner sheen, hospitality and chatting have forfeited their innate power of communication. As a result, modern man is more love-hungry than ever before.
Every culture has its share of ugly citizens. Like the ugly American, the ugly Indian displays the worst aspects of his culture. Loud, inconsiderate, sensuous, and disrespectful, he plays his raucous “music” even around hospitals and silent zones, with scant respect or consideration for the needs of his hosts. Littering the grounds wherever he moves, he personifies cacophony, intrusion, and chaos. As a tourist, he is no different from the worst offenders at a zoo. Indeed, he treats his host communities as if they are inmates of zoos – so great is his disrespect. As sentient beings, both people and animals deserve respect as ends in themselves – not as means to the ends of alien others. But the gaze of the voyeur-tourist reifies both people and animals into commodities. Mammon rules his world, so that he thinks he can treat a place as he wants, just because he pays money. Despite the realities of western neo-colonialism, western tourists are often more considerate and courteous than the ugly Indian. Often, they tip more generously. Given their ideals of democratic egalitarianism and social justice, and their historical experiences of anti-racism, western tourists can be more courteous to indigenous communities and impoverished Indians.
The modern tourist, therefore, is an entirely different species from the traveler. Even considerate tourists are caught in the maelstrom of commercialism. In an existential sense, every sentient being is a metaphysical traveler because his very existence entails traversing time and transience. But in a physical sense, the traveler is unique among his fellow humans. This world has always had its share of wanderers. Distinct from the traditional nomad, the wanderer travels for serious reasons that range from self-discovery to discovery of the world. To the wanderer, travelling is a mode of education and an art. He travels in order to learn from different people and cultures. Not because he is empty and a voyeur, but because he wants to add to his inner wealth of wisdom. Today travelers are utilitarian and cosmic. They go to outer space to pave the way for space tourism.
Yet not all travelers are virtuous. Like others they cover the range between good and evil. Always intrepid and rarely a dilettante or voyeur, the traveler is, at best, an ambassador and diplomat who bridges different cultures, and at worst, a philanderer and adventurer. Often, travelers are itinerant writers, who leave treasure troves of documents for historians. Thus, Xuanzang, a Chinese Buddhist monastic traveler, left documentations of interactions between China and India. Moreover, travelers often make history directly. Even a ruthless traveler, like Christopher Columbus, made history. Finally, unlike tourists, travelers travel great distances. Thus, Marco Polo traveled over 15,000 miles. Travelers, therefore, affect their times and posterity in ways that tourists simply do not.
But what is travelling, in essence? In the words of Ibn Battuta, “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” In the words of the Buddha, “It is better to travel well than to arrive.” This last quote, supposedly from the Buddha, I am sure, was meant metaphorically. Yet it applies to physical travel as well. Unlike the tourist who consumes the objects of tourism, thus experiencing nothing – the traveler revels more in the experience of traveling than in that of arrival. A dilettante and voyeur who turns tourism into a spectacle, the tourist neither learns nor contributes to learning. Pecking at this place and the other, rather than savoring and experiencing, he returns as homeless and empty as before.
The main challenge of the modern reified hospitality industry lies in its demand that we practice this precious form of love – not in the sanctity of a home – but in the wilderness of the market-driven world. It therefore calls for practicing love amidst the sheer alienation of the market economy. As a result, it demands proper legislation to safeguard both tourists and their local hosts. A system of checks and balances should foster the hospitality industry, even as it protects all who partake of it.
This type of legislation matters all the more in a place like Meghalaya, given its frail economy and natural wonders. The beauty of Meghalaya is, as yet, pristine. Unlike the manufactured beauty of many natural spots in the developed economies, Meghalaya is still relatively untouched by the footprints of man. Such rare beauty, which makes the mind naturally contemplative and God conscious, deserves protection and homage.
At the very least, tourism in Meghalaya should be sustainable, as Patricia Mukhim urges as the main thrust of her article, “Maggie Noodles Tourism killing Meghalaya” (TST, Aug 18, 2023). Poor villagers and others in Meghalaya need the tourism industry, because it is, as Ms. Mukhim says, the only “clean, green, non-polluting, non-invasive and employment generating industry.” Tourism helps not only economically, but also morally and spiritually – by diffusing the xenophobia inherent in the identity politics of an isolated society. Indeed, tourism can be a powerful antidote against xenophobia. Surely there is a way to protect local people, through proper legislation, without encouraging the ethnocentrism that mars hospitality? Surely there is a way, through rules and regulations, to educate tourists to respect the sanctity of the places they visit? Surely, YouTuber tourists who visit Meghalaya villages, should be forced, by law, to share their profits with the people they film? For all this to happen, both tourists and their hosts must respect each other. Moreover, all rules and laws must be enforced by the proper authorities, without corruption.