A couple of days ago, in "Politically incorrect India", I gave you a quick review of Gordon Sinclair's Khyber Caravan, a dated (written in 1935) but still cogent account of the author's travels and misadventures in the wild, wild northwest corner of the British Raj...and beyond. Three-quarters of a century since, the area he describes -- the Khyber Pass and its surrounds -- has changed very little -- and not necessarily for the better.
Khyber Caravan was not Sinclair's first book about the south Asian sub-continent. Three years earlier he wrote Footloose in India (S.B. Gundy, 1932), subtitled "Adventures of a news chaser from Khyber's grim gash of death to the tiger jungles of Bengal and the Burmese battle ground of the black cobra". Melodramatic? Definitely. A fascinating portrayal of a "loco land of lotus, lice and loincloths"? Decidedly! Worth reading today? Walt would say so.
21st-century readers may find Sinclair's style dated and a tad over the top. He writes in the "tough guy lingo" popular in Hollywood movies of the day. Imagine dialogue spoken by Edward G. Robinson reduced to print: gams, gats and bad eggs. Sinclair's prose is not just violet, but deep purple. But he was writing for a popular audience, what we might call the "middle-brow" readers of the Toronto Star. Did he speak to them in language they could understand? Footloose in India was published in October 1932 and the first edition sold out on the first day of release. It went on to become a best-seller in Canada that year, and in the USA and UK the following year.
Sinclair's books would today be called racist and politically incorrect in the extreme. He said and wrote what he thought. Here's an example which he quotes from a brief interview with Mahatma Gandhi. "India is undoubted the filthiest, smelliest, unhealthiest country in the known world."
Gandhi did not argue the point, possibly out of politeness, possibly out of annoyance. Or possibly because it couldn't be denied then and shouldn't be denied now. It's just that we don't say those things now. Which is exactly why Footloose in India should be read as an antidote to the poison of one-worldism and political correctness which the lamestream media is feeding us every hour of every day. We are not all the same! Some cultures and civilizations are more advanced, healthier, saner and generally better than others.
Later in Footloose in India, Sinclair recounts a visit to a mosque in Delhi.
The sight there was one to remember. Twenty thousand men faced the east and bowed in prayer like animated clockwork. Up front on a marble throne the priest droned his sing-song about life and death -- "What is written is written."
Nobody can do anything about anything. You live and die exactly the way it is all planned out in the beginning. No wonder these people make no progress in the world. No wonder they crawl about in filthy hovels. No wonder they suffer from inferiority, lice, starvation and fear of devils. It is written.
That observation could just as easily be written today, only in Pakistan, say, or Afghanistan, there being a dire dearth of mosques in Hindu India. Pious Muslims still believe "what is wwritten is written". Nothing has changed. It's just that we don't say those things now.
Does Gordon Sinclair's jaundiced view of the sub-continent mean that he hated or despised India and Indians? No. Did he not go back only three years later for another look? Which is more than many latter-day travellers could stomach. He just told it like it was, no sugar-coating or wilful blindness. Footloose in India and Khyber Caravan are good books, honest and entertaining. Read them if you can find them, before the PC police burn them.
Footnote: According to Sinclair's introduction to a 1966 edition of Footloose in India (McClelland & Stewart), he wrote another book, which was never published because "by the standards of that day, it was considered dirty". Ed. and I have looked hard [very hard! Ed.] but have been unable to find any trace of the hidden opus. Anyone with any information is asked to e-mail us.
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