Spirit in a Book Review

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704611404574556473204912180.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

By SADANAND DHUME
India has long been an object of fascination for foreigners seeking spiritual enlightenment. At times this takes the form of a travel-show fixation with rituals performed along the Ganges; sometimes it's a pilgrimage to the Dalai Lama's home in Dharamsala. But the country's rapid economic development brings with it a question: Does the new India, with its feuding billionaires and mushrooming call centers, its armies of reality TV contestants and booming stock exchanges, still offer a spiritual alternative to materialism? Or has it become, to quote the British writer William Dalrymple, "just another fast developing satrap of the wider capitalist world?"

In "Nine Lives," Mr. Dalrymple—who has written about the subcontinent for 20 years, and is best known for his forays into Mughal history—sets out to answer this question by exploring the parts of India and Pakistan "suspended between modernity and tradition." He quickly discovers that the demands of development often conflict with India's age-old spiritual traditions. A sacred grove is challenged by the depredations of illegal loggers. Villagers in Rajasthan must choose between continuing to bring their ailing cattle to an illiterate minstrel who has memorized a 600-year-old epic or instead turning to the nearest veterinarian. A distinguished Tamil bronze caster, the 23rd in an unbroken family line going back to the 13th century, tries to persuade his son not to abandon the family tradition for the glamour of a job as a computer engineer in Bangalore.

In the end, Mr. Dalrymple comes to no firm conclusion. The traditions "Nine Lives" explores are often threatened. Yet, in their own way, like India itself, they are also remarkably robust. Mr. Dalrymple finds the holy men of modern India preoccupied with the same questions that absorbed their ancient counterparts. Among them: "the quest for material success and comfort against the claims of the life of the spirit; the call of the life of action against the life of contemplation; the way of stability against the lure of the open road"