Zócalo Public Square

No matter how many Silicon Valley-bound software engineers, Texan-imitating call center operators, or Pepsi-endorsing movie stars it produces, India retains a promise of untrammeled, ancient spirituality. But how is modernity changing some of the country’s oldest traditions? Children of businessmen and engineers disobey their parents to join obscure, exacting religious orders; holy men hold work-a-day jobs; Sufi mystics struggle in Talibanizing provinces. Historian and travel writer William Dalrymple, author of Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, visited Zócalo to explore where modern meets ancient in a transforming country, and the constant human pursuit of the divine.