19. India Has No Clue What "modern" Means.

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Listening to: Dev.D - Attyachaar - Rock Version
via FoxyTunes
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The Sri Ram Sena debacle in Bangalore needs no introduction, I hope. There seem to be two sides here -
1. The Hindu right wing (means "radical", maybe?) and people who think they're right.
2. The "Pink Chuddies" brigade.

[Please google any term you find unfamiliar - anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis, as well as a first-time reader, would notice that I hate sprinkling links all over my text like confetti. I'm old school, and a book-lover, and I hate the liberal use of highlighted words in anything I read, since that means the author is overtly insulting my intelligence. Anyone who feels the need to be sarcastic because I use italics and bold is welcome to do so in the privacy of his own home, and needs to be reminded that I've been decent and not highlighted "liberal" in the above paragraph, which is something they must've missed.]

Well, back to those 2 sides in this argument -to be referred to as Sides 1 and 2, respectively.

Side 1 is very familiar to us, right from the times of Babri Masjid and Graham Staines. In recent times, they have resorted to such co-curricular activities as moral policing, torturing card shop owners and generally being pains in the ..ahem, neck.
Side 2 consists less of those who were inside the pubs that were attacked, and more of people who were more fortunate, and took it upon themselves to get their keyboards and pens busy, chanting support for the pub-goers.

As usual, I think that when people take sides, they immediately lose the privilege of seeing the complete picture. Not having taken either side, I think both are neither wrong nor right.

There is evident moral degradation in Indian society, but I believe it has been happening over a few hundred years, not a few decades, as is commonly believed. Westernization can't be blamed for the loss of our cultural fabric - It simply gave many an outlet to demonstrate that very well-veiled threadbare morality - All the B-Grade movie watchers, who were, and still are frowned upon, today have much easier access to what they were seeking, and in better quality. Who needs a seedy "Daaku Hasina" when a "Neal n Nikki" is much more easily procured, and in fact, because of the availability, more socially accepted?

Most of the promoters on side 2 have suggested that the pub-goers and Valentines must be excused, and similarly accepted, since culture is an ever-changing entity, and it borrows and evolves. True, indeed.

Our culture, especially, has a flair for the borrowing part. Most of modern Hindi is a khichdi of Urdu, some actual Hindi, and English - Anyone knows that chaste Hindi, pure Urdu and fluent English, on their own, are the best ways of looking like a freak in the average conversation - Fluent English less so because of the general lift in social status and economic opportunity it seems to ensure. Cross-language mixtures of words and phrases (Such as "adjushht") are rather frequent, too.

But, closer observation reveals that Indian culture has failed in its evolution, in a way a lot of countries have. In fact, barring a few exceptions, every other culture that has resisted this failure (and even some that haven't), has ended up being so watertight, that human rights violations and genocide become the order of the day. Cases in point being Turkey, Taliban-era Afghanistan, Iran, and a host of other nations.

India's failure is in finding its own modernity.

I. A culture must be enriched from within, by significant contributions by the people who identify with it. AND/OR

II. A nation with many subcultures should let them converse, mix up real well, to create its own "evolved culture". These subcultures themselves, may be derived from the cultures of other different nations and religions, but, in their final contributions to this nation's final culture, should only be faint traces, indistinguishable from each other .

These 2 ways, among many others, are the legit ways of acquiring "modernity" for a culture, because "modernity" simply means what stage your culture is in now, and how it got there.

What's modern today, will be outdated in a couple of years, and retro-cool the next decade. I already have some clothes that I call "early-90's retro" - unfaded jeans and a WWE-themed T-shirt. Late 80's, they were considered "modern"; early 90's, they were "acceptable"; early 2000's, they were "passe"; today, they're "retro". (And yes, I wear them on occasion.)

The failure lies in recognizing that over the last 400 years or so, and more conspicuously, since 1991's Liberalization, India's modernity has essentially been borrowed.

This has been the pitfall of many an Asian nation, to think that everything "modern" had to be "European" (later, "American"). This article has, in its background, the story of America's modernity. It's the story of a nation that had to create its identity from scratch, and made such a good job of it, that other nations adopted its "modernity" for their own. Like the Europeans before them, the Americans represent technology, affluence, education and all things worthwhile to the Third World's population. In the process, these nations preserve their indigenous culture only as tourist attractions. Case in point being modern Japan.

Our fashions are Indian, the cycles of fads and trends are very Indian, but the attitudes, the slang, the way we speak, the responses are modern, but not locally made. We have borrowed quite some modernity in our bid to "catch up" with the world.

We, as Indians have barely invented anything culturally new for ourselves in a long time. We just never had enough time.

The Japanese proudly pronounce English words wrongly (English itself is pronounced Engrish in Japanese), but correctly in accordance with their alphabet. That kind of nationalist culture-protection is often only symbolic. Japan's cities, the "modern wear" of its youth and old alike, are western. The kimono, like our "Gandhi cap" has become a symbol of a bygone age. Both these pieces of apparel became unwieldy in changing times, but instead of creating a homegrown alternative or modifying what we have to stay fashionable, we've just taken western improvements. The comparison with Japan ends here, though - they have ensured that modernity, borrowed as it was, was used to compete effectively with the West. India, on the other hand, is a consumer of modernity; we just "do" modern, we don't "use" it.

We "consume" borrowed cultures, savouring the delicacies they have to offer - like dishes at a buffet. It is also our responsibility to use what we have borrowed, to make us a more "effective" culture, not just a more "good-looking"one. We are responsible for creating a new, unique persona for the nation, instead of making it look like more than one nation living together.

India's dominant religion does not change itself, there's hardly any revolutions going on there, because it's pretty much an unorganised, scattered thing already. If any rebel factions were to form, whom would they split from? You know, like "Protestant Hindus"? Where's the Hindu equivalent of the Pope figure anyway? How can you fight authority where there's no such single thing? A "Hinduism rebel" just ends up fighting his family, thus ensuring his thoughts are never considered by society at large.

The political parties do a good job of splitting up as factions, except the offspring, and its many fathers, all look the same. Rest assured, we won't have anything like an Obama election for a long time.

The urban and rural of India are well-unaware of each other, the urban live in their own income-level, education-level pockets.

I think I've cited enough examples - both local and international, for the idea to be pretty clear. We haven't failed in finding our modernity, we just never pursued it whole-heartedly. We've confused modernity with urban, with rich, with western.
Modern means a change in attitudes, a willingness to break the old guard, the guts to stand up for something you've tested (with logic and not blind belief), the simple sense to test everything before you swallow it.

Any nation that can hold onto this little idea, can always be proud of its modernity - because it paved its roads for its people to travel faster and comfortably, not to catch up with the Uncle Sams of the world (, or as we know, not to keep the local politicians wealthy).

So, India has no clue. None at all. For now.


PS: Ironic, therefore, that I'm listening to the local lyrics of that "Attyachaar" song set to a rock arrangement. Modern song, right? ;)