Culture or Tradition...What is 'Indian' to it?

I am not here to review a film like Monsoon Wedding which is a true mirror of the contemporary Indian culture, or to discuss anthropology or sociology. But to throw light and reserve my thoughts on the content and ideology that these elements share in common, that is the contemporary and cosmopolitan Indian culture, and doing it without taking any moral stands. Before we start off, the first thing that might strike the readers, looking at the heading is that, aren’t they both supposed to mean the same, “what is India without its traditional culture?”. Not to be mock my readers, but this notion is typical to every “Indian”. But why??? 

Recollecting the attacks in the Mangalore pub which I watched on Internet TV, in earlier days, when I was feisty and change-the-world kind of attitude, this would have earned a nice long blog post all by itself, though I have a post that details the irateness in me. Not that it makes me any less angry today, but I've sort of given up ranting on subjects I'm going to do nothing about. I'm also a little weary of people who send me email forwards about China while acting mean to everyone else around them. This is not to say that you ought to wash your hands off the world. But merely agreeing to be angry in little cliques changes nothing.

But I can rant about what I can change. That's allowed. So when I was watching the Mangalore attacks and listening to these Ram Sene people vowing that they were doing their duty by saving Indian Culture from the corrupting influences of the West, I was reminded of the conversations and snarly email exchanges at my school. Culture, somehow, has become a thing of the past, something that remains beautiful because it is veiled from the present. I had to struggle quite a bit to include the contemporary section in a revamped blog. Contemporary stories are, apparently, not part of Indian Culture because well, how can children learn the Right from the Wrong in this Godless age? I have nothing against mythology- on the contrary, I read as much of it as I can because I delight in ambiguity. I love the same tale recast in several moulds. I love folk tales and the whole Akbar-Birbal witticisms. But I cannot see why contemporary writing should be treated with disdain just because it is set in the here and now of things.

I watched Slumdog Millionaire last month. I loved the O Saya song in which the kids race from the airport to their homes in the slums. This is perhaps one of the not-okay scenes for those branding the film as 'selling poverty to the West'. And yet, the mood of the song does not dwell on the squalor. The filth is in the background, something that the children hardly notice in their mad, joyous scramble to safety. This is not to romanticize poverty at all- I think the film had enough gut-wrenching material ('feel good' movie it certainly isn't, improbable perhaps) to demolish such notions. Instead, what I found interesting was the script's genuine attempt to engage with the children's reality. The fact that Salim tells Jamal he dropped a sitter- the noisy plane that flies over Jamal's head is of no significance to the cricketers because it is the everyday, the unremarkable- shows an understanding of their lives and their realities. Cricket everywhere, cricket anywhere is a scene that we are all familiar with and it's not surprising at all that the audience unanimously cheers for the players, no matter how many rules they break in the process. Because this is such an integral part of our culture, and this is a story that is set in its here and now.

I find this self-imposed alienation from everyday culture indigestible. That by writing a story in which I mention a mobile phone or a packet of Lays, I have somehow squandered away the wisdom of my ancestors. That by mentioning incidents that happened in real life which can serve as reference points in chronology for children, I have somehow killed their value systems. You can't teach culture to someone. You learn it by observation and through experience. You can tell a child not to spit on the roads till your face is blue, but if you spit on the roads right after the lesson, chances are that he/she will remember your deviance more and devalue the lesson. This whole thing inflames me even more if my fellow mates of the same age think the “Culturally Traditional” or “Traditionally Cultural” way. What a farce? There were instances when I had to defend myself for being as contemporary as I am. Whether it is justifiable or not, I am what I am today and want to remain the same through the journey of life. I do not wish anybody to play my cards and in the same way I do not intend to play some one else cards. Be it what I am, and I am proud of myself.

A refusal to talk to society about everyday reality and contemporary culture is a dangerous trend. We have somehow convinced ourselves that the word 'culture' means 'tradition' and that anything traditional is compulsorily good. And by the same logic, anything 'modern' becomes compulsorily bad. Its funny how 'modern' has come to have such heavy negative connotations. There is no creature more dangerous than the Modern Young Woman. She is an indiscipline child who has set out to wreck the cultural ethos of entire nations. Whether it be Arvind Swamy inRoja who wants to marry a 'simple, village girl' or Raja in Anand exhorting Kamalini to wear silk sarees, our movies have made it amply clear that Modern Young Women are undesirable in the family scene. They are great for item numbers to show the hero's unbridled sexuality, of course. While the issues I've mentioned here might seem different, they all hinge upon the rhetoric of Indian Culture- an increasingly saffron and ironically Talibanesque ideology that is being allowed to grow. While the obvious reasons for this growth are political, it is also true that such ideologies receive some degree of support from the societies that they thrive in- not for political reasons but because the people believe they are indeed the protectors of Indian Culture.

If we as responsible humans and adults- must produce literature for society that teaches Indian Culture, let's not play down the value of a culture that they see and experience around them. Explaining contemporary culture does not translate into morbid and scary realities alone. While it is important to discuss child sexual abuse with children, discussing issues such as these is not the only claim to contemporary culture that we have. There are so many stories tumbling out of everyday World that children will take pleasure in reading. I say this with some degree of evidence since month after month; I see stories that reflect this view on the Internet. And contemporary stories figure heavily in the lists. If these stories did not touch a chord in the lives of the people in the society (again, not necessarily a chord of tragedy), they wouldn't have stayed in their memories. It is difficult to explain content to people who ride the Holy Cow of Indian Culture. Who assume that contemporary stories lack values because they don't come with a moral at the end.

This strange appropriation of Indian Culture that has turned its back upon so many of our realities must not be allowed to continue. Whether it is a question of beating up pub-goers in Mangalore or insisting that children don't know what Sex is.

So my dear colleagues, I am not writing this post because this Young Man has hope that you will read it with patience. How will you when you don't read your own magazine or newspaper? But I do intend to go after you with my claws out, with every rage that is worthy of a shrew. You have no right to define my India for me. And so I will rant here about this and not about Mangalore.