Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity
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In a world of cultural asymmetry, and one where the pressures of co-option are immense, individual cultures have to make extra efforts to preserve and project their distinct heritage and way of life. For the once colonized, the task is doubly difficult. The project of colonization, after all, was about undermining the culture of the natives and eroding their confidence in it. Colonialism robbed its victims of the pride and security that comes from being rooted, and this was done through a disruption of creative continuity of a magnitude that has no parallel in human history: almost all means of propagating local cultures were destroyed. As a consequence of that process, there is a continuing predisposition among the formerly colonized to absorb the culture of the erstwhile ruling power. In this sense, the co-option inherent in the globalizing world of today is a continuation of the colonial projects of the past. The past and the present are closely linked, and those who seek to structure the future on their own terms must first understand this co-relation between colonialism and globalization.
Mahatma Gandhi understood that the fight against colonialism is incomplete without the assertion of one’s culture and identity. That is why he consciously chose to be visibly Indian while opposing the British. He could have worn a suit and tie, but he chose the dhoti; he could have lived in a colonial-style bungalow, but he chose to build an ashram in the Indian way. Even today, a visit to the ashram at Sabarmati is an aesthetic celebration. One man’s sensitivity to his own heritage allowed him to structure space in a manner that was authentic, simple and beautiful. He wrote his first book—Hind Swaraj—in Gujarati, although he could have done so in English. He admired and respected the Bible, but was well versed in the scriptures and philosophy of his own faith and the other religions of his country. He understood the utility of English—and indeed wrote and spoke it impeccably—but was never in doubt about the centrality of India’s indigenous languages.
The point is not that we need to believe in or do everything he did. Along with his great truths, Gandhi had his minor fads and they are subject to scrutiny. But the Mahatma had the courage to be himself, and he could be so without affectation or hate. Charles Smith, who was Mountbatten’s valet and butler in India, recalls what happened when Gandhi came one afternoon for tea at the Viceroy’s Palace. The tables in the garden were laden with scones and sandwiches, but he smiled benignly at his hosts and chose ‘to eat a bowl of curds he had brought with him. He even persuaded Lord Louis to sample a mouthful! His Lordship bravely swallowed it, but gracefully declined the offer of more.’14 On another occasion, Gandhi responded to the urgent summons of Mountbatten in his own inimitable way. ‘Judge of my astonished delight,’ Mountbatten recorded, ‘on my finding him enter my study with his finger to his lips to indicate that it was his day of silence. So I did all the talking. He scribbled a few friendly notes on the backs of used envelopes.’15 There was also that occasion—once again at the Viceroy’s Palace—when during a lunch break, Gandhi spread out a chattai on the ground and sat down to eat. A horrified British official kept this note: ‘I remember Gandhi squatting on the floor and after a while a girl coming in with some filthy yellow stuff which he started eating without as much as a by your leave.’16
Such idiosyncrasies, if that is how some would wish to see them, were not only about the superiority of goat’s curd over scones, or the virtues of silence, or the merits of sitting on the floor while eating. They were symbolic of a revolution of spirit, a proclamation of intent, that even under British subjugation he would meet with the rulers as himself. His persona was, therefore, at once rid of both deference and mimicry. The question is whether he can inspire us even today—for the issue is as important now as it was then—to be Indian through a conscious decision not to be imitative or unthinkingly derivative. If he can, then we would be equipped to authentically preserve our self-respect and dignity while simultaneously enhancing our stock as global citizens.
In an increasingly Anglo-globalized world, one of the key challenges will be what happens to other cultures. The dominant powers cannot be expected to curb their global cultural reach. It is a momentum which builds upon the empires of the past and, given the obtrusiveness and reach of technology and wealth, can no longer be controlled. Institutions like UNESCO are doing what they can to preserve cultural diversity by, inter alia, supporting the preservation of both tangible and intangible heritage, and in 2001 the organization adopted the Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity. But while this is laudable activity, the effort has to go beyond the passing of resolutions and the selective allocation of funds towards preserving heritage. Diversity cannot only be preserved in museums. It needs to be respected as a living entity. Moreover, unless diversity is accompanied by equality between cultures, there is the real danger of some cultures reinforcing their global hold and others being fossilized for the viewing pleasure of tourists. International organizations can only do so much for people. The real awareness of what is afoot, and what needs to be preserved and projected, has to ignite in the minds of peoples whose cultures are under threat. International bodies, for all their good intentions, can be manipulated or used as camouflage by the dominant nations of the world that will, in theory, make every assurance of support. For instance, President Sarkozy of France said this while speaking at the UN General Assembly in September 2007: ‘Attachment to one’s faith, to one’s language and culture, and to one’s way of life, thought and belief—all this is natural, legitimate and profoundly human … To deny this is to sow the seeds of humiliation. A “clash of civilizations” will not be averted by forcing everyone to think and believe alike; cultural and religious diversity must be accepted everywhere and by all.’ Wise and relevant words, but the small number of Sikh children in France can still not wear turbans to school, nor can the much larger number of Muslim girls wear headscarves.
Even as the complex and deeply problematic legacies of colonialism continue to shape our world, we are faced with the equally complex effects of globalization, which now appears irreversible. It is imperative, therefore, that those at the receiving end of the often imperceptible project of co-option, whether on home ground or as minorities in their adopted countries, preserve and reassert their cultural identity. Nations and peoples that do not, will be relentlessly homogenized. However, this very process will unleash huge tensions: Societies may be unable to resist homogenization, but there is always a remembered past, which creates deep resentments against the homogenizing powers. Such resentment will eventually express itself in religious extremism or atavistic and fanatical nationalism that strengthens fundamentalist leaders. The ‘clash of civilizations’ is then inevitable.
The flashpoints of the future may appear to be political. But the real causes are rooted in the unresolved issues of culture and identity.
Author’s Note
This book has taken me over four years to write and has involved rigorous research, including several hours spent at the British Library in London. Writing is a lonely pursuit, and I was able to stay the course and complete this book because I believe, as do many others I have met and talked to, that such a project is relevant to the urgently needed debate on issues of culture and identity in a globalizing world, specifically in the context of India and all other formerly colonized countries. I have had the opportunity to interact with a great many people across the world, and I am grateful for their insights. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the entire Penguin team, but most emphatically to Ravi Singh who meticulously—and often tyrannically!—edited the book. I would also like to thank Mohammad Khaliq who assisted me in keeping track of the thousands of press clippings I dipped into as part of my research. Finally, and as always, I am indebted to the understanding of my wife Renuka, who gave me the space and the encouragement to pursue my writing in the midst of an exceptionally demanding professional assignment in New Delhi. To my daughter, Batasha, and my son, Vedanta, I can only express my sympathies for the innumerable occasions when I used them as sounding boards to bounce off my ideas. My eld
est daughter, Manvi, married and left for America just when I began the writing. She, therefore, largely escaped this persecution.
Notes
1. Choosing Exile
1. Thomas R. Metcalfe, ‘Ideologies of the Raj’, The New Cambridge History of India (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 211
2. Ibid, p. 207
3. George Otto Trevelyan, Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 378-79
4. Quoted in The Asian Age, 22 April 2006
5. This was suggested by Dr Karan Singh in a letter to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
6. Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (Penguin, 2003), p. 215
2. The Imperishable Empire
1. Macaulay, Thomas Babington, Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches, Vol. 4 ( http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2170 )
2. George Otto Trevelyan, Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, op cit, p. 351
3. From Macaulay’s Minute on Education
4. William Jones, Collected Works, Vol. III, p. 34
5. John Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian (Secker & Warburg, 1973), p. 359
6. Ibid, p. 390
7. Ibid, p. 398
8. British Parliamentary Papers, XXXII (1852-53), pp. 263-64
9. Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (Little, Brown, 1997), p. 158
10. Ibid, p. 157
11. An Account of Sir Thomas Roe’s Embassy to the Court of Jahangir, British Library
12. John Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay, op cit, p. 344
13. Gauri Vishwanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study & British Rule in India (Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 51
14. This document, and other details relating to Rammohan Roy’s life, are sourced from V. Mahadevan and S.K. Krishnamurthi’s book Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Lord William Bentinck (Longmans, 1929), and R.C. Mazumdar’s learned essay on Roy, brought out by the Asiatic Society, Kolkata, in 1972
15. Thomas R. Metcalfe, ‘Ideologies of the Raj’, op cit, p. 96
16. Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India (University of California Press, 1998), p. 22
17. Anand A. Yang, ‘Whose Sati: Widow Burning in Early-Nineteenth-Century India’, Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader, Ed. Tanika Sarkar and Sumit Sarkar (Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 28
18. Ibid
19. Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions, op cit
20. George Smith, The Life of William Carey (The Echo Library, 2006), p. 162
21. Thomas R. Metcalfe, ‘Ideologies of the Raj’, op cit
22. Q. Hyder, S. Jafri, Ghalib and his Poetry, (Popular Prakashan, 1970), p. 40
23. Ibid, p. 30
24. John Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay, op cit, p. 410
25. Quoted in Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest, op cit, p. 6
26. John Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay, op cit, p. 409
27. Thomas R. Metcalfe, ‘Ideologies of the Raj’, op cit, p. 49
28. Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest, op cit, p. 139
29. John Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay, op cit, p. 408
30. Ibid, p. 403
31. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, A Passage to England, p. 188
32. Quoted in Ashis Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology—Essays in Politics and Culture (New Delhi, 1980), p. 60
3. Macaulay’s Legacy
1. Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography (Bodley Head, 1936), p. 23
2. Ibid, p. 29
3. Ibid, pp. 3, 5, 24
4. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Navjivan, 1958), pp. 42-43
5. Mahatma Gandhi, Constructive Programme ( Navjivan, 1944), p. 16
6. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, (Asia Publishing House, 1967) pp. 413-414
7. Lord Mountbatten, Reflections on The Transfer of Power and Jawaharlal Nehru (Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 12
8. Constituent Assembly Debates, Official Debates Vol. 1 (New Delhi, 1985), p. 269
9. V.S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness ( Penguin, 1968), p. 213
10. Outlook, 27 October 2008
11. The Indian Express, Sunday, 22 Februrary 2009
12. Sheldon Pollock, The Real Classical Languages Debate, in The Hindu, 27 November 2008
13. Ibid
14. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, (Heinemann, 1986), p. 13
15. Stephen David, India Today, sourced from http://www.india-today.com/webexclusive/dispatch/20011222/david.xhtml
16. Sourced from http://www.india-seminar.com/2005/549
17. Nirmal Verma, in Vishva Bazar Mein Hindi, Ed: Mahipal Singh and Devendra Mishra, (Vani Prakasham, 2008), p. 19
18. V.G. Kiernan, quoted in John Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay, op cit, p. 358
19. Namvar Singh, in Vishva Bazar Mein Hindi, op cit, p. 16
20. U.R. Ananthmurthy in the Sumitra Chishti Memorial Lecture delivered in New Delhi on 2 March 2009, and reported in The Indian Express, 3 March 2009
4. Colonial Amnesia: A Tale of Two Cities
1. Charles Lutyens in the New Delhi Newsletter, The Lutyens Trust
2. Ibid
3. John Commins, Ibid
4. Ibid
5. Ibid
6. The excerpts from Lutyens letters quoted subsequently are all from this book (The Letters of Edwin Lutyens to his Wife Lady Emily) and only the page numbers are indicated for reference purposes.
7. p. 279
8. p. 386
9. p. 253
10. p. 247
11. p. 248
12. p. 238
13. p. 232
14. pp. 239-40
15. p. 241
16. p. 276
17. p. 276
18. p. 419
19. p. 251
20. p. 271
21. p. 279
22. pp. 268-69
23. p. 292
24. p. 295
25. p. 323
26. p. 332
27. p. 280
28. p. 250
29. p. 416
30. p. 414
31. p. 280
32. p. 271
33. p. 419
34. Quoted in New Delhi Newsletter, The Lutyens Trust
35. Robert Grant Irving, Indian Summer: Lutyens, Baker and Imperial Delhi, (Yale University Press, 1981), p. 186
36. Narayani Gupta, Delhi Between Two Empires (1803-1931) (Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 178
37. Ibid, p. 179
38. Ibid, p. 180
39. Thomas R Metcalfe, ‘Ideologies of the Raj’, op cit, p. 87
40. Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art ( Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 267
41. Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography, op cit, p. 426
42. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, op cit, p. 509
43. Ibid, p. 510
44. Nehru, An Autobiography, op cit, p. 429
45. Nehru, The Discovery of India, op cit, p. 510
46. Ibid, p. 513
47. Quoted by Barkha Dutt in the Hindustan Times, 12 February 2008
48. Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography, op cit, p. 429
49. Gautam Bhatia, Punjabi Baroque and other Memories of Architecture, (Penguin, 1994), p. 231
50. Ibid, p. 231
51. Vikramaditya Prakash, Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India (Mapin, 2002), p. 27
52. Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru (Second Series), NMML, Vol 28, p. 26
53. Ibid, p. 29
54. Nehru’s speech at the inaugural ceremony of Chandigarh quoted in Prakash, Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier, op cit, p. 27.
55. Nehru’s speech at the Institution of Engineers quoted in Prakash, Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier, op cit, p. 19
56. Letter to Swaran Singh, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, op cit, Vol. 19, p. 476
57. Letter to Chief Minister of Punjab
, Partap Singh Kairon, 4 November 1960 (Chandigarh Museum Archives)
58. Quoted in Prakash, Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier, op cit, p. 150
59. See Doshi’s interview in Le Corbusier: From Marseilles to Chandigarh, brought out by the Embassy of France in New Delhi on the occasion of the exhibition on Corbusier, November 2007, p. 28
60. Vikramaditya Prakash, Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier, op cit, p. 148
61. Note to Planning Commission, 4 April 1952, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, op cit, Vol 18, p. 115
62. Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, op cit, pp. 27-28
63. Gautam Bhatia, Punjabi Baroque, op cit, pp. 246-47
64. Gautam Bhatia, Silent Spaces and other Stories of Architecture, (Penguin, 1994) p. 111