> Shoba (who lurks on silk) has a point. Exactly what is "Indian culture"? > I am equally puzzled by the subsidiary question of "what is India?" (for > the moment, we will ignore the otherwise equally important issue of > "what is culture?" while we address the above two...) > > Thoughts?
I think we've already given in to the Mutaliks if we find ourselves trying to answer that question. The question is not what defines Indian culture, but what gives you the right to impose your interpretation (or your sub-culture) of it on others. Every culture goes through a shock when interacting with other cultures. And why most of us find it so difficult to answer that question is because the Indian urban centres are now a meeting point of many cultures (not just the "western" variety), and the urbane have successfully integrated what they find attractive in the cultures it encounters. I went through something similar, being from Cochin in Kerala and then transplanted into the US at the age of 11/12. I went to school there for 4 years and then came back to Cochin. A day before leaving, one of my teachers from school came to my house and told me that I was an American kid and he encouraged me to stay on somehow which was of course impossible. I hated coming back here at the time and I rebelled for a good year on return. But gradually as I made friends, went to engineering college, I realized that I was pretty much the same even before I left for the US. Living there has definitely changed me, but not made me a different person. Even if I stayed on in India, I would have grown up to the something similar. And so comes my reasoning that Mutalik and his goons are a passing phenomenon. It happens in every culture. I faced it for the first two years in the US because of their inherent fear of something unknown (the only 4 Indians in my school were second generation immigrants) manifested as anger and hate which is raging in the likes of Mutalik. I was made fun of, beat up quite a few times, and my only friends were a Costa Rican (who couldn't speak much english) and a Puerto Rican who loved video games and wanted to be a Ninja. The only reason we were friends was because they were also victims of the same treatment. But it eventually stopped when they understood enough about me and I about them that a common ground was established. And my last two years I had the most fun I've had in my life till then. Culture, like religion is personal and nobody should have to defend theirs against anybody else's. And the moment you start, you've already admitted defeat. Kiran
