Indian culture has little to fear from chips and cola

Indian culture has little to fear from chips and cola


There is a reasonably popular school of thought that needs to apply a brush to its thinking. The thought runs like this: why does India need potato chips, fried chicken, thick crusted pizzas, fancy apparel, fancier shoes, designer do-dads, imported pulp fiction, manners and mores via satellite et al, when it has substantial needs in infrastructure and considerable culture of its own? Which misguided soul permitted all of those baubles to strew our shores when we have such huge deficits in basic infrastructure? How much longer should the righteous endure this aberration of policy before setting it back on the tried and tested rails of our national needs? Frivolity is okay but should the national policy cater to it?

The drift of the above diatribe misses out the history of our sovereign democratic republic. We came in on a burst of ahimsa peppered with dead nationalist heroes and the factory siren dominated rule of a British Labour Party, weary from the War, not willing to get any more of its constituency killed over imperial lucre on distant shores. We jettisoned the “small is beautiful” policies of the Mahatma with enormous despatch, remembering, and generally believing, that it costs a lot to keep a nation in poverty, to paraphrase and twist Mrs Naidu’s famous remark on the Mahatma’s predilections. We built a command economy and watered it down to take into account the plurality of our thinking. Had Trotsky survived the purge he would have understood Nehru’s reluctance to wield a big stick.

We believed in social equality and enshrined it in the preamble and directive principles to the Constitution, and administered the country with a thicket of laws for a full 44 years before liberalisation; administering this bias, but without attacking the rich or demeaning their enterprise. We knew our ancient culture was replete with kings and serfs and a sinuous bonding held them together. Sometimes, more out of spite than governance, we snatched away privileges given solemnly at the hour of our nation’s birth from the princes, stripping away their titles and purses, and again from the people themselves during the Emergency, but soon remorse overcame these excesses and our rulers stood contrite in front of the populace to take their punishment. The princes became ambassadors, politicians, industrialists, hoteliers.

We are not quite fifty as an independent nation but have shown a remarkable maturity both from the point of view of the governing classes and the governed. Both have, in the ultimate analysis, forgiven the excesses of the other and learned to respect the flash points that matter to each. The populace threw out Mrs. Gandhi because of the Emergency but brought her back longing for her sincerity and ability when the poseurs and small-minded had had a go at trashing the portals of power. We threw out Mr. VP Singh for being opportunistic over Mandal but he will go down in history as the man who addressed the inequity of a system of democracy which carefully contrived to keep the backwards out of real power. Jagjivan Ram’s ashes must be giving birth to a sea of flowers at the thought. Had he been alive now in 1996, perhaps his ability would have counted for more than his caste. Ms Mayawati will heartily agree with him and so will Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav and Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav and many others.

The governing classes have their own story of noblesse oblige to tell. A home-loving pilot lost his life in the hurly-burly of a political legacy he was uncomfortable with. His mother refused to stop short of attacking the Golden Temple at Amritsar or paying for her sacrilege with her life in the security interests of her country. Her Army Chief, General Vaidya, died the unprotected death of a pensioner with a solitary guard who could not even unsheath his weapon to protect the great man. The BJP has never recovered from the ignominy of destroying the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya. A well-known historical precedent for their logic was that of Auranzeb’s, and he did as much to destroy the Mughal legacy as Akbar did to build it. They both lived one solitary incarnation and made their owm historical statements for us to assess.

Less exalted men with good education and from comfortable backgrounds have donned the regulation terry-cotton pyjamas, updated from the nationalist khaddar pre-independence, to grapple with the shaping of a democratic ethos that is a far cry from the Churchillian sneer of us destroying ourselves in no time. I wonder if that was really a sneer or the lament of a lover who had been shown the door.

Bureaucrats and postal employees, workers and mill hands, farmers, engineers, doctors, computer experts, mechanics, sadhus, charlatans, clowns and tragedy queens, bus drivers and railwaymen, scooter wallahs, taxi drivers and ferrymen, fisherfolk and bootleggers, dacoits and saints, aesthetes and boors, we have all made up this fabric from Madna to Malgudi (Yes, I know, you have many more who need naming too).

In broader terms and reaching farther back into time, India has always shown a remarkable ability to take in the invader and his foreign influences and churn it up so mysteriously and well that the new one becomes an Indian too. We therefore should have little to fear from the pop culture and food coming into the country. It might not be long till peculiar Indian hybrids and adaptations rule the roost. It is difficult to dilute an ancient culture. It is much more likely that the new influence will get blended in with the rest.

Now to the moot point of infrastructural investment.Anybody knows that it takes years to build power plants, roads, railways, ports, bridges, drill for oil, establish telecommunication networks, and that masses of deadwood have to be shifted to make room. Our legal system may be very thorough but no one can accuse it of restlessness. So why should any investor in his right mind wish to get involved in such exercises with less than advantageous terms to compensate for the delayed gratification? And why should he not want to make a quick buck at some instant coffee sales at the same time? Going back to the FERA days will not help the process and did the electorate give their votes to the Bombay Club or to the politicians who stood before them?

From our own point of view, it is clear that we are in need of everything, even superior rubber bands, which our local industry on its own refuses to make without the prod of competition. Perhaps Indian industry can do many things just like Indian politicians or writers or film makers or bureaucrats can, but we can only do it if there is a perceived need to change something.

Today there is a need for the elected representatives to submerge their petty agendas in order to cobble together a stable government. The voter has spoken in many voices leaving it up to the representatives to interpret his wishes. The wish list implies a blending of the various aspirations of the populace. Can our elected representatives bear this in mind when they start their post-election negotiations?

Instead of demanding a selective and lopsided appreciation of our charms, why do we not plunge in wholesale, confident of our ancient legacy of survival and amalgamation of the best and the worst that anyone can bring to our shores?

(1,243 words)

By Gautam Mukerji
First published in THE PIONEER www.dailypioneer.com on Wednesday, June 19th, 1996 in the main OPINION slot on the Edit page