Variety is the Spice of Life

One of the pleasures of early rising, apart from a steaming cup of coffee ,is a quick walk through the walkway circuiting the colony.  I have deliberately chosen coffee over tea, as stimulation of tea is quiescent than that of coffee. Further as talk of cultural cleansing gains in, it is better to discard tea that has a British flavour. The bracing air, the serene skies and the quietness all round relieved by the musical cooing of the nightingale and the whistling of the parrots are adequately invigorating and refreshing to face the rest of the day’s encounter with air pollution, noise,  chaos and bedlam that we encounter for the major part of our waking hours. I do not ever miss these few moments of unalloyed pleasure unless incapacitated by the seasonal flu or other related illness. These momentary fragments of happiness, I shore against the turmoil and disorder that follow us till we retire to bed at the end of the day.

This was a habit that I cultivated when I was In England as a student. I loved getting out before others woke up and aimlessly walk through the dormitory encircled by green lawns.  I would return to my dorm to the smell of toasted bread, fried eggs,  bacon and sausages uniformly floating  from all the kitchens, underwhelming the olfactory senses of a pure vegetarian like me. I used to wonder how conservative the British were in matters of food and specially that of breakfast (the fact is, the British breakfast continues even today to be hidebound in this respect).  For them there can be no deviation from the standard breakfast of bread, bacon, cheese and eggs that best indexes British conservatism.

Back home, the morning walks are a pure delight to my olfactory senses. The colony I live in is a mini India with a mix of Tamils, Punjabis, Telugus, Bengalis besides those from the Hindi belt. The aroma of breakfast prepared in the different kitchens is a testimony to the diversity of taste and culture that is uniquely Indian. The smell of dosa and vada, aloo paratha, pesarattu upma, luchi and cholar daal, kachori and aloo sabzi and fried onions comes wafting from the many apartment kitchens– a contrast to the stale egg and bacon smell of the English kitchens. But what is still more unique is that there is a mix of these culinary delights in the different households as they are not restricted to the regions they come from. A Tamil delights as much in aloo paratha as a Punjabi in vada sambar. So is the case with a Bengali smacking his lips with pesarattu upma and a Telugu enjoying his cholar daal. The culinary open-mindedness has contributed to our cultural heterogeneity much more than any other factor.

India is distinctively known for heterogeneity much more than for homogeneity. In fact, the latter had been an one-off happening that manifested itself during the pre- Independence movement. In a recent book A Children’s History of India, the author Subhadra Sen Gupta chronologically delineates the history of India and highlights how our land, with the passage of time had made many of its various invaders its own , absorbing and assimilating their culture which finally progressed into a spirit of nationalism during the Independence movement. This is the quintessence of indianness- a unified culture accommodating the diverse cultures of the Mughals, the Afghans, the French, the Portugese and the British invaders within its fold. This is our strength –often referred to in the clichéd phrase “Unity in Diversity”, rephrased in the  modern jargon as homogeneity in heterogeneity.

Our idea of a secular India emerges from this syncretism, which encourages every citizen of this country to follow his own culture, religion, belief and custom and brings about the reconciliation of all the diverse practices. It is strange that today in place of cultural syncretism, we hear phrases like cultural cleansing, seeking to rid India of its diversity and imposing a certain form of homogeneity very similar to what ISIS is attempting all over the world. ISIS is destroying the artifacts, temples and cultural heritage in the Middle east and believes that  pledging allegiance to the new Caliph is a duty for every Muslim, and those who fail or refuse to do so shall be deemed as apostates, and will be fought and struck down, thereby making Muslims a major power in all fields. They drive American trucks, use computers, internet...all the luxuries of the West, and then drumming up the cult of Islam!  Aside from being subhuman, ISIS war on culture is, according to the Guardian correspondent, Martin Chulov,  ‘a sledgehammer to civilization”.

 Our present day Hindutva  brigade is also embarking on a similar mission to cleanse the nation of what it calls alien culture. What a difference to our genetic trait of indianness- of accepting, accommodating and synthesizing different civilizations and cultures to build a composite new culture! But harping on the ancient past of governance that went by the name Raj Dharma, where the code of conduct was given by the just and benevolent monarchs, the Hindutva brigade forgets that those were days before the advent of  the  modern states  when monarchical form of governance was  founded on” structures that did not recognize individual liberty and rights in the modern sense  of democracy… a genuine secularism in India requires that the forces of individual liberty be given priority over social orthodoxy, that our rights as citizens becomes progressively detached from our particular identities, that there is genuine distrust of the state’s intrusive power over individual lives.”(Pratap Bhanu Mehta).

The banning of meat during the holy days of the Jains is a case in point. The BJP governments indifferent states  explain it as a rightful measure to protect the sensitivities of the Jain community during their festival of Paryushan. Can these governments in the same voice say that there should be fasting during the holy months of Ramzan!  Can they declare the forty days of Lent as a period of fasting?  Can they ask all the restaurants in their states to close during the fasting months observed by different religious denominations?  On the contrary Hindus have hosted Iftar parties during the Ramzan month to forge fellow feelings, friendship and brotherhood between Hindus and Muslims. Christmas and the arrival of Santa Claus are celebrated in many parts of the country. There are no longer stand alone festivals in India designated for individual religious communities. Holi is played with equal fervor by the two communities  and Diwali is a festival of lights for every Indian.

In such a contxt of a pliuralistic society like ours, banning beef (and now meat during the Jain festival) comes close on the heels of banning English language which was given special priority during the recently concluded World Hindi Divas. Can India afford to give up English which has given the country a leg up over the mighty China specially  in the IT sector and in the success of the Indian diaspora in US and Australia? Cleansing of English and replacing it by Hindi may please a few chauvinists but in a globalized world, it will prove a disaster. Banning books that do not meet with the professed ideology of the Hindu chauvinists, rejecting all books on history by reputed historians because they had a left leaning , being intolerant of Valentine’s Day, imposing dress code for young adults in colleges and universities, all these are retrograde steps , not in sync with modern development, liberal outlook and forward thinking. What is attempted is past forward and not present forward. A new equation is being worked out that looks at future as present minus and past plus.

India’s famous heterogeneity all through history has been built on the principle of amalgamation where the assimilation of racial groups and ethnic cultures constantly takes place, resulting in an improved cultural fusion.   Indian civilization is more analogous to  a compound than a mixture. The latter  is a mixture two or more substances that comes unstuck because there is no bonding while the former  is a fusion of different substances that has a an attractive bonding to hold them together.

We have this heritage, what is known as Sanatan Dharma , the Eternal Law or the Eternal way resulting from the union of intuition and reason. Our intuitive appreciation of our glorious heritage is to be fused with our rational understanding of other cultures of the world to bring about synthetic thinking that is central to global connectivity. This should not be bartered away in the name of cultural cleansing. We should recall how the end of colonization in Asia, Africa and other parts of the world in the 20^th century had marginalized the hegemony of the West. But unfortunately a large number of the newly decolonized nations with their fierce loyalty to their own culture and civilization have used religion for asserting their superiority resulting in violent clashes between the West and the rest of the world.  The dethronement of the colonizers had meant dethronement of their religion, culture and civilization. The assertion of indigenous cultures of different states has thus become the new hegemonic order replacing that of the colonizer. Instead of assimilating the salient features of the erstwhile colonizer’s culture into their own, some of these newly liberated states, that had earlier resented the marginalization of their indigenous cultures during the colonizer’s regime, have almost become fanatic to claim insularity from all cultures. This they do by adhering to practices and rituals claiming for themselves religious sanction and prescription. What could have paved the way for co-existence, enhancement and enrichment of different world cultures has unfortunately given in to ‘cultural atavism’ citing divine sanction to inflict cruelty on those with different identity. “Cultural origin is the new aristocratism of the masses.  The emphasis on difference, which in principle should have made us more sensitive to the existence of others, has on the contrary mainly served to sharpen our craving for identity. Every culture is arrogating to itself the right to be inhuman, and cultural rights are the prerogatives of the inhuman.”

It is time for our Hindutva votaries  with their frenzied love and admiration for our rich ancient culture  to recognize the dangers of cultural and religious insularity in the 21^st century  where the coming together of civilizations and cultures  alone can erect a bulwark against the inhumanity that is presently unleashed by violent fundamentalists like ISIS. If we fail to perceive the universal oneness in different cultures, we may be instrumental in bringing about the collapse of civilization and disintegration of humanity. A simple walk in the morning, enjoying the aroma of culinary delights, has greater power of healing our disturbed thoughts and minds, adding variety to our daily life and promoting a healthy co-existence of humanity that owes allegiance to different religious and cultural sects  that exemplify  oneness among multitudinousness.