We hear or read very often. People saying, “our great Indian culture”, “our great Indian culture is getting spoilt by western influence”, “there is nothing like our great Indian culture”, “let’s preserve our great Indian culture” and so forth. But not every Indian says that. A little examination of the profiles of those who do would reveal that they all have certain shared features; they all belong to the set of chauvinist/sexist Indian men. (hereafter called Set C). I do not mean all Indian men, however. There definitely exists a set of Indian men that are progressive. A set that is slowly expanding, a set that scoffs with as much contempt as I and women of my ilk do, at the mention of “our great Indian culture”.
I am not against any people of the world feeling proud of their culture. My trouble is not with calling Indian culture great. It is calling it great for reasons that Set C do.
Our Set C think Indian culture is great, because in their household:
- They can enjoy unrestricted freedom that women do not.
- They can harass women and get away with it.
- The women at home slog in the kitchen to cook food for them and also get their laundry done.
- Women wait on them, serve them food, pick their plates.
- Women treat them like they are God.
- There is a male head in the family who is nothing short of a dictator. He wears a large pagdi. Everyone in the family has to touch his feet every morning and pander to him and his ego all day. He knows what is best for everyone (read what is best for him), he unilaterally makes decisions on everyone’s behalf.
Recall the Mangalore pub incident three years back, where members of Hindu right wing outfit Ram Sene beat up two girls for visiting a pub. In the outrage that followed, there were discussions all over the internet. I remember a comment from a doctor posting from Delhi that he hates pub going or drinking women and they are so different from the women in his house who follow “dharma”. Let’s decipher what he means by “dharma”. The “dharma” he is referring to obviously means women wear only traditional clothes, are ever subservient to men, do not open their mouth unless it’s for eating, do not eat before the men do, women cook, clean, wash, baby sit and watch Ekta Kapoor TV serials for training and upgrading their “dharma” related skills.
Obviously, our Delhi doctor uncle feels threatened by modern women. We can understand why he hates them. A women speaking, giving her opinion, wearing a western dress, going to a party or enjoying a drink is too much for his ego to handle. The modern women may not follow “dharma”, and if his wife were modern, he’d have to share washing, cooking and cleaning. Such cowardice? After all, is this what these men are afraid of? Holey moley! Many men posted similar comments, but I picked on the doctor, as my memory also seems to have done. Probably I was expecting something better than that from an educated doctor.
I do not mean there aren’t chauvinists in other cultures. Nor am I a loony leftist whose full time job is to whine and complain about how bad everything about India is. In this post I’m just trying to understand what people mean when they say “our great Indian culture”, because while they just say that, they stop short of explaining why they think it is great.
We can understand why our Set C thinks their great Indian culture is getting corrupted by western influence. The doctor’s example says it all.
Another observation: Set C has a deep sense of contempt for western clothes. In a visit to Tirupati recently, I noticed at the entry into darshan queue that some young men and women who were in shorts or capris were asked to go back and change into full length clothes or buy dhotis being sold near the entry, and wrap it over their shorts. What a way to sell their merchandise! A tie up between the cloth merchant and the temple staff in the name of Indian culture/dress code. There were a lot of topless men in the queue wearing just a dhoti. Also a lot of those men had folded their dhotis up knee length, in effect showing more skin than those boys or girls wearing shorts. “Our great Indian culture”, indeed.
In another temple downhill next morning, while we sitting in the premises and waiting for it to open, a chief pontiff was passing by. A women staffer of the temple alerted everyone and asked them to give him a standing ovation. She herself bowed to him with almost a 90 degree bend. “Our great Indian culture”, indeed. I did NOT stand up. I also looked at the pontiff straight into his eyes with an expression of deep contempt on my face. What are his achievements? What did he contribute to the society? We are expected to treat him like he’s super-important just because he learnt by rote certain scriptures although he has no clue what they mean.
If that were a hundred or two hundred years back, the topless pontiff would have got me killed. I would happily give a standing ovation to the municipality workers who broom the streets everyday and give great service to society.
I’ve had umpteen experiences with purohits in temples. I seem to get into a row with one almost each time I visit a temple. Bad experiences for them, fun for me, I guess. We can’t pass off beautiful opportunities to cut immature/arrogant purohits to size.
Aw! Second post in two days playing up the word “great”. Not a coincidence, they were intended.
