The wedding season is upon us, in India. This means that while navigating the maddening, slow, noisy traffic, our ears suddenly pick up sounds other than honking. The sound gets louder, then deafening and suddenly a strange visual bursts upon us – a group of men and women dancing away, with full gusto, on the streets, led by a band in bright red, shiny costumes belting out Bollywood numbers. Men in suits and colourful headgear; women in vibrant, rich, glittering wedding finery, dripping jewellery, make their moves, cheer, laugh; oblivious of traffic rules, oblivious of the furious drivers who have been slowed to a crawl. It’s a wedding procession!
The very next day, one of these ladies could be in a grey business suit talking in low tones, making a presentation to a roomful of international clients where the only other noise is that of a humming air-conditioner. So, which one is she – the noisy, vibrant, colourful one or the reserved, structured, professional, one? Actually, she is both. She is equally comfortable with both. Indians move easily between different worlds. What are these worlds? What are these contexts? Last month, that is where we had paused while exploring the question – what Intercultural Studies mean in India.
This month, we will try to understand the contexts, past and present, that are shaping minds in India.
How old is India
India as we know it today is less than 200 years old. Wait! Doesn’t that make India even younger than the United States of America! Also, isn’t India supposed to be a very old civilization! The catch word here is, obviously, ‘as we know it today’. Since thousands of years, India was made up of several, separate, independent, sovereign nation state, each functioning under their own King - battles were fought, borders changed. Sometimes nations shrunk, sometimes they disappeared, sometimes they swelled and spilled onto terrains much beyond India’s current borders. It was a highly dynamic land constantly encountering, accepting, integrating, rejecting new languages, new religions, new rules, new social norms. From the end of the 15th century onwards, future colonists started entering India. All with trading interests, initially.
The British entered way back in the beginning of the 17th century. To consolidate their commercial interests further, they tried to integrate with the local population – they mingled, married local women, had children. A fascinating account of this social period can be found in William Dalrymple’s novel ‘The White Mughals’. As a result of unions between Indians and Britishers the Anglo-Indians – a unique community – came into existence (the Anglo-Indians highlight a very foundational aspect of Indian culture – but more on this later). It was much later, in 1857, that is less that 200 years ago, that the British Crown took over India as a colony, and India became a single political entity.
How to organize India into a cohesive whole
When the British left India, in 1947, the borders demarcated for India are the national frontiers of today. Inside this border were 17 Provinces of British territories, 565 princely states as well as pockets of French and Portuguese colonies. Work began on organizing the country into a cohesive, logical and manageable number of States. How does one do that in a massive land that, historically, had never functioned as a single, uniform unit? What could be the criteria? Could States be created based on the language spoken in the area? But then, India had thousands of languages. Dialects, accents, changed every few kilometres!
In the end, the final winner WAS language. It took almost 10 years. By 1956, India had become a Union of federal states, which comprised 14 States and 6 Union Territories. Naturally, each State was not a perfect map of its language – that may be a reason why the internal borders stay dynamic, even today. As of now, the number is 28 States and 9 Union territories. The last State, Telengana, was created exactly 10 years ago.
Is language a clue to cultural identity?
I come from a family that has roots in Dhaka. They crossed over into India at the time of Independence when the country was partitioned. Growing up, I heard stories from my grandparents about our ancestral village. I still feel nostalgia, my kids don’t. They grew up in different cities across India and it’s hard to pin down their roots when they speak in English or Hindi. But the fun begins when they speak Bengali - remnants of a dialect from that long-lost land slip into their words and terms pinning them down, not only to Bengal but the locality in present-day Bangladesh, where their ancestors once lived.
We accept that languages and cultures are closely linked. We accept that a person’s mother tongue is often an indicator of mindset, habits, characteristics and traits. That makes me wonder – what remnants of cultural attributes do my kids (or for that matter, anyone who has moved far away from roots) carry from their ancestral land.
Are Indians migrants?
The migrant labour story was there for everyone to see when Covid struck in 2020. It’s not just labourers, but students, white-collar workers, families – who migrate to other parts of India for professional, educational and personal reasons. Internal migration within India stands at 37%. With a population density of 481 per square km, it is one of the most populous nations in the world. In the context of its size and population density, can we even imagine the large-scale cross-pollination of languages and cultures that is happening within India? Can we really assess to what extent these internal migrants retain their ancestral culture, and to what extent they have soaked in cultures other than the one that they were born into?
Does India need intercultural education? Why?
History clearly explains the multilingual and multicultural nature of India. Current realities add layers of complexity and confusion to the process. A society like this seems ripe for intercultural education. So, what do the results of the BCFAI Survey tell us? The answer is a clear ‘Yes’ – 75% of the respondents (educators), from the field of languages and social sciences, are bringing content related to intercultural understanding, into classrooms.
Personal experience had led us to assume that those introducing intercultural education into classrooms, in India, believe that it is primarily to prepare learners to do business with other countries. But, the Survey led us down a different road altogether - 90% of the respondents believe that a primary objective of Intercultural Education is “to understand how to navigate deep diversity in multilingual and multicultural societies”.
Whatever the majority of educators may be saying, there still remain the lone voices, in the Survey, that say “the Indian economy is doing fine even without intercultural trainings.” (that is true! It is the 6th largest economy in the world.), “Indians instinctively know how to navigate cultural differences.”, (there is truth in this too). The most intriguing one, according to me, is that “intercultural education is not needed in India because it is a multilingual and multicultural country.” And these lone voices swell and become majority voices in society at large.
So, the crucial question becomes - do Indians need or NOT need intercultural education because they live in a multilingual and multicultural country? And an even more critical question - if Indians are doing something right, developing their own tools and strategies to cope with a multicultural society, what kind of knowledge base or emotions or mindsets are they dipping into?
What lies beneath those mindsets?
First, the top layer. Over the last few decades, a strong wave of homogenization has swept through the world. No country has been immune to the effects of telecommunications and globalization – hyper connectedness, social media, move towards global citizenry. Next, a bit deeper, another layer emerges, effects of colonization, the post-modern world. Theories abound, many of which along with the theories in Intercultural Studies help unpack Indian mindsets. Finally, the foundational layer beneath – the trickiest one. I’m not sure whether this a layer or an abyss – age-old cultural habits, practices and beliefs, from thousands of years, that are deeply embedded inside the Indian DNA.
Each country comes up with its own unique cocktail when all layers mingle – a silent language is created. Thanks to Edward Hall’s pathbreaking work, we know what a silent language means.
India’s unique cocktail
How strong is the voice of each layer when the cocktail gets mixed? I’d like to share a story here.
Imagine an Indian household, at the height of colonial rule. British officers have been invited in the evening. Grand arrangements are made, there is a surfeit of food, alcohol and nautch girls. It is a typical scene of arrogant colonisers being hosted by obliging subjects. But note, no woman of the house comes out to meet the guests; the party is held in a separate hall located outside of the main living areas; food is cooked in a separate kitchen, not the one used by members of the household. Next morning, those halls and kitchens are washed and purified in the same way as it would be done had an ‘untouchable’ entered the house. So, were the British the rulers or the untouchables? Was imperial might not powerful enough to bludgeon its way inside an Indian home, inside personal spaces? Were age-old, inherited mindsets so deeply embedded, that chipping into it was difficult?
This is where the Anglo-Indian community helps explain an intrinsic part of the Indian identity. During the colonial period, the Anglo-Indians aligned with the ruling elite. As soon as the British left India, Anglo-Indians came under enormous social pressure. They were squeezed out of the Indian social fabric. As a result, thousands migrated out of India to find homes elsewhere. An excellent book – The Anglo Indians by Barry O’Brien - analyses how history cheated this community.
To come back to the question – in this cocktail, to what extent do the flavours blend or co-exist? Be it Indian hospitality during the colonial era or the wedding processions of today, things point more towards co-existence than blending. We accept that colonial culture could not dislodge deeply entrenched thought processes, but the English language had a home run!
Coming up
Language! Another word that opens up a whole world in India; gives a glimpse into India’s past and present. Some ancient, classical languages thrive, some tribal languages thrive, some languages weaken and wither, some just die out, while the language of the colonisers becomes the uniting force (!!!). What is happening here? Why? How many live languages does India actually have? While the world and India move more and more towards homogeneity, languages get eroded and extinct. But what is happening to the silent language? Next month, we delve into these questions and let’s see where that leads.
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