RSS and Indian Culture

What is culture? I don't really know. I don't remember anybody telling me about it in school. But we all talk about it, perhaps without knowing what we are talking about. Or perhaps we do know it, but we can't nail it down in exact words. In that way, culture is like love. Just because one can't define love doesn't mean he doesn't know what love is. Romeo loved famously without perhaps knowing (or caring to know) about love.

Can someone be called cultured without him/her knowing what culture is? I'm not sure.

Based on my experience, my understanding of culture involves cultural relativism relativity, meaning one is more cultured than other. Frequently, those who talk more about culture are usually considered more cultured. That makes many of us culturally talkative, as it were, to win the cultural argument. The talk of White Man's burden obviously makes the white man look cultured than a colored man. Similarly, an upper caste Bengali gentleman raised on Ray and Tagore, and more importantly, talking about Ray and Tagore, is likely to look more cultured than a lower caste peasant. 

At this point, it's pertinent to wonder how's culture different from civilization? In school, these words were used often either together or interchangeably. I have a vague understanding that civilization primarily involves application of technology and architecture to build civil infrastructure - and that's why West seems to be more civilized than us, since our cities don't even have decent drainage systems or proper pavements for pedestrians. On the other hand, culture involves the human elements, apart from the more visible works of art and aesthetics.

The visible works of art - that explains why there are many who believe that culture is something to be reached out to, and to be seen, in art galleries, in theaters, and in musical concerts. This is the type of culture they show in those incredibly misleading "Incredible India" campaigns, in which you see snapshots of our cultural bestsellers like Ravi Shankar, Kuchipudi and Tajmahal. This is type of culture that the business class people collect and display in their drawing rooms. 

On the other side, many believe that culture is something that reaches out in to you and that you can't run away from. It's in the air; it's something you breathe in and breathe out all the time. It forms you and shapes you. For instance, in Hyderabad, much more than Kuchipudi, what shapes you is the sound of beggars knocking the window panes of your car at every other traffic signal, and your learning to look away in strange mix of pathetic exasperation and indifference.

That way, one's cultural health depends on one's cultural environment. The culturally conscious could afford to keep cultural hygiene to some extent by confining themselves to galleries and keeping away from what's going around in culturally polluted world, but complete cultural immunity is impossible. Culture, or lack of culture, is uncannily contagious.

Then there is an interesting divide between cultural practice and cultural precept. What is Indian culture - what we practice or what we preach? Female feticide or "Yatra Naryastu Pujyante, Ramante Tatra Devata"? Or both? Or is this duality absurd?

Well, the thought of absurdity takes me to RSS. 

I have met many of them, in different stages of my life, and all of them had one thing in common - they were all very difficult-to-like people. Without exception, they came across as supercilious and pig-headed to me; and their know-at-all and morally presumptuous attitude towards others seems grating. Worse, they manage to prick the worst in you, again and again. Long back, when I was in intermediate, I bumped into one of them in train. As revealed later, he was not at all impressed with my appearance, since I was wearing a pair of denims. Besides, I had music plugged in, which he might have assumed to be loud and anarchic. After exchanging a few casual words, if that could be called exchange at all, he handed me over my cultural report card which had reds and crosses all over. He commented that I belonged to a culturally dislocated generation. Valentine's Day had passed recently and he had a thing or two to say about that too. He hardly bothered to believe, ever listen to, my opinion. I tried to reason with him but after a point I felt that I had had enough and I decided to stop his juggernaut of nonsense.

I said it's rather cheap on his part to enjoy all the blessings of West and cursing their culture at the same time. Why didn't he mount a bullock cart instead, if that was Indian enough? As for the Indian railways, railways had been given by the British, and whatever was Indian in the Indian railways was rather unflattering - infernal filth and stink, beggars and eunuchs and pickpockets harassing the hell out of you in their own unique ways, occasional news of robberies and horrible accidents, outrageously frequent delays and people sleeping like dogs on platforms, not to mention deafening noise, theft of public properties ranging from rails to fans to even mugs that they keep in lavatories and finally, people, people all over, tides of people pushing and stepping on one another in mad rush of everyday Indian life. 

That's what you see all around yourself and that's Indian culture for you! What is kept in museums is not culture; it's a mere showpiece. Moreover, the defeated races like ours should retrospect and effect a comprehensive reform instead of hanging on to some imagined history and preserving the very things what led to our defeat at first place. Otherwise, extinction is just a matter of time. 

I knew I was not completely correct. But I had to offset the wind to hit the target. He retreated into his cocoon. After that, I don't know why, I felt sorry for him.