OUR twenty-first century world seems fession? On all of them, or on some
to be caught in a dangerous paradox: combination of them? Will it be sin- on the one hand a global monoculture, gular (I am a freethinker) or plural spread by market and media forces, is (a Black American), binding indivi- constantly eroding traditional cultures, duals to a community or specific soci- while on the other our societies appear ety? And what of gender, age and other ever more fragmented, with every ingredients in our global khichri? small bit of the mosaic noisily assert- Nowhere as in India have these ing its identity. In October 2010, the questions been asked with a degree of German Chancellor Angela Merkels intensity that often moves crowds and statement that Germanys multicultural occasionally decides between life and approach has failed, utterly failed, death. At the back of the numberless was soon echoed by several of her identities the subcontinent has created European counterparts, who called for over time lies the overarching question integration rather than mere juxtapo- of how to define Indianness. I will not sition of cultures. But what are the presume to attempt such a definition; mechanisms of such integration, and instead, I will begin by tracing my own what happens to the identity of the journey towards identity, uninteresting integrated bit, assuming it has will- as it may be: the personal approach has ingly submitted to the process? obvious and severe limits, but is often Indeed, nothing seems more a more honest and reliable starting confusing to contemporary societies point. and individuals than the question of My parents were born Moroc- identity: Should it be based on ethnic- cans, and with three visits to that coun- ity, religion, culture, nationality or pro- try in my early years, it became a part * Michel Danino is the author of The Lost of me a small but vivid bit of Orient River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati (Penguin adding some colour to a continental India, 2010) and Indian Culture and Indias drabness. Our family is Jewish, and Future (DK Printworld, 2011). For two dec- something of that Jewishness remained 17 ades, Michel Danino was active in the pres- ervation of Shola forests in the Nilgiris, with me long after I had rejected the Tamil Nadu. Biblical foundations of Judaism; the
SEMINAR 649 September 2013
Jewish view of life, especially its neatly compartmentalized as in some rediscover themselves. In the process, obsession with knowledge and its Indians living abroad nor somehow I observed what Indianness meant to stubbornly positive outlook in the face jumbled. Relegated to the periphery, them: at one end of the spectrum, very of adversity, always has great lessons they still contributed to the core on little, a mere accident of birth and a low for a secular Jew (a useful oxymoron). occasion. Whatever I had imbibed of level of self-esteem as Indians, barely I was born and brought up in France, the French sense of rigour and discern- relieved by an ebulient sense of patri- and Frenchness taught me the mean- ment came in handy while exploring otism (cricket and Bollywood among ing of culture, intellectual lucidity the jungle of ancient India, with a rid- its prime drivers); at the other, a strong and a sense of ceaseless quest. Yet dle behind every tree, as it were. My attachment fuelled by some aware- three and a half decades ago, as an Jewish atavism protected me from ness of Indias intellectual, artistic, immature but resolute twenty one exclusiveness and saw me through spiritual, scientific or technological year old, I decided to come and live in particularly rough patches, leading me achievements. The difference between India, a country I knew next to noth- to extract their hidden message and the two attitudes has a considerable ing about, and which many Indians look beyond. impact in actual life: the first produces readily compared to hell in contrast Were those peripheral identities individuals who see themselves as with a heavenly West. limiting in any way? They might have such islands in time and space, with been, left to themselves: the French few or no roots; the second results in
W hy India? A short answer is, Sri
Aurobindo. The meaning he gave to make a cult of the intellect, often closing the door to other ranges of consciousness; the Jews are prone to a sense of belonging to a stream of civilization and imparts an identity, self-confidence and resilience. life and the evolution of humanity make a cult of pragmatism. But once The latter attitude is of course appealed to me like no other thought reined in, my minor selves became something of my own, provided that system I was aware of. But it was valuable helpers: the old Indian image the attachment is more than merely more than thought: it also answered of the charioteer and his horses sentimental, and the awareness and fed deeper stirrings. I was moved applied. grounded in genuine knowledge. This, by Sri Ramakrishna, inspired by in fact, is among the first points I make Swami Vivekananda, interested in several other Indian great masters of the twentieth century, and decided T hings got curiouser when circum- stances led me to lecture or teach in my courses: patriotism, a superficial and passing sentiment, easily leads to excesses, as the most cursory reading that this was what I wanted to explore. on the material and cultural roots of of history tells us; a wholesome pride This exploration soon extended Indian civilization. While I had of belonging to a country, a culture, a to India: what made this land what it migrated towards Indianness, I saw civilization, can only be founded on is. I began studying rather haphazardly numerous young Indian moving away dispassionate knowledge. its archaeological and historical origins from it not deliberately or consciously and its cultural developments. Even- tually, I adopted Indian citizenship, realizing that there was no meaning in so, but as a result of a fast changing India, exposure to global media (glo- bal meaning here, as it so often does, T o decide what is worth teaching young Indians of Indias past is a deli- technically remaining a foreigner in American), peer pressure, and a cate exercise. It is tempting (and a nation I had not once felt foreign to school system which, strangely, keeps some do yield to the temptation) to from the minute I had landed in Bom- the best of Indias knowledge sys- use shortcuts and paint a glorious pic- bay on a sultry evening of July 1977. tems out of sight of the student. A ture of a golden past by exaggerating What happened to my other iden- White man teaching young Indians here, misinterpreting there and cherry- tities? I had become an Indian, possi- about their own past and heritage is picking all over. This, of course, leads bly a Hindu (accepting an extended something of an irony, but India, as nowhere, because it makes nonsense definition of the term), though still a we know, is the land of paradoxes. of the long maturing of ideas, trials and White (no darkness creams are And it had the advantage of tickling my errors, debate and disagreement that available in India), but could I still be students curiosity, in the initial stages go into the building of knowledge. At a Jew, a Frenchman, a European? at least. the other end of the spectrum, for the 18 After some years, I found out that the It has been interesting to observe last few decades a neo-colonial view answer was in the positive, but those their responses, ranging from com- of India as a land that failed to produce identities were neither hyphenated plete self-alienation to a strong urge to any useful knowledge has resulted in
SEMINAR 649 September 2013
standard history books that blank out every culture can throw up such pain- easing the growing tensions of our glo- most advances in science, technology, ful paradoxes; Voltaire or Beethoven balized twenty-first-century societies, grammar, literature, yoga and spiritu- may not be of great daily concern to Indian or not? ality, among other thought systems. the average twenty-first century I have already alluded to nature Ashoka or Akbar find a place, not European. But the distance between conservation based on Indias high Panini, Patanjali or Aryabhatta. Strik- the two ends of the spectrum seems ecological traditions. It is, in fact, a ing a middle path has been challeng- to me much greater in India. whole philosophy of environment that ing, but rewarding. Since going back is never a they flowed from, based on the one solution, in my limited field I have hand on the sacredness of nature, and
A more difficult exercise is to recon-
cile this high culture, which has elicited endeavoured to show, through real- life examples, how Indian ethics or ecological traditions could still offer on the other on restraint: we can milk the earth, in the image of the Mahabharata, but not bleed her; she is the admiration of countless travellers solutions, with due adaptation, to the our mother, not a garbage dump for our to India and western Indologists, with increasingly unmanageable problems precious consumption. Ancient India the spectacle of life in modern India. besetting twenty-first century. Others developed the art of being happy with I am not just referring to the fast rise have done it before, and better, in fields little not asceticism, but just what is in violent crime, financial fraud or all- like agriculture, irrigation, nature con- required for our basic needs to be taken pervasive greed and corruption, but servation or medicine, often with con- care of. In contrast, current market also to a less tangible though equally siderable success. And while ordinary economics creates a condition of serious ravage: in this land which, from Indians tolerate (though with growing being unhappy with much. Many of the all accounts, valued and nurtured signs of impatience) endless deceit saner voices we hear today in the West beauty, not just in great monuments but and bottomless incompetence on (Schumacher was a pioneer) have in everyday life, we now have to live the part of their rulers, this very state used some of these Indian threads to with unsightly dwellings, ugly and of things has given rise to numerous weave a new paradigm of sustainable polluted cities, garbage heaps sending unsung heroes: men and women, development in which consumption up toxic fumes from every village, generally unknown and more often becomes a side activity, no longer an clouds of smog extending across vast than not from humble social origins, end, and the human being is restored stretches of rural areas, disappearing who have silently protected a forest, to the centre. rivers and forests. planted trees in urban or rural space, There seems to be a growing dis- connect between modern Indians and the nature their ancestors regarded as rescued brutalized animals, opened a school on a pavement, protected a monument, a pond or a river, or some- S ecularism is the shibboleth of our century. It was Europes creation: she sacred, a tacit acceptance that eco- times their country with no regard for needed it to free herself from the nomic growth comes at a price a price their own lives. clutches of churches. But in India, no one can quantify, but which cer- I have tried to keep track of a no ruler ever imposed a state religion. tainly involves a sacrifice of the finer few such Indians, whose contribution Indian history reverberates with wars, aspects of life. To a sense of aesthet- will not appear in official reports or but not wars of religion. With rare ics nurtured on, say, sublime Indian history textbooks, but who are, in exceptions, belief systems a term music and dance, the grandeur of my opinion, those who best help us more apt than religion in the Indian Indian architecture, the exquisite understand Indianness: they are context were a matter of individual or delicacy and rich imagery of a Kali- embodiments of Indias ancient value communal choice, not to be interfered dasa, an encounter with the indescrib- system, which prayed for the welfare with; they could hardly have been, the able vulgarity of Indias nouveaux of every creature and enjoined one to said systems having non-dogmatic riches or an awareness of the colos- leave the world a better place than he foundations. sal wastage of material or human or she found it. Strictly speaking, then, secular- resources in public life are like slaps ism of the European kind is ill-suited to in the face. I have not yet quite managed to understand how those Indians who still C an this worldview (I am referring here to the belief systems that go by India, since religion did not here attempt to harness political power. Moreover, it is not just nature that was 19 embody the former values manage to the names of Hinduism, Jainism and (since I cannot honestly use the pre- survive the latter. I am well aware that Buddhism) contribute in any way to sent tense here) regarded as sacred,
SEMINAR 649 September 2013
but, ideally, all stages and activities of have inclusive features that promoted human life: studying, marrying, acquir- cultural diversity, endowing each com- ing wealth, benefiting the society at munity with customs, festivals, some- large, or simply building ones house. times godheads of its own. But Indias Such a culture is non-secular by defi- model is neither the mosaic nor the nition and shows the limits of our salad bowl; I like to think of it as a concept of secularism: imposing it banyan tree, constantly throwing fresh on Indian public life can only lead to roots, but keeping its trunk at the cen- cultural nihilism, as we have seen in tre. There is a centre. Indian society, the field of education: in the name of sorely tested and bruised as it may be, keeping religion out, it is the whole of remains a living proof of it; otherwise, Indian heritage that has been hidden I am convinced it would have irretriev- from the view of its rightful inheritors. ably fragmented long ago. It may, of course, yet do so. No
B ecause of this awkward situation,
which Indias intellectual discourse has one knows whether or how long what remains of Indias classical culture will survive (and I am well aware that never really confronted (what to make, many, regarding it as hopelessly obso- for instance, of Sri Aurobindos asser- lete, actually wish its final disappear- tion, There is to me nothing secular?), ance). Throughout its history, this land India had to invent its own definition has had a proverbial ability to assimi- of secularism, holding that the term late, transform, while retaining that actually means equal treatment of all indefinable Indianness; but the present religions and religious tolerance. phase is enormously more rapid and Thus, in India, I am a secular intrusive, and its impact incalculable. person, an oft-heard proud assertion, India may finally graduate to a deve- really means, I am broad-minded (or loped nation, with a few of its old at least I think I am) and well disposed customs and traditions relegated to the towards all religions. Perhaps future role of flower pots or museum pieces; editions of standard dictionaries will or she may splinter into several con- end up including this unorthodox defi- tending nations, some of which would nition (with an India tag), and secu- soon fall victims to the expansive larism will end its chequered carrier affections of our neighbours. as a mere appendage of the notion of tolerance. But here too, the Indian brand of tolerance is different from the one Europe came up with after a long O r she may find that there is still something worthwhile in her old and bloody experiment in intolerance: value system and try to apply it to her here, in its genuine form, it is accept- problems. Problems which are now ance acceptance that the other is as no longer hers alone: perhaps no coun- much a manifestation of divinity as try is now untouched by the riddle of oneself, and therefore has as much a peaceful coexistence in the face of ris- right to strike his or her own path to the ing intolerance and fanaticism. Indias truth. solution, if she has one, is to insist on This attitude has been very our common human roots, but roots largely practised in India, resulting in which, like the cosmic tree of the the mind-boggling cultural pluralism Upanishads, are above, while our that confronts us at every street cor- branches spread below. Without some 20 ner. Even the caste system, now stud- divine source, human life can have ied exclusively through a prism of no meaning; that, perhaps, might be in exclusion and marginalization, did the end what Indianness is about.