Prof. Indra Nath Choudhuri
Academic Director,
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts,
New Delhi-110001, India
My related reflections are as follows:
1) There is no doubt that symbolic expression is key to
cultures and also to personal identity and also the way people interpret and
reach to the world around them but if one follows the concept of the ‘melting
pot’ of synthesis or amalgamation of diverse identities then the problem
starts and tension among the ethnic minorities of a nation increases.
2) India believes in variety, in plurality, the singular
thing about India is that you can speak of it only in the plural. Indian
culture is studded with varied signs and symptoms which are mystic in character
and symbolic in nature, and are also sacred symbols of spiritualism as well.
These symbols are concretized philosophy and because of the cultural plurality
these symbols have multilevel meaningfulness and are never rigid and hence one
can find an inner flow of catholicity in Indian culture which is better know as
a composite culture. Indians by and large not use these key symbols to
interpret and react to the world around them and because of this reason it is so
easy for an Indian youth to find their identity in following the path of western
culture celebrating ‘valentine day’ or gyrating their waist with the tune of
western pop music in discos. But we have no doubt that if somebody from
the foreign land interrogates an Indian youth of today to know about Indianness,
the Indian youth, we are absolutely certain, would never say that Indianness is
what is shown on MTV or the alien influence that has penetrated into Indian
society, even though absorption of elements of other culture has always been a
reality for India. Our youth may today accept many mores of western
cultural expositions and life styles but it is more or less adoptive rather than
substitutive.
Religious fundamentalists today contest this idea and define India as a
homogenous exclusive and belong to one community which is based on an absolute
sense of culture and interpretation of socio-religio symbols and on the doctrine
of segregation and separatism.
Infact the other, an inalienable entity external to oneself is both a source of
terror and an object of desire for the West. Sartre’s famous statement
“hell is the other” carries a strong echo of Hegel, who always defines
one’s identity against the other either to be appropriated or to be destroyed.
But the Western mind knows well that if he succeeds in completely subjugating
the “other”, the identity of his own self becomes dubious. He wants to
be come whole by destroying the other but without the other, he becomes nothing.
India always looks at things holistically but western approach is binary and
hence Huntington writes about the clashes of civilizations. For them any
two civilisations are bound to stand as opposite from each other and ultimately
clash is inevitable. India’s perception is totally different. It
looks at two apparently incompatible ideas as complementary to each other.
And hence west gets confused by Tagore’s own description of his Bengali family
as the product of a confluence of three cultures, Hindu, Mohammedan and British.
West is logo-centric and exclusive India on the contrary is symbolic.
West has accepted multiculturalism but is used as a political weapon, a method
of ruling a country of people of different cultures and ethnicity. But at
the same time there is no denial of the fact that because of multiculturalism
Asians particularly in US and UK are making their presence felt in the
mainstream living and at times calling the shot also. Multiculturalism is
a stage of historical awakening in which the peoples of the world are coming to
recognise that all the cultures and civilizations of the human family, of the
present as of the past, have their intrinsic value and beauty. But trouble
starts when religion, culture and related symbols are used to demonstrate a kind
of racism in a politically – correct guise. And at the same time recent
banning of head scarf of the muslim women and turbn ban of sikh community in
France indicates a tendency to uphold and support only what is practised in
their culture and entertain a biased approach towards what is valued in other
areas.
3) The paper on the ‘Role of imagination’ is
excellent and raises many issue of high value.
The reason of finding ourselves at the juncture of objective and subjective
because of the binary approach to life. In Indian philosophy the
subjective self is one with the objectivity of the Supreme. In this
dynamic relationship the juncture of objectivity and subjectivity vanishes to
make way for the universalisation of our existence. It fulfils one of the
biggest demands of modern times, sublimation of one’s ego and the unity
between ecology and the human mind. This is not an alchemical unity where
the subject loses its entity but a state of complementariness where both are
important and at the same time both tend to become one. Life is not a
pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it is an oceanic circle
whose centre is the individual using one’s language, local, regional, national
identities and ultimately becoming the part of the whole which takes one form
composed of many individuals. Culture in Indian context is the
manifestation of dharma in which all are harmonized and hence it is another name
for pluralistic universalsim which always introduces a space for discussion, a
dialogue on divergent issues, religious, social and political, but in a
democratic way to justify pluralistic differences in the use of different
symbols and at the same time seeking for some universal oneness.
Even if the various socio-religious symbols are used to demand for separate
identity is symptomatic of the desire for self-realization rather than an
ultimate objective in itself. Each group is just saying, give us our
space, in which we can feel we belong, we call the shots, we determine our own
fate but this all will be done under the solid frame of a nation to which we
belong.
The term for imagination is dhvani. It is suggestive of n order meaning of
a text. The linearity is lost here and in the suggestiveness lies the beauty.
It is like the Tribhanga pose of Sri Krishna – because of the curve, the
object is not linear, and that adds to its beauty. Something always
remains hidden. Symbols are like this and the moment it is concretized it
loses its expansiveness. This is the advantage as well as disadvantage of a
symbol.
Indra Nath Choudhuri