Observations about the urban Indian Sunday, October 26, 2008 By Aakar Patel The urban Indian's behaviour unfolds from his cultural values. The first value of the Indian is his belief that the world is zero-sum, where there is no gain without loss. Each man looks out for his best interest, and there is no understanding of a collective good. This makes the Indian an opportunist. On the road his opportunism is seen in the behaviour of the Indian driver. Where traffic halts on one side of the road in India, motorists will encroach the oncoming side because there is space available there. If that leads to both sides being blocked, that is fine as long as you have an advantage over people in front of or next to you. The Indian's instinct is to jump the traffic light if he is convinced that the signal is not policed. If he gets flagged down by the police, his instinct is to bolt. In an accident, his instinct is to flee. Fatal motoring cases in India are a grim record of how the driver ran over people and drove away. This instinct of me-versus-the- world leads to irrational behaviour, demonstrated when Indians board flights. They form a mob at the entrance, and as the flight is announced will scramble for the plane even though all tickets are numbered. Because they do not understand collective good, Indians will litter if they are not policed. Someone else will always pick up the rubbish we throw. The un-policed Indian neighbourhood in the west will slowly unravel and come to resemble the Indian bazaar. Religion has a high content of magic and miracles, and gods and saints must be appeased all the time to watch out for you. The Indian notices the disability of the other and points it out through his name: Langda, Kaana, Goonga, Takloo, Motu. He is neutral in this and will also recognise those more fortunate than him: Gora, Maaldaar and so on. The Indian is prejudiced against dark skin, and the westerner is held in awe because of his fairness. The African is despised and feared. The ability of West Indian cricketers is recognised, but even revered figures like Richards and Lloyd will face racial slurs of 'Kaalia' and 'Kallu' on the field. This prejudice does not come to the Indian from his Hindu faith, but his culture. Two Hindu Gods, Krishna and Shiv, are dark and the names Shyam and Shyamala, which mean dark, are associated with sensual beauty. The second value of the Indian is his tolerance. Few other nations in the world have been as accepting of the foreigner and his religion as India. The Parsis, persecuted by Arabs who defeated Persia under Caliph Abu Bakr (RA) in AD 627, found prosperity in India. His tolerance comes from a belief in relativism: that there is no one truth, which he believes, is an essential part of the Hindu religion. The tolerance is value-neutral and shows up in his attitude to corruption, which also he does not view in absolute terms. Political parties in India understand this and corruption is not an issue in Indian politics. Politicians, who are demonstrably corrupt, caught on camera taking a bribe or convicted by a court, can hold legitimate hope of a comeback -- unthinkable in the west. Mob violence is contextual and may be explained away as being caused by provocation, such as by Muslims in Gujarat or by North Indians in Bombay. While he tolerates the other culture, the Indian does not see it as equal. The north Indian finds south Indian accents funny. This will be endlessly caricatured in cinema. His entertainment is slapstick and he is moved only by unsubtle emotion. The third is his value of his culture. This is seen in received terms. He does not engage with it or try to understand its nuance. Someone, somewhere has done or is doing something wise, which is to be followed. Indians earnestly recite a classic prayer -- say the Gayatri Mantra -- but will not know what it means. Many Indians can sing the national anthem while understanding only those words in it that are geographic terms: Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravid, Utkal, Bengal, Vindhya, Himachal, Yamuna, Ganga. Indians revere Gandhi and Nehru but do not read their works and cannot really say what they stood for or against. Honouring something and holding it to respect is good enough. Learning is prized but the nature of study is recitation and repetition. Though children rarely understand what they are taught, Indians are first rate at committing things to memory. In America, the Indian has no equal in the annual Spelling Bee contest. This formula skewers his creativity. Bollywood's instinct is towards plagiarism, and it lifts scripts and screenplays and melodies. Children have no control over what they want to study and are prepared from a very young age along their parents' expectation to become doctors and engineers. Because the family is a unit, Indian children feel guilty about not meeting their parents' ambitions. India is the only nation in the world where children in school kill themselves after failing an exam. Many urban children are taught dance -- Kathak and Bharat Natyam -- and Hindustani music, which the Indian sees as his inheritance. Here the Indian is deeply secular and the Muslim ustad is as revered as the Hindu guru. While the urban Indian understands the world increasingly through English, his entertainment is entirely local. The discos of Bombay light up only when Bollywood's Hindi songs play. The fourth value is his inclination towards the communitarian or the collective. The correct word is actually communal, but in India it is understood negatively to mean religious bigotry. Indians operate by consensus. The smallest unit of consensus is the family. Families agree through living together. Parents and grandparents are cared for better than in most cultures and kept within the family. Dissent is unacceptable. The political party, a larger unit of consensus, is undemocratic in India and its leaders not elected internally. The Congress is run by what is called a coterie. Many leaders -- Bal Thackeray is one -- are elected 'for life'. Because he inclines towards the collective, the Indian's individualism is low. Individualism cannot exist without respect for the individualism of the other. Harmony is two disparate views engaging without friction. In Hindustani music, the Indian shows his view of harmony as inessential. Hindustani music has melody and rhythm, two out of the three components of music, but does not harmonise two separate melodies. In Hindustani rhythm, the beat keeps returning to the Sam, where all listeners 'agree'. The definition of Sam given to tabla students is that it is that moment of the taal, "Jahan 'Haan!' kehney ko man karey". Melody comes from the singer or the solo instrument. Where there is an accompanying instrument -- and Indians are clear about hierarchy -- it must repeat the melody line. The harmonium or the sarangi only imitates the trailing voice of the singer. The dark side to collectivism is the mob, in which the Indian shows his valour. Indian mobs build quickly because the consensus is already present and only needs to be operationalised. The massacre of the Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 or Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 was preceded by the build-up of a known rhythm. The two or three days of actual violence are only the Sam. The current violence in Mumbai by Raj Thackeray's party against North Indians has a Marathi consensus behind it. Going against the consensus can be dangerous in India and the right to free speech is conditional. The quality of debate is poor and it will rapidly accommodate emotion, and then abuse. The origin of the argument is traced immediately to the person's community, and who says something is more important than what he says. Because Individualism is not recognised, seniority is the currency of competence and it prevails in government and even private sector jobs. There is no recognition of the space of the other. When Indians use the terminology of our universal civilisation, they do so without understanding it. Indians say 'Please excuse me' as they brush past someone. We do not stay and wait for the other to move. DISCLAIMER: Notice : This e-mail and any attachments may contain information which is confidential to the addressee and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you may not copy, forward, disclose or otherwise use it in any way whatsoever. 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