I am a wife who has traveled more than her husband both in india and outside although what all that moving has to do with any learning is a moot point!
the question of what is indian culture i interpret as asking what do we as a society cultivate? What do we as a society hope for in our young and what do we teach them? I am not sure that any nation-state today has explicit lessons in culture although many messages are passed on subtly about what constitutes americanness or frenchness or indianness. The cultural message that came through to me most clearly when I was a child is that being HIndu (confused in my case with the idea of being Indian) means to endure. Enduring hardship, insult, injury, wrongdoing, but steadily plodding on impervious to all and somehow maintaining the illusion that we are not participants in that which we observe only in that which we do and sometimes not even that as we were thwarted by circumstances. Endurance became Janus faced sometimes taking on the guise of tolerance, a Gandian turning of the cheek, and other times just an excuse for being unaccountable/irresponsible when your neighbors were being burned, raped and killed. Some of you may be interested in the South Asian Idea weblog, started by Dr. Anjum Altaf of Pakistan at http://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2007/12/09/hello-world/. He is also at this time looking for schools/ school systems in India and other South asian countries that would like to engage their students and teachers in such discussions of culture, religion, democracy and governance. The explicit aim is to encourage critical thinking and fill a gap in the education systems that de-emphasize liberal arts and humanities where such skills are tradition. Radhika On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 7:45 AM, ss <[email protected]> wrote: > On Monday 09 Mar 2009 6:23:13 pm Ramakrishnan Sundaram wrote: > > I wish I had traveled more in India when I was single. > > Heh heh heh > > i know the feeling - and we don't want the wives to know do we? :D > > shiv > >
