--- On Thu, 11/6/09, ss <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: ss <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [silk] Indian foodies
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Thursday, 11 June, 2009, 4:37 PM
> On Thursday 11 Jun 2009 11:04:33 am
> Indrajit Gupta wrote:
> > Anthropologically, sociologically, it is amazing that
> a culture that got
> > down to defining distances from different types of
> animal that were safe to
> > maintain, to defining complications of physical
> disposition during
> > intercourse that are brutally frank in their depiction
> of the
> > possibilities, that can minutely subdivide which
> sub-caste may marry which
> > other finally fails to lay down laws relating to
> community cleanliness.
> >
> > Any clue, Shiv, what this huge gap might signify?
>
> IG I can say this to you safely, although this is a
> publicly archived list. My
> view on tis causes offence in some quarters.
>
> But, whether you like it or not, the Indian (Hindu?) thrust
> has always been
> towards emancipation and release of the individual. It is
> always about
> keeping oneself pure, keeping oneself safe, keeping oneself
> above all bad
> things. It is very much a set of guidelines to look after
> yourself in person,
> with very little to tell you what to do about your neighbor
> other than shun
> him if he does things that may sully your personal purity.
>
> As far as my (possibly limited) knowledge goes, one's main
> duties to society
> are laid out. A child undergoes the rites of initiation
> into brahmacharya,
> after which he must look after one's Guru's and his own
> interests. Later he
> must look after his family. But what does he do about his
> neighbor? His
> village? These appear to be fundamental lacunae that nobody
> has managed to
> explain to me - which only means that I may well be right
> and that there are
> no rules that tell you what to do in terms of "civic
> order".
So true, so bitterly accurate.
How did we manage to side-step the community so completely, and concentrate on
the individual so exclusively? Is it anything to do with our philosophical
systems, which concentrate on the individual almost exclusively? If that were
the case, what is the situation in other cultural contexts? Do the Chinese
behave similarly, retaining extreme personal cleanliness and making a mockery
of the community?
My impression is that the Chinese and Japanese cultures place a greater premium
on communal conformity, or rather, on conformity with the family and then the
group, and less emphasis on the individual compared to Indic philosophical
systems. Would this be a contributing factor to their relative communal
cleanliness?
What would we postulate as an equivalent Occidental analysis?
Finally, why are we a xenophobic culture? With a very well-hidden talent for
ruthless co-option of anything remotely dangerous to the existing order of
society?
Take the food thread, for instance; we are fanatic about eating only what 'we'
eat; the Bengali to his own taste, scathingly contemptuous about the tamarind
melange that is 'Madrasi' cooking to him, oblivious to the subtleties of
bitter, and oblivious also to the deadening effects on the palate and the
digestive system alike of mustard oil; the Punjabi certain that cholesterol in
some mysterious way is linked to his libido; the Gujarati suspicious of
anything and everything, but managing to ingest vast quantities of food while
being dainty as my fair lady. It's weird how utterly insular we are about food.
Bhy, saar?
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