By Madhusree Chatterjee, IANS,
New Delhi : The time has come for Indians to introspect whether they are in tune with their culture or not, \”to pause and put a mirror before society to see why dilution, mutilation and modification of culture have taken place against the backdrop of such a distinguished civilisation heritage\”, says diplomat-writer Pavan Varma.
Varma, former director-general of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), was in the capital to promote his new book, “Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity” (Allen Lane/Penguin; Price Rs. 499)), which was released in the capital Friday.
“My book investigates how those who are culturally rootless and India’s educated classes will be co-opted in a globalised world where the victims are usually the last to know,” Varma, who is currently India’s ambassador to Bhutan, told IANS in an interview.
“We are not merely a nation but a civilisation with a legacy of 5,000 years – one that represents great ambiguity, continuity, peaks of refinement and plurality, along with a huge sense of underlying unity. But such a civilisation is always at the risk of mediocrity, mimicry, cultural rootlessness and tokenisms – particularly where the educated middle classes are concerned,” Varma said.
“In doing so, we must analyse that the importance of colonialism is not just physical subjugation but also about colonisation of the mind. While its consequences in terms of politics and economics have been analysed, a cultural audit of its colonised legacies in compromising the authentic cultural space of Indians has never been done.
“So the great unfinished revolution of India is to re-appropriate the cultural space in authentic terms calmly, without xenophobia and chauvinism. This is the purpose of the book,” Varma said.
The book looks at India’s cultural journey through the writer’s own itinerary as a bureaucrat and Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer. It begins with Varma’s vision of exile – his growing up years in Delhi to his relocation to London with his family in the first chapter, “Choosing Exile,” followed by the “The Imperishable Empire” in which he analyses the East India Company’s role in the country.
“Colonial Amnesia: The Tale of Two Cities”, “Creativity and Distortion”, “The Empire At Your Threshold”, “Within the Global Village: Asymmetry and Co-option” probe the colonial high, hangover and the gradual assimilation of the Indian urban educated societies into a new global order.
“Therefore, the book is a rigorous analysis of colonisation and consequences in the cultural and intellectual space – and then the enumeration of its impact in areas of language, creative experience, music, films and architecture,” Varma said.
It took the veteran career diplomat four years to write the book.
The writer said: “We need to be concerned about our cultures.”
“Our threshold of satisfaction is unacceptably low. At the slightest praise from the West, there is euphoria and any criticism evokes extreme indignation. If you see the condition of our classical music and dance – they are pathetic. Even the best of dancers cannot fill a hall when the ticket is free.
“Nearly 70 percent of Bollywood movies are lifted from Hollywood and Gyanpeeth winners cannot sell more than 100 copies of their books. In any area of creative expression, there is shabbiness,” he said.
“Photocopies cannot sit at the high table. You have to be original and rooted to the milieu you belong to. Photocopies are like caricatures and those who carry the legacies of great civilisations like India cannot become caricatures,” he said.
The writer recommended a change in school language modules. “Education till Class 6 should be in one’s mother tongue and in another language. It will help a child get a firm ground in culture. Recent researches show that those who become adept in their own mother tongue pick up foreign languages faster,” he said.
Varma is now working on his first work of fiction – a novel. “After 20 years of writing non-fiction, I have a powerful story to tell,” he said.
(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at [email protected])