What Shapes Modern Society and Culture in India? Indian National emblem

1. What Shapes Modern Society and Culture in India?Indian National emblem Dr Peter Gerard Friedlander

2. The Presence of the Past • How India’s past is seen by its inhabitants shapes India today • The interaction between • pre-colonial world views • world views forged in contact with the West • The tension between these world view is a major part of what makes India ‘India’ • So it is not the past itself, but its manifestation in the present is what we need to explore. http://www.ranajitpal.com/ashoka_pillar.jpg

3. Multiple meanings - common ideas • ‘māyā’: magic in Buddhist texts, the world as illusion in Hindu Advaita tradition, attraction in folk beliefs, money in Panjabi Hindi, Mayavati the UP politician: ‘possessor of maya’ • ‘samsara’: the endless cycle of ‘faring together’ in rebirth, world in sāṛī sãsār ‘Sari World’ shop. Something else again when a Western perfume.

4. The longevity of Civilization in India • As you all know India has been a host to ancient cultures. Modern India is heir to several thousand years of History reaching back to the Indus valley cultures of Mohenjodaro and Harappa that flourished over 3,500 years ago.

5. Brahminical Influences • Brahminical tradition absorbs other traditions by arguing that both are valid truths within the Brahminical system, and that they are therefore part of the same system as itself, with the Brahmins as its natural arbiters.

6. Central Asian Influences • Turkic Traditions: its important to realise that the first central Asian conquerers of India were as much Turkic as Islamic, Kutub Minar is based on models in Afghanistan.

7. Persian Influences • The Mughals brought with them Persianized Islamic traditions. So the gardens and and palaces of the Mughals are as much Persian as they are Islamic.

8. Colonial Influences: Language • The British brought English with them and it was seen by many Indian intellectuals as a vehicle for liberation and a way to revitalize culture in India. • Ram Mohan Roy1772-1833

9. Colonial Influences: Education • People in India also embraced education on the English model as a method for advancement. Initially in Indian languages, as at Fort William college and after 1835 in English after Lord Macauley’s memo on Indian Languages.http://www.geocities.com/bororissa/mac.html

10. Colonial Influences: Census data • The British refined the idea of cataloguing the wealth of India and in the census surveys conducted from the 1860s onwards began to classify India in ways which drew on new ideas based on European notions of how to define things.http://www.chaf.lib.latrobe.edu.au/dcd/

11. Regional relations • India was imagined in the 19th century as being like a mother and in a sense the relationship that has developed between : India, Pakistan and other South Asian nations is dogged by the notion that it is like a family. (image source: http://www.freeindia.org/bharat_bhakti/page28.htm)

12. Fighting for the Motherland • However, the other side of this image is that people will fight for their mother.This image comes from a site about ‘Hindipendence’. • (image: http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/3328/independence.html)

13. Partition • The partition of India, into India and Pakistan was not only a human tragedy on a vast scale but also a redefining moment in North Indian culture, dividing families as well as nations and creating new cultural zones, like the Panjabi culture of Delhi. • Image: http://www.indhistory.com/partition-independence.html

14. The Independence Movement: Idealism to Pragmatism • The Indian Independence movement gradually evolved from idealist visions in the 19th century into practical schemes for India in the 20th century. For instance Bharatendu Harishcandra imagined an India free from the British in which a united Indian people lived in harmony.

15. The Independence Movement: Gandhian Idealism • Gandhi had strong ideas about family, as well as nation. But his ideals were austere and at times his own actions point to a gap between idealistic notions of how life should be and the family life. • http://www.theindianblogger.com/interesting/mahatma-gandhi-little-known-facts-most-of-us-don%E2%80%99t-know-about-him/

16. The Independence Movement: Nehruvian Socialism • Nehru was a socialist, who went to Harrow and Trinity and sent his shirts to Paris to be pressed. This points to another facet in Indian idealism, the persistence of elite culture in India. • http://www.asiansinharrow.org/history/02-vipsmaharajas/article1.htm

17. Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920) and Swaraj • Tilak is know as a pioneer of the independence movement. But his study of the arctic home of the Vedic peoples also shows idealism in other ways, visions that seem hard to reconcile with later history.http://www.vaidilute.com/books/tilak/tilak-contents.html

18. Gokhale (1856-1915): The garam and naram • By the 1907 Congress sessions Independence leaders were seen as being in two camps the ‘hot’ (garam) who advocated agitation, and were mostly Hindu fundamentalists, and the moderates (naram i.e. gentle) who advocated reform and were somewhat more secular in approach.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gopal_Krishna_Gokhale.jpg

19. Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-1898) • Sir Syed Ahmed Khan for many represents Islamic Nationalism in India in the 19th century. • Engineer, has argued that whilst he and the elites stood for separation from Congress, the ‘Ulama in India represented the masses and always supported the Congress.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SAKhan.jpgEngineer, Ashgar Ali, 1992, Indian Muslims in a Multi-religious society, in Douglas Allen (ed.) Religion and Political Conflict in South Asia, Greenwood Press, London. pp. 55-65.

20. Ideal Families: Women’s Dharma • Partly in response to 19th century British moralism, and partly a continuance of earlier Islamic ideas on women’s status the role of women in families was stressed as being interior and circumscribed in nationalist rhetoric. A mix of Hindu, Muslim and 19th century British morality.image: http://pustak.org/bs/home.php?bookid=956

21. Regional and group identities:Modernity and Indian Identity • Nationalism also posed a challenge to understanding how regional and group identities related to the Nation. As these identities modernised they also engaged with how they related to the nation. An example of this is the question of Kayastha identity, Brahmin? Kshatriya? Muslim aligned? British aligned? • image: http://www.ekayastha.com/

22. Ananda Math and Vande Mataram • Ananda Math by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838-1894) is an example of a Bengali contribution to nationalism and redefining the family. The work praises renunciation in favour of becoming armed ascetics fighting the British, and introduced a kind of Indian Nationalist anthem Vande Mataram • image: http://www.exoticindiaart.com/book/details/ACK79/

23. Jungle to Jungle • Jangal, in Sanskrit Ayurvedic texts means dry forest scrubland. • In Hindi it means ‘wild’ or ‘wasteland’ and can refer to desert, mountains, or forests. • In English it came to mean tropical rain forest. • Now Hindi speakers also think it means that, when they think in English, but think of it as meaning ‘wild’ when they think in Hindi.

24. Conclusion • What Shapes Modern Society and culture in India? • Factors like economics, politics, etc. yes, but… • Societies and cultures in India are framed by how they are seen by India’s peoples • What makes India ‘India’ is how ideas in India have complex histories developed over time and how those ideas are interacting with modernity.