National Colour

After my usual work I started scanning the Times of India and Hindustan Times. This is my usual routine which keeps me kind of connected with India, its culture, gossip and all the fun!
I happened to hear a lot of the protests happening in Lhasa, Tibet. I had never actually bothered to find out what was really happening there. I thought I should do so, so I started reading more about that matter. Hardly had I read a few things about the protests, some extremely fundamental questions arose in my mind and I stopped reading and started pondering about the questions lingering in my mind. I decided to think with an open mind and this made me think very deep and far into the whole matter.

At the outset I started thinking from the side of the Tibetans who were demanding their sovereignty. This made me think about a similar problem which our country is facing – Kashmir. Then I started asking myself some fundamental questions like –

What constitutes a nation?
When is it that a group of people come together to form and proclaim a nation?
What motivates them to do so?

From a group of people I came down to a family and put forth the same questions considering a family rather than a nation. I was still somehow not getting a meaningful answer. I decided to move further in the same direction. I came down to an individual. I came down to myself. I asked will I allow someone to take my decisions or to influence my decisions. The answer was a resounding “no”! Obviously I as an individual in this world have my own identity (Astitva). I have my own value systems and principles, I am an independent entity. But then I realized that in order to survive I need the help from others. I cannot live by myself. For example, I need someone who makes my clothes; I need someone who grows crops/food which I can buy and similarly a host of several other consumer things. On the same lines I also produce some things (software) which can be used by some companies. In short we all need the help of each other to survive. After all man is a social animal. But I was still not satisfied. Based on the above reasoning it would be mean that there should be just one nation or no nation, just a society of interdependent people, right?

But then why are there so many different nations in this world? Why would a group of people want to identify themselves as a “separate” nation? What is this separateness, uniqueness? What is the subject under consideration? I realized that when a group of people interact there is definitely some scope for disputes. After all no two individuals think similarly. Apart from this there is a need for a common of set of laws which define the rules of the trade and commerce. What is right and what is wrong. But then even the concept of right and wrong is relative, right? But still the interested people do not want a third person to resolve their disputes. Makes sense. Now who is this third person? He is someone who is different from this group of people, who thinks in a fundamentally different way from these men.

This in turn implies that the group of people despite their personal differences over issues has some fundamental things in common. Have some fundamental ways of life which define what is right, what is wrong, what is legitimate, what is good, what is bad and so on. We call this collective set of guidelines as culture or way of life.

But doesn’t religion define culture. May be. But every nation has people from several religions. Still they all have one thing in common. There is something beyond this religious culture. I am not able to find a word, let me call it the national culture, national identity, rule of the “land”.
So we as Indians have our own ways of everything, our own and unique perspective to look at things. But internally we are an extremely diverse lot. Language and culture change over a few hundred kilometers! India is indeed a very delicate nation of highly self esteemed internal groups. And there is nothing wrong in self esteem. Ever Indian state has its own culture, heritage, language, literature, art, architecture and what not. But yet we all have some fundamental things in common. But the irony is these fundamental things are very subtle and difficult to define so as to keep all these groups connected.

I personally feel that we have made some costly mistakes in ignoring these things since we got independence and not taken any emphatic steps to voice loudly the fundamental things which unite us. As such our regional groups never realized these fundamental things which unite us. They have always placed their regional interests above national interest. Sometimes I wonder whether we are really united…

When India was formed we did not define an official religion. So far so good. But we did define a national language. There was actually nothing wrong in it. I personally consider Hindi a great language and admire its eloquent and rich literature. And it was also a great move to have a common national language to aid as an easy means of communication. But I think we ignored the possibility that this assignment to Hindi as a national language status might lead to creating a “social hierarchy” among those whose mother tongue is Hindi and those whose mother tongue is not Hindi and who are very sensitive and esteemed about their mother tongue. I still see many intolerant people whose mother tongue is Hindi and who look down upon those whose mother tongue is not Hindi. They fail to realize the fact that the latter have a different identity and speak a different language (I'm not saying all Hindi speaking people do. No definitely not. In fact I have more North Indian friends!). And their intolerant attitude is just because their mother tongue was accorded the national language status.

And I think this social hierarchy has forced these non Hindi speaking groups to voice their identity more vehemently. In fact their loud voices reflect great hatred and bitterness. But above all this loud voice hides the great insecurity which they feel… Insecurity in their own nation! How sad… I have personally sensed all this when I was in Chennai. At that time I was furious at those people who did not recognize their national language. But after a long time, taking into account all these fundamental things I feel sad for them.

In fact for that matter any individual will act defensive when faced with injustice, when faced with danger, when faced with a social hierarchy, when faced with domination. Speaking about social hierarchy, it is one of the most powerful forces to divide a group. It raises the question of who is superior and who is inferior. But there does exist social hierarchy in many institutions and organizations, right? People over there live and work in harmony. Why is that so? Because it is based on competence, professionalism and responsibility. It is healthy in that it extracts the best out of everyone who wishes to excel and move further in life. It is fair and transparent. But the hierarchy which I am talking about is based on contempt and injustice. It irrationally places one group of people above the rest, just because they are in a majority.

There was in fact a very elegant and simple alternative. Do not recognize any language as a national language. In fact even today, despite Hindi being our national language all the social institutes (buses, government papers, buildings etc) flaunt their names in regional languages. Now as far as government, judicial or political literature is concerned I would say keep it in English.

I think there was another mistake which we made and which has prevented the diverse cultural groups of India from interacting with another. Perhaps it has augmented the already existing diversity. It was forming states on the basis of language. Everyone today represents himself as either belonging to Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka etc. In fact nothing wrong in this. One should be proud of one’s culture. We are one nation, but we do have an enormously rich cultural diversity be it in language, art, music, food, architecture etc. But the point I am trying to make is nobody of us thinks beyond that. India is now a system of highly cohesive and loosely coupled states!! There is a similar concept of highly cohesive and loosely coupled system in software engineering! What it essentially means is that the system comprises several groups which among themselves are extremely united, but when it comes to the overall system there is very little dependency or interaction among the different groups. But when applied to a nation, this concept fails to establish the very significance of a nation. India indeed has very diverse groups. But do these diverse groups form a “team” among themselves?

What is the level of inter-state interaction across the socio-cultural domain? What is the percentage of inter-cultural marriages? How many north Indians can speak a south Indian language? How many south Indians can speak Bengali? How many festivals predominantly celebrated in North India are celebrated in south India? What is the level of migration across the various states not just on the basis of jobs or economic conditions? I’m not trying to say that everyone in India learn every other culture or every other language.

The question I’m asking is, does socio-cultural interaction among Indians happen not because the other person speaks your language or is from your state, but just because he is an Indian? How comfortable is a person when he speaks to a fellow Indian who has a different culture and who speaks a different language? What is the level of their tolerance? Do they recognize the fact that we all have our own identity our own culture but we should also accept and respect other’s culture and language? Does anyone take interest in learning some other Indian language just because of pure interest? May be it could offer great insights into its culture! For the last 60 years the individual cultural groups might have become richer (culturally), might have preserved their heritage, might have become more colorful, but has a national color ever taken shape? Is India still a canvas of areas having their own color? Can we add some water and derive brighter shades out of this canvas? Is this a farfetched dream? It may be difficult, but not impossible.

What we could do is form a set of 5-6 states geographically and not on the basis of language. Each state will hence have people from several cultures and who speak several language. But since they all belong to one state there will be interaction among them. In this way there will be interaction among the diverse cultural groups. After some years we could again form a different set of states to facilitate interactions among groups which had little chance of interacting before. And we carry on until we develop a national identity, a national culture and a national color!

And I strongly believe that this national color which will evolve will be 1000 times brighter!! Jai Hind!!