Coexistence is Possible: Traditional Values and Modern Ideas
Traditional and modern
concepts seem to be in a constant state of struggle for dominance over peoples’
minds. The idea that to have one means sacrificing the other seems to be the
reigning paradigm amongst political, social, and cultural talking heads. It has
been a battle created by those who fail to understand the concepts of
integration and adaptation. My time in India has taught, retaught, confirmed,
and reconfirmed that it is indeed a possibility to make these seemingly
opposite ideals coexist and work together. Some would classify this as trying
to push the proverbial “square peg through a round hole”. I would like to
counter immediately with two points from my observations here. The first comes
from Dr. Ashwin Mahesh. He noted that India’s problems require creative
solutions. My host teacher, Babu Simon Louis, further complimented this by
saying “Sometimes you make the hole bigger to make things fit.
Modernization usually comes with a steep cost. This is
especially true in the event that the process is a rapid one. Local customs,
languages, art forms, and traditions are usually the sacrificial lamb of this
need to revolutionize and upgrade. The traditional customs and languages are
seen by modernists as roadblocks to progression and that the easiest way to
revolutionize the country is to remove these or have them become of such a
taboo nature that people do not want to engage in the tradition and therefore
dies a little more with every following generation.
India is a vastly wide and diverse country. It has been
said that India is more like Europe than a single country. If one considers the
number of languages, the number of states, the number of local customs it
becomes clear that any attempt to modernize or create some form of unification
will result in a heated debate in India’s Parliament. Each of the states was
drawn up by linguistic boundaries. Inside each state is a unique accent for
that language. I was in the state of Kerala. Our host was able to identify
those from north and south Kerala and those who lived by the ocean just based
off of their way of speaking. Modernists would see the diversity of languages
as a barrier to communication. As a result, there has been a push to have some
form of standard language learning. Hindi has been largely taught but the
language of status and prestige is English. Many people in Kerala speak 2-3
languages with English being one of them. The schools I was able to attend and
observe their classes had the students learning in both the local language and
English. The belief in teaching the local language stems from the idea of if
one loses the language; they lose their past and their culture. They lose what
makes their group unique. The Indian reality requires creativity to solve any
of their solutions. So, the Indian educators have their classes taught in both
the local language and English medium. This learning of both languages allows
the people to engage in business and have a way of communicating across their
diverse nation.
I also witnessed the incarnate form of this balancing of
tradition and modern ideas on my way to school one morning. There was a woman
driving her Vespa in full sari. This does not sound like much until one takes a
closer look. A sari is one of the traditional forms of dress for women in
India. It requires large quantities of fabric to make. They are not exactly the
easiest to move or balance in either. That being said, this woman I was
observing was the example I was looking for in regards to this balancing act of
tradition and modern. She was in traditional garb and riding a modern machine.
I would hazard a guess she was going to work as well. Understanding that she
lives in a country that has been dominated by some form a patriarchy at some
point or another, she represented this balancing act of new and old in more
ways than one.
In conclusion, India is a deeply diverse and rich
country. This is true both culturally and resource wise. Their issues and
problems will require creative responses to their multi-tiered and
interconnected issues. There are no simple solutions. Any responses to any of
their issues need to be supported by all or it will inevitably fail and all
movements to reform and upgrading will indeed sacrifice their tradition and
culture. India’s problems of tradition vs modern require distinctly Indian
solutions.
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