Sasana -- Village and Worldview

When I now go to Orissa, I like to spend much of my time in villages. These villages are known as Sasana, much like the Agrahara of South India.
I was born and raised a brahmin, and both my families on the maternal and paternal side were priests and astrologers to one of the erstwhile kings in Orissa. When the king invited them from Varanasi or other places of higher study, he gave them considerable land as an annuity stream. This was common practice in the creation of Sasanas in the period between the 10th and 18th centuries, and resulted in a certain cultural construct but also an important part of Brahmin social identity in many parts of India, continuing to this day.
Looked at through a western lens, these villages may seem to suggest the classic proof for homo heirarchicus and separateness but the reality is somewhat deeper. Religious ritual and meditation required an environment that was focussed on study, discipline, debate, voice modulation for Sanskrit chants, and purification of body and mind. A key learning for me as a child was how much internal focus and self-awareness there was in these villageworlds. I still remember my great-grandfather providing detailed notes on his examination of Sanskrit papers from Oxford University where he was a designated external examiner explaining to me (and the student who was being examined) what grammatical logic meant in the various schools of linguistic philosophy and how that might translate into a framework understandeable to a native English speaker.
Many of my interactions with people in the West or in nearly-West urban India these days suggests the opposite: the defensive-aggressive posture, the lack of scholarship and self-awareness, superficial discourse, and above all externalization of ignorance and even a righteous defense of these when questioned resulting in Ad Hominem fallacies. Westerners who are increasingly interacting with India, see only the urban social construct which is largely a diluted reflection of their own mindset from the colonial age reinforced by the globalization of western media. They have not for the most part interacted with rural India where in places it has been independent of these globalizing forces.
Thus in the Sasana there was an appreciation of difference that is not directive, and there was a contentment that came from great introspection. The chants still speak in an ancient tone of the oneness of self and the universal divine. The crumbling palm leaf manuscipt next to the salegram points the way through meditation to fulfilment. All that is slowly changing now as cable wires intrude ever deeper into this Indian psyche.
For now, these villages still provide a view of the world.

White Woman's Burden?

There are a small number of blogs now, by women from the West in the process of getting married to, or already with, an Indian husband. Interestingly many of these blogs call out to themselves in "skin color" terms: "WHITE Indian housewife" or "GORI girl". Perhaps I am overly sensitive, but there seems to be a mild air of prejudiced condecension in the subtext of these blog titles.
'Look at me, I am white but I am trying to make it with a "colored" man in very difficult circumstances. I am liberated and don't care about race (what about those color references as the defining characteristic of the blog titles?) but look at my husband's family and country -- caste system, higher fees at parks for foreigners, they shit and spit in the street, mom-in-law looks at my "blonde" hair and "fair" skin in envy -- so much of a white woman's burden (sigh!).'
Methinks there is an externalization of collective prejudice perhaps? When 9/11 happened, Sikhs got murdered in Phoenix, AZ, coz some European-Americans couldn't be bothered with the difference between them and Al-Qaeda! Sikhs and Muslims thrown into the same category because they have turbans and beards is the ultimate irony! And speakin' of Australia --- well, lets examine the immigration policies from a few years ago or how "aborigines" have been treated.....the less said the better! Australia, South Africa, and the US are examples of institutionalized prejudice in European-dominant societies, in the same way as one might think of the caste system in India. There is unfortunately no racial monopoly when it comes to prejudice, although the evidence points to greater violence related to institutional prejudice in "white" societies.
Another important point about these (mis)conceptions is the equating of race with skin or eye color. Any decent anthropologist or evolutionary biologist will tell you that human beings are essentially all racial hybrids and are genetically indistinguishable from each other racially compared to other species, say, apes or mice. Indians and Europeans are actually all caucasians who even share a common original language called proto-Indo-European -- read Max Mueller. This is what really gets me: that these women/men think they actually have married into a different race because of differences in skin color. It never occurs to them in their ignorance that they should question the prejudices they grew up with in their own societies/families. The externalization of ignorance is the very essence of prejudice. So skin color is just a political manifestation of "racial" self-identity in institutionally prejuduced societies: us vs. the aborigines, us vs. the "blacks", us vs. the injuns, us vs. the japs we put in the internment camps, us vs. the wetbacks, us vs. the curry-smelling brown guys, us vs. the shudras, etc., etc. I have never actually seen a WHITE-skinned person, they are mottled pink or cream, or yellow, or brown, or whatever. White is the color of the printer paper next to your PC;its an invention of convenience to define separateness in very superficial terms.
So, I might ask, are Westerners like that only, but I may be accused of generalizing to an entire group or race or set of countries, and that wouldn't be right, now, would it?

A President for the Ages?

Re: my earlier post on the emergence of democracy in the US, we now have a President of a non-European hue. Free, free at last! Watch the media swoon at the inaugural balls. And Oprah and Jesse crying! Well, the President is sophisticated and he actually mentioned the word "Hindu" along with other religions in his inaugural speech. And he says "Eeraan" and not "I-ran" and that is a truly wondrous thing.

But the popular media is still so illiterate. Things are so black-and-white. Many have declared the country free of racism and prejudice with the election of one different looking man about 200 years after the constitution got started. Lets have some perspective here folks! What about that senator from Louisiana. What if he wasn't born-again; what if he was twice-born? Would you vote for him as the next Republican candidate for President? Wouldja?
Meanwhile we had one woman take over from another in a presidential election in godforsaken, third-world, Muslim-dominant Bangaladesh. Boy, they must be crazy!

Movie Slumdogs

Once again I am struck by this rising to the surface of a shadowy battle; the clash of exports from the two great film-producing countries of the world, mediated by the old imperial master, Britain.
There are many good movies on Mumbai, classic like Anand or Kaagaz Ke Phool or Maqbool, but also the more urban-modern: Bombay, Company, Satya. All edgy in different ways, visually arresting, tugging at your emotions, musically vivid. And then, I recently saw Slumdog Millionaire and have watched its Dickensian appeal to the Western media, rising up in waves about the feel-good story of the underdog, the conceits, the pulsating music and truthful view of Mumbai like the Indians would never tell it, and the raw cinematography. The interviews with Dev Patel (where are you from really? London, really? You have never been to India??) and Freida Pinto (are you from India? Really? Sure you are not from Portugal?) and the excitement over Bollywood dancing over the ending credits.
Slumdog Millionaire? A decent Bollywood movie on a $13MM budget. Good production values. But great? Come on! Wake up. Watch a few really good Mumbai movies...like the other ones I mention above. And I am just talking about movies out of Mumbai. Don't get me started on Adoor and Ritwik and the other great movie makers that have suffered the fate of all subalterns. Danny Boyle vs. Guru Dutt vs. Mani Ratnam. Such sadness underlies one of the great loves of my life, and yet so much richness.

Political Preference: The Obama Factor

The Democratic Presidential Primaries have sprung two lucky candidates -- one woman, and one African-American male -- against 200 years of ageing European extraction males being in the White House. The quality of media debate in the US, particularly in the Fox News and Lou Dobbs era, continues to be riveting.
In any democratic society, you would expect that unless there were historically reinforced inequalities, candidates, and indeed election winners would reflect social demographics. Not so in the USA...and citizens do not question it either. Where in another democratic country, people might naively push for rules to encourage women and historically oppressed segments of the population to participate and win, perhaps to the detriment of individual choice, in the US, democracy is massacred with statements about lucky black men, and a focus on the possibility of Islamic contamination in a middle name...psst, psst!
I have strong free market views and would probably make voting decisions for people on the right. Therefore, I am shocked by the implication that a Muslim or a Jew or a woman or a Hindu (are we even past Catholicism??) cannot aspire to and win high office in a democratic country.
It is interesting that the US seeks to export and even enforce free choice and democracy to the rest of the world. Except for the enforcing part, I actually support that sentiment.
But charity begins at home. The US must be a failed democracy if, having allowed women the right to vote in the 1920s, and citizens of African extraction the right to vote in the 1960s, cannot bring itself to allow people to run for office and be elected if they do not subscribe to the WASP norm. How different is this from the caste system in India or the suppression of Shia or Sunni sects. Israel has had a woman president; India has had a woman prime minister and an "untouchable" President, even the UK has had its Iron Lady PM.
When will the US catch up??