THE CULTURAL CONVERSION

THE CULTURAL CONVERSION 

The upper-class Indian mind must be de-Anglicised and de-Americanised but not with a vengeance. Imitation is dangerous. Enlightened assimilation of the best of every culture the world over into the body politic of Indian culture is most beneficial. Neither regressive nationalism nor slavish culture-copying will serve our national interests. The soil has its own elemental composition that will yield best its typical vegetation. Keeping this in mind we must forge ahead as a nation in the wider community of the peoples of the world, absorbing, assimilating and growing along the line of our age-old national development. Our cultural characteristics must be preserved if our nationhood in substantive essence is to be preserved. The Bhagavad Geeta exhorts us to better die in the pursuit of our innate nature than succumb to terrible alien nature. This Anglicisation and Americanisation is connected to exposure to such cultures by the rootless upperclass Indian who by dint of wealth can afford such contact and conversion but the poor people are saved from such perversion owing to their rootedness in home culture simply because of poverty. Hence, the nation yet has a bright future. But the virus is spreading and hundreds of millions of middle-class Indians are coming under the sway of superficial and shallow westernisation with its concomitant evils. Thus, there is ample cause for concern.

Written by Sugata Bose