Globalisation Through The Kalpas

Centuries arc back into themselves, fusing together as they recede from our collective memories and our multiple pasts, turn and return. Historical moments are like opaque silhouettes cast on the slippery, indistinct face of time; trajectories of ideas, influences, and experiences stretching out oblong, overlapping, reaching backwards, forwards and sideways.

Brass and clay, seeds and blood and ideas and experiences, that which can respond and accumulate, leave hazy images on the undifferentiated edges of our disappearing records. Throughout the millennia-inventions, languages, commodities and movements of peoples have combined and recombined, crisscrossing across shifting continents.

Concepts such as “nationalism” and “globalisation” are not newly-coined, neatly defined categories that can be classified as the products of a specific time. Nationalism is not only a post-Enlightenment construct, based on the premise of the modern nation-state as a unifying, political institution. It is far more complex and ancient.

Who can say what social and political infrastructures maintained the longevity, architectural consistency, the weights and measures and economic viability of the Indus Valley Civilisation for dozens of centuries? Were not the concepts of Jambudvipa or Bharatvarsh part of the world view of the Mauryas, the Guptas or other historic Rajas? Scholars in this post-postmodern world can scarcely agree as to what constitutes a state or a nation, or which salient characteristics should be employed in the construction of terms such as nationalism, nationalist, nationhood, nation-state, sub-nationals, etc. (See: Democracy in Ancient India - Steve Muhlberger, PhD.)

The phrase “nationalism problem” means something quite opposite in India than it does in neighbouring Pakistan; where it refers to the disintegration of the state by subnational, ethnic secessionists in Sindh, Pakhtunkhwa or Balouchistan. In India, Marxist intellectuals complain about the “nationalism problem” in reference to the rise of what they consider to be excessive patriotism and nationalism, in contemporary Indian society. Since Indian Marxists have academically avoided and avidly opposed the political propagation of patriotism for decades, this is serious criticism.

Undoubtedly, this officially sponsored anti-nationalism seems strange for flag waving Americans. In contrast, the common citizen in India was not allowed to fly the Indian flag until January 2002. Until that time, only diplomats and other government officials were authorized to fly the tricolour-a situation completely juxtaposed to the flag waving tendencies of patriotic Americans, for whom patriotic historical narratives are the norm. In India, in the officially sponsored NCERT social studies textbooks, the opposite is seemingly the intention. It is to ignore or denigrate India’s past while promoting a non-violent, if tepid, acceptance of the constitutional authority of the Indian nation-state.

Globalisation didn’t suddenly emerge at the end of the 20th century, as a threat to cultural diversity imposed by the market-driven forces of hegemonic modernity. Globalising pressures have always been with us. The Indian subcontinent has been the recipient and dispenser of international influences, long before the Internet and stock exchanges. Now it has tied us all together intellectually (perhaps pseudo-intellectually), economically, often ruthlessly greedy but sometimes community-minded and generously-otherwise known in Sanskrit as jaal. The idea of a World Wide Web is a modern metaphor for the “inherent interconnectedness of all sentient beings”. It is no wonder that India is in step with infotechnology-the symbols are not alien.

Earlier forms of globalisation and the slow but steady intercontinental spread of culture and languages have been around for as long as there have been civilisations interacting on the planet.

From four millennia ago, there are cuneiform records from Sumeria-depicting the shipments of peacocks, elephants and oils arriving on sailing ships from ancient India. In 2nd millennium BCE, mummies in Egypt were wrapped in cotton grown in the Sindhi-Sarasvati region. 1900 years ago, the Senate in Rome passed an ordinance forbidding senators from wearing togas made from Indian cloth-a legal effort to hinder the flow of gold coins pouring out of Roman coffers into India. A 1000 years ago, Hindu temples were built in Cambodia and Vietnam. The national symbol of Indonesia-a Muslim majority nation-is Garuda, the Hindu phoenix associated with Lord Vishnu.

A whole New World was discovered because of the European desire for Indian products; particularly for spices, scents, oils, and fabrics but also steel, brass and semi- precious stones and jewelry. 2000 years ago, India approximately had a 60 per cent share of the world market. But then came 800 years of Sharia laws and ‘dhimmi’ status, followed by three centuries of Victorian prudishness, coupled with the destruction of the indigenous education system.

This was followed by invasions of Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Evangelical missionaries and even Latter-day Saints and Children of God missionaries, positioning themselves to “Plant a Cross” in every field and empty lot. After all that, in the intervening centuries, one could say that contemporary India has become more porous and susceptible to the hegemony of globalised commodities. Commodities that were used popularly in India become intertwined with Bharatiya ambiance, eventually became ‘desi-ized’ as per alu-chop and chilies.

I often hear the fear expressed that Coca-Cola, blue jeans and other American imports will destroy Indian culture. As if Indian culture were that fragile! 400 years ago, the first flood of products from the Americas did not dramatically alter the nature of Indic Civilization. Did tomatoes, potatoes or red and green chilies herald the end of Indian cuisine? Obviously not, since they are essential ingredients in numerous delicious and very Hindustani dishes. Yet, Indian food remains distinctly Indian.

Bougainvilleas that drape drab walls of urban edifices, dahilas that brighten flowerbeds in ashram gardens, stitched choli blouses that ladies wear under their saris-all these and more are Western imports to the subcontinent. Even the most ardent Swadeshi supporter would never think of boycotting alu-chop with tamatar-mirch chutney or criticize ladies’ silk blouses as “corrupt alien influences”. Certainly, American pop culture and the mindless consumerism of the late 20th century are more insidious than a few vegetables. Colas and jeans will eventually become quasi-invisible parts of the colourful and diverse Indian landscape.

India has also impacted and interacted with the West and the rest of the world for many millennia. Though not as profound as the impact of the concept of zero, blue jeans originated in India and were widely adopted by farmers, cowboys, working-class men, teenagers and suburban moms. Almost everyone in the West has at least one pair of blue jeans. They are the hallmark of American fashion and in vogue across the world. One of India’s lasting contributions to Western life was the export of a thick cotton clot, known as the “dungaree”. In the 16th century, it was sold near the Dongri Fort in Bombay. Portuguese and Genoan sailors used this durable blue broadcloth, dyed with indigo, for their bell-bottom sailing pants.

Should Indians fear the Westernized fashion imperialists? Is it a threat when tailors and shopkeepers in urban India added some extra brass buttons and zippers, bringing blue jeans back to the Motherland a few 100 years later? I doubt if “dungarees” are going to damage culture as they find their way back to Indian shores. Male college students in India have been wearing blue jeans for over 40 years. without any dramatic destruction of their value system and they still respect their parents, graduate first class and participate in family rituals. I seriously doubt if female college students, who have more recently taken to wearing jeans in places such as Delhi, Bombay and Kanpur will lose touch with their cultural heritage, by continued contact with this blue broadcloth of Indian origin.

The interactions of human civilisations over time look less like linear progressions and more like oil slicks on a wet road-opalescent interconnecting ovals. Similarly, traditions and languages reach into one another and exchange words and concepts. Hindi uses the Nahuatl word ‘tomato’ borrowed from the Aztecs, just as dozens of words commonly used in English come from Hindi. The word “shampoo” is borrowed directly from Hindi into English, taken from the verb chhaapnaa-meaning “to massage”.

When the British first came to India in the 16th century, they were not accustomed to the daily rituals of personal hygiene. During that period, Europeans rarely took baths. Hence, their need for perfumes from India. At that time, European belief held that bathing weakened the body, inviting bad “humors”. However, in India, a morning bath is an integral part of Hindu ritual. The British brought this cleanliness habit, which was initially dubbed a “craze”, to the West-as well as the word “shampoo” meaning a “cleanser that you rub or press into your hair”. The idea that “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”, which inspired a Christian revivalist movement in early 19th century USA, grew out of the knowledge of bathing rituals that the Europeans learned from their contact with Hindus. 



There are numerous words so common in English that no one remembers they actually came from Hindi. In the following etymology tale, there are 13 Hindi words:

“Wearing a khaki hat, his face half covered by a red bandana, the thug took the loot to his cushy bungalow in the jungle. After drinking rum punch, he put on silk pajamas and fell asleep on a cot. He thought he was the big cheese until the juggernaut of the law caught up with that social pariah”.

Three of these borrowed words are particularly interesting: “bandana”, a red or blue head scarf with small, white patterns modelled after bandhana kapra or tie-dyed cloth; “cushy”, taken from the Hindi word khushii meaning pleasure or happiness (originally coming to Hindi from Urdu) and “cheese” as in “the big cheese”, from the common Hindi phrase badi chiiz, meaning big thing. There are, of course, many words that have been borrowed from English into Hindi such as bus, tank, torch, taxi, bomb, eschool, pencil, cyber café, etc.

Numbers in the Indo-European family of languages are often very similar. In Hindi, the number for seven is sat, eight is aaT, nine is nau. If you know how to count in French or Spanish, you will notice the similarity between the numbers in these languages as well. The word for 10 in Hindi is das, whose cognates can be seen in the Spanish and French words for 10 and in the words “decimal” and “decade”, which refer to units of 10.

Many English words originated from Sanskrit or Hindi, as the following examples illustrate. Some are cognates and some are borrowed words.

Divine, in Sanskrit, comes from div- meaning “to shine”, heaven, resplendent and refers to the sky god. In Latin, deus is God. In Hindi, dev is God/devi is Goddess. The common root of these words means “to shine” because, in heaven, divine beings are thought to have bodies of light.

In Hindi and Sanskrit, the word for “mother” is maataa. This word is etymologically related to the word for “mother” in almost all Indo-European languages. “Father” in Hindi and Sanskrit is pita which is also akin to the Latin patter, the Spanish padre and the French pe`re. The original “p” sound shifts to an “f” sound in certain languages, such as English and German.

Pedal and pedestrian-in Sanskrit pad means foot. In Hindi, paidal se means “by foot”.

Dental-in Hindi, daat means “tooth”.

Ignite, ignition, igneous - the Hindi word for fire is Aag and the name of the ancient Sanskrit god of fire is Agni.

Hand-in Hindi, it is hath.

Mind-in Hindi, it is man.

Serpent-in Hindi, it is saamp.

Mouth-in Hindi, it is munh.

Insomnia, somnambulate- in Hindi, the word for “sleep” is sonaa.

Service-in Hindi, it is sevaa.

Month-in Hindi, it is mahinaa.

Mortal- related to the Hindi word marnaa, meaning “to die” and Sanskrit mrit, meaning “death”.

Yoke-related to the Hindi word yoga. In Hinduism, yoga is a discipline that aims to train one’s consciousness through strategies and exercises that promote control of the mind and body. The concept of the union of the mind and body is related to the idea of a yoke, used to join a beast of burden to a plow.

In English, the prefix “a” negates the word to which it is attached. In Hindi and Sanskrit, “a” preceding the word also changes into its opposite, such as the word amar which means immortal (a+mar = no+death).

In addition to the words mentioned above, here is a list of other words that were borrowed directly from Hindi into English during the time of the British Raj:

Calico- a cloth usually printed with bright designs and spotted mottled. This word is taken from the name of the city, Calcutta.

Cashmere- a fine, downy wool sweater made from the soft wool of cashmere goats from Kashmir, a state in North-Western India.

Chintz- printed cotton of bright and speckled colours, taken from the Hindi word chhiint.

Cummerbund- a sash worn around the waist, usually with a tuxedo. Taken from kambar, Hindi for “waist” and bandh, Hindi for “tie”.

Mogul- a very rich or powerful person, i.e. a “movie mogul”. Taken from the Persian word that refers to the descendants of Babur, who conquered parts of India. He founded an empire in 1526 that lasted, in name at least, until 1857. Babur’s ancestors were descendants of Genghis Khan- a Mongol- where the word “mogul” is derived from.

Monsoon- a wind system that influences large climatic regions and reverses direction, seasonally. Taken from the Hindi word mausam, meaning “weather”. It was originally an Arabic word.

Pundit- a learned person. Taken from the Hindi and Sanskrit word panDit, referring to a Brahmanical Scholar.

Shawl- a piece of cloth worn by women as a covering for the head and shoulders. Taken from the Urdu word shaul.

Sherbet- a sweet, flavored ice to which milk, egg white or gelatin has been added. This word is originally an Arabic word shariba, meaning “to drink”. The word sharbat, a cooling drink, was then borrowed from Hindi into English.

Verandah- a porch or balcony usually roofed and often partially enclosed, extending to the outside of a building. It is taken from the Hindi word baraamdaa.

Words are still being borrowed from Hindi and Sanskrit into English. During the decade of the 60s, many spiritual and philosophical ideas from India became popular in the West and some related terms have come into common usage.

Guru- a spiritual leader. Taken from the Hindi word guru, originally from Sanskrit guruh, meaning heavy. This word has gained popularity in modern English, outside of its original, religious meaning and is used in phrases such as “computer guru”.

Karma- the sum and consequences of a person’s actions during the successive phases of existence, regarded as influencing destiny. From the Sanskrit word karma, meaning “act” or “deed”. Popular usage of this term is seen in phrases like “good karma”, “bad karma” and in a Beatles’ song “Instant Karma’s Gonna’ Get You”.

Mantra- a sacred formula of words that are spoken or chanted repetitively and used in prayers and incantations to invoke the deity’s blessing. For example: “Om Mani Padme Hum” from Tibetan Buddhism and “Shri Raam Jaya Raam Jaya Jaya Raam” from Hinduism. An American woman might say, “I am repeating the mantra over and over, ‘I will lose weight. I will lose weight’.”

Nirvana- the state of release from the cycles of reincarnation; attained through the cessation of individual existence, freedom from pain and care of the external world. This word is from the Sanskrit nirvaana meaning “to be extinguished”. Not only was this the name of a popular rock band in the 90s, it is also commonly used to express a “state of sheer delight or satisfaction”.

India has impacted and interacted with the Occidental world since before recorded history. This civilisational relationship of cultural exchanges still continues today. To those who fear that India will one day be subsumed by decadent Western values, I would venture to say it is Indian values that are poised to take over the world, during the coming century.

In today’s modern societies, stressed-out corporate executives of multinational corporations take weekend seminars to learn relaxation and mind control. They are instructed in variations of yogic and meditative practices, adapted from Indian traditions such as Vipassana; which was offered by Shri S.N Goenka to practitioners, free of charge. The vocabulary used at these retreats is not completely Sanskrit and the terms and concepts are modernized and repackaged. Hindu and Buddhist ideas have been incorporated into the worldviews of a staggering number of people living in Western countries, the majority of whom self-identify as being “spiritual, not religious”.

Dharmic ideas may become warped and their spiritual context diffused, as a result of the synthesis arising from contact with the cult of the individual. They may also be filtered through a cosmic, romantic New Age lens. Nonetheless, many of the concepts and worldviews articulated by the rishis and the saints of India, have become pervasive in the discourse of humanistic thought. They are intertwined with modern secular society in need of an influx of non-dogmatic spiritual values. India, the USA and all the nations of the world are always in a state of flux. If not, they are doomed as rigidity marks the end of a viable, sustainable culture. Or, like the Taliban, enforced codified retrograde adaptations are introduced as an effort to arrest the changing times.

Christian conservatives in the USA fear the ubiquitous Asian values, entering Western society. Innovative, effective educators who try to teach techniques of nonviolence and conflict resolution to school children and who propose methods to help students calm their minds and bodies are accused of promoting vague, pluralistic and non-Christian values. There is a fear among certain groups that Western values (read Christian) are being threatened by the onslaught of Asian values (read Hindu and Buddhist).

Interaction with challenges of modernity and globalisation has certainly changed the lives of crores of Indians, during the last few decades. The widespread use of mobile phones among all segments of society is the most visible. As I observe my Indian friends, colleagues, and strangers- it seems that the paranoid warning, regarding the core of India’s value system being distorted by “corrupt Western influences”, is unsubstantiated in practical manifestations of everyday life.

A few years ago in New Delhi, I witnessed a succinct example that testifies to the pervasiveness and continuity of that primordial Indian ethos, which sustains society. I was standing near a big tree at an auto-rickshaw stand in Vikas Puri, negotiating with several drivers about my fare. One driver jumped into his rickshaw and sped off. Unbeknown to him, there was a puppy sleeping under his rickshaw. Over the roar of the motor, the driver never knew he had run over the puppy. It yelped loudly and began to writhe on the roadside, before our eyes.

Helplessly, 4 rickshaw walas and I stood there watching this poor, mangy puppy thrash and flail from his injuries. The rickshaw walas and I looked at each other, shaking our heads sadly. Those few agonizing seconds passed painfully. With a final contortion of its body, it lay still on the asphalt, glazed eyes blinking once or twice.

At that moment, as the last breath of spirit was leaving the body of this dying creature, one of the drivers reached into his rickshaw and brought out a bottle of drinking water. Holding the bottle shoulder height, he very slowly poured a thin stream of water directly into the mouth of the puppy, who gratefully gulped a few sips. It closed its eyes and died. As suddenly as it had disappeared into the focus of that traumatic moment, the New Delhi street scene reappeared. The drama was over and I departed in one of the rickshaws.

Who knows how long the dog’s corpse lay on the roadside-it may have been hours before someone took it away. The issue is not that the driver had a great affection for this animal. Obviously, the puppy did not belong to the rickshaw wala. It was a street dog. The man had no real love for that dog and, perhaps, had even kicked it aside on a previous day or tossed it an old roti on another. But, at the moment of death and as the soul of this wretched creature was leaving its body, a simple rickshaw wala-living in what many would consider a “dehumanized, corrupted environment”- had the presence of mind and a certain honour and respect for life, to offer a spontaneous ritual for the passing of that puppy’s soul. Where else but in India?

In which other country would an autorickshaw driver have such an innately spiritual response to an otherwise dreadfully ordinary situation? Dogs are killed on roads everyday all over the world. This may not seem like a wonderful example of the continuity of Indian civilization-a homeless dog crushed by an autorickshaw on the side of a busy street. But I think it speaks volumes.

Many people in India really are worried that their society is in danger of being swallowed by multinational corporations and Western values. Western values are often cited as an amorphous looming threat to Indian civilisation but it is ill-defined as to what Western values actually are and how are they undermining South Asian values, whatever those are; considering the tremendous differences among the vast numbers of ethnic groups and peoples that populate the subcontinent.

When pressed to explain which Western values are to be avoided, many Indians automatically say that Americans don’t love their children as much as Indians do and that they don’t respect or care for their elders. I have often taken exception to this charge since I know very well how passionately I love my children and how much I adore and respect my mother and how dedicated she is to me. My family is not an anomaly. Most Americans live their lives deeply dedicated to their parents and their children.

There are certainly cultural differences in the way people live but there is not a marked absence of love in American families, a hallmark that can be dramatically contrasted as the opposite of family values in India. American families are also affectionate, caring and get together for holidays and birthdays. There is, however, a difference in commitment and responsibility.

There is an invisible bond that ties families together in India, in the capacity that your first cousins are your brothers and sisters. The importance of family relationships is highlighted by the fact that in Hindi, each and every member of the extended family has a specific name such as chacha for father’s younger brother, taauu for father’s elder brother and phupha for father’s sister’s husband. In English, we only have two words-aunt and uncle-to account for multiple family relationships. Americans do not live in extended households but the love of a mother for her child or a son for his father is not culturally specific, though the commitment and intensity of that love can vary. The slow disappearance of the extended family living system may be the gravest impact of the pressures of modernity on the traditional Indian way of life.

One marked subtle difference is when an American mother ends a phone conversation with her child. She will say, “Bye, bye. See you later. Love you.” Mothers in India rarely tell their children “I love you,” they simply say “Thiik hai. Phair milenge” (OK. See you later.) This doesn’t mean Indian mothers love their children less- it simply means that the love in Indian families is so obvious, that there’s no need to declare it. They just live it. In contrast, American mothers feel the need to remind their children of their motherly love. Additionally, I must sincerely say that the devotion grown Indian children show to their parents is extraordinary and can be seen ubiquitously in all social segments of Indian society. It is to a much more passionate extent than is usually seen in the USA though, of course, there are exceptions.

Many Americans have negative stereotypes of India typified by images of child marriage, bride burning and dowry deaths while many Indians simply assume that most Americans abandon their children the moment they graduate from high school. In reality, these are the exceptions in both countries. More worrying than these uninformed assumptions about family relations is the gratuitous violence and indecency that have become the hallmarks of the media industry. Whether it is the abuse and enslavment of women in Bollywood films or blood splattering from Hollywood celluloid, the images are destructive.

Ironically, regardless of the stated condemnation of American culture or lack thereof, American products enjoy a prestige in India. American brands such as Pizza Hut, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, exported to foreign countries, have lost their fast-food identity and have become icons and signifiers of all sorts of non-commercial messages. Strangely enough, American soft drinks have been codified in a most peculiary Indian way. Two decades ago, gossip in Delhi was that the choice between Pepsi and Coke has developed a communal slant. The Hindus were drinking Coke and the Muslims were drinking Pepsi, based on which Bollywood stars had been promoting what brand.

When I was in Pakistan in 2000, a controversy arose in the Urdu press concerning Coca-Cola. Some clerics claimed that the curling, cursive letters of the Coca-Cola logo, if turned a certain way, spelled the words La Ilaha. This is Arabic for “There is no God”- the first phrase in the Islamic prayer La ilaha illallah, Muhammad-ur-rasoolullah (There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet). The mullahs claimed that Coke had manipulated the Arabic script in writing the words “Coca-Cola”, appropriating the first few sounds of this most sacred Muslim prayer in order to spread atheism and Western secular values.

The mullahs warned that this was an American conspiracy and a plot to turn the youth of Pakistan into atheists and apostates. They cautioned Pakistani’s that drinking Coca-Cola would cause them to lose their faith in Allah and they issued a fatwa for Muslims, to boycott this brand of carbonated beverage and save their souls from decadent Western values. At that time, true believers began drinking Pepsi.

Certainly, Coke and Pepsi are not nutritious food products but whether American soft drinks can so easily dim the “divine light” within or secularize the citizens of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is questionable. Historically speaking, Coca-Cola is yet another flagship that will, one day, sink into the Ganga- where the pasts and futures have always merged and flowed back to the seas. Blue jeans, tomatoes and nation-states- like Indra’s ants- are but passing specks in the recurring flow of time.

As Arnold Toynbee famously said,

“It is already becoming clearer that a chapter which has a western beginning will have to have an Indian ending, if it is not to end in the self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in history, the only way of salvation for mankind is the Indian Way.”

We are aware that millennia ago, Indic civilization had a “dharmic essence” which was diluted, appropriated, adopted and adapted through the centuries by the West and has even mutated into the Hindu heartland. With the dawn of the 21st century, the influences have come full circle and “the Dharma is going to the West to the land of the other buffalo”, as the Tibetan proverb says. Again and again, civilizations continuously flow into one another.

A very different version of this article was published in The Hindu newspaper on 1 October 2000, retitled as “Buy Indian, Be Indian”. This is a phrase oddly appropriated from Pakistan’s, General Zia-ul-Haq. In practice, The Hindu does not usually print opinion pieces that embrace the idea of India’s continuity of culture. Therefore, borrowing a phrase from neibouring, militaristic and fundamentalist embracing Pakistan, dims the impact of the trajectory of Hinduism- moving unscathed through the Kalpas.

Since writing the first version of this piece in 2000, I have become less “sanguine” than I may have been a decade and a half ago. Then, I was mainly looking at the big picture of the sustainability of Bharatiya culture without considering the hegemony of faceless, pitiless entities such as the WTO, GATT and IMF; which often introduce destabilizing forces behind a beneficent, all-knowing deracinating facade.

If globalisation is synonymous with Westernisation and its ultimate impact is judged by a totalising Westernisation, then I hold that its impact will be somewhat superficial in India; where samskaras run deeper than consumerism, regardless of blue jeans and Bollywood.

Certainly, globalisation is real and Indian society will be changed forever but when we worry that India is under siege by Western values, we have to contextualise that’ All living cultures are synthetic and adapt and adopt. If they don’t, they cease to exist. Hinduism and India, in general, have never been static or dormant; nor in the centuries of contact with cultures that came into India, did Indic Civilization absorb cultural accretions in totality and injudiciously.

Ultimately, in India, there is a high degree of selectivity as to what becomes incorporated and what are yesterday’s fears and fads. In years to come, when blue jeans are out of style in India; someone, somewhere in the subcontinent will be willing to die of heat to keep the dungaree fashion alive as part of his or her birthright! Then, blue jeans will be considered anachronistic by those who adopted new, perhaps a retro-fitting of the old, more comfortable forms of light, cotton clothing.

If you take a larger historical perspective, all of us are an amalgam- a little of everyone else. Astronomy and mathematics first went to the West from India, where they were repackaged and returned as “Western”. A whole range of subjects are owed to developments in Ancient India, that were assimilated by the West. What goes around, comes around as civilisations continuously spin into each other.

16 years ago, my friend Vinish Gupta read the shorter, earlier version of this article in The Hindu “with dismay” and didn’t agree with me “one bit.” Indeed, he wrote, “It is not a question of where jeans or Coca-Cola come from (but) what these things have come to represent.” The “devastating effects of globalising influences” that he has seen, within his “own short lifetime” have made “young people … ashamed to wear more traditional kinds of clothing.” Vinish pointed out that all these globalised “things” contribute to the negative feelings that large sections of our youth have about the self and about their own culture. People come to hate their very names. Some of his students admitted to feeling “ashamed of their parents and relatives”. Vinish writes that, as a youth, he felt like that as well- before making “a fortuitous u-turn.” (He suggested reading the African writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s “Decolonising the Mind”).

The following few sentences written by Vinish, 16 years ago, have stuck with me as one of the almost comical but destructive downsides of globalisation. In the late 90s, in Varanasi, Vinish knew “a pandit who taught at the same Institute… and had recently gotten his daughter married. He was very concerned that four types of fizzy drinks be served to guests at the wedding, since the in-laws were also particular about this. This is a typical instance…and in a part of the country that is home to dozens of, I’ll be modest, types of sherbets and traditional soft drinks.”

A keen observer, Vinish has lived in the Himalayas for several years. He wrote that, “In Garhwal, the traditional mountain boot used to be made by a cobbler who handled the entire process from curing the leather (using leaves, not toxic chemicals) to making the final boot. A pair of such boots was available till five years ago for Rs.200 a pair, which is a ridiculously low price for a pair of mountain boots even in the 90s. Now these shoes are no longer available since everyone in the hills is wearing imitation Nike and Reebok shoes, that cost several times as much and last much less.The skill of how to make the traditional shoes is with only a few old cobblers, and will probably die out with them.”

In 1997, my 13 year old son Jai Hanuman was with me in Mussoorie, when I studied at a Hindi language program. He had shoes made from a traditional cobbler (mochi), who made him a pair of incredibly comfortable and sturdy leather half-boots. Regarding Garhwal, Vinish added, “Everyone...is wearing synthetic cashmilon. Where is all the wool that their herds of sheep are producing going?”

Countering my claims of Bharatiya’s sustainability, Vinish wrote that, “India is the most resilient of civilisation and we’ll defeat all the evil yet. We’re not dead yet and we have plenty of gods to help us. I am hopeful, too. But there are limits to this resilience and it is, at present, being stretched too far. RamRani, I know you love this culture and have great faith in it but don’t underestimate the strength of the opposing forces. In the past, changes were slow and there was time to absorb, to adjust, to assimilate. The present forces are of the nature of a typhoon (toofan) and are sweeping people and processes off their feet.”

He continued with, “Remember what Gandhiji said: ‘I want the window of my room to be open to the fresh breezes blowing in from elsewhere but I don’t want to be swept off my feet by any of them.’ I am not a retrograde mediaevalist but neither do I want to belong to the ever-growing tribe of giddy, unthinking modernists. Let’s be concerned with what’s bad for the world (and patently, so) and that will actually get over this debate about nationalism. The situation is akin to this: One can’t be a very genuine (or effective) feminist, if one is only concerned with oppression of women and doesn’t look at it in the larger context of all oppression.” He signed off with, “Eat golgappa, drink lassi!”

Vinish’s critique of my earlier “Globalisation Through the Kalpas” essay is articulate, to the point and, perhaps, more on target than my original; which is, after all, a rather feel good piece. Vinish’s (Tenzin’s) comments eloquently challenge my observations. I agree with his criticisms wholeheartedly, which doesn’t mean that my story about India’s ability to respond to globalisation is also invalid.

It is in the nature of Hinduism to exist within the paradox, without cognitive dissonance as centuries arc back into themselves, fusing together as they recede from our collective memories and our multiple pasts, turn and return.