Shining India, a Satire

The following appeared in India Abroad as khao-piyo-mauj-karo

On my recent trip to India I could feel the material progress in India – the glittering malls, the dual carriage toll roads, the flyovers, and lavish weddings in farm houses. All parties, all dining table and living room discussions revolved around material goods that are available in India which were once available only in the US. Everyone has a smart phone and many have ipods, Mack air, and laptops. While the children and the youth phone and SMS, the middle aged adults watch TV serials or Sa-re- ga-ma. In their leisure they either watch or deliberate upon the troubles between silver screen mother and daughter in laws. I saw few reading books, magazines or even newspapers. I, too, did not read the newspaper because it was filled by the trinity of scams, Bollywood and cricket. The Hindi papers were gossipy tabloids with very poor diction and syntax. Everyone was watching or talking or surfing the net. No one was reading and discussing history, literature, poetry or talking about global events such as global warning. Everything was mostly inane and trivial when it came to national discourse. While Bollywood has touched upon a few important topics through art movies, the TV serials have dumbed down whatever little intellectual curiosity was extant among Indians and whatever intellectual content was in broadcast media in India. TV serials are like a soporific, stilling the mind and insulating it from all the realities of the world. And isn’t that is what broadcast media are supposed to be. Work hard to earn nice dough and then enjoy it with your family and friends. They, the politicians and economists, will take care of the world. Drinking alcohol has become a symbol of modernism. More pubs have opened in Delhi in the last ten years than libraries, according to a playwright. But is there anything more than khao-piyo-mauj-karo in life? Yes, and it is called culture. The culture consists of language, literature, values, music, theatre, other performing arts, painting and other fine arts, and the external accoutrements of attire and food.

Before the advent of broadcast media, Indian culture was informed by tradition, literature, newspapers, discourses in religious institutions, coffee houses or village parks, theatre and fine arts. After independence, Bollywood slowly took over, because the former requires some effort but Bollywood required only a few rupees. Today the popular culture is shaped almost entirely by the glitter and jazz provided by Bollywood. Our dance forms that had a glorious history have been relegated to antiquity by lip synching and hip swinging histrionics of Bollywood dance, instead of thoughtful op-eds and investigative reports, the main pages of our newspapers are dominated by Bollywood gossip and cricket. Our TV either plays Bollywood or emulates it both in song and act - in song through sa-re-ga-ma and in act though intellectually empty serials. Rarely is there a poetry competition or recital, a discussion of a new or old novel, of performing arts, or important social issues. Few know about poets such as Jayashanker Prasad or writers like Mulk Raj Anand. There is a collective amnesia about our colonial history and its heroes. Zee TV and Sony TV have accelerated the cultural decline. The serials hold attention by their vapid plots bringing advertisement dollars to two companies that are incorporated outside of India and have no stake in refining Indian culture. There is no parallel to public broadcasting corporation to refine the taste. Our languages have been polluted by a khichri (pidgin), sometimes outright vulgar, Bollywood language full of clichés and devoid of metaphor. Bollywood projects a boozing and smooching life style that few Indians can afford and puts Indian womanhood on sensual display for middle easterners to whistle and pass lewd remarks on.

I am not blaming only Bollywood or TV for this cultural dumbing down. Despite tall claims of religiosity religious institutions in India have failed to stall the loss of traditional values. Secularism has been misinterpreted as a separation between religious institutions and all other aspects of life while it is only a separation of religion and state operations. Ethics, or righteous conduct, the true reason d’être of religion has been relegated to a background. Religion has become a glitzy tug-of-war for benedictions and votes. While most stalwarts of Indian freedom struggle such as Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave, Tagore and Rajagopalchari drew their soul force from the principles of Hinduisms, today even the slightest mention of Hindu ideals gets a label of communalism from the secularists.

The liberal media, too, has contributed to the cultural nihilism by deriding all Indian values as archaic and socially exploitative. Borrowing most of the paradigms from the west, these ultraliberals dub everything from sari to lajja or haya and sexual modesty as tools of women’s exploitation and glorify drinking, smoking and getting laid outside of marriage as women’s lib. They dub all Indian history as figment of imagination of the nationalists and Indian languages as native vernaculars.

The Indian educators, too, have done an abysmal job by making education as a commodity that is being mass produced on an assembly line. Yes, our education produces great quality doctors and engineers by gives a “pre-determined set skills. According to the great American philosopher educator, John Dewey, the purpose of education is to lead to “the realization of one’s full potential and the ability to use those skills for the greater good.” Yes, Indians have good content knowledge but they do they become fully informed citizens of a democratic civil society or promoters of only their personal good through their knowledge. Sadly in the recent decades, education, like everything in India, has been politicized and is being used as a weapon in vote bank politics.

India has progressed economically at the cost of its culture. The body has grown while the soul has shrunk. The technology-savvy Indians have brought money and fame to India and Bollywood, too, has brought money and fame to India. And the combination of the two has produced a vast entertainment industry through which Indians are ‘amusing themselves to death,” as Neil Postman says about Americans in his book by this name. Wayfaring stranger, a blogger, on August 15th, 2010, quotes from this book about Aldus Huxley’s prediction in Brave New World that “we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.” And we will be controlled and killed by pleasure.