A clash of culture -(contd.)

A reader wrote in after my latest blog on ‘ A clash of cultures” saying that he found the piece “a little confusing. In case of US we are clear you would prefer the idealistic over the mean minded.:  But in case of India one is not clear  whom you prefer: in case of US you give us a blunt black and white divide; in case of India you say the  cultural divide is generational and speak of  strengths and weaknesses  of both. “

If I am not clear which vision or culture I prefer in the case of India, it is because I am genuinely confused. Having been brought up in the western traditions of universality of values and fairness, the present day turn to crass materialism and commercialization jars. Yet the power of capitalism to rapidly erode boundaries of caste and class, bringing in greater societal equality and providing an avenue for innovation and experimentation are sorely welcome in a society that seemed to be decaying. There are two cultures in conflict in modern day India their differences perhaps best captured in their distinct visions of morality.

The first vision, espoused by the older generations who came to power after independence and also by my generation, is more concerned with a universal fairness, no matter who the person, no matter what the context. It has echoes of the Western Judeo-Christian tradition of thought, a society of propriety and principles and ideals. It had clear ideas of right and wrong and the summons to uphold universal principles at any cost. It is true that this morality was not the only, or even the dominant, Indian morality, or that it really was confined to the elite who possessed a disproportionate influence in years since independence, but it was the ethos I grew up in. Public service was a sacred trust, integrity and honesty was to be prized over material wealth and that was the respected Indian way. But the abstraction of these ideals, their universal and civic nature, may have given them an alien and borrowed quality, and in time the indigenous soil below had begun to assert its claims, leading to the emergence in prominence of the second vision of morality.

This second vision is the ethics of dharma and duty, not of abstract rules. Its emphasis is on applying such norms in family situations more than in the public square.  It is more rooted in the Hindu worldview. It is an alternative morality, a context-sensitive morality, and a pattern of moral reasoning in which the calculus of right and wrong is made based on the effect of one’s choices on those one cared about. The universal has given way to the familial. Another aspect of the new morality seems to be its disproportionate emphasis on money and success. The new society has stopped lying to itself and to the world about its ascetic otherworldliness. Rupee had thus finally emerged as God in India, an instant substitute for so many other forms of meaning. Consumption—condemned as futile by the religious texts and strenuously resisted by the older generation, is now paramount. There is a sense now, absent from an earlier generation, that money could solve all problems. If you were wealthy in today’s India, there were no problems that could not be overcome- power outages, land approvals, foreign deals, anything was possible. Capitalism has transfixed the Indian imagination. But this has come at a cost- in the form of rampant corruption at all levels of life, breakdown of family ties, crudeness in political behavior and a general lack of integrity in public life. 

Of the two visions, I would greatly prefer the Tata industrialists than the Ambanis, the BARC  set up by Tata than the $1 billion house of Ambanis. But perhaps there is some middle ground somewhere.