B. Thohii Hiimai
Social phenomenon of attacking on culture of the perceived dominant group by the affected population to reclaim their ethnic and cultural roots and construct identity within plural and multiracial societies is nothing new in the human history. This is more pronounce and vocal in societies where there is political unrest, agitation, and rebellions among the people who are in search for ethnic and cultural identity.
The Nagas of Manipur in the four Hill districts is today in a virtual conflict minus violence with the mainstream Meities. It has taken a direction that was unthinkable in the past. A non-cooperation movement launched for NBSE affiliation has moved on by stages: first it was consigning the MBSE textbooks, then to ransacking the Government Schools and ZEO Offices in the four Hill districts, and now to banning ‘Meitei Mayek’ and all CDs/Video cassettes, films and audio in Meitei language in all the four Hill districts. This recourse is not a new phenomenon in Manipur. It was earlier first recourse to by the proscribed outfits and Students’ Organisation in the valley. The Manipuri Students’ Federation, for instance, has called for a ban on all cable TV and DDK Imphal from public view some time back in the valley. In more coercion the proscribed outfits in the valley have called for ban on all Bollywood(Hindi) movies and diktak on women from wearing Indian dress like Sari that exposed greater part of the woman’s stomach.
What does this imply? From the perspective of quest for ethnic and cultural identity in a society infected by political unrest,these movements are manifestation of cultural nationalism for political ends. However, while accepting the underlying root cause for socio-political unrest, which deserves solution at the soonest, the means taken to achieve it by ‘ban’ on culture of the perceived group in target is not free from debate on rationale and in term of efficacy in long term. It invites a debate on question whether a society can survive in its own exclusivity in term of cultural influence and shut doors and windows to influence from outside in this world of ‘Global village’? Of course this does not suggest that we should assimilate everything without judgment on the binary of good/evil, moral/immoral, or right/wrong on external influences that invade us constantly.
While certain amount of resistance to alien culture is important without question in order to preserve the rich cultural heritage of people, total resistance or rejection against all forms of alien culture is not only impossible but also would too anachronistic and conservative in a world where despite political differences between nations steps to have bilateral relations through cultural exchange programme is being pushed forward for better relation.
Development of cultural hegemonism within plural and multiracial societies is the seed of self-destruction both in ‘intra’ and ‘inter’ relations. Hegemonic culture would attempts to homogenize attitude and worldviews of the people. The communal forces in India, for instance, which are well organized have throughout done propagandistic campaign since inception and have welded a mass ideology in which different organizations are drawn together and a hegemony is achieved which attempts to destroy all living folk culture and homogenizes Hinduism around the Ram cult in synthetic and syndicated ways.
The fascist culture which contains potential danger can be best summed up from what M.S.Gowalker – successor of Dr. Hedgeswar, the founder of the RSS – published in 1938 his Seminal work We and Our Nationhood Defined is which he drew explicitly on the cultural nationalism of Adolf Hitler: “German national pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the bounty of the Semitic – the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by”. For the Indian context he spells out that all the non- Hindu people in Hindustan must adopt Hindu culture and language, respect and revere Hindu religion and glorify the Hindu nation or they deserve not even citizen’s rights.
Only Hindus are children of the soil.
Take for instance the Muslim world. Most Islamic nations are against the western world particularly the USA not so much for fear of military might and economic power or the policy of spreading democracy, but for fear of western culture onslaught that they fear would shake the fabric of Islamic culture. For the Muslim fundamentalists, every thing that is of the western culture is a blasphemy to Islam, and hence the rhetoric like, “to hell with western culture and modernization”. Talibanism in Afghanistan before its fall was an archetypal of cultural extremism and hegemonism that attempts to block everything that is modern and change. It was a primitive attack on culture. But what is seen today in Afghanistan in the post-Taliban regime is altogether a different picture and story. Even the most conservative society that insists on homogeneity of attitude and worldviews in exclusivity is in practical unable to wall against the swept of swift and rapid influence of alien culture that is blowing from all directions.
For the need of inclusive culture for better social harmony it is best illustrated by the founding fathers of free India. When Gandhiji launched his nationwide non-cooperation movement, he was able to carry all the Indians everywhere along the stream. There was however one exception: Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore also shared the same dream of free and united India – a nation free from poverty and practice of untouchability in Hindu society but he worried that the rhetoric of non-cooperation contained within it the seeds of self-destroying isolationism, and in setting India above also set it apart from the rest of the world. Tagore has seen that European nationalism could so easily slide into jingoism. He worried that that same might happen now in India. In his remarkable essay “The call of Truth” Tagore wrote “Today at this critical moment of the world’s history, cannot India rise above her limitations and offer the great ideal to the world that will work towards harmony in co-operation between different people of the earth?....Let us ride of all false pride and rejoice at any corner of the world, knowing that it is a part of the common illumination of our house….”.
Gandhiji recognized the force of the warning and he accepted that India must be open to creative influences from outside. He wrote “I hope I’am as great a believer in free air as the great poet. I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any”. Thus based on this principle the founding fathers of free India chose to base its constitution not on indigenous ideas alone but on modern, even western, ideals of democracy and secularism.
No people or race can live in borrowed identity. There is no wrong with certain amount of resistance to alien culture in order to protect the indigenous communities from losing their creativity and originalities. But extremism of total resistance against other culture is a road to isolationism. The kind of nationalism that sought not just political liberty for the nation, but equal rights for all its citizens; that insists not on homogeneity of attitude and worldviews, but which is open to creative influences from out side is a model to opt for by all struggling societies for identity.
