Ambassador Debabrata Saha's opening remarks at the Seminar at Kyiv National University on
Globalization of Indian Culture

17 May, 2006

Before addressing the question of globalization of Indian culture, it bears mentioning that Culture is such a broad concept that it defies definition in a compact form. It encompasses numerous identifying features of a society, too detailed to list comprehensively. Even so, we have a good sense of what it is. Culture shapes our personality, we know, and has an enduring imprint on our consciousness. Rooted as it is in a mixture of popular philosophy, tradition, religion, history, myth, and legend, this consciousness evolved through several millennia, creating, over successive generations, a mind-set, a value system and a way of life.

Going by the experience of some countries, however, even if a nation's culture is shaped over a long historical time period, it can, over time, become suppressed, and even become extinct in the face of a dominant foreign culture. The strength of Indian culture is that it has retained its essential Indian character with remarkable continuity - despite the passage of time, numerous foreign invasions and a huge growth in population. Our culture and civilization have remained more or less intact to the present day. Indeed, the globalization of Indian culture began several millennia ago. What we are seeing today is only the effect of the 'shrinking' of the world, thanks to the advancement of modern technology. Cultural expressions, in different forms, are being shared today rather more rapidly than at any time in the past.

By the beginning of the Christian era, India's civilization and culture had begun to spread to South East Asia and to other parts of the world. As early as in the 3rd century B.C. a number of Indians had settled in some parts of Central Asia. Fa-Hein notes that by the 5th century A.D. practically the whole of Central Asia had come under the influence of Indian religion and culture. Sanskrit and Prakrit, along with local dialects flourished in Central Asian countries well before the Christian era. Indeed, Indian culture had a significant impact as far away as Greece, Turkey and several other countries. Even the Chinese civilization, which is as old as that of India, drew from India as noted by LeRoy Davidson. Recognizing India's contribution to world civilization, Will Durant says, "India was the Motherland of our race and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages; she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community of self governance and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all."

In the words of Prof. Basham, in his introduction to "A Cultural History of India, no land on earth has such a long cultural continuity as India, though there were more ancient civilizations, notably in Egypt and Iraq that were virtually forgotten by the inhabitants of those lands, and were overlaid by new intrusive culture. "On the other hand, in India the Brahman still repeats in his daily worship vedic hymns composed over 3000 years ago, and tradition recalls heroic chieftains and the great battles fought by them about the same time," Basham points out, adding: "in respect of the length of continuous tradition, China comes second to India and Greece makes a poor third."

The continuity of Indian culture is, perhaps, linked to India's long cherished ideal of openness and freedom. In a famous invocation, the poet Rabindranath Tagore speaks of a larger freedom, "where knowledge is free; where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls, where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action." The invocation concludes with a prayer: "into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake". Not surprisingly, Indians in their quest for knowledge and inspiration turn not only to the teachings of the Buddha, Gandhi or Tagore, but also to the works of Shakespeare, Beethoven, Tolstoy and other great writers, thinkers and artists.

Clearly, the diffusion of culture has been a two way process over history. India is a land where all the major religions of the world flourish. The people of Tiruvankur had become Christian long before the people of England, and Islam had probably arrived among the Mooplah while Prophet Mohammed was still alive. The followers of Zarathusthra have lived in India since the 10th century. When the Arab Muslims occupied Iran and began to propagate their own religion there, the Parsis fled and came to settle in India. When Jewish temples fell victim to Roman tyranny a number of Jews fled to India to save their faith. Needless to say, Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Zoroastrianism have as much a claim over India today as Hinduism or Buddhism does.

In 1921, Mahatma Gandhi virtually laid down India's cultural policy. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible, he wrote. "But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other peoples' houses as an interloper, beggar or a slave". While always open to the outside world, our cultural continuity has been our ballast. It has been a powerful factor in ensuring that we retain our essential Indian-ness.

India's great heritage of arts and crafts, of language and literature, of music and dance, of religion and philosophy and of the traditional ways of life and living have inspired not only Indians but also countless others who came to be associated with it. That is how our culture has spread to different parts of the globe over the ages. Migration, too has been a factor, especially over the last hundred and fifty years. What we see today, following the coinage of the term 'globalization' is perhaps no more than a re-discovery. Westerners and non-resident Indians have rediscovered many aspects of our culture. Classical Indian music, for example, went global a generation ago, thanks to the Beatles with Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan. Today, leading classical Indian musicians devote as much as a third of their time to overseas concerts. The thousands who visit India to study yoga, Buddhism and other aspects of Indian culture highlight the fact that globalization is increasingly a two-way street.

One aspect of the globalization of Indian culture that has created particular awareness of this issue in recent years is the impact of Indian cinema worldwide. Known globally today as Bollywood, it represents an interesting case study of India's cultural globalization. Today, Bollywood turns out well over 1,000 movies every year, more than any other movie producing country in the world. In the early days of Indian Cinema, our filmmakers were obviously influenced by Hollywood musicals. They used a similar approach, but adapted it sufficiently to the Indian context so that there was little of Hollywood left in them. What they created was a quintessentially Indian mass appeal entertainment industry.

Despite the language barrier, the appeal of Bollywood formula movies soon began to extend well beyond the country. So much so, that Indian celluloid is a primary source of entertainment in many countries today. Bollywood movies appeal to ever increasing audiences. Indian films are extremely popular, not only all over South Asia - including in Pakistan where most of it is seen thanks to pirated DVDs - but also in the Middle East, Asia, and countries of the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine. More significantly, its audience is not just ethnic Indians, but the local populations.

Several Indian-themed films rooted in the experience of diaspora communities and targeted at mainstream audiences in the West have been quite successful. "Bend it like Beckham", a 2002 movie which cost $4 million to make, and earned more than a $100 million at the box-office worldwide stands out particularly in this regard. A number of other films by directors of Indian origin have married elements of Bollywood and Hollywood to achieve mainstream success.

According to a prominent Indian filmmaker, Shekhar Kapur, it shouldn't be long before Indian movies make the crossover. The sheer size of the potential market could lead to a reverse cultural colonization, according to some. Even if "Bombay Dreams" evoked rather mixed reactions, the fact that this cross-cultural import was produced by no less a figure than Andrew Lloyd Webber, working with Kapur and A.R.Rahman, meant that Indian pop-culture had transcended its ethnic Indian roots. It represents an important collaborative effort by Indian and Western artists. The Indian community in England, for example, has created a new type of fusion music combining bhangra, hip-hop and several others with Western rhythms. The increased interest in things Indian - be it Yoga, Indian fashion, food, dance or music - has brought synergy to the larger process of globalization of Indian culture.

There are many critics of cultural globalization. In its defence, one could make the argument that Globalization, rather than destroying cultures fills the cultural landscape with greater choice and richness. Today you can access Bharatnatyam lessons in Baltimore or tabla classes in London with the same ease as in Bangalore or Lucknow. In the context of globalization, Indian culture has undoubtedly done at least as well in holding its own relative to the dominant cultures, as the Indian economy has done relative to the dominant economies. Not surprisingly, we have been far less 'protectionist' culturally speaking than we have been in the field of economy. Indeed, culture is our strong suit in this age of globalization. India's cultural identity is not about to be blown away by western influences even as we become more active players in this increasingly borderless world.