Gods of Small Changes

Several times, in recent memory, an acquaintance asked me to recommend an introductory book about India. It is a question that I dread, because I have no books that I am willing to recommend that could adequately introduce Indian culture. There are multiple, excellent, scholastic, works documenting nearly every aspect of India. None-the-less, I’ve never answered that question because I don’t believe that any book bridges the contextual chasm between Western and Indian culture. Offering a book seems akin to throwing a brick, and I have a strong objection to throwing bricks at people no matter how instructive a flying hunk of stone might be.

Most books about India, with which I am familiar, always felt too broad in context, heavily biased toward reengineering the country’s culture, or written from non-native perspectives. India’s struggle for independence freed the country from direct political and economic control of the British, but the struggle to gain control of the country’s future didn’t end.

Interpretations of history and culture have, thus far, been controlled almost wholly by men and women who styled themselves after long departed foreign masters. They set out to create Modern India in their image; an India that they believe must shed itself of stagnant ancient superstitions and regressive traditions, and embraced the virtues of European enlightenment. Chief among these figures was the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the gods of change that tried to sweep aside the old and usher in a bright and modern India that could stand as a peer among the great powers of the world.

If there is any clear indication of the utter failure of the Nehru’s grand project, it is the rise of Hindu India, a reassertion of ancient spiritual traditions, an engagement with native lore, and the confident and selective engagement with western culture. For any of the books to make sense, the yawning divide between western interpretations of India and native interpretations of Bharat must be crossed. A divide that is probably not as vast as it seems at first glance.

I don’t have a bridge to bring you safely across this divide, but I do have a yarn; a thread that, helpfully enough, is tied into every other story in the Country. This particular thread leads to two ponds, Sattva and Tamas, which sat some distance apart for most of their existences.

Except for those rare occasions when drops of a water or bird were carried, upon sun stirred wind, from the body of Tamas to the body of Sattva, or the other way around, the two ponds were sufficiently far apart that they never mixed.

Sun and moon moved above them, lighting the corners of their worlds, and showing them the way; earth and water played the song of peace and prosperity to which they dance; and the stars taught them stories of wisdom to give shape to their lives.

By the weight of these the denizens of Sattva and Tamas lived, each in their own way, until one rainy season when the Moon hid the Sun over the body of Tamas. The moon managed this feat for only the span of a few moments, but it was enough. Thick and heavy rains began to fall upon the body of Tamas. Some few of the denizens of Tamas, who paid attention to such things, remarked upon the change, but what was more water to those who were already wet? The rain fell for the whole season in drizzles or downpours, and barely a dry breath passed between each.

The waters of Tamas broke their banks and spread out across the land. As the season turned, the rain continued unabated. The season turned again and the rain still fell. Tamas grew, then grew again, until it was a very large lake. As the waters spread the denizens of Tamas prospered. Though the waters of their pond were muddier, they still were able to find their way.

Tamas, now grown with flood waters finally reached the shores of Sattva, and spilled over into the once separate pond. For the first time the waters of Tamas and Sattva mixed. All the debris that Tamas carried with it came with the waters, as did many denizens of the Pond. The pure waters of Sattva grew murky, the denizens of sattva could no longer see the movement of sun and moon. They could no longer hear the songs of earth and water through the churn of the debris, and the stars grew dim and their stories weak.

          The denizens of Tamas saw the confusion of the denizens of Sattva and reasoned that the cause was the wrongness of their ways. So the denizens of Tamas set about making things right. The said to the denziens of Sattva “your ways are old, the songs you sing lead you to poverty and conflict, your stories grant you no wisdom. 

          Then they said, “Our wisdom allows us to swim the whole of Tamas, which is grand and large, our rituals shine the light of the whole sky upon us, and our songs made us powerful and wealthy.

           Under normal circumstances such haughty comments would have no affect upon those of Sattva, but the waters had changed and those who swam in it had also changed. With change came confusion and uncertainty, and the words drew their strength from doubt. Scattered and separated, many began to heed the words of Tamas.

           Stories with the wisdom of the stars that were told for generations began to fall silent. Songs that held up the whole of the world, songs of peace and prosperity began to unravel. The way, once clearly lit by the light the Sun and Moon was no longer easy to find.

           Changing waters brought fear to Sattva, though some few prospered from the new ways, and some learned from them, most others were scattered. However, just as Tamas seemed poised to win over the whole of Sattva, the Earth stood between the Sun and Moon. The rains slowed, and then finally stopped. Stillness gave the denizens of Sattva clarity; they sensed about them the change. Memories of older days, and older ways began to be whispered about Sattva. Even among those who were born during the days of flood, the value of ancient wisdom, ways, and songs became known. The will to be free built, surged, and with a great effort the people of Sattva pushed out the people of Tamas.

           The rains finally abated, a thousand ponds stood in the receding flood waters, each connected by streams great and narrow. Many generations were born in Sattva during the years of flood. The Sun and the Moon still showed them the way, but they swam to it differently than their ancestors. The old songs no longer gave them the peace and prosperity they once did, nor did the lessons of the old stories fit the world after the flood. Among them many schools arose, three among those stood grand.

            There were those who saw great value in the ways that held strong before the flood, and they stood against the greater power of those who saw only value in the days of flood. Both called mightily to those who were uncertain of the right way. Among these three and many more a great clamor arose. What was the proper way that they Sun and Moon showed? What were the proper songs to sing to bring prosperity and order? What was the meaning of the stories told by the stars?

Cultures meet like water flowing together; they spill into each other and mix with little regard to barriers that are thrown up against them. Culture describes a vast verity of human behavior, and at its root it means a collective cultivation of thought. Our values, the emphasis we place on certain actions or practices, places, or things are one facet of culture. A village that determines that an appropriate way to deal with land is to work with spirits of the land, could emphasize specific rituals to organize the harvest, build a new building, or any other act that humans engage in, is habitually practicing its values. Repeat a thought or action enough and it becomes a habit, but the reasoning for the habit is found in its value.

German philosopher of history, Oswald Spengler, coined the rather clinical term “Psudomorphasis,” to describe the process of cultural mixing. Culture shapes our subconscious, creates boundaries that define how we engage the world. Anything from our perception of color, to the food we eat during periods of famine can be determined by these deeply sunk values, and habits that emerge from those values.

Cultural mixing is more than the meeting of different traditions; they are often battles for dominance of values, and thus our identities. If two cultures with different traditions of property inheritance meet, and don’t find a way to merge their two habits to create a third, then one of two streams will inevitably become dominant, especially if the meeting between the two cultures wasn’t initially peaceful. In a very real sense, we are so saturated in our cultures that they are a part of us, and after psudomorphasis occurs, returning to a pure tradition is impossible. One may as well try to separate two buckets of water that have been dumped into a single barrel.

Not all expansionist powers purposefully destroy cultural models they encounter, most only destroy the parts of any culture they cannot co-opt or subjugate, parts that promote and create resistance to the machinations of the aggressor. India’s native models, and there were many, were riven with imperfections, as all models are, but they produced results, among which was a native leadership class capable of organizing resistance to British expansion. Local resistance was sufficiently sophisticated that the empire’s military minds were forced to adopt indirect methods to break the hold of native power structures.

Several avenues of assault were used, and we will be talking about all of them in the future, but two had a greater impact on culture in India than the others. First was the indoctrination of natives to serve as a professional management class, interlocutors between the British and native subjects. Second, the British purposefully targeted native models of knowledge accumulation and dissemination. Not only were institutions such as schools targeted, but so too were basic structures of language and narrative history.

To eradicate education systems in a culture with an oral and literary tradition, the British government developed extensive programs to target interpretations of native experience. The very languages themselves were reinterpreted. The value of vernacular languages was already diminished because access to high-paying government jobs required fluency in English, but the British education systems also began to interpret the religious, technical, and historic knowledge of India in ways that were unfavorable to native power structures. They emphasized specific points to sow divisions, while diminishing avenues that gave access to martial, political, or industrial knowledge. By challenging and reinterpreting the grammar and logic of native culture the British government warped the first philosophies of Indic models, sowing enough confusion to allow their indoctrinated elite to assert command over cultural spaces.

Independence was not a guarantee of liberation from colonial systems which were, after over a hundred years of occupation, deeply rooted in the subconscious of individuals and amplified by hostile government institutions. There were as many responses to psudomorphasis, as there were newly freed countries. In China, for example, the Communist party internalized Marxist ideology and transformed it with their own cultural models, which included the wholesale destruction of native cultural artifacts that were viewed as responsible for the “Century of Humiliation.” Purge after purge attempted to annihilate the evils of the past, and it was only by the guile and cunning of the Chinese people themselves that such a large amount of the cultural treasures of China’s history survived.

In the Islamic world the tide shifted against western traditions, and nearly every artifact of the west was rejected as an imposition. Thinkers like Sayyid Qutb, Rhulloh Khomani, and others rejected even the first philosophies of the former colonial powers, and kept only fragments that were deemed necessary to preserve the political independence of the newly freed Muslim countries.

In India, conflict erupted between divergent interpretations of colonial legacy. Nehru’s vision competed against Gandhi’s philosophy, the Communists, the Rstriya Swyam Sveak Sangh, and many others. Factions finally coalesced around two unstable polar orthodoxies; one held Dharma and Karma as the core native values of the sub-continent and the other opposed that interpretation. Nehru, the communists, the Christians, and the Muslim elite largely promoted foreign perspectives, while a wide array of parties lead by the RSS and BJP formed the Hindu orthodoxy.

Each response emerged from the mixed waters of traditional and colonial culture, and each response was a struggle to understand and define life after the flood. No amount of intellectual argument or violence could purify the water. Yet, everywhere, leaders emerged that used state power to remake their cultures to reflect grand ideological visions. British historical philosopher Arnold Toyebee, one of Spenglers contemporaries, wrote of the “colonial intelligentsia,” a class of native that embraced and propagated the the values of the colonizers.

India’s newly written constitution enshrined the country’s European heritage by establishing English, among other features, as the language of law in the country’s legal system. Every court case was conducted in a language that 90% of the country’s population did not speak. Even the interpretations of historical events was controlled and directed by officially appointed “eminent historians,” who wrote history books that emphasized or neglected events based on the fashions of western intellectual culture.

Visionary leaders are a nuisance even in the best of times, but in newly independent countries that are attempting to recover from the ravages of colonialism, these leaders are a menace. Heads filled with sweeping philosophies, visionary leaders impose themselves on millions of unwilling or ignorant participants. Instead of the petty and mundane work of government, grand projects with very little basis in local needs become the norm. Natural flows of culture that spring from the daily needs and limited resources of the people are interrupted by these expansive visions, like dams constructed by the Indian government interrupted the flow of rivers across India. If visions conflict with the real capacity of a people, which they often do, a visionary leader can establish a pattern of failure that lasts for decades after they die. Democratic societies are lucky in this sense because checks and balances keep the body county relatively low.

Capitalism and Communism, two sides of an imperially minted coin, delineate Post-colonial elite values which, themselves, are imitations of colonial hierarchies. Both schools employ ranks of academics to write volumes upon their favored ideology, and also spend vast sums to spread their ideas. All other ideologies were gradually interpreted into just two models, cultural colonization that benefited the new elite. Only the most robust social systems managed to resist and adapt. Smaller competing ideologies of political-economy, ones that included nature, spiritual values, and ancestral traditions, either went extinct or survive on the far fringes of “civilized space.”

           The grim necessities of being able to counter predative economic policies, religious expansionism, and blunt violence was simply too much for any native culture that could not isolate itself or organize a sustained response. The struggle to survive, the re-adaption of ancient traditions to meet modern challenges is ongoing, never ending. India, wrestling with the dark legacy of repeated conquest and colonialism, has entered a new phase, where native traditions are reclaiming sacred spaces, sacred words, and selectively developing new values to reshape the mundane.

           Whispers of resistance are now a roar, and everywhere across India there are loud and raucous debates. Those maelstroms of noise are our entrance into discourse, and of the sacred, the mundane, and the profane we will have much to discuss. We will unravel, instead of hack away, the Gordian Knot that is India; for, unlike the self-styled gods of great changes, who seek to remake the world in broad strokes, we will work with the many small things that give rise to the great and grand.

The audible version of this blog can be found at Bones of the Empire Podcast: God's of Small Changes.