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Indian Culture as Political Phenomena
| Article
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12198 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1987 |
8,822 Words |
| Author
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S. Krishnaswamy
S. Krishnaswamy has won four national awards for his
documentary films. His magnum opus is a four-hour film on
Indian history and culture entitled Indus Valley to Indira
Gandhi, distributed by Warner Bros., and critically acclaimed
around the world. He is the coauthor with Erik Barnouw of the
authoritative book Indian film. He makes films and fiction-
based television serials under the banner of Krishnaswamy
Associates (P) Ltd., which he founded in 1960. He received his
M.A. in film and television from Columbia University in 1961
and earned his Ph.D. several years later. He represents India
in the International Quorum of Film & Video Producers, based
in Washington, D.C. This article was presented as a paper as
part of a series on India-U.S. Relations, sponsored by the
Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy. It appears
here by permission of the Washington Institute. |
The Eskimo has some twenty words to denote snow, but the Arab has no word for snow in his language. The Eskimo distinguishes between fresh and well-settled snow and between different grades of snow with one word to denote each, because his geography demands that subtlety. Language reflects not only the demands of physical geography but also the collective psychic geography of a people.
In my mother tongue, Tamil, when a person is sick, he says Enakku Udambu Sari Illai, which literally translated would read "My body is unwell." This sentence is commonly translated into English as "I am unwell." While this translation is more consistent with accepted English, it is not faithful to the innate cultural nuance of the original, "My body is unwell." When the same person is convalescing, a friend would ask him, Udambu Thevalaya? or Udambu Sugama? literally meaning, "Is your body better?" or "Is your body healthy now?" There is an irreparable cultural loss in the translation, "Are you better?" A man's state of ill health in other Indian languages would read exactly in the same fashion. For instance, in Hindi you would say, Meri tabiyat theek Nahin hai; in Telugu, Na Ontla Baga Ledu; in Marati Maji tabiat teek nahin aahe; all of which mean, "My body is unwell."
The primordial cultural root of the Indian makes him distinguish, even in everyday language and habit, between the body and the soul. 'I' refers to the soul, not the body. Literate or illiterate, wealthy or poor, irrespective of caste and other traditional or modern status, the individual subconsciously believes that he or she is different from the body. In the vast majority, this belief is dormant, while in others it is a conscious "awareness," often one of degree.
Hindi and other northern languages of India belong to the Indo-Aryan family of languages, with a common heritage of linguistic roots between Sanskrit and Latin. Tamil and the southern languages belong to an entirely independent linguistic group of the Dravidian family. In terms of basic cultural expression, however, the languages of India belong to one sociophilosophical tree.
The Hindu worldview and ancient India
The second and most crucial aspect of the Indian worldview is that the individual soul is an integral part of the infinite soul. The Hindus call it Brahman - the imperishable and causeless world soul, filling all space, and projecting itself as the living and the nonliving. Thus the metaphysical
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