Jun 17, 2020. Updated: Feb 17, 2023.

Culture

All definitions summarise culture as a set of ideas, literature, arts, practices, customs and traditions that are actively followed in a group. While culture generally refers to the current practices in group, it can also constitute the practices followed in previous generations, for society and culture did not sprout out on a specific day, but it evolved over many generations. What we are today is a product of what we were.

To understand a culture, one has to see it with an objective mindset — agnostic to his concepts of right and wrong, morality, education, civilisation, social status, god, human relationships, etc., and see the culture as it is, studying their traditions in relation to their beliefs. This is when a culture will appear in its true and sensible form, and you will realise that there is no superior or inferior culture, but only a culture that is cohesive with their beliefs and moral tenets.

One's culture is both lineage and upbringing. Those who grew up in their ethnic domiciles cultivate cultures of their ethnic community, while those who grew up elsewhere cultivate a culture with elements of both ethnicities. In other words, culture is ethnic, not geographic. Therefore it is not inappropriate for individuals to practice their culture even in foreign lands. What makes a society multi-cultural is not various cultures culminating into a mono culture or the practice of cultural appropriations, but it is her multi-cultural citizenry practising their respective cultures in the society.

We see people practising foreign cultures when they move to a foreign land. This is so for three reasons. One is to blend in with the new culture, which is both a sweet gesture and an occasional necessity. The second reason is to try a change, which too is an occasional necessity. The third reason, and that which is of a concern, is that they are too ashamed to practice their culture in the new land. Such sentiments reflect the nature of grooming education and upbringing has done to them. Many say that when in Rome, one must dress like a Roman. I reckon that someone with a sense of disdain to his own culture would have said that, for when in Rome, besides dressing like a Roman occasionally as a gesture of cultural exchange, one must dress in his own culture.

Why Practice?

On reflecting why should one practice his culture, or why shouldn't people stop practising their cultures and adopt a mono culture, a tenable reason that pops up is the progress of human race through the preservation of diversity. Diversity nurtures people with different philosophies, traditions, beliefs, outlook, etc., which can be extremely valuable as a team, and build resistance to any threats to the human species. But one can call a group diverse only when the members are truly diverse in the practice of cultural elements. Two people from two races who practice mono culture are diverse only by their looks (which isn't of much practical use); not by their nature (which is of the real use). So preserving culture is a way to preserve diversity.

Culture is a by-product of human nature to tribalise. When left on our own, it is our nature to tribalise and form groups based on similarities in us, such as race, language, ideologies, faith, etc. Once tribalised, we will soon cultivate and share a way of functioning in many aspects of our lives, which will evolve over a period of time to become our culture. Therefore, due to this nature to tribalise, the idea of one culture will not work.

The way to preserve culture is to practice it, improve it and pass it on the the next generation to do the same. Only that which is actively practised is culture and can be preserved; the rest are dead cultures. That which is hardly practised or is given lesser importance, despite how close it is in people's heart, will be soon lost to history, because what a generation hardly practices, the following generation most likely will not practice at all.

Cultural elements form what can be referred to as "cultural integrity". Most practices blend in with each other so much so that an interference in one affects the practice and cohesion of the other, and finally meddles with the whole culture.

Cultural elements have evolved to aesthetically complement each other. Take for instance the garments people wear. Each of us, whether Indian, Chinese, White or Arab, look better in our cultural garments than of other cultures. This contrast is vivid when you judge the two garment designs against the most natural and raw version of the person, with no make up or grooming, but only the natural look.

This complement is because of the natural progression in design in a group. At the most fundamental level, each visual shape or design — even the characteristics of human face — is formed by lines. In other words, geometry forms the basis of visual design of each group, and every design progression in that group preserves that geometry. As a result, every cultural element of a group aesthetically complement each other.

This science of design, if I may call it so, is why we can find a clear consensus on extremely subjective subjects such as beauty and ugliness. In most cases of 'is it beautiful' tests, there is always a clear majority saying yes or no. It is never a close call. Our eyes and brain are designed to enjoy aesthetically complementing design.

That said, cultures also contain questionable, oppressive, nonsensical, illogical and unhealthy practices, against which one must rebel and become the torch bearer of change. Culture is not a set of commandments that must be obeyed without introspection. Nor is it written anywhere by anyone. In fact, it is imperative that culture remains so in order to preserve its malleability. Had culture been a set of commandments, it would reduce itself to a stubborn set of practices, continuing which, a society will only regress, or stagnate at best; never evolve. It is culture and education that advances society, and therefore, culture must stay malleable and evolve.

So is the case with various customs prevalent in the society. They must not be blindly followed simply because they are customs and form a part of the existing culture. Each custom was born off a thought, which must still be sensible when following the custom. If so, wear the custom with pride; if not, it's time to kill that custom.

Cultural changes are heavily influenced by the thoughts of the respective generation, and thoughts pave way for progressive changes as well as imitative changes, thus making cultural changes a double sided sword. Progressive changes are changes made to existing cultural structure in accordance with the then social thoughts and scientific evidences, wherever applicable. The abolishment of sati, child marriages, dowry, bringing women out of their household confinement, abolishment of jati based discrimination, etc., are progressive changes because they eliminated something that the then generation judged as wrong, yet the new tradition is culturally coherent.

Imitative changes, on the other hand, are plain adoptions of foreign cultures for reasons such as cultural disorientation and a false sense of superiority. Imitative cultures substitute indigenous cultures, and scrape off what we are, layer by layer. From India's perspective, western school uniforms, prevailing corporate culture, birthday celebrations with cake cuttings¹, etc, are imitative changes that substituted their traditional counterparts."

One might wonder what is wrong in adopting one or two foreign cultural elements; or will such adoptions destroy indigenous culture. In most cases, it does not matter; after all, we enjoy a change at times. But one or two never stays one or two — one soon becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes eight and so on until a complete mutation takes place shaking up the cultural ecosystem. The problem is not just the adoption, but the reason behind the adoption, the trend of mutation adoption creates, and what it can do to the entire culture, much like what swapping components of a distinctive engine with components of another engine will do The engine will still run, but not optimally, degenerating and disintegrating slowly, deceiving that everything is fine, until halting abruptly.

Similarly, cultural substitutions loosen our cultural integrity, changing individuals, families and societies to someone new, but not brand new either, instead to an inferior imitation of the foreign — inferior because no imitation can truly surpass the original; inferior because in an attempt to imitate foreign, some of us forgot that there are elements in us that we can never change, and when imitated, we fused it into something else. Change we must, dear friends; but progressively, not by imitating others.

Cultural imitations disturb the cohesion of culture, transforming it to a system with components that no longer fit with each other, slowly eroding its efficiency and finally halting the functioning of the society. We cease to be what we are without our culture, instead we become someone else or something else, fused with foreign elements and culturally lost. Indeed, culture must evolve, but progressively, never through imitation. Those changes that are progressive must be embraced, and those that are imitative must be resisted.

We cannot iminate life, we cannot simulate strength for long, nay, what is more, a mere imitation is a source of weakness. For it hampers our true nature, for it is always in our way. It is like dressing our skleton in another man's skin, giving rise to eternal fueds between the skin and the bones at every movement.

Rabindranath Tagore in Nationalism.

There is a way to figure out if we are culturally lost or not. What we feel and do instinctively — how we wish others, how we dress up most of the time, the kind of dresses we own, the language we speak often, the language we think with often, etc. — tell us who we are culturally.

Adherence to one's own culture does not mean intolerance to any foreign culture. We have Anglo Indians, Portuguese Indians and French Indians who follow their culture and traditions and yet live peacefully in our country — our country as in yours, mine and theirs. Similarly, tolerance, inclusiveness and acceptance does not mean mutation; we need not adopt and change ourselves in order to be tolerant, inclusive or accepting. What we are, we must not forget. It makes sense to adopt something foreign only if it adds some form value that the cultural counterpart cannot add.

As said earlier, to preserve diversity and culture, one must actually practice it.

Language

Of all the cultural elements that contribute to cultural integrity, language is the fundamental element as it alone facilitates communication, which fundamental to form a society. Languages must be protected from imitative influences and its richness and literature must be improved. This is progression.

We have thousands of languages in our country. But if the language is not dead and people are still speaking it, they all can evolve and be rich. Evolution is a natural process for all languages. All you got to do is invest your time in that language naturally — ie, use it, and it will progress.

Languages cease to progress when it is abandoned partially or fully in our day to day lives. The use of English script for certain regional languages² that do have a script of their own instead of advancing their own script or using a regional script, the inability to speak purely in our mother tongues and reliance on English words due to the lack of proficiency in mother tongue, the consistent christening of infants with foreign languages names for no particular reason, our English signatures ³, our inability to flawlessly read and write numerals in our mother tongues, and some people's superior skills in speaking English than their mother tongues — all contribute to the death of our mother tongues.

When names are sorted in our civic processes, they are sorted according to English alphabets: not the regional alphabets even though the majority of the names are of regional language. This is a practice I noticed even before computers became a day to day tool.

Clothing

Clothings and ornaments are the most expressive elements of any culture because it requires only the sense of vision to capture them. They also often influence an individual's attitude, mannerisms and habits; therefore playing a vital role in cultivating cultural belongingness in an individual.

There are only two ways clothings can be worn on human body: around the waist or through the legs in the case of lower body; and over the head or through your arms in the case of the upper body. Every culture has their own fair share of dresses in all these four forms. Therefore what makes a clothing eastern or western is not how the clothes are worn, but its visual design (geometry), its convenience in doing activities specific to a group, and its degree of adherence to the moral principles of the group.

Since the idea of being cultural infers to being part of a group, and because the morality of a group influences the actions of each participants, one cannot not snub the morality of the group as a cultural factor. While it is the prerogative of the individual to decide how much body to expose, and it shouldn't concern anyone even if someone chooses to be naked, a clothing that exposes the body beyond what the general morality of the group can tolerate is deviant by definition. Therefore such clothings cannot be considered to represent the culture. It is for this reason why most Indians cannot accept clothings that expose the body beyond a point; and why most westerners who although accept a deep level of skin exposure cannot however accept women going topless or all public nudity.

However, unlike the other two aspects, public morality is more malleable and subject to change. A generation can significantly change the moral degree of a group. Also, among the three factors, the adherence to public morality is the easiest to compromise because all it takes is a change in outlook; whereas, to compromise visual design and convenience, the science of human visual perception and a group's way of doing things must change, which are far reaching expectations.

Public morality is sensible to a degree; beyond which it becomes an illogical restriction that must be broken. Public morality is also uneven: meaning that subgroups within a group can have two degrees of morality as seen in the culture of urban dweller and rural dwellers. The urban dwellers seem to be have a bit more lenient moral code than the rural dwellers; at least as seen in India.

To sum it up with an example, a pair of jeans can be Indian if its shape suits an Indian body, if its visual design such as stitches, patterns, and embroidery adheres to the geometry of Indian designs, if it comfortably lets you sit crossed legged (an Indian way), and once worn, if the individual's look does not deviate too far away from the accepted moral standards.

There is an increased adoption of western clothing in many eastern cultures include India for the reason of comfort. But I suspect that they confuse convenience for comfort. Comfort is what the skin feels with a clothing and convenience is the ease at which the body does an activity with the clothing. The most comfortable clothing is no clothes at all — we are most comfortable in our naked bodies. The next comfortable are clothings made of light natural fibres that claim the least surface area of our skin — such as a plain cloth worn around the waist of men or chest of women. Natural fibres such as cotton are the most comfortable to wear, but they not as convenient for movements as many stretchable synthetic fibres are. But we do not need such stretchable fibres in our everyday lives either.

Indian clothings are traditionally made of natural fibres like cotton, linen and silk; and when compared to western clothings, their designs cover the least body area and are the least body hugging. So technically, Indian clothings ought to be more comfortable and even convenient then western clothings. But because it's human nature to justify our actions with something that sounds logical, most people who choose to wear western dresses use the 'comfort' card when asked about their choice.

I have also noticed that once you wear less comfortable clothes like trousers for some days, you grow to be comfortable with it. But this feeling is your body stopping its complaining of the discomfort; it is not the magically transformation of discomfort into comfort. To prove this, just wear a more comfortable clothing like a "mundu", and notice that you experience higher comfort.

Given the case of comfort and even convenience of Indian clothing, there is an affinity among many easterners toward western clothing. There are many reasons for that — our nature that the grass is always greener on the other side, our educational system that subconsciously westernises you, the influence by the glamour industry which is mostly westernised, the cost and maintenance required for ethnic dresses, the senseless definitions of clothing categories, the fanatic influence of religious leaders... all play a role in creating an affinity among us towards foreign clothing.

Speaking of the influence of education system, as discussed in our conversation on education, schools are our first socialising space, and we are conditioned by what we learn schools. When English medium are considered to be better, when our uniforms are western dresses, when what we teach students in schools are western ideas and when the teachers and non-teaching staff themselves wear western dresses, I will only be surprised if a generations of students do not cultivate an affinity for everything foreign.

Speaking of the influence of glamour industry, it is a natural tendency to want to be beautiful, fashionable and glamorous; and so people follow the industry and the influencers, which features western clothing most of the time.

Speaking of cost and maintenance, which are factors pivotal in buying and wearing clothes, traditional ethnic dresses are costlier and demand more maintenance — its more difficult to wash and iron a mundu or sari than a trouser or jeans, : or jubha than a shirt or t-shirt, or sherwani than a suit.

Speaking of idiotic definitions and classifications of clothing, we have many around, such as the definition of formal clothing. Formal dresses, by definition and practice, are those that you wear on formal occasions. Every ethnicity on the planet has their own fair share of formal occasions giving them varieties of formal dresses. But the general understanding of formal dress limits it to shirts, trousers and suits.

Among the working professionals in India, there is a misconception that ethnic and formal clothing are mutually exclusive dresses. 'Ethnic' and 'formal' denote two different things — one simply says that a dress belongs to an ethnicity, while the other classifies the dress according to the occasion it is worn. Therefore, they are mutually inclusive. Ethnic dresses can be formal, casual, festive, home wear or something else. In fact, ethnic dresses can also be traditional and modern — traditional being older designs and modern being new evolved designs in the same category of ethnic dresses. All dresses are ethnic in nature too: the western attire being the ethnic wear of the Europeans.

Work Culture

When work constitute the major part of your day, work culture becomes relevant. And this deliberation has been merged with this post.

Biological Drives

Human biology predates human culture. Therefore, the satisfaction of biological drives must favour when it conflicts with social norms.

A notion seen in some societies is the culturalisation of sex. Sex is not a cultural expression or a cultural element, but a biological expression mostly associated with the emotions of lust or love. Moreover, sex isn't a public act, but an done privately. Therefore, sex with whoever, whenever and wherever it is, so long as it is with a consenting adult in a private space, does not affect a culture.

The win biological drives have over cultural practices are applicable in cases such as music and food. These two satisfies the senses of tastes and hearing. Although one's upbringing can influence his love for the local music and cuisine, although local music and cuisine form an integral part of one's culture, nothing much can be done if a foreign genre of music or foreign cuisine is preferred by an individual on reasonable grounds of pleasing music and taste.

Religious Influence

One's beliefs influence his customary practices. Therefore religion plays a role in a person's culture, and consequently, in society's culture. But the influence of religion is tenable only if it is limited to customs and practices that are related to faith; not if it influences customs and practices that have nothing to do with faith. Of late, over-religiousness of many practioners are aggravating the latter type of influence, and this is a sociological concern.

Dresses people wear and languages people speak are the most influenced by religion. A religion has no dress or language⁴ of it's own, that it can prescribe to its followers. It can only tell its followers how to dress — eg, modestly — or how to speak — eg, with humility — but cannot tell what dress to wear or what language to speak.

What makes one a follower of a religion is his adherence to its doctrine and values, not to the dresses or languages of the culture where the religion originated, or is/was predominant. One's cultural identity lies in lineage and upbringing, not in one's religion.

Preservation and Return

Often, persuasions to practice one's culture are met with responses that it is an individual's wish, choice or right to wear whatever one wants or to speak in whatever language one wishes to. It certainly is, but this argument is valid only when someone is prevented from practising a culture of his or her choice. Otherwise, it is merely an intervention much like an awareness campaign against an alcoholic epidemic in a society. It certainly is stupid to call such interventions an infringement of one's right to drink alcohol.

When individual rights are exercised in such strength that it changes the social trend, they become subjects that must be dissected and discussed to ascertain their progressiveness or regressiveness. Such dialogues aren't infringements of one's right but rather interventions.

Even so, interventions are often met with questions as to who entrusted you with the job of preserving culture. Well, no one has and no one has to — it is your damn socio-cultural responsibility to do so because cultural preservation contributes to ethnic diversity, which in turn is a necessity to the progress of humanity.

Let it also be noted that preserving ethnic diversity does not mean that a person have no liberty to marry someone outside of his or her ethnic community⁴. Mixing gene pool is important from the perspective of what life can become. However, no ethnic group can afford the exercise of this right by all of their members in the same generation since it would wipe the existing ethnic group out and pave way to a mixed race, which in today's trend, will follow mono culture — something that is not the so conducive for the progress of humanity. The truth is: every right we have is subject to certain conditions and circumstances; and this is a pretty hard truth to accept.

However, fights against cultural whitewashing or for cultural preservation must be non-violent, logical, educational and thought provoking. Else, it will be counter-productive. Nobody likes to be told what to do and what not to do. Change must come from within; not forced. Cultural return must be a conscious return — a conscious choice to practice one's culture made by exercising the freedom of choice.

Nor can we be purists in practising our culture. Functionality and practicality must dominate our decisions on what to wear than any emotional satisfaction. Generally, one's ethnic dress (both traditional and modern) are the most practical dresses for that culture. Hence purism and functionality sort of go hand in hand till a point. Moreover, the current global setting encourages cultural exchange and adoptions among global societies. Therefore, when we cannot be purists, exercise common sense and ensure that adoptions are are not imitative or mutative in nature.

From my experience, there are some cultural changes that are easy: like addressing people in the traditional way; do them. Others are fairly difficult and needs effort: such as gaining proficiency in your mother tongue or getting used to traditional dresses; do them as well. But few others will mess up your life because they are deeply associated with you; such as your name in foreign language, which was given by your parents out of love, and is associated with your certificates and social settings; that changing will make life terrible. Nor must we become so intolerant to foreign elements and undertake such changes that almost turns your life upside down. So avoid them and instead ensure that your children aren't subject to such foreign fusion.