The Cultural Identity

The last few months, I have been coming to terms with the affinity that I have been developing for advocates of the Hindu civilizational identity. I was surprised to notice that some of their concerns resonated with me. The more I listened to some of these advocates, the more I found myself identifying with their sentiments. It is important for me to explore my own thoughts on cultural identity.

A secure identity is no doubt, a key component of psychological well-being. An identity is created through a journey in a socio-cultural context. It is therefore rooted in the soil of culture, and it cannot be alienated from its history. When I ask myself who I am and what my history has been, I can find within myself a cultural experience that was an eclectic mix of different values- some liberal, and some traditional. My liberal values allowed me to embrace diverse perspectives and relate to people whose beliefs were different from mine. They allowed me to be open-minded, and challenge my own beliefs. They allowed me to unlearn and retain a fresh outlook to life. But it was tradition that taught me to look at life as a moral and ethical dilemma, rather than as a logical dilemma. Very early in life, I empathized with fictional and real-life characters who found their way out of their moral dilemmas in the most ingenious ways. The conversation at home was also often about moral decisions. Morality was therefore a concept strongly ingrained in me. I started appreciating the merit of defining moral ideals in life. The concept of morality added a dimension to life that made it meaningful. It was morality that added character to our otherwise dull logical personalities. I learnt early in life that contexts introduced nuances into a dilemma, and these nuances demanded a moral outlook to life. Morality had the power to transform a defeat into a victory, deficiency into abundance. If you learnt to address the moral dilemma in your mind, then you could keep winning the battles in life.

I must say the books we read as children significantly influenced our moral development. They taught me to see the world as a beautiful place that was created with love and where every form of life was valuable. Stories invariably portrayed animals, birds, trees, and all the elements of nature as animated beings that were capable of feeling pain and joy. Their lives were not inferior or insignificant by any means. These stories brought them to visibility, and made them matter. Stories helped us identify with the nature of human interactions. We could see how an individual’s life was intimately linked to the family structure and to the larger universe represented by the village or town where he/she dwelt. Today, when I look back at the perceptions created by these books, I realize that they introduced to us at an early age the concept of morality, or dharma. They instilled in us a social consciousness and a sense of duty. These books were our earliest lessons in social psychology- they taught us to identify with the larger universe and perceive ourselves as integral components of this universe. They taught us that our freedom and rights demanded of us certain duties. This is perhaps the point of conflict in these times- we demand rights and freedom, without being conscious of our duties, roles and responsibilities.

Because people chose to see life from a moral perspective, my life was filled with ordinary people who were extraordinary in their choices. In those days, people led difficult lives, but they defined their roles in terms of values that transformed the perception of adversity, and made life not only bearable, but worthwhile. People may have been poor, but they were invincible. The competence that frail, pious grandmothers demonstrated, and the confidence that they instilled in us, can put modern young women to shame. People took their roles seriously, and made themselves indispensable to their families and communities. We knew everybody not by their job titles, but by what they stood for. In MT Vasudevan Nair’s Oru punchiri, we have a brilliant example of an elderly couple who choose to continue engaging with the roles that enable them to add value to the world, rather than settle into a life of comfort and dependence. Their physical limitations do not stop them from touching the lives of numerous people in the village. They see their roles as meaningful, and refuse to give them up. This is what we saw with our parents and grandparents. They never withdrew from their highly demanding roles because they believed that the integrity of the social structures they were serving, depended on their contributions. Today, we have switched from our social roles to our individual roles, and are therefore accountable for the collapse of the social structures that made our lives meaningful. We have destroyed the very culture that sustained us. We have no home to return to. Yet, we do not take responsibility.

The Hinduism that touched me, emphasized this delicate balance between our duties/responsibilities and our freedom/rights. The Hinduism that is in my memory, is not a religion, but a culture and a philosophy. It stood for simplicity, modesty, humility, honesty, integrity, and so much more. The Hinduism that I assimilated from my early life and from the beautiful Malayalam movies I watched, was my first textbook of psychology. It helped me understand why our modern identities are so fragile and confused, and why we are all anxious or depressed. Today, the Hinduism that I get to witness is far removed from what it truly stood for. Revival of temples as businesses cannot be the answer to revival of the Hindu principles of life. Unless these temples make a shift from merely being public places with social events, to being places that engage people in meaningful ways in their spiritual quest, I do not see any scope for transformation.

Why is it that we are so ashamed of our native identities? I am very proud of our native identity- of our culture, literature and works of art. It is this cultural wisdom that helped us build our identity as roles which added value to society. It is certainly heartening to witness a phenomenon where more young people are finally realizing the importance of engaging with their social environment. The depression and anxiety that we imported into this country, can only be warded off if we choose to build a social self, rather than a limited individual self.

A Dose of Heidi

If children were to rule, they would perhaps help us find our way out of depression, anxiety, and all the ailments that imprison our minds in prisons of gold.

There are questions that you must ask yourself as you age. How excited are you in your daily life? Each morning, when you wake up, do you look forward to the day ahead? Are you excited by the thought of a world waiting for you? What does it take for you to get excited? Are you excited by the ordinary? Does it excite you to see a flower bloom in your garden, birds splashing about in puddles of water, or an army of ants carrying a grain of rice between them? Does it excite you to feel challenged by a task that you aren’t getting right, so much so that you persist until you get it right? Does it excite you to daydream and build your own fantasy tales around the things you cannot seem to have in your life? Does it excite you to meet people without an agenda, and create meaning with them? Does it excite you to explore and experiment, not knowing what you might discover? Does it excite you to believe in things that you cannot see, but that you perceive? As a child, weren’t you excited by these very things? As a child, wasn’t the whole always larger than the sum of the individual components? So when was it that you traded off this excitement, and what was it that you got in return? Was it worth it?

When Heidi is brought to Clara’s house, Miss Rottenmeier has a tough time accommodating Heidi’s unconditioned nature. Heidi demonstrates all the natural instincts of a child. She is spontaneous, curious, honest, authentic, adventurous, imaginative, and finds no reason to conceal these instincts. Miss Rottenmeier finds it absurd that Heidi does not remember her formal name Adelheid. As a child, Heidi has no reason to know her formal name. She has always been called Heidi, and that is all that matters. As a child, you only believe the things that you can actually experience. The fantasy that you experience, becomes your truth. The factual reality that you do not experience, becomes an untruth. Table manners and discipline are unnatural to the child, unless somebody helps the child experience the wisdom in them. But that somebody must be affectionate, authentic, kind and trustworthy. That somebody must know what it means to be a child. They must not take away from you your natural instincts and your inner vitality. They must recognize that your childhood will always be your most precious gift.

Children are what this world needs. To bring order to the chaos. To restore justice. To save the planet. To unveil the miracles in life. To take us back home, where we truly belong. To bring back the stories that nurture life and weave beautiful personalities. We have become despicable people, blinded by our self-aggrandization and our choice of comfort over meaning. We have forgotten the truth that we do not own our minds, and that our minds are precious gifts that God entrusted to us. Our minds are the means by which we experience this world, and to be able to do that, we must have reverence for our minds. We forget to be humble in our achievements, and proud in our struggles. Children revere their minds. Their natural wisdom allows them to experience their world with the intricacies of their mind. Their natural wisdom allows them to put their faith in their mind.

It would perhaps do us a lot of good if we could transport our minds to the character of Heidi. A dose of children’s books would do us good. But is it possible that we have traveled too far away- so much so that we can no longer connect with these natural ingredients that were an integral part of who we once were?

What remains?

As a child of the 80s and 90s, life was good. Despite growing up in the city, my childhood was not severed from the natural world. Apart from the numerous parks, gardens, and playgrounds we children had to ourselves, I also had the luxury of my vacations in Kerala. I am surprised by how little I recall of events in the last few years, while some of the memories of my childhood are as clear as daylight. I even remember how slowly time passed in my mother’s ancestral house in Kerala. The nights were long, electricity was just a dim-lit room with the moths arranging themselves on the ceiling around the bulb. There was not much that we could do, and there was no television to watch. So we kids would find our own ways to pass time. I remember the smell of hay and the attic where firewood was stacked. I remember the pretty wild flowers that grew everywhere, some purple and some yellow, some with round bulbs and others with fragile petals. I remember the dull thud of coconuts falling from the tree. In the city, my memories of childhood are of open spaces filled with the sounds of play and laughter; of interesting indigenous characters with an abundance of affection and native wisdom; and of thousands and thousands of books that presented to our little minds the enticing worlds beyond our own. As a child, I had nature, books and people to absorb. The world of my childhood faded away slowly. The people from my childhood left; some changed. Places changed. The culture changed. Even as men turned into beasts, nature remained.

I recently picked up Heidi to reminisce impressions from my childhood. When Heidi accompanies Peter and the goats to the pastures high up in the mountains, she finds herself awed by the experience of the natural world. The glorious sunset leaves behind a lasting impression on her young mind. Only the intuitive wisdom of a child can access the invisible communication that exists between the elements of our world. As the sun sets, it appears to have set everything ablaze. Every rock, every blade of grass, every flower, is brought under the sun’s spell. For a few moments, they have all borrowed the character of the sun, and have lost their distinctiveness. The sunset becomes a unifying force, and the earth speaks the language of the sun. Heidi is too young to verbalize the phenomenon she has just witnessed, but her native wisdom allows her to access the miracles of the universe and to form impressions of these. Her native wisdom allows her to discern what is original and profound. Heidi is sad when the spell ends, and the colors of the sunset give way to darkness. She voices her concern to Peter who reassures her by declaring that it will be the same the next evening. Heidi is relieved to learn that this phenomenon repeats itself day after day.

Heidi voiced the concern that we all have. None of us really like change. There are things we wish would never change. Deep inside, we want everything to be the same. We never want to grow old, we never want to be parted from our homes and our near and dear ones, we never want to be separated from the familiarity of all that was once home. Deep inside, we always want to belong. We learn the hard way that we have to let go of many things we cherished and identified with. Eventually, we only belong with the impressions that exist within us. The impressions that can never be erased, simply because they touched us so deep at a time when we could devour our world without any filters.

So what remains? Nature remains. Knowledge remains. Even when everything else has faded away, there is nature that comforts, counsels, and heals. Nature that recreates the experiences of our childhood. Nature that allows us to go back to our instinctive nature. There is also knowledge that allows us to be eternally youthful, and never lose the qualities of our childhood- our inquisitiveness, our fearlessness, our desire to know, our ability to lose ourselves to experiences, and our ability to be touched.