Culture Wars And Conspiracy Theories

I was recently pointed to an article on Swarajya mag titled "The Cultural War Against Hinduism". I knew what I was going to be reading as soon as I saw the title, and I was not disappointed.

The author (David Frawley) joins a long line of useful idiots from the West who, for reasons of their own, are happy to echo the conspiracy theories of the Hindu right, only in more articulate English. Others in this category are Maria Wirth, Koenraad Elst, François Gautier and Michel Danino. Their Indian counterparts are Rajiv Malhotra, Vamsee Juluri and Sankrant Sanu.

Frawley's words are music to the ears of the believers. However, a slightly deeper analysis of his arguments reveals the contradictions inherent in them.

1. "Along with the spread of Western culture is found the promotion of Western monotheistic religions [read Christianity]. It was particularly true during the colonial era, but continues in a subdued form today."

A surprising statement, when Christianity can be seen to be in full retreat in its Western homelands, and churches are closing every year as attendance falls. Any number of verifiable statistics are available in the public domain to refute this conspiracy theory. Western culture (Western *secular* culture, that is) is alternately despised and feared by the church in Western countries. How can Christianity be promoted by the materialistic Western culture being propagated across the world?

2. "The West [...] defends jihadi Islam while ignoring indigenous groups like the Yazidis being destroyed by it."

Another surprising statement, when millions of Muslims around the world are convinced that the West is on an existential crusade to wipe them out. Is the mess in the Middle East a figment of our collective imagination? Aren't the millions of dead and displaced in the Muslim world the direct victims of Western intervention in their region? And what about the struggle between Western and Muslim cultures in the West itself? Witness the Swiss minarets ban, the French burqa ban, and in general the feedback loop between Islamic terror and Islamophobia. Only a Hindu conspiracy theorist could imagine an unholy alliance between two Abrahamic cultures engaged in a bitter internecine war of their own.

3. "Meanwhile, Western commercial culture turns traditional cultures into folk art for casual adornment and entertainment, forgetting their sacred dimensions."

What sacred dimensions? Surely Mr Frawley does not expect to win over a rational audience with an appeal to unsubstantiated metaphysical belief? There is nothing sacred about any Hindu religious belief. They are a bunch of superstitions, just like the beliefs of every other religion. Hinduism is in no way superior.

4. "With the Left is allied an aggressive judiciary in India that feels it has the legal right to rule over Hindu practices, including to ban whatever it feels inappropriate, however ancient or revered."

Excuse me? In a secular democracy, it is entirely by design that the judiciary has the right to rule over religious practices, including bans on what religious people may feel are "sacred". If the author does not like this aspect of living in a secular society, he must campaign to amend the Indian constitution. Nothing less will do.

5. "The same judiciary, however, will tread carefully with the inequalities or violence that occurs in Islam."

This is playing fast and loose with the truth, and there are countless examples to refute this, both positive and negative. As just one positive example, the Supreme Court of India in fact angered Muslim fundamentalists with its 1981 ruling on support for widows in the Shah Bano case, which the Rajiv Gandhi government cravenly overturned by passing the cruelly misnamed "The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act" in 1986. As a negative example, Delhi's Tis Hazari Court in 2015 acquitted all those accused of the murder of 42 Muslims at Hashimpura in 1987. It's hardly fair to accuse the Indian judiciary of being biased towards Muslims. Ask Muslims whether they perceive things the same way, and you will hear a story of victimhood that is the mirror-image of the author's.

6. "Caste and untouchability will be used to divide Hinduism, ignoring Hinduism’s own social reform movements"

That's a laugh. Genetic evidence (Moorjani et al) established that strict endogamy (caste restrictions on inter-marriage) began 1900 years ago. These are not Western assaults on Hinduism. They are endemic evils within the religion. Any Hindu reform movements are feeble and meet with stiff resistance (witness the reaction to the efforts of BJP MP Tarun Vijay). The most effective weapons against caste-consciousness seem to be urbanisation and a Western secular education. There are many more, but all stemming from modernisation inspired by the West. Hindu society has no homegrown remedies to the evils of the caste system, only apologism.

7. "Fortunately, the vastness of Hindu culture can ultimately prevail over the superficial cultural movements in the world today that lack an understanding of higher consciousness. Hindu Yoga, Vedanta and Ayurveda and its ally, Buddhism, are also spreading worldwide at a higher level of ideas, insights and aspirations."

Now here's an example of how an inferiority complex may often come intertwined with a superiority complex. So far, the article dwelt on "Hinduism in danger". Now the tone shifts to one of mocking superiority. How could something as superficial as Western consumerist culture hope to prevail against the "vastness" of one that possesses a "higher consciousness"?

I'm confused now. Is there a danger to Hinduism or not?

Ah, and Buddhism is now an ally? How cute, considering that Hinduism and Buddhism were once mortal theological enemies, and often wreaked violence upon each other's followers, until the Muslims arrived and slaughtered both of them.

Well, that fizzled out quickly.

I eagerly devour writings about cultures and cultural clashes, because these interest me a lot personally, but I am invariably disappointed with both the content and the logical frailty of Hindu right wing conspiracy theories. I'm sure I could do a far more sophisticated job if I were so inclined. Perhaps I will one day, as an exercise in parody. I will not be surprised if such a takedown goes viral thanks to people who cannot see irony. Right wingers are the same the world over. Their passion dwarfs their intellect and reason by orders of magnitude.

A very different take can be found here "Why Hinduism is Philosophically Superior to Christianity"

The Indic Identity - What It Is And What It Isn't

My exploratory thoughts on what an Indic civilisational identity could look like attracted some appreciation but also some critical comment.

I would like to expand on one set of related comments, which is that the Indic identity should more properly be called the "Dharmic" identity, which is a name that has recently come into vogue (I suspect, thanks to the influential writings of Rajiv Malhotra).

Fundamentally, I disagree with this.

First, I disagree on a personal level because an atheist like myself simply cannot believe the mystical ideas that are axiomatic to the dharmic worldview - an all-pervading supreme consciousness that underlies all of creation itself, the immortal atma or soul, karma or the law of cosmic consequences, and so on.

Hence the "dharma" part of the Dharmic identity is completely alien to me. Some well-meaning Hindu friends have attempted to tell me that one can be an atheist as well as a Hindu, since Hinduism is a very broad church. Well, it's heartwarming that a certain worldview accepts mine, but honesty prevents me from reciprocating. The metaphysical aspects of the dharmic philosophy make no rational sense to me, and so I cannot accept them.

Second, the Dharmic identity is too narrow to serve as a civilisational identity. It could be one possible cultural identity, because civilisational identities can and should go deeper. 

In order to explain this statement, we will need to step back a fair bit.

A course called "Careers, Roles and Identity" that I enrolled in at management school turned out to fundamentally alter my worldview and show me new ways of looking at things. The definition of Identity that I learnt here has revolutionised my personal philosophy. Identity, I learnt, is "the meaning you give to the situation in which you find yourself".

This is revolutionary because it turns the whole notion of "Who am I?" on its head. Who I am turns out to have nothing much to do with any objective attribute of myself, except what I think is important, - which then makes identity entirely subjective. Two people may have had almost exactly the same social, cultural and economic background as well as near-identical life experiences, yet they could form very different identities simply because they looked at these situations and events differently.

My theory of shared identities builds on this model. It deals with how we view ourselves in relation to other individuals. We subjectively evaluate (1) our similarity of appearance (which is influenced by race or genetics), (2) how we see ourselves in terms of a group narrative or community history, and (3) the set of ideas that we agree on. This is our mental model which makes us feel that we "belong" to a group, and also the extent to which we feel we belong.

Genetics can be thought of as "hardware" and cannot be easily changed except through generations of cross-breeding. However, genetic identity is based on a subjective view of our racial appearance and what it means to us. This explains why family, tribe, clan and ethnic group tend to be such powerfully emotive grounds for a feeling of belonging, even in the case of individuals with whom we may have had no prior relationship. At the same time, since genetic identity is subjective, loyalties to family, clan or ethnic group cannot be deterministically predicted.

Received history can be thought of as "firmware". It is largely immutable, although secure and enlightened individuals can consciously revise the model of their own group history, perhaps even identify with another group's narrative.

Thoughts, ideas, theories and ideologies are "software". They are much less "fixed", although many may endure for life.

Together, genetic identity, shared community history and one's current set of ideas and ideologies form one's mental model. Again, secure and thinking individuals constantly revise and refine their mental model of themselves and the world.

The model I propose is that the more immutable aspects of one's identity (genetics and received community history) can be called civilisational identity. The more mutable aspects (various ideas, philosophies and ideologies) can be called cultural identity. The boundaries can be somewhat blurred, but the distinction is nevertheless useful.

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Western civilisation, for example, could be thought of as being made up of a Caucasian racial identity, a shared Hebraic/Hellenic historical identity and commonly held ideological beliefs such as a belief in democracy, the rule of law, individual rights, etc. (I will explain the terms Hebraic and Hellenic in a minute.) Two Caucasian individuals with the same cultural background would tend to see themselves as the same people, especially in contrast to other individuals who do not share either or both identities. Other ethnic groups may share specific ideas and philosophies with individuals belonging to Western civilisation, but there is a natural limit to such self-identification, mainly because of differences in racial and historical background. African-Americans, for example, cannot exclusively identify with Western civilisation even after generations of cultural conditioning, because the racial part of their identity, based on their genetic hardware, draws them back to their African roots. Besides, many of them have a community narrative based on the experience of slavery, which prevents them from identifying completely with their Caucasian compatriots.

The example of African-Americans brings us to the important concept of hybrid identities, especially in relation to the notion of authenticity.

Authenticity is a key concept that I want to address, because cultural purists (usually from the right of the political spectrum) have a simplistic idea of identity. To them, hybrid identities are marked by confusion and are therefore inauthentic; only "pure" identities are authentic. But such simplistic ideologies are dead at the starting gate, because there are no pure identities. All identities are combinations of genetic, historical and ideological views of oneself. They are all subjective and are hence software. The ideas underpinning them have evolved and grown through interplay over millennia. Therefore purity of identity is a chimera. Not only is it a chimera, any "pure" culture is, ipso facto, stagnant and dead. All living cultures are malleable and fluid. As they cross-pollinate through ideas, hybrids form all the time. By definition, all these hybrids are authentic. It is "pure" cultures that are inauthentic, and this is also by definition, since pure cultures only exist in the imagination.

Typically, the cultural make-up of an individual draws from multiple groups of related ideas. Religion and language are two of the two most powerful markers of self-identification, along with gender identity.

Cultural layers can coexist in spite of inherent contradictions (e.g., religious faith and training in scientific rationalism). Also, like any software, any strand of cultural identity can be modified or even removed completely.

The "dharmic" identity has a genetic basis, being associated with people from South Asia and to a lesser extent Southeast Asia. It also has a unique historical narrative (although one with parts that are in dispute, such as the Aryan Invasion Theory) and a set of core metaphysical and abstract philosophical beliefs. It could conceivably form a civilisational identity, but it is unlikely to be a good one.

The first problem, of course, is obvious when one looks at the social reality of the Indian nation-state to which this identity is proffered.

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There are people who are part of the Indic civilisational identity who would feel left out of a purely Dharmic cultural identity. These include not just Indian Christians, Muslims and atheists, but also people, mostly Muslim, from other South Asian countries.

Besides, the Dharmic cultural identity is not inherently egalitarian towards all the individuals that it includes.

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Women, the so-called "lower" castes, non-Hindus and non-Indians could all feel like second-class members of this group because of entrenched biases in the social culture that is enmeshed with the core dharmic philosophy. It is hard to separate out abstract philosophy from social prescriptions when the two come tightly bound in a single cultural package.

It is far more powerful to adopt the Indic civilisational identity as a basis of a shared identity, since many more individuals can accept this, and undesirable elements of culture can be dropped without one's core identity being threatened. Some individuals, of course, will also have a dharmic cultural identity, with the specialised characteristics of their particular faith shaping this identity more finely. but they will not be "more equal" than others who share their civilisational identity, which is the problem when a common dharmic identity is sought to be imposed on all.

See diagram below (click to expand).

As a contrast, it is useful to look at the Western identity. It is simpler than the Indic one, but it is not monolithic either.

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Western identity consists of a shared civilisation identity (Caucasian genetics and European history, in the main) but with two mutually opposed cultural identities, the Hebraic and the Hellenic. The Hebraic culture refers to the Judeo-Christian tradition that underpins the two major religions of the West, Judaism and Christianity. The Hellenic culture refers to the rational schools of philosophical thought that originated with the ancient Greeks. The tension between the Hebraic and Hellenic cultures is reflected in the separation of church and state in the modern West. Western society reflects Western identity.

Similarly, although the (Han) Chinese appear to have a monolithic identity, there have been many cultural influences that have shaped their identity/identities. They share a racial identity and a historical narrative (e.g., the invasion and subsequent repulsion of the Mongols, the "century of humiliation", etc.) The two sets of indigenous cultural ideas are Confucianism and Taoism. The former emphasises duty, hard work and the importance of social structures and hierarchies. The latter emphasises oneness with nature and an ability to "go with the flow". These are quite distinct philosophies. In addition, Buddhism is a third influence imported from India, which stresses compassion and the renunciation of desire as the means to a fulfilling life. Finally, Communism was a twentieth-century import from Europe, and a version of this philosophy endures to this day.

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Civilisational and cultural identities need not result in constant conflict. The world sees shifting alliances based on shared (or not shared!) values. This implies that groups of people with no common civilisational identity could ally with one another based on shared cultural identities. Opposition to a common group that is more alien to two parties than they are to each other could also lead to political alliances.

(Click to expand)

To find one's place in the world, one needs to establish an identity that is self-confident yet respectful of others on equal terms. The model of the Indic civilisational identity described above, which layers cultural identity above civilisational identity, provides the maximum scope for individuals to engage effectively with one another to form groups and build bridges, to find commonality where it occurs and to be respectful of difference when none is found.

Enemy Mine - The Ugliness Of Cultural Arrogance

Australia and India signed a defence agreement today during Indian PM Narendra Modi's visit to Canberra.

Narendra Modi and Tony Abbott in Canberra

A couple of thoughts went through my head as I read the news, the foremost being how Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilisations had taken yet another interesting turn. The other was that this seemed to be a replay of that underrated science fiction movie starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr., Enemy Mine.

Enemy Mine is a story of how two individuals belonging to different species (humans and Dracs) that are at war, are forced to cooperate when they both crash-land on a planet with a hostile environment and vicious native fauna. Suddenly, their own differences seem inconsequential, and they finally become good friends.

An ant-lion of enormous proportions is only one of the dangers facing our mutually antagonistic heroes

A pragmatic basis for cooperation: "You are ugly, Davidge. But there are things out there that are uglier than you."

Australia has not traditionally viewed India as a natural ally. Indeed, Australia considered the expansion of Indian naval power in the 80s to be a threat! (I was a student in India at the time, highly politically aware, I might add, and I remember being quite offended at the inexplicably hostile attitude of what I viewed as a fellow democracy.)

In retrospect, that was not surprising given the understanding now afforded by Huntington's thesis. As a naive student, I might have seen the world in terms of democracies and non-democracies, but I was not to know that civilisational identities run far deeper. Australia belongs to and identifies strongly with Western civilisation, and an even narrower sub-group within it called the Anglosphere. India is not only not a Western country but the proud flagship of the distinct and much older Indic civilisation. It does not belong in the club, and so any increase in its power would naturally be viewed as a threat by the members of the club.

However, in recent times, a shift in Western attitudes seems to have taken place. The threatening rise of yet another non-member of the Anglosphere club has resulted in the club relaxing its rules for membership, it would appear.

Something out there that is uglier to Western eyes than an Indian elephant

Witness Tony Abbott's address at Queen's College, Oxford in 2012:

As with all the countries that think and argue among themselves in English (that these days include Singapore and Hong Kong, Malaysia and even India), what we have in common is usually more important than anything that divides us.

It sounds to me like the grounds are being laid for an invitation to join the club.

Huntington had referred to Russia and India as "swing civilisations", meaning that they could either side with Western civilisation or with other non-Western civilisations such as the Sinic or Islamic ones. It appears that the threat from China (and perhaps from Islamism as well) is now high enough for the Anglosphere club to open its doors to India. Speaking English has given India a second-class passport into the Anglosphere club.

As evidence of this, note that even this welcome is being afforded on terms that are purely Western.

Tony Abbott said in his speech welcoming Modi in parliament,

Australians admired the way India won independence – not by rejecting the values learned from Britain, but by appealing to them; not by fighting the colonisers, but by working on their conscience.

The reader will discern that even when describing the seminal moment of India's rupture with Britain, Abbott is emphasising the influence of Britain on India, rather than acknowledging India's non-violent struggle to be based on its own inherent civilisational values. The land of Buddha and Mahavira, the culture whose homegrown philosophy of Yoga has Ahimsa (non-violence) as its first and foremost Yama (ethical rule), has no need for Britain's civilising influence! India was not just a civilisation in terms of physical infrastructure but civilised in a deeply human sense long before the badlands that became Britain could lay claim to any such description. After all, Gandhi did not owe his non-violent style of agitation to his training as a barrister in London. His legal training might have helped him craft specific strategies to take on the Empire, but his fundamental philosophy came out of his exposure to living examples of non-violence in his childhood, such as his mother who would not kill a scorpion. Viewed through this lens, the cultural blindness that the London-born Abbott displayed here was breathtaking. You can take the man out of Britain, but you cannot take Anglocentrism out of the man.

In Abbott's eyes, India acquires legitimacy only from its characterisation as an English-speaking country that has imbibed Western cultural values. There is no effort to accept India as an equal on its own unique civilisational terms. Any defence agreement signed is therefore to be viewed not as one between equals, but as an oath of allegiance administered by a Western nation to a non-Western one that agrees to submit to Western values.

It's a testament to the intellectual poverty of Australia's current crop of political leaders and commentators that no one has noticed this glaring statement of cultural arrogance, much less seen fit to point it out.

India and the West can do business with each other not because India is now Westernised, but because the human values independently evolved by each of them happen to be compatible. Enough is known about Western values, but not quite enough is known about Indic ones, it would seem. Indian civilisation has been based on philosophies that acknowledge unity in diversity (Rig Veda 1.164.46, "Truth is one but the sages speak of it by many names") and emphasise universal brotherhood (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, or "the world is one family") even as they encourage the exchange and conflict of ideas (Purva Paksha, or a form of debate that mandates looking through an opponent's eyes). The civilisation could not have survived and evolved otherwise. It deserves to be given its due, not a condescending pat on the head for learning human values from the West.

Australians admire the way India won independence [...] by appealing to [the values learnt from Britain]

Can you see why that sort of praise can be viewed as insulting?

Much is made of the idea that Western civilisation owes its character to its "Judeo-Christian" roots That concept does have validity, even if Judaism and Christianity were long at each other's throats, and the vaunted "separation of church and state" was nothing but the Hebraic and the Hellenic aspects of Western civilisation being forcibly kept apart like squabbling children. Civilisations influence peoples and the conduct of nation-states. The Indic civilisation with its homegrown principles of unity in diversity, universal brotherhood and the acceptance of other viewpoints, intrinsically influences modern India, whether by the mundane non-event of a billion diverse people not erupting into civil war but staying together as a united nation, or India's uniquely non-violent freedom struggle, or India's leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War. (The Judeo-Christian value of "Thou shalt have no other gods before me", in similar fashion, results in Bush-era policies like "You are either with us or against us".)

[None of the above is intended to imply that the Indic civilisation is perfect, or superior to Western civilisation. Three glaring Indian weaknesses are superstition, caste-based discrimination and the poor status of women in society. These require India to look at itself through Western eyes to effect a change. Thankfully, this purva paksha is already happening, albeit slowly.]

For India, today's defence agreement with Australia no doubt represents an important alliance from a national security perspective given its own apprehensions about China, but it is not to be taken as a sign of having "arrived" in any sense. India will only truly arrive when its allies demonstrate through word and deed that they acknowledge and respect it as a distinct non-Western civilisation with independently evolved human values.

Chaos Is A Warm And Fuzzy Hairball, Or Is It?

Trust Indians to put a positive spin on their country's worst characteristics. It's certainly easier than improving!

I was recently pointed to a TED talk by that well-known ambassador for Indian culture, Devdutt Pattanaik. His argument reminded me of a similar talk I have heard from that doyen of scholars of Indian civilisation, the erudite and much-respected Rajiv Malhotra. Both pieces are brilliantly argued. The core thesis, formulated in an attack-is-the-best-form-of-defence kind of way, is that any perceived "chaos" in India is just a symptom of a problem in the Western mind. There really is no chaos. It's just "diversity", "inclusion" and "negotiated boundaries", in the words of Pattanaik, or as Malhotra would put it, it's just everybody doing his own thing in a spirit of live-and-let-live that happens to result in "cognitive overload" within Western minds that are used to only "simple models".

Is that the simple explanation that reframes what happens in India and turns the daily unpleasantness and frustration of the Indian experience into a beautiful set of patterns, now that we are newly enlightened?

Somehow, I would find Pattanaik's glib characterisation of an Indian road's "negotiated boundaries" more convincing if India didn't have the highest number of road fatalities in the world. And since it has also been reported that the majority of victims belong to poorer sections of society, I think I have a pretty good idea of how those negotiations go. "Might is right" may in fact be a better description of the operating principle behind Indian roads than either "inclusion" or "negotiated boundaries".

Likewise, Rajiv Malhotra's benign characterisation of the Kumbh Mela as a self-organising system with no event manager or schedule of events may inspire awe, until one realises that stampedes are a regular feature of this periodic gathering of devotees. The deadliest was in 1954 (over 1000 deaths), but recent years have seen fatalities too (39 in 2003, 7 in 2010 and 36 in 2013).

I have a less rose-tinted view of India's systems, having suffered them for many years. Indian systems are expedient. They sort of work because they have to. People need to get their work done, and they will brave the lack of defined process stoically, negotiating as best as they can against the elements and other people, and be satisfied with the outcomes they get. Contentment with one's lot is just a coping mechanism to avoid perpetual frustration. It certainly should not be glorified as some kind of civilisational wisdom, which is what these popular modern philosophers are trying to do.

The big picture view in such cases is also horribly cruel, because it dismisses the fatalities, the injuries and even the individual frustration that systems may cause. A "Western" view of a system would be that even one fatality is one too many. In India, life is cheap, and there are doubtless many who would view 10 deaths at a Kumbh Mela stampede as "fairly low" for an event that attracts tens of millions of devotees. I think that is the core difference between Western and Indian systems. In spite of Pattanaik's characterisation of Indian systems as more "inclusive" than Western ones, at a practical level, the individual gets much more respect in the Western system than in the Indian one.

Malhotra dismisses the negative side of the Indian lack of systemic rigour with a chuckle that his audience shares. Work not delivered at the agreed time, quality and quantity of agreed deliverables not being met, etc., are serious issues, not endearing cultural traits to be affectionately chided. These are flaws in the Indian character, and they need to be fixed. Malhotra does concede that India needs to learn some order from the West, but does not see it as a symptom of a larger problem, which is that Indians are essentially a defeated and cynical race. We have simply given up on striving, and are content to survive, get by, negotiate slightly better deals, cut corners, bribe, cheat our neighbour, beat the system, and in general, win little tactical victories at an individual level rather than lift ourselves as a society to a higher plane of existence.

There have been many who have called out for improvement in the Indian character, Mahatma Gandhi being the best known of them. Such people make the rest of us uncomfortable, and I'm sure Gandhi would have ended up being shot by some other disgruntled group if not the one that did do him in. Today, it seems the most popular thought leaders are those who assure us, Reagan-like, that there is nothing wrong with us and that we are in fact the greatest.

A more effective call to inaction I have never seen.

Devdutt Pattanaik's warm and fuzzy speech "India is not chaotic", only slightly dampened by the statistic that the system of "negotiated boundaries" kills 13 people an hour on Indian roads.

Rajiv Malhotra's engaging fireside chat explains India's perceived chaos as a product of the mind of the Western observer, while making light of the Indian unconcern for quality, time and the other person

Our Sterile Monoculture Of Storytelling

When reviewing the movie "Madras Café", I mentioned my disappointment that the movie eschewed the traditional Bollywood style of storytelling in one very important respect - it had no dances or even songs. There are many who think this makes it a "serious" movie, because songs and dances distract from the storyline (at best) and trivialise a serious story (at worst).

I'm actually disturbed at this. Different cultural traditions have different storytelling styles, and none is inherently more or less valid than another.

A non-Japanese watching the Kabuki theatre might wonder why there is so much slow movement and screaming. A Japanese might point out that a member of the audience who sees the performance in such terms is in fact a philistine. [Confession: I have watched bits of Kabuki as part of Japanese movies and must count myself among the philistines.]

Movie buffs would know the subtle differences that exist between American movies, English movies and Australian movies, even though all of them are in the English language. Readers of "Asterix" and "Tintin" comics would surely have noticed the distinctly European sense of humour in these stories. What a pity it would be if this rich variety did not exist. We would lose something if all English-language movies had the same "feel" to them, or if all comics exuded the same sense of humour. We must not lose the diversity of the world's storytelling cultures. To avoid such a loss, we must actively train and sensitise ourselves to appreciate this diversity.

I have explained before why Bollywood movies cannot be lightly dismissed as "musicals". In the Indian movie tradition (not just Bollywood but the various regional language movies as well), songs and dances are part of the entertainment package. The best movies manage to weave these sequences into the flow of the story so that they advance it in their own way. But even those that don't cannot be faulted. A song sequence in the middle of an otherwise gripping story is an admonition to the audience to stop and smell the roses. Life is multifaceted, and the goal of watching a movie is not to rush headlong towards the dénouement, but to savour every subtle emotion along the way. It's an attitude that should inform one's approach to life itself. Life is not a rat race in which we have to get somewhere. The journey itself is the point. That's why Indian movies are often called "masala" movies. They're a mix of flavours, all of which are meant to be savoured. Viewing Indian movies through a Western cultural prism (according to which the movie's sole purpose is to relentlessly advance the storyline) only exposes the viewer as a philistine.

I believe it is legitimate to challenge an audience to evolve in sophistication to appreciate an art form, rather than to demand that artistes dumb down their art to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

That's why I'm unhappy that "Madras Cafe" has no songs or dances. In its quest for respectability in Western eyes, it has sold its soul. It's now a Hollywood movie with Indian names in the credits.