Last year, when we moved to our new home after 20 years at our old home, my dad was a little reluctant to leave the place. Even after we settled at our new place, papa was not able to shed his nostalgia. We hadn’t moved to a different country. In fact, we hadn’t left the city. Our new home is barely 5 mins away from old home. It’s just changing your street. Still it’s potent enough to stir your emotions. The case is more or less same with every Indian. My dad is nostalgic about his neighborhood; we may be nostalgic about our city or our state or our culture.
***
This feeling is perhaps greatest in Indian psychology. And by Indian, I don’t mean just political India but the whole Indian subcontinent. We are not comfortable or even confident enough to lose our familiar settings and step into a different and perhaps a little tough one. Trying new things are alien to us. Underneath this fear is our so called cultural reins, that strangulate us when we try to break them.
Due to this fear of unknown, we never set out of subcontinent historically. Darius the great was able to break the boundaries of Persian homeland. Alexander and Genghis Khan stormed half of the world. But no Indian ruler was ever able to register his presence beyond Hindukush. Even at the peak of its glory, when Patliputra, today’s Patna, was the largest city of the world, Indian presence was limited to its homeland. When Rome became the largest metropolis in the world in 1st century BCE, it started to expand its boundaries, eventually creating the byzantine and roman empires. When in 16th century CE, London became the first city to attain 2 million mark, it had already started flexing its muscle. The point here is, with power comes the desire to conquer the unknown, which is constantly absent from Indian subconscious.
Put aside the geographical ambition, this trait is notable even in mental realms. That is the reason that Indians are best theoreticians and academics, but they are not vibrant patent holders. We invented zero, but not the binary system. We are the creators of Kamasutras, but not its practitioners. And this is also the reason for our unreasonable chauvinism. Because we are not ready to leave our comfort zone, we reject better opportunities, a better world, and stick to our beloved old world, however flawed it may be. Instead of accepting something better whole heartedly, we soothe ourselves with the fake solace of our nostalgic past.
Many examples can be cited, like why the adventure sports are not popular in India, why Indian companies, making multinational giants pant in the home market, fails to do the same when it comes to take on the International market. Despite the heartland of spices, Indians were never the controllers of that lucrative trade. They contended themselves with penny profits, while first Arabs and then English made staggering fortunes controlling the trade routes. No wonder that the peninsular India, traditionally less haunted with the demons of the past, with IT hubs of Bengaluru and Hyderabad, is the powerhouse of emerging India. Once again delve into the history and you will find the conformation. Cholas were the only Indian power extending their presence out of the subcontinent. That was perhaps the break point for peninsular India. And no wonder why India became the cultural melt pot of all the major faiths of the world, but the rainbow civilization thus created failed to travel beyond the boundaries. India even tamed the bloodthirsty lineage of Temur lane.
Today, our society is a society in flux. The gen next today tries to overthrow the cloak of the past. And during this attempt they confront with their parents, their family and their society. Some succeed to break the chains; others find themselves tangled between them. And there are extreme chances that these entrapped souls find themselves rotting into the same unreasonable chauvinists their predecessors were. Generation gap in India is, I think, nothing but the confrontation between these two groups. Those who wants to move on and those who wants to hang on.
In this new century, when we are aspiring to be a superpower, we have to uncover this strong veil. In the cutthroat competition with China to be a global superpower, this may be our greatest setback. The best example is that of Japan, who overthrew its nostalgia some 150 years ago, after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Japan resuscitated itself from the feudal bloodshed of Samurai warriors and went on to be the only Asian power to join the race of colonization, while both Asian giants, India and China remained drowned into their golden slumber. It’s time to revitalize ourselves from that slumber. If this can be achieved, India would really shine on faces of 1.2 billion Indians, not on the government billboards!!!
