Going Global
Culture Quandary of the Global Village

By Dr. Kiran Budkuley

           There is a distinct if not obvious pull of nature-culture nexus on human life. It is this strange shuffle and coil, which is responsible for Man’s concern with the one or the other at the given point in history. This explains Man’s periodic attempts down the ages to organize, understand and interpret life on the basis of principles or theories focussing  either nature or culture, depending upon the primacy enjoyed by either in a given age. In fact, if one were to trace the checkered path of civilization traversed by mankind the point would be clear: at a given stage in human history we see their relative dominance and the resultant reaction in the following age. This has been going on almost interminably for the last few centuries if history is to be believed. But a rare kind of metamorphosis is taking place during the present times which is somehow inconsistent with the trend and scale of our hitherto known experience. As such, it would be not only interesting but also necessary to understand this phenomenal change before we guess what the reaction of the future would be.

The turn of the century has shown a marked shift in the traditional concerns of the contemporary world. The pride of place occupied by basically tolerant concepts like liberal democracy or human rights protection or female empowerment has suddenly yielded place to seemingly harmless but subtly divisionist ideas like religious priorities, nativist preoccupations, regional and linguistic issues, professing of ethnic identity and the like. Strangely enough, these priorities are hitched on to the now-popular bandwagon of cultural excluvism so much out of tune with the professed global goals and the objectives of enlightened democracies towards the close of the just concluded century.

It appears that, the present day globe has suddenly veered around towards the culture syndrome as never before. For a century so preoccupied with glasnost and perestroika in the early nineties and with an all-embracing globalization and liberal market economy, the twentieth century closed rather heavily on an uncomfortably exclusionist cultural note. So much so, there are already visible signs that such an exclusionist culture politics is going to be the watchword of the early march of the third millennium if academic discourse, religious propaganda, political agenda, media medley as well as street talk are any indications. Interestingly, these are symptoms common to the world and not exclusive to any country or region though it may appear to be so. 

Practically, in every intellectual forum -worth mention- across the globe as also in academic circles that matter, the culture quest is no longer just an academic curiosity, scholarly interest or intellectual stimulation. It has rather grown to be the matter of survival as never before. Likewise, whether at formal panel discussions or at casual chat-shows it has become imperative, if not fashionable, among socialites and intellectuals alike to dwell at length on this in thing. Not to be left too far behind, even fashion designers and beauty contest organizers nowadays insist on ethnic wear and culture talk. In short, right from bubbly teenagers to wobbly dowagers, every one who htmlires for political/social recognition or swears by commitment to a social cause dare not skip the culture cue whether at work or play for fear of being  deemed an insensitive  boor, perhaps even  a  nincompoop.

            What could be the reason for this over-whelming wash-over of culture from which the globe presently suffers_ More than ever before, the new millennium has pitted mankind with a strange identity crisis rooted in a stranger tug of war. On the one hand, the process of globalisation with market economy and info-technology in tow, has contracted our net-connected globe into a veritable cyber village creating a sense of mutual dependence and universal fraternity among the global community. On the other hand, an astounding exposure to an unforeseen info-boom has intimidated the global villager into an acceptance of his own smallness. He has become starkly aware of the need to preserve his own local identity so as to preclude the peril of being drawned under the smothering breaker of faceless globality. Thanks to informatics the global citizen is witness to the unimaginable shades of the distinctness of human condition, the mind-boggling diversity of individual experiences, the plural ethnological contexts and the like. Further, the overpowering influence of multi-pronged socio-political discourse right into our drawing room has generated a never-before insight into  the essentially plural  dimensions of an individual’s mundane existence and the uniqueness of  one’s  exclusive cultural identity in the midst of an  awesome  likely whitewash of  global commonality.

            As such the global citizen is in a veritable culture quandary! For long, the feeble victim of mindless materialism and unlimited consumerism in a brutally industialized world, he had also been  the unresisting puppet manipulated by the gimmicks of  an aggressive  advertising industry brainwashing him into a ruthlessly sterile  market culture. An indiscriminate consumer to the core, he had been sold as much to market economy as to the diktats of the just-emergent infocracy. To make matters worse, immigration, travel and communication binge are further compelling him to look askance at himself and the world around. All this has begun to take its toll! As a result, an average individual reacts to his situation often without realizing his paradoxical predicament of being culturally complex and intellectually confused. 

A careful analysis will indicate without doubt that the global citizen is in an unenviable fix. Hard put to meet the unequal challenge of acknowledging, preserving and promoting his distinct local identity on the one hand, he is fully aware of the compulsions of a common global identity. This then is the inevitable dilemma of our global villager. The unsavoury reality of his existence is that an aseptic, uninspiring global culture is about to gobble him up by foisting a faceless universal identity on him. If he dares to resist it, then an insane cultural fundamentalism is out to get him, no matter who he is or how liberal his credentials. His very survival as a sane, sensitive and open-minded individual is threatened by the backlash of the religio-cultural fanaticism and terrorizing fundamentalism supported by unethical handouts from suspect sources, international drug-mafia, indiscriminate trade in killer-weapons and an awesome propagandist campaign. Ironically, this onslaught is pampered by the insecure politics of the present-day globe, which makes its leaders turn a Nelson eye to this growing menace.

 A question that comes to mind is, what do these trends signify_ The naked dance of gruesome terrorism in the name of religion, race, caste, region and so on clearly shows the eagerness of vested interests to hold the globe in the vicious grip of a chauvinist, fanatical or obscurantist ideology in the name of culture and identity. The unsuspecting contemporary citizen truly confused over his own identity has been starved for a long time of spiritual moorings due to an overkill of scientific temper. He has also been deprived in the so-called liberal democracies of a healthy religious co-existence in the name of soulless secularism- neither truly tolerant nor genuinely liberal. In autocratic or totalitarian regimes he has been held to ransom by mindless ideologies ranging from religious chauvinism to anti-religious programs. Regrettably, none of the major political powers or leading religions of the world can claim to be innocent of this powerplay.

 This global politics of convenience has caused mankind to live with a hypocrisy elevated to a subtle art. But with the collapse of the bi-polar world order the mutual tensions supporting this edifice of make-belief broke down. Gradually, the veneer of suspended beliefs has also worn off. Further, the compulsions of global survival have changed and with them the pressures on mankind have been lifted, perhaps replaced by those of surviving under the demands of a brutally uni-polar world. The politically ambitious vested interests are trying to fish into these troubled waters by trying to create a sizeable chunk of regional influence on the basis of religion, ethnicity and the like while conveniently paying cheap lip-service to cultural identity. The dangerously growing graph of terrrorist violence, conversions, re-conversions and subversions across international politico-religious boundaries at least has this very story to tell... whether in India or abroad!