Is India turning into a cheap imitation of America?

(India-centric Post)

I was at a social event last week in Bangalore where an "eclectic" group had gathered to celebrate the successful launch of yet another new automobile in India. The ambience and attire at the party was no different from what you would expect at any of these types of gatherings in India these days.

During my mix-and-meet walk-arounds I ran into a small group that was engaged in an all-agreeing conversation on how well India has been doing in catching up with the "developed" world. After brief, informal introductions, someone threw a question at me;"have you noticed these days our airports are as busy as any of the US airports. In peak hours I can see a flight taking off every minute from our Bangalore airport". Nodding with approval, another guy said "we are no less than any other country. In fact, Bombay is even faster, women are more westernized than the USA". I too nodded in agreement, to go with the flow though I didn’t quite understand what "faster" meant (at that time), that they were right.

I know I am not the only one that is sad and ashamed of what our beloved country has become. First question that comes to my mind is why are we always in a catch up mode with the West, especially when it comes to superficial things? Why are we desperately trying to imitate degenerated and insignificant pieces of American culture? Does eating X number of hamburgers and pizzas, wearing tank-tops and Tommy Hilfiger’s, discussing American sitcoms at workplaces, telling the neighbor that the son is dating a new woman this week, hanging pictures in bedrooms of pictures that we have seen in American movies, and especially ridiculing the lower-middle class make us worthy of an American stamp and a ‘westernized’ label on our foreheads?

What is Westernization or Americanization anyway? Apparently the word(s) means different things to different people in India. It means industrialized and technologically advanced to the business community, courteous and "civilized" co-existence to growth seeking people, richer and fancier life styles to the wealthy, sanskriti-less to the orthodox, vanity and glamour to the youth, superior culture to the ignorant and in-secured, and most of the above to the intellectual community. Fortunately our intellectual community understands the word better than anyone else. Unfortunately our media does not, as is represented by only our youth and the ignorant.

In our "westernizing" India, a student is considered "hipper" for hanging a ‘Raging Bull’ or ‘Scarface’ or even a one-hit-wonder Axel Rose poster than for hanging a Johnny Lever or Rehman or Mandolin Srinivasan poster in his bedroom. I wonder if the world were to never enter his bedroom and not find out whose poster he had hung on his walls his conscience would have attempted to hang on his walls pictures of whom he knew and enjoyed well than to hang unknown pictures to seek the image that the world he thinks is seeking from him.

Our behavioral patterns seem to have changed drastically since the introduction of American TV in India. We are emulating what is perceived to be American on American channels. We eat what Americans eat, watch what Americans watch, play what Americans play, even imitate the accents of Americans. Are we that desperate to be American? I remember not too long ago when we were not exposed to American sports on TV, clapping with right hand on the left, folk dancing, and drumming teen-maar in our stadiums celebrating the game. Now we imitate American stadium activity: Flags on faces, clapping with left on right, waves, "we will rock you" songs, high-fives in our stadiums, and half naked Caucasian cheerleaders. Have we really lost our sense of originality? What happened to our own unique styles of celebrating the game?

What about tattoos? These "skin-markings" were indigenous to India, but they never could ignite the interest of our image conscious youth in India until Aerosmith and Guns and Roses emerged on our TV sets. These tattoos that were considered "villagy" and "backward" for thousands of years are now a common decor on our skins.

Apparently ‘aping the West’ cliché is not limited to our youth as was demonstrated recently by an informal study conducted on an elite group of individuals in India. (I could not authenticate this story but I will share this exactly as I was told). From what I *heard*, a group of highly educated (in terms of college degrees!) and highly successful people in the industry were chosen to be part of a food-tasting event. First they were interviewed on a paper to find out what their favorite foods were, later they were blind-folded and fed cuisines from various countries with devices attached to their brains to observe the patterns. To the participants’ disbelief, American food ranked 9th out of a total of 10 according to the brain activity while most had put down on the paper that they enjoyed American food the most. Studies like these make you really wonder if we would have started eating hamburgers(beef) and other types of meats and junk food items if they had been African instead of American.

Now let me play devil’s advocate and give you a half-glass is half-full scenario. Imitating, though cheap and unoriginal, seems to have had some positive effects on our culture too. The proliferation of Yoga, as can be seen via mushrooming yoga centers in India, can be highly attributed to recent American interest in Yoga. What 2000 years of ancient wisdom, experience and Gurukuls could not sell, Madonna was able to in one trip to India. Thanks to Americans and their way of commercializing the art forms, Yoga has gone main-stream in India. What was considered an exclusively brahmin and lower-middle class art form has now become a hip "aerobic" and healthy activity. Thanks to capitalism, Yoga is now sold in pounds and kilos in India. There is nothing wrong with this scenario... right? End easily justifies the means...does it?

What really sold us into Yoga? Is it really our sudden interest to get healthier or is it the obsession to copy what Americans do? Answer is obvious. And the message too to our marketing teams in India--To keep Yoga businesses healthy and running in India, ensure that the Americans stay interested in Yoga, because if America loses interest in Yoga, we would too. Perhaps, and I sincerely hope, some day classical music in India will be bestowed upon with the same luck that Yoga had had in the recent past and will make it big in its native country. All it needs is a little nudge of awareness to our media that America has already gone gung-ho with our sangeetham!

For brevity's sake, I will not venture into more examples of cheap imitation that is in our faces everyday. It’s a shame that we embarked upon this path of "aping the west" in the quest to be "westernized". What India is embracing right now is a double whammy! We are ignorantly thriving to strike a perfect balance between bad and bad. Every culture has good and bad qualities. American culture too offers a lot of wonderful things as our culture does to qualitatively enrich our lives. But sadly these American culture’s positive traits have not been brought to Indians’ attention by our media, perhaps because there is no monetary benefit to Corporates.

With the liberty the blogging world gives me if I could collectively judge/generalize masses of people, Americans are the most honest, open-minded and tolerant in the world today (well, I have lived in America for 24 years and I am entitled to an opinion!). And this ought to be learnt (or at least be imitated!) by us and integrated into our culture. I could  not have been a better person today if I had lived in any other country but in the US. I love America for the people, and the opportunity she gives one to succeed in career and life. One of the best qualities of Americans is their ability to learn and improve from their mistakes. The result of this is clearly evident in the systems they have developed and the progress their societies have made in the last 300+ years. On the contrary our striking quality is copying mistakes and fixes as well. The ability to self-think and self-correct is completely missing in our culture. There is a lot that Indians can and need to learn from America and American culture. But that does not mean there is good in everything America offers and India has nothing to learn from. To evolve in a better fashion we (peoples of all nations) need to learn positive traits from one another. In order to do that we need to first identify and keep away from negative traits of all cultures. In other words we all need to be a little smarter in copying. Ignorantly copying/imitating leads to the degradation of the existing.

It is expected that all cultures, including a supposedly stubborn but exhibitedly fragile culture such as ours, will assimilate some unwanted changes due to global economic policies. But we, the people, can demonstrate vigilance by embracing good from outside and retaining what’s already good on our own. Otherwise we would risk not only losing our identity but also transforming this colorful diverse-cultured world into a pale mono-cultured world.