COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

The Rediff Special/Nirad C Chaudhuri

The new-rich class is contributing to social decadence in India

I have now to complete my account of decadence in India by describing its expansion into social and cultural life, and, of course, as its escapable accompaniment -- decadence of mental life.

During the periods of Hindu and Muslim rule, political regimes in India had no organic relationship with the general life of the people. They only superimposed an exploitative, almost predatory, class of men on the people; this class maintained law and order only to the extent that this was necessary for full-scale exploitation. They would not permit the infringement of their monopoly of robbery.

Thus the historical political regimes of ancient Hindu India left no trace or memory of their existence among the people. Before the European Orientalists discovered the historical ancient India, the Indian people knew nothing of Chandragupta and Asoka and the Maurya dynasty, of Chandragupta, Samudragupta and the Gupta dynasty, of Harsha, of the Palas of Bengal, the Pratharas of upper India, and the Rashtrakutas of the Deccan. The entire historic Hindu role left only two names, Vikramaditya and Bhoja-Raja, to be applied to any great ruler. For the rest, the legends embodied in the two epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, became the only sources of the political life of ancient Hindus. Rama's rule was the Hindu Pax Britannica, and the conflict between the Kurus and the Pandavas the civil war par excellence.

The Muslims, in contrast, brought historical knowledge and memory to India, but this did not create a political life which impinged on the life of the people. They brought into existence only a lasting relationship between the ruling order and the general mass of the people created by Muslim rule through the system of revenue collection introduced during the reign of the Mogul emperor Akbar by his Punjabi Khatri revenue minister, Todar Mal.

So it was left for British rule to establish a close relationship between the political regime in India and the Indian people. That was created especially by the creation of a Hindu official class and a Hindu professional class. Though them the political order and the social order became intertwined, and on account of this any changes in the political order were bound to produce corresponding changes in the life of the people. Thus the decadence of political life in India had its counterpart in the decadence in social and cultural life, although there were also trends towards decadence innate in those areas of life. I shall now give a summary account of the social and cultural decadence without distinguishing between its causes.

On the whole, it resembles the decadence in England in these spheres, but there are differences which either intensify or weaken the manifestations in India. At the same time, its visible manifestations are more American than English. The most conspicuous outward manifestation of social and cultural decadence in India is the popular and lowest expression of Americanism. This is also inducing many enterprising Indians to emigrate and settle in the United States, so as to be in their real cultural home. But there they join only that element of the American population which is composed of its 'sansculottes'.

When I was for a time professor in the University of Texas at Austin, we entertained in the manner of the professors there. When a fellow-Indian saw my wife's table he laughed and said; 'What have you done? People here would laugh at you.' Yet the China was Lennox.

I can now proceed, to describe the particular features of the Indian decadence, and I shall begin with:

a. Money-making. This is more single-minded, sordid, and dishonest in India than in England, and this debasement of the pursuit of money marks it as a manifestation of decadence. The traditional Hindu orders had always a place in it for resolute money-making to the exclusion of all other interests. That was practised by the castes or classes of all other interests.

That was practised by the castes or classes to whom the Hindu sacred law (Dharmasastra) assigned the 'social duty' of providing wealth for the entire order. So, for these castes and classes money-making was a vocation rather than a profession; the special characterisation of it in Sanskrit was dedication to svadharma. There still survive in India money-makers of this type. Most of the Indian immigrants in England who have become fabulously wealthy are families of that type. So are the Hindu retailers at a less wealthy level.

The Islamic order, too, provided an honourable place for its traders. It never created any social distinction between the gentry and the tradesmen which was seen in England. Whether in Cairo, Baghdad, or Delhi the shop was as honoured a place as a castle or a country house.

But in the last few decades there has appeared in India a new upstart class of money-makers who surpass the English money-makers in sordidness and dishonesty. It is this new-rich class which is contributing to social decadence in India.

b.Licentiousness. In this sphere decadence is showing less degradation in India than in England and is not becoming a force for destroying the family. This is due to the fact that traditional Hindus society provided a wide scope for licentiousness within family relationships as a safety valve. The only restriction imposed on licentiousness was that it should be secret, always assumed but never paraded. This makes the licentiousness which is now being seen in India less significant than that which is rampant in England. Furthermore, licentiousness has not become dogmatic in India. It is only an easing of the rigor of social inhibition.

But it is acquiring a social character, coming out of its familial segregation. This is due to two new developments in Hindu social life: first, the virtual disappearance of the purdah system and unrestricted meeting of men and women; secondly, the new Hindu law of divorce. Formerly, there was informal separation between husband and wife arising from incompatibility, but no formal divorce. Now, for young Hindu wives the husband's friend has potentially acquired the new attribute of a lover, and that without becoming a co-respondent in a divorce case but only being the tacit cause of it.

I am told that the man-woman relationship among educated Indians is drifting perceptively towards Western practice. But I know that over this question there may be both exaggeration and understatement -- in India perhaps exaggeration on account of its open exhibition. I shall leave the consideration of licentiousness as a feature of Indian decadence at that.

c. Mores. There are three aspects of the mores or the no-nos of a people which indicate its soundness or unsoundness, its vitality or loss of vitality, and its authenticity or its falsity. These are speech, dressing and eating. These go together, and if there is absence of strictness in one, there will be the same absence in the other two. And this triple loss of strictness always indicates decadence.

Judged by this criterion, all India is decadent, although each region is so in its peculiar way. To take Bengal alone, of which I have complete knowledge, authentic 'Bengali-ness' in all three has not only declined, but virtually disappeared. Bengali colloquial speech, Bengali cuisine, and the Bengali costume of dhoti and a Punjabi, were the foundation of Bengali conservatism and identity. All three are in a state of desarroi, if not actually in a shambles.

Young Bengalis who visit me at Oxford remark after hearing me that I speak like their grandmothers, not even their mothers. Next, even in England, I am in my dhoti when at home, whereas even in Calcutta very few Bengalis now appear in public except in trousers or pyjamas. I am also most 'uncontemporary' in this that I sleep in a dhoti. But the contemporary Bengalii libertarians in matters of clothes are nondescript. Their sartorial choice is wholly capricious. This is more or less true of Hindu life in every great city of India. The upper garment is now not even a shirt, but a T-shirt, with an inscription.

Coming finally to habits of eating, I would say that, as an indication of decadence, the changes in them in Bengal are the most significant. The Bengalis were extremely conservative both as to what they ate and how they ate it. A day on which they did not eat boiled rice, but a richer meal of luchis (thin and delicate roundels of white flour dough shaped by a rolling pin, with vegetable dishes, sweet yogurt plus sweets) was called by them a day of fast.

The same Bengalis nowadays relish south Indian bhondas and idlis; they have also begun to eat Chinese food as a luxury. But they have an extreme dislike for English cooking, and even French and Italian dishes. Their one-sided abandonment of conservatism in respect of eating I see as a manifestation of decadence.

Excerpted from Three Horsemen Of The New Apocalypse by Nirad C Chaudhuri, Oxford University Press, 1997, Rs 250, with the publisher's permission.

The Rediff Special

Tell us what you think of this feature