The Unification of Cultures

THE UNIFICATION OF CULTURES *

C. RAJAGOPALACHARI

If one wishes to be a man of good health, one should observe restraint in eating and drinking. If one wishes to be a good man, one should abstain from untruth and cruelty. If you wish to be a man of culture, you should try to forget your own self and keep the other fellow always in mind. It is only if the ego disappears from one’s consciousness that one can attain the high characteristics of a cultured person. This applies as much to women as to men, to boys as well as to girls. It was, I think, alter Sir Walter Scott who said on his death-bed to his son-in-law, “Be a good man, my son.” When Scott said, be a good man, he did not mean simply avoid sin. He meant something positive. Now being good in the positive sense is the essence of culture; To be cultured in behaviour is a positive achievement, not just avoiding sin.

These days culture has got mixed up with the arts, music, dancing, painting, sculpture, etc. We cannot help accepting this broader denotation. It has gone too far in public acceptance to be fought against. Words must after all be accepted in the sense in which most people have accepted them. That is the law of language. Culture is not only the conduct and behaviour of a good man but includes love of the arts.

Now there are some who wish to work for an integrated World Culture. I at first thought that the Institute which has conferred on me the honour of this opportunity was among them. But from the papers sent to me I find this is not correct. The Institute was simply an Indian Institute of Culture at first. Later it adopted the name Indian Institute of World Culture. But I do not find among the printed objects of the Institute anything like aiming at the unification of world cultures into one pattern. Perhaps the name of the Institute should more properly be Indian Institute of World Cultures in the plural.

It is a very interesting issue whether a single unified culture is practicable; also whether it is on the whole a good thing to aim at a unified culture. I intend devoting my talk this night entirely and solely to this point.

A unified code of morals can be drafted for acceptance. Indeed all religions have done it. But culture, as I said before, is different from mere moral behaviour. Culture is made up of positive conceptions–do’s and not don’ts only–whereas moral codes, generally speaking, consist of don’ts. Don’ts can be uniform for all peoples. But do’s must differ from place to place, from people to people. The culture of a people is what has grown among them to be recognized as contributing to the joy and happiness of the people as a whole–contributing positively, although not coming under the direction of law or government. Morality is governed by both social opinion and law. But culture is something free and positive. Laws and governments aim at preventing unhappiness, but culture is what contributes positively to joy. Compassion, for instance, is positive and contributes to happiness at both ends. No one is liable to be punished by the courts for not being compassionate. Compassion in various degrees and forms is a part of the culture-pattern of a people. Vegetarianism is based on compassion. It is not merely a hygienic issue. The Tamil scripture Kuralputs it clearly: If people did not eat meat, no one would take the trouble of slaughtering animals. The butcher is the product of the meat-eating habit of people. Helping one’s distant relatives and one’s clansmen has been a part of the culture of the people of India from time immemorial. It has not yet completely disappeared. No one could be punished for not doing it. But he who did not fall in line with that element of our culture was looked upon as a brute, whatever his rank in society. In spite of the growing pressure of the Western culture of individualism and the terrible, pressure of the cost of living the Indian culture of helping one s relatives near and distant has not yet completely disappeared, doing more service than Governmental socialism. Robbery, stealing, cheating are infringements of the moral code and are infringements of the legal code also. Not to cheat is not culture. It is just avoiding a crime. But to be helpful and not to be completely immersed in looking after oneself is culture. Helpfulness expands in widening circles in proportion to one’s capacity to be helpful. Help a few people, those nearest to you, if you are not able to do more. But if you are able to do it, help a wider circle. This is Hindu culture both in the North and in the South. Indeed I may claim that the oldest literature of the South lays great emphasis on this. “Oppuravu” is the Kuralword for this element of culture. We should preserve this word as a precious heritage.^l Be like a sweet-water reservoir or a fruit-bearing tree in the middle of the village, said Tiruvalluvar. It is a pity that, as a result of the impact of Western individualism, this element of Hindu culture is rapidly disappearing.

Another example of positive behaviour falling within the ambit of culture is hospitality, the readiness to receive guests and callers at any time, which marks Hindu and Islamic social cultures. Alms-giving is a striking feature in Indian and Semitic cultures. It is part of our general culture and not merely individual generosity. The utter loyalty of wife to husband, the utter obedience of sons to parents, are also essential elements in Hindu culture. Western culture laid emphasis on self-help, individuality, and the assertion of equality and liberty, which are also quite justifiable, but go contrary to the Hindu cultural elements of wide helpfulness, loyalty to husband, and obedience to parents. Boiled down, all cultures may rest on the same values. But measure and emphasis make a difference, and they go far.

Now, it is obvious that various peoples, who have lived and grown in relatively independent ways in the various parts of the globe where they have lived for thousands of years, have developed different cultures with features and emphases differing from one another although a common humanity makes all people alike fundamentally. Western culture differs from Eastern, Semitic culture from Hindu culture, Indian culture from the Siamese and Chinese and Japanese cultures. Indeed the culture of North America differs from British or European culture, because of living for a long time in circumstances different from those of the mother countries. Rajputana culture is different from Tanjore culture; Coimbatore culture is different from Tinnevelly culture; and so on. Would it be a good thing to grind all these cultures into one world culture–behaviour, dancing, singing, painting, etc., all to be one admirable standardized pattern?

Things that come into mutual contact do tend to rub off angles and become similar and merge. Synthesis is natural. This natural evolution of sameness cannot be prevented. But is it good to accelerate and intensify this process or is it good to keep harmless differences going? Is the preservation of distinction in cultural features a good thing, or must we seek to remove them as quickly as possible and work for a common world pattern? Does it help the totality of human joy to maintain these differences that have grown naturally, or would it be conducive to greater joy if we reduce them all to sameness and uniformity?

The form in which I have posed the question must have made it clear already that I would rather like to maintain these differing characteristics in cultures, so as to increase the joy of life. A Persian carpet with its multiple colours and chequered pattern is more beautiful than a single-colour dhurrie. Not only several types of music, or of dancing, or of other entertainments, but several differing but harmless types of human behaviour, in my opinion, add to happiness and joy on the whole; not uniformity.

Now, let me refer to the dynamic element of emulation which is roused by proximity and freedom of evolution without being restrained by the goal of uniformity or integration. Progress in the fields where human behaviour and talent count, as they do in the cultural field, is greatly accelerated and augmented by competition. Like production in the industrial field, the cultural arts are assisted by competition. They tend towards stagnation under standardization.

The German example in history is a striking demonstration of what I have said. Before the days of Bismarck, and for sometime even during his Chancellorship, Germany was divided into numerous politically independent States, some of them exhibiting even active hostility towards Prussia, which was beginning to emerge in the eyes of the German nation as the hope and standard-bearer of democratic unification. In other parts of Germany there was no drive towards this kind of unity. But (and from here I shall continue in the words of an excellent book of German history recently issued from Bonn)

all of them have contributed to the progress of the arts and science, winning for the nation a respected place among civilized mankind long before there existed a unified German Reich. Munich, the “Athens on the Isar River” with its humanist spirit and magnificent classicistic buildings, holds in this field a high rank. Its devotion to the arts, its excellent university, its operas and theatres, and last not least, its gaily cosmopolitan life made the city an attraction for friends of beauty and learning all over the world. In 1864 King Ludwig II, grandson of the “Philnellene” Ludwig I, whose son Otto had become the first king of liberated Greece, ascended the throne of Bavaria. He was then only eighteen years old. His magic beauty, his profound love for the arts, his royal demeanour and a strange, fascinating romanticism which found expression in some of the castles he built, were in that sober bourgeois century like an island of golden legend. Among his first acts of government was to call Richard Wagner to his side, with whose genius he found an intimate communion. The lasting monument to their friendship and work is the Opera House at Bayreuth. It has remained a spiritual centre of Europe and a shrine of pilgrimage for music-lovers from all countries. But not Munich alone stands out as a German cultural centre. The excellent theatres in Hamburg, Dresden, Leipzig, Weimar, Meiningen, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf and in many other cities are unequalled anywhere in such variety and dispersal. They are the famous museums of Munich, Dresden, Cologne, the Romanesque and Baroque treasures of Wurzburg, Augsburg, Bamberg, Nurenberg; there is Heidelberg with its renowned university, second oldest in Germany; there are the ancient Hanseatic cities, Hamburg, Lubeck, Bremen, with their world-open spirit, and there are countless others, large and small, where the creative spirit has left its mark. And, of course, there is Berlin, the very centre of intellectual, artistic, international life, with its University and Music Academy, its Technical University, its picture galleries, the Pergamon and the Egyptian Museums, its galaxy of theatres and concert halls.

The German record of culture demonstrates that it is not uniformity and merger but healthy competition which is the live force bringing about the rich growth of culture. Not only in Germany, but in Italy also, we could see the same phenomenon of national culture richly growing in spite of division into numerous politically independent regions. Competition in culture helps growth, especially where the emulation is among proximate communities who see one another more often than nations divided from one another by great distance.

I have cited Germany and Italy, whose cultural achievements were contemporaneous with great and deplorable political disunity. I might ask Indian historians to see when and under what conditions Indian literature, scholarship, and philosophy, our arts, music, dancing, architecture, painting and sculpture, and all else falling with-in what we call culture flourished. They flourished when India was divided into numerous politically independent or semi-independent and when we did not know what political unity was. Have they improved under British unity or under our recently consummated Swaraj unity? Even after Swaraj, as long as the Indian States under the various Rajahs and chieftains were allowed to function, cultural arts throve in competition. No particular advance in these fields has been achieved after the total integration of the States was achieved at the end of the first half of this century.

Even in the matter of education, especially in the early stages, I am very doubtful if we are wise in laying down hard rules and in insisting on uniformity, instead of encouraging a variety of methods and systems and promoting competition, leaving the initiative in the hands of autonomous managements. In every line of human activity, individual enterprise and competition fostered by a tolerance of dissimilarities is the real way to progressive evolution. I do not believe in working for unified culture. We should let nature work out the synthesis, not force it by artificial pressure. Natural synthesis is inevitable. The domination of one pattern of culture over another as a result of political shifts of power is also inevitable. But if the question is, what is good for culture, I vote for variety and competition and not for steam-rolling into uniformity. A hundred flowers may bloom, and all of them are separately beautiful; and the garden in which they bloom is also as a whole beautiful; separately and together they are sources of ineffable joy. Mao-tse Tung said this and he was right there. We should not under the pressure of political vanities and ambitions destroy variety. Vulgar uniformity is not culture or beauty though it may be politics of a kind.

* Address delivered at the Indian Institute of World Culture, Bangalore on 18 August 1968 under Major-General H. N. Bhatia Endowment Lectureship.

^l Kural, XXII. 8: Idan il puruvattum oppuravirku olhaar
                        Kadan ari kaatciyavar

(The wise who know what is duty will not diminish their benevolence even when they are without wealth.)