The Hindu : Mixing of cultures a dynamic force

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 13, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Mixing of cultures a dynamic force

By Anjali Mody

NEW DELHI Jan. 12. The Prime Minister, in his opening address to the Pravasi Bharatiyas (People of Indian Origin) said that India wanted to tap the "richness of their experience''. But between the sop of `dual citizenship' and encouragements to invest in India, it was this "richness of experience'' that was mostly ignored, largely because the driving force of the event, as V.S. Naipaul put it, was the "financially successful recent immigrants to the U.S.''.

Among the men and women who attended the three-day Pravasi event were those who had made their mark, not merely in terms of their personal bank balances, in societies that were not always completely accepting them — societies in which they were ethnic and religious minorities.

They brought with them the experience of those who had helped transform and been transformed by the societies they were now a part of. And the message they left behind, if anyone was really willing to hear it, was that the movement of people and the mixing of cultures were the dynamic forces impelling the world to move forward.

The British peer and president of the Liberal Democratic Party, Navnit Dholakia, speaking ahead of the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, said a society was defined by the value it placed on its minorities and that "social disorder'' was a by-product of "discrimination". He spoke of the need to "celebrate differences and multiple identities''. Lord Dholakia said societies and cultures do not remain static and those who ignored this fact would be the losers.

Bhikhu Parekh, political philosopher and member of the House of Lords, said India's was not "a narrow band of cultural nationalism''. Rather, it was cultural universalism that India was engendered on; and it would be untrue to its history if it failed to remain "an open society''.

Ujjal Dosanj, former Prime Minister of the Canadian province of British Columbia, said the success Indians like him had achieved was the celebration of the diversity of culture of the countries of their settlement and of India. He called on India's 21st century leaders to leave an imprint of the country's multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural identity on the world.

The South African MP, Mewa Ramgobin, condemning religious bigotry, said there was no security in the insecurity of others. His compatriot, Fatima Meer, said India's greatest export was its values, and that people of Indian origin living elsewhere did not want India to be guilty of exclusivism.

Lynda Babulal, Senator from Trinidad and Tobago, said India could "learn from her Diasporic children'', for they had both wit and wisdom to remake lives in distant lands — holding on to some "traditions'' and letting go others, enriching and being enriched by the societies that they were a part of.

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