Aparna Sharma

Two broad temperaments towards culture can be discerned in our times. One temperament manifests in the form of cultural self-assertion (including intensifying fundamentalisms), which is quite often rooted in whole systems of belief, race or religion. At the heart of self-assertive tendency is a will to claim visibility in the public sphere and secure increased access to shared resources. The self-assertive tendency often mobilises a sense of injury: present or past, actual or imagined on which to build its claims for assertion. Cultural self-assertion can yield productive outcomes as was seen in the Indian subcontinent when a certain introspection in the face of colonialism generated a sense of cultural self-confidence that in turn strengthened both the desire for Indian independence as well as the means to achieve it. However, a decontextualised sense of victimhood i.e. an unsound and unreasoned sense of having been violated, can imbue the will for cultural self-assertion less with meaning and more with emotional charge, which in turn can excite human energies in all sorts of poor ways including such extremities as violence. What gets lost on such occasions is the intelligence and power of culture.