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.
A second temperament we note rests on appreciation, even celebration of diverse cultures. Here cultures are understood in the plural. Plurality is valued and in countries such as India and the United States, plurality, on occasions even gets posited as forming the very fabric of society. The temperament for cultural appreciation appeals to the senses and it can assume different forms ranging from a sincere interest in disparate ways of being in the world onto academic disciplines such as Cultural Studies and Anthropology. There is however a more superficial manifestation of cultural appreciation channeled through exhibitionary and market-oriented avenues where cultures are consumed not experienced. Tourism, trade fairs and bazaars — these are some examples that come to mind here. While seemingly well-meaning and benign cultural appreciation that lacks contextual insight risks overlooking cultural histories, injustices and traumas thereby foreclosing the possibility to engage with cultures in a meaningful and compassionate manner. Once again, culture risks being slighted, its power undermined.
I have indulged in defining two tendencies towards culture as a way to carve a space for readers where they may consider what a serious engagement with cultures might entail without running into the limitations I have raised above. I feel that in our times exposure to disparate cultures has both intensified because of technologies that permeate our everyday lives and at the same time, the exposure has been limited due to the restricted and repetitive circuits of knowledge contemporary technologies afford. To my mind, now is a moment globally when education — formal or informal — must foster a temperament to relate with disparate cultures in a considerate manner with skills befitting any serious inquiry. In this essay I share my experiences of working in Northeast India to discuss how the region’s diversity presents rich opportunities and challenges to advance thinking about cultural diversity.
Northeast India is a region of deep ecological and cultural diversity. I am alert to the region’s complex history first under colonial rule and now, following independent India’s State formation. I also share in the sense of violation the region’s people feel as they get either stereotyped or undermined within the Indian mainstream. My filmmaking and research work in the region have exposed me to many communities and their distinct cultures. I have learned about different ways of living and, by ways of living I mean composites of reason, knowledge and practice. To me such learning is the basis for a meaningful cultural exchange.
Cultures as Living
The principles and practices by which different communities of Northeast India relate with their immediate environments have been to me a most compelling learning experience. Here I share some moments from my work that illustrate how cultural practices operate. Between 2011-19, I made a documentary on a centurion women’s organisation, the Tezpur District Mahila Samiti (TDMS), Assam. The Mahila Samiti of Assam is a grassroot organisation that promotes women’s empowerment in day-to-day life. The focus of my film was on the weaving workshop of TDMS. The weavers of TDMS are considered as the finest and most skilled crafts-persons, and in my film they speak eloquently of what their craft means to them creatively and economically. They proudly highlight the important place that handloom weaving occupies in Assamese culture. Though they are preserving the traditional motifs and designs characteristic of Assamese weaving, they also shared how they research and create new designs often inspired by their environments. Their creative processes reveal how a cultural practice i.e. weaving, though ‘traditional’ is never quite fixed or ossified. It lives through the vision and energy its practitioners imbue it with.
Similarly, in the early-2010s I had made a film on the visual cultures surrounding the famous Kamakhya Temple of Assam. In this project I had been inspired to consider how worshippers of Goddess Kamakhya visualise and give this deity a form. I had followed local artists who make arts and crafts inspired by Goddess Kamakhya. One artist, Kandarp Sarmah, who studied art at Santiniketan, shared how he uses line and colour to develop vibrant, abstract renditions of the Goddess. Another artist, a local carpenter, illustrated how he uses leftover wood in his workshop to make replicas of the enormous temple that visitors can buy as a souvenir in the local market outside the Kamakhya shrine. Each artist’s process for giving a unique form to the deity yet again illustrates how culture is not uniform or homogenous, and that it lives through the articulations of those who practice it.
I want to assert that cultures are living and breathing formations. While ‘traditions’ may constitute a key component of cultures, there is a creative element that allows for reflection and innovation. To think that the ‘traditions’ of a given culture are fixed or ossified, is to see that culture in a limited way. Raymond Williams has so persuasively discussed that every culture is made up of two elements: the learned practices, and established ways as well as those we create out of interrogation or through our own initiative. (Williams 1985) Every culture offers space where practitioners act as creative agents and shape the future course of culture. If we acknowledge the power and responsibility such an understanding emplaces in us as bearers of culture, we will be positioned to appreciate cultures beyond the narrow confines of self-assertion and/or appreciation. We will see cultures as living and processual. This may stop us from objectifying and consuming cultures; fighting in the name of cultures. We may then be able to see other cultures too as living formations and, that we are only a small part of a larger humanity inhabiting a shared planet.
Culture and History
In recent years there has been much euphoria with the Look East Policy, and it has become quite fashionable to flaunt a connection with Northeast India. Brand names of the global market are mushrooming across cities from Guwahati to Imphal and these are touted as evidence of ‘development’ and this region’s escalating profile. But I feel one might get misplaced in this euphoria without a robust understanding of this region, its people and their histories.
I am often disturbed by the lack of resources to maintain the region’s cultural heritage. Old monuments with deep cultural meaning can be seen lying in disrepair. Old mills and power plants are now abandoned, silently murmuring an anguish the region bears everyday. As the years have gone by, I have also noted the steady erasure of the ways by which communities understood and coexisted with the dense natural resources of their immediate environments. In any rural corner of Northeast India, we can note how a whole system of knowledge is in place wherein the natural world is not seen as an inert mass awaiting exploitation. A value of reverence towards the natural world informed the everyday life practices of communities. Indigenous systems of knowledge first came under threat during colonial times when nature got reduced to a ‘resource’ meant to be mastered and extracted for profit. Quite unfortunately this tendency persists into the present, now guised under a fairly neutral term: ‘development.’ Moving forward, I only urge deep caution and rigorous interrogation of how ‘development’ might impact this region’s unparalleled natural resources as it remains our duty to leave this planet in a sustainable condition for future generations.
Last, and as an example from my own field of work i.e. media, I want to share the need for preserving historical materials. During the years that I have worked in the Northeastern region, I have noted how old media including rare films and photographs simply languish, decay and eventually get lost. This is a most unfortunate loss for all of us! The hot and humid climate of the region poses very real challenges in preserving media, but this makes it even more urgent that old media be appropriately sourced, preserved and disseminated to the wider public so that people may have access to historical materials pertaining to their lands and cultures. It is only by preserving and accessing historical materials that a refined sense of history can be cultivated in this. The need for accessing materials for a better informed sense of history is especially acute in Northeast India, for the region has faced long-standing neglect, violence and violation in the hands of the many powers that wish to rule and exploit this region without understanding it with any depth or sincerity.
To conclude, the Northeast India that I have experienced has been a landscape of rich diversity that can strengthen our understanding of the role cultures play in our everyday lives. This understanding is needed rather urgently in our times. In coming times, it is my desire that the people of this region strengthen their sense of history and carry the memories of their past to make reasoned choices for the future, one in which neither their lives nor their resources are summarily threatened with exploitation.
References:
Williams, R. 1989 [1958]. ‘Culture is Ordinary’; in Resources of Hope. UK: Verso. Pp: 91-100.
