M J Akbar (Byline) / 30 July 2012
That infallible icon of contemporary mores, Oprah Winfrey, seems to have suffered deep and choking revulsion at the sight of Indians eating with their hands. The very rich and extremely civilised Oprah must be eating with her feet. All of us eat with our fingers. Some of us feel the need for metal or wooden appendages to our fingers. To each his own; why get smug about this?
The
cutlery-wallahs believe that spoon and fork are hallmarks of cleanliness. This
logic seems a trifle dubious. At least your fingers belong to you. Cutlery does
not. Do you really want to know who shoved the fork into his mouth just ahead
of you in a restaurant? You don’t want to go there, so unconsciously keep such
questions out of your mind.
Convention can
become a barrier to the obvious. Those who do not believe in being spoon-fed
simply keep their hands and fingers clean. They wash before a meal. Moreover,
the Indian climate is conducive to bathing; a bath is not considered a special
event, as it was in colder climes before central heating and running hot water.
History confirms
that the major power of an era determines what becomes socially correct within
the penumbra of its influence. Power, empirically measured by economic growth
and military supremacy (the two are not entirely unconnected), is a cyclical
occurrence. Egypt, India, China, Mexico, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Turkey,
Mongolia, Kampuchea, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, America: all have had
their turn. Success sets the standards of usage and behaviour. The beard was
doubtless all the rage when Darius ruled the routes; and Bernard Lewis notes,
wryly, that the gentlemen of Cairo began to prepare for the Mongol onslaught
after the destruction of Baghdad in the middle of the 13th century
by adopting the drooping moustache of Chengiz Khan. Mughal dress influenced
court and popular wear all across southern Asia from Herat to Rangoon for an
age, and the bright red Ottoman fez was a defining visual of Muslim identity up
to Hollywood films of the 1950s, long after the reformer Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
had abolished them in Turkey as a memento of medieval nostalgia.
The British gave
us trousers for which I, at least, am deeply thankful. They are far more
comfortable than the lungi or dhoti of my ancestors — although I may now be
talking like a victim. The British gave their empire and its huge hinterland a
dress code. The Americans gave us food. It was fast, but it was food.
This is entirely
appropriate as a difference between a democracy and a plutocracy, which is what
Britain was during its imperial phase. British food may or may not be described
as an oxymoron, but it was designed for the stomach, not the palate. America,
on the other hand, does not quite understand dressing up. It is stretching a
point to call jeans, America’s contribution to clothes, haute couture. But only
in the Age of America could something created for obesity, such as the McDonald’s
burger, conquer the world. You can eat this burger after a stern party
committee meeting in Beijing, or after a pilgrimage in Makkah, or after a holy
dip in the Ganga at Allahabad. Wherever you go, McDonald’s follows you. You
can, with some luck and creative positioning, avoid the American Army, but you
cannot escape the American McDonald’s.
The law of
capitalism is unflinching: no army can defeat a market force. Any prevailing
superpower can influence style and surface behaviour, but when it tries to
permeate through culture, the effort begins to congeal.
Style has a
value; it can be purchased. Culture, to use a familiar line, is priceless.
Culture is far deeper than modern needs, compulsions or attractions. Let me end
with an example from India. We inherited English from the British empire and
have turned it into the operating language of the ruling class.
We govern in
English. We write our balance sheets in English. While news is available in
every language, English news in print or television still earns a premium in
both advertising and influence. We seem to have everything in English, but we
do not have television soap
operas in
English. Why? Because we still laugh and cry in Hindi, or Urdu, or Bengali or
Tamil or Bhojpuri — in the tongue of the mother. We can turn for news to BBC or
CNN, but Oprah Winfrey would flop on Indian television. Not because she is good
or bad, but simply because she is the voice of a different culture. She thinks
fingers are distasteful; we consider finger-licking a gesture of great
appreciation. No one is right, and no one is wrong. We are merely different,
and long live the difference!
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