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Wednesday 13 February, 2013

Patronising Attitudes - Cultural Racism???


Patronising Attitudes - Cultural Racism???




From time to time, I've come across instances of "studies", "Reports" by NGOs, "Surveys", etc. that complain about Indian problems of different kinds, such as:

  • Caste based atrocities
  • Crimes against Women
  • Communal violence
  • Child Labour
  • Corruption

While most of these problems are very real and deserve to be addressed, analysed, solved, etc., I've also noticed something rather interesting in many of those studies, reports and surveys - "The Foreign Hand" - Often, the people who commission these surveys or reports belong to or are funded by foregin sources - especially from the Western World.

All of us would have heard about the so-called western influence in the protests against the Koodankulam Nuclear project.

I just came across another one very recently:

Gist: Oppression and discrimination suffered by the low caste groups and Dalits at the hands of the dominant caste groups in Haryana and Rajasthan is reproduced within the families bringing in wives from other parts of India.
The findings are the result of a study apparently funded by Royal Norwegian Embassy

Frankly, I don't even have any major problems with foreigners looking at our real problems (including the above one) and coming up with useful reports with or without meaningful suggestions.

However, I'm tempted to wonder why someone from the Western World should be interested in such subjects which are obviously "irrelevant" to their own immediate society - After all, in what way will Norway benefit from such a study, for instance?

You will observe that the frequency of such studies, surveys, reports etc. are quite common about "atrocities" from Asian countries like China, India, etc. as well as about various African nations and the West Asian countries.

I suspect that there is a very strong undercurrent of a patronising attitude in all these efforts. I'll not be surprised if there is an "assumed superiority" of "their own" society, culture, practices, religions, etc. which form the basis for such studies. They even strive to make "us" believe in an unconscious manner that "they" are, in some manner, "superior".

I must admit that:
  • I've got no firm data to prove my hypothesis.
  • It is just a lurking suspicion based on my own hunch.

I would welcome comments about the above hypothesis.

More importantly, considering the manner in which countries like China, India, South Korea, Indonesia, etc. are becoming significant economic powers in their own right, I feel that the time has come for some of the High-networth-individuals from these countries as well as the government-backed entities from these countries should start sponsoring various studies, surveys, etc. about problems (real and imaginary) faced by the Western nations and come up with authoritative reports and publicise the findings extensively.
Some suggested topics for such studies could include:
  • Debasement of the institution of marriage
  • Neo-Nazi trends among the youth of Germany
  • Irrational child-right beliefs leading to irresponsible parenting in Scandinavian nations
  • Overdose of materialistic selfishness and the resultant inequalities in the Western Societies
  • Artificial re-writing of history with a western bias
  • Attitudes of German citizens about East European "free-riders"
  • Hedonistic and lazy attitudes of Greeks
  • Paranoia of the Americans about Muslims
  • Power of Gun-manufacturing lobbies leading to violence in US society
  • Conscious looting of natural resources from African nations by the Western Society
  • Sexual abuse of children by Christian Missionaries
  • Evergreening of patents by the "Big-Pharma" MNCs from the West

Let's join hands in showing "Them" as to how it feels when "others" poke their noses in "their holy cow subjects"

Regards,

N

Posted by N at 11:27 pm

1 comment:

  1. Prabhu14 February 2013 at 7:23 am

    Cultural colonialism; it is the way the West achieves coherence of its own identity, by making the "other" incoherent and dependent. In Rajiv Malhotra's words: "digestion is the process by which the west establishes its own coherence and simultaneously dismantles the coherence of its prey. So the civilizational discourse thus far has often been a war to establish which side is coherent and which side is not."

    As Iago puts it regarding Othello (from Shakespeare): "He hath a daily goodness in him that maketh me ugly." So what else to do but devise ways to destroy or subjugate him. The "West" feels self-secure when it controls the world "outside". The traditional "East" is self-secure when it controls the world inside.
    The "head" of our society is not the PM but the sannyasi. The high-class is the Brahmana and not the Kshatriya. Can we understand why?

    The West will therefore always try and ensure that the East is not self-secure, for the inherent security of a distinct and superior ideological stance implies that it stands independent and hence beyond the "control" zone of the West. Read Iago here carefully again.

    So the weaker character undoes the greater one by various deceptions (recall "divide and rule"); and in the end the higher stance is compromised and one finds the East lost to its own greatness and self-esteem, envisioning itself through Western constructs, and following the West as moral guide of the planet.

    The game is over once you accept their platform and parameters as your own; you have then disconnected yourself from your own foundations and become a dependent entity.

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