A FLAVOR OF INDIA

By Donald Johnson
Director of International Education & Professor of Asian Studies
New York University

India is a very long and complex civilization, reaching back as an unbroken tradition for more than four thousand five hundred years. If we date U.S. history from the time of the first settlements in New England and Virginia, we Americans have a history of less than four hundred years. If we count our history as a free nation from the close of the Revolutionary War, our history is a little over two hundred tears. Indian history would then makeup twelve of our long history and about twenty unimaginable diversity. As the late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru once noted," India contains all that is disgusting and all that is noble. You can take your choice."

Because European geographers divided and named the continents on most of the maps we use, Europe is usually called a continent while India is call d a sub-continent. In reality India embraces cultural and linguistic differences as diverse as the nations of Europe - all within one national political system. Perhaps Bengalis in the northeast of India are as different from the Gujeratis in the west as are the Italians from the Scotch. Certainly Tamil, the language of the southern most state of India, is as different from the Northern language of Hindi as is Turkish from English. We should think of India, both in cultural diversity and in its size and population, as we might think of Europe, except that India has a far longer history. When we try to study this vast civilization we may grasp a small part of it in a daily lesson and mistake one impression with the whole. A famous Indian poem handed down from the Jain tradition makes this point by asking us to imagine that six blind men are groping about an elephant trying to explain what an elephant is.

Because of this diversity and longevity, India has, for millennia, like the elephant, challenged the imagination of those, like the six blind men, who have visited this complex civilization. From impressions of early travelers onward, outsiders have often misunderstood India and most have either greatly admired it or dismissed the culture with disgust.

As we begin our journey into the study of India, we can try to be a little more open about our study of India than many of earlier travelers who judged India on the basis of their own ideas of the good life. One of the best ways to study a civilization like India, even as our brief study means that we will, because of the short time we have, probably grab on to a tusk, an ear or a leg of the elephant. But if we try to experience and appreciate some of the expressions of the culture such as food, music art, literature, politics and social life, we will come to see that all these parts of the elephant take us deeper into something that has a wholeness and identity. In the Indian tradition of aesthetics, the way people sense and interact with the arts, a key idea is "rasa," roughly translated as flavor or taste. Performers of Indian dance and theater try to help the audience gain a feeling of rasa or flavor of life. Perhaps as we embark on our study of India, we should approach it with the wish to feel rasa or some of the flavor of Indian civilization. We would do well to try to get the true flavor of India rather than to try to remember all the details of this study, although many of the details will help us experience the culture. The Rasas we take away will linger with us for a long time and rasa is much more than all the units and lessons you will study in this package.

The flavor of India is expressed in its foods where a melody of spices and other ingredients are carefully balanced into something at once larger than the parts, yet the dish retains the specific identities of each ingredient. Indian civilization itself is a medley of diverse people making up a recognizable nation. The rasas of India are also there in the music which moves out in marvelous improvisations from the eternal beat of the drone; (get the name of instrument), Rasa is certainly there in the architecture where both Hindu temples and Islamic mosques embody the people's image of the world and how one is supposed to live in it. The rasa of India is there in the sculptures and paintings of countless deities and in the mythic expression of the universe and in the various dance traditions which tell the stories of the Gods and Goddesses.

A strong flavor of India can be gained by reading the Ramayana and the Mahabhara, the two great Indian epics of world literature. Their place in Indian civilization is so basic that when Mahatma Gandhi sought a symbol to stand for the India he dreamed of when once free from Britain, he chose the ideal of "Ram Raj" or the rule of King Rama from the Ramayana. We can also gain a taste of India in poetry, stories and film where the age-old themes of salvation, duty and principles of human relationships are re-worked by poets and artists of our own time. The symbols of the great tradition are also important forces in politics. A magazine article on a massive water development project has a picture of Shiva in one corner and the author knows that almost every Indian will know the story of the Great God Shiva catching the sacred Ganges River in his hair in order to tame it.

Hinduism, the majority religion of India, unlike Islam, Judaism and Christianity, does not require every person to follow the same laws and rules. Because, as Hindus believe, each person is different, he or she must have specific rules to govern behavior and these rules must change as we grow older and hopefully wiser. As we move in age through the life cycle, we change and the scriptures outline moral expectations for each of these four ages. We are also different by sex, personality or guna, and by virtue of our birth into specific communities of people.

Much of Hindu life and your study of India will depend on an understanding of dharma the principle that determines what proper behavior for each person is to be in any given situation. Whatever particular rasa or part of India we may be dealing with may make us think, on that day when we are studying that small sample, that this must be the key to understanding all of India, but we must always keep in mind that although each rasa is true, it is not the whole truth. Perhaps a life time of study would not even bring that "whole truth."

India cannot help but challenge the mind sets of both American teachers and students. Indian civilization and cultural values developed in very different ways and are far removed from American and European culture. For young Americans who think they define themselves by the choices they make as individuals and the items they consume, things such as arranged marriages, caste and the non-materialistic messages of Indian teachers may seem backward and distinctly un-modern. Most Indians experience a universe which they believe is all interrelated, a seamless web of existence. All life and every part of the universe, Hindus say, is but a manifestation of the ONENESS of all existence. Most westerners may believe that God and creation are separate and that parts of the world are in conflict. Westerners raised on Aristotle's excluded middle principle where every proposition is either right or wrong will find Jain, Buddhist and Hindu logic, which holds that one's perception of things shape many possible understandings of the world, baffling and imprecise.

In a modern culture, especially in the twentieth century, which takes violence for granted and still glories in war, India's long tradition of ahinsa or non-violence which culminated in Gandhi's nationalist movement, may seem effeminate and unheroic compared to Mao Tse-Tung's admonition that, "Truth grows out of the barrel of a gun," or various Sylvester Stalone and Arnold Swartzenager films we often watch.

During the few weeks that we will study India we must try to remember that our own pictures of what we think is normal and good is only one way of looking at the world, and that there are many other ways of organizing society which may be equally good. Rather than trying to judge India and its long and diverse history, even as we can't help comparing it to our own way of life, we should appreciate it, marvel at its achievements and use our study to deepen our understanding of the world. Each culture gives special importance to those things and ideas it values, representing them symbolically in songs, epics, legends, images and sacred places. In studying India and taking its long and rich civilization seriously, we will not only learn about a culture very different from our own, but we will also learn to see our own way of life in a new perspective, and, hopefully, this new knowledge and understanding of the world will make the world more exiting for us and we will become more interesting people as well.