फ्रॉम अर्तिक्ले http://www.hindu.com/2000/10/01/stories/13010613.htm
Just as chillies and cholis changed India in subtle ways, so too India has impacted and interacted with the West (and the rest) for millenia. Two thousand years ago, the Senate in Rome passed an ordinance forbidding senators from wearing togas made from Indian cloth - a legal effort to slow the flow of gold coins pouring out of Roman coffers into India. A whole New World was discovered because of the European desire for Indian products, particularly spices scents and fabrics. One of India's lasting contributions to Western life was the export of a thick cotton cloth known as "Dungaree" which, in the 16th Century, was sold near the Dongarii Fort in Bombay. Portuguese and Genoan sailors used this durable blue broad cloth, dyed with indigo, for their bellbottom sailing pants.Though not as profound as the impact of the concept of zero, blue jeans, originating in India, were widely adopted by farmers, cowboys, working-class men, teenagers, suburban moms; almost everyone in the West has at least one pair of blue jeans. They are the hallmark of American fashion and in vogue across the world. Should Indians fear the hegemonic westernised fashion imperalists who have added some extra brass buttons and zippers and are bringing jeans back to the Motherland a few hundred years later? I doubt if dungarees are going to damage cultural mores as they continue to find their way back to Indian shores. Male college students in India have been wearing blue jeans for over 30 years without any dramatic destruction of their value system. I seriously doubt if the female college students, who have recently taken to wearing jeans in places such as Delhi, Mumbai and Kanpur, will lose touch with their cultural heritage by continued contact with this blue broadcloth.The interactions of human cilivisations over time appear like linear progressions than oil designs on water-amebic opalescent ovals.
So too languages reach into one another and exchange words and concepts. Hindi uses the Nahuatl word "tomatl" borrowed from the Aztecs by the Spanish, just as dozens of words commonly used in English come from Hindi. The word shampoo is borrowed directly from Hindi into English, taken from Chhaapnaa, to press, or massage ... "Chhaapuu? (Shall I rub?") There are numerous words so common in English that no one remembers they actually came from Hindi. In the following etymology tale there are 13 Hindi words: "Wearing a khaki hat, his face half covered by a red bandana, the thug took the loot to his cushy bungalow in the jungle. After drinking rum punch he put on silk pajamas and fell asleep on a cot. He thought he was the big cheese, until the juggernaut of the law caught up with that social pariah." Three of these borrowed words are particularly interesting: "bandana", a red or blue head scarf with small white patterns modelled after "bandhana kapra" or tie-dyed cloth; "cushy", as in cushy job, taken from "khushii" meaning pleasure or happiness; and, "cheese", as in the big cheese, a slang expression used sarcastically to refer to an important person, from the common Hindi word, chiiz, meaning "thing". If your boss thinks he or she is the big cheese, (barii chiiz), it has nothing to do with panir or any other milk product, in Hindi or English. There are, of course, many words that have been borrowed from English into Hindi such as "bus", "tank", "torch", "taxi", "bomb", "pencil" and "cyber cafe".Interacting with problems of modernity and globalisation has certainly changed the lives of crores of urban Indian during the last few decades. Yet the paranoid danger-cry warning that the core of India's value system will be distorted by "corrupt Western influences" is unsubstantiated in everyday life. (***my insertion: I am not sure about this....perhaps I know too many statistics which would have the author back pedalling- culturally with respect to education, food, music the impact will not be so negative, but in sense of traditional homes and families, the West has a different view of it. As much as women or men want to stay married, an eighty percent divorce rate after 7 years and 50 percent within, three to four marriages a lifetime is norm, see Hoffman & Averett Women &The Economy 2004,high percentages of single parenthood (1/5 white kids is raised with one parent by 18, 50% of black kids, high percentages of teen pregnancies 1/6 (sex starts at 15 or much earlier in the West, in India it is typical to wait until marrige or early 20's) high percentages of stds (1/4 women has Herpes 1/3 has HPV) - What is % of Orthodox here when compared to the % of OrthodoxHindus born in India soil or not are raised. Hindu moms &dads create the traditional sons and daughters who pass these traditions on; women (future daughters) in particular play a very important role in procuring family traditions and the Hindu religion for next generations). Hindu daughters are rasied with 10x more conservatism and religion in daily life-divorce rate in India is 1% &for those abroad the same for homogenous marriages &teen pregnancies are a rarity in India since dress codes are imposed thru college and many schools are not co-ed.
A few months ago in New Delhi, I witnessed a succinct example testifying to the pervasiveness and continuity of that certain primordial Indian ethos that sustains society. I was standing near a big tree at an auto-rickshaw stand in Vikas Puri negotiating with several drivers about my fare.One driver jumped into his rickshaw and sped off on a run. Unbeknown to him there was a puppy sleeping under his vehicle. Over the roar of the motor, the driver never knew he had run over the dog that yelped loudly and began to twist and writhe on the roadside before our eyes. Four rickshaw walas and I stood there, helpless, watching this poor mangy puppy thrash and flail from his injuries. The rickshaw walas and I looked at each other, shaking our heads sadly, tsk tsk. We looked at the puppy. Those few agonising seconds passed painfully slowly. We watched, powerless to save this injured dog, which, with a final contortion of its body, lay still on the asphalt, its glazed eyes blinking once or twice. At that moment, as the last breath of spirit was leaving the body of this dying creature, one of the drivers reached into his rickshaw and brought out a bottle of Bisleri. Holding the bottle shoulder height, he very slowly poured a thin stream of water directly into the mouth of the puppy, which gratefully gulping a few sips, closed its eyes and died. As suddenly as it had disappeared into the focus of that traumatic moment, the New Delhi street scene reappeared. The drama was over. I departed in one of the rickshaws.Who knows how long the dog's corpse lay on the roadside, it may have been hours, perhaps days, before someone came to haul it away. The issue is not that the driver had a great affection for this animal. Obviously, the puppy did not belong to the rickshaw wala. It was a mange-covered street dog. The man had no real love for that dog and perhaps had even kicked it aside on a previous day, or perhaps tossed it an old roti. This was not man's best friend. But at the moment of death, as the soul of this wretched creature was leaving its body, a simple rickshaw wala, living in what many would consider a dehumanised, corrupted environment, had a presence of mind and a certain honour and respect for life, to offer a spontaneous ritual for the passing of that puppy's soul. Where else but in India? In what other country would an auto-rickshaw driver have such an innately spiritual response to an otherwise dreadfully ordinary situation? Dogs are killed on roads everyday all over the world. This may not seem like a wonderful example of the continuity of Indian civilisation - a mangy dog crushed by an auto-rickshaw on the side of a busy street. But I think it speaks volumes.
Continued: Of more concern than these uninformed assumptions about family relations is the gratuitous violence and indecency that have become the hallmarks of the media industry, whether abusing and enslaving women in Bollywood films (which movies is author referring to? I know of only one "Water" which documented social backwardness during Moghul era)or blood splattering from Hollywood celluloid, the images are destructive. Ironically, regardless of the stated condemnation of American culture or lack thereof, American products enjoy a prestige in India.American name-brands, such as McDonald's and Coca-Cola, exported to foreign countries, have lost their fast-food identity and have become icons, signifiers of all sorts of non-commercial messages. Strangely enough, American soft drinks have recently been codified in a most peculiarly Indian way. Gossip in Delhi last summer was that the choice between Pepsi and Coke has developed a communal slant, with Hindus drinking Coke and Muslims drinking Pepsi - based on which Bollywood stars had been promoting what brand.When I was in Pakistan last year, a controversy arose in the Urdu press concerning Coca-Cola. It was reported that some Mullahs claimed that the curling cursive letters of the Coca-Cola logo, if turned a certain way, spelled the words, "La Illaha", Arabic for "There is no God" - the first phrase in the Islamic prayer, "La ilaha illallah, Muhammad-ur-rasoolullah (There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet"). The clerics claimed that Coke had manipulated the Arabic script and appropriated the first few sounds of this most sacred Muslim prayer in order to spread atheism and Western secular values.Hence, the words "There is no God", were incorporated into the soft drink's logo.
The Mullahs warned that this was an American conspiracy, a plot to turn the youth of Pakistan into atheists and apostates. They cautioned Pakistanis that drinking Coca-Cola would cause them to lose their faith in Allah and they issued a fatwa for Muslims to boycott this particular brand of carbonated beverage and save their souls.Coke is certainly not a health food product but whether it can dim the divine light within is questionable. Historically speaking, Coca-Cola, is yet another flagship that will one day too sink in the Ganga where the pasts and futures have always merged and flowed back to us from the seas as ideas and experiences. Blue jeans, tomatoes, and nation-states, like Indra's ants, are but passing specks in the recurring flows of time.
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And God said "eh" "Whatever" "It's all propaganda"
