Indian Culture: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Introduction

Merriam Webster defines culture as “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group”, this includes things like how they dress, how they talk, what kind of food they eat, the method by which they worship, and their art among many other things. Thus, Indian culture is the Indians’ way of life. Now, India’s culture is as many-sided as life and this is essentially because India is a vast country with a lot of diversity in terms of sects, caste, and religion. We see individuals around us communicating in various dialects and practicing countless rituals. However, inside each and every one of these diversities, there is an underlying unity that makes India incredible. The amalgamation of these numerous social groups has been consistently occurring in India throughout history. Let us not overlook that the complex and dynamic character of Indian culture is an aftereffect of the immense commitments of all these various social-cultural groups over an extensive period of time. All in all, the eccentric characteristics of Indian culture and its uniqueness are the precious possession of all Indians who take pride in their nationality. SWOT Analysis is a study undertaken to help a person or organization identify the strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities and threats of a subject. This research article is an attempt to use this valuable tool to explore the Indian Culture from the perspective of subtopics such as India’s Languages, Literature, Mythology, Indian Gods, and Traditions.

Strengths

No country in the world comes close to matching the linguistic diversity of India and not just that, Indian languages are commonly spoken all over the world too. Hindi is the 3rd most spoken language in the world, only behind English and Mandarin. Indian languages have received worldwide acclaim in various instances. For example, NASA scientist Rick Briggs once said that Sanskrit is the only unambiguous language in existence. In another instance, George Bush, former President of the USA, had allocated a budget of $114 million for teaching Hindi in the US. However, the Constitution of India does not give any language the status of national language, which only promotes our secularism. Furthermore, the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution lists 22 languages, which have been referred to as scheduled languages and given recognition, status, and official encouragement. These languages are probably why the Indian literary tradition is the oldest in the world and has given us epics like the Mahabharata, which is the longest epic poem ever written. Now, the interesting aspect of Indian Mythology is how well their storytelling was. They were usually used to guide people in their everyday lives, be it some subtle maxim conveying tale from Panchatantra, Jataka-Tales, or some life paradigm defining story from the Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana, or Mahabharata. Something that I found, which was really fascinating was that there are usually various versions of the same fact, event or festival. This was probably because these stories were passed on from generation to generation for centuries. Since they all explain things in their own way, it can be said that they all are valid in their own merit. Another fascinating feature was that Hindu mythology made constant references to queerness. There were stories of men becoming women and vice versa and then some more stories about creatures which were neither this nor that but a little bit of both. For example, Makara was a combination of fish and elephant, the Yali was a combination of lion and elephant. The easy-to-understand storytelling and these references have clearly helped Indian mythology gain a lot of support and popularity amongst all age groups. Moving on from Hindu mythology to Hinduism itself, it is the biggest religion of the Indian subcontinent and the third-biggest religion in the world. Now, a bit about some of the major gods and goddesses, Lord Vishnu is considered to be calm and composed. Goddess Durga is considered to be the destroyer of evil and the protector of the right. Reading about Lord Shiva was very interesting as it is not just gods who worship Shiva. All kinds of creatures worship him. Even those beings who are rejected by everyone — Shiva accepted them. In some ways, it can be said that Shiva resembled life itself. These Gods and religions certainly gave rise to a huge number of traditions, which are often found to be backed by science. For instance, most parents getting their child’s ears pierced at a young age has been proved to have several health benefits. The same goes for the usage of Copper utensils and Surya Namaskar to name a few.

Weaknesses

India’s ethnic and linguistic diversity is a boon and a bane at the same time. This is because the diversity does give us a rich culture to look at but at the same time, it has also caused numerous conflicts since the very beginning of independent India. India’s language issue is arguably the most complex in the world and it has been cased due to its long history of people from various social groups coming and leaving the subcontinent. This diversity has become both a strong barrier to the development of the society and a source of constant friction amongst India’s different communities. This is so because people use languages to form cultural entities and take great pride in it. This has led to severe violence all throughout India’s history. When it comes to literature, it is quite the opposite of what has happened with languages as Indian literature has barely developed over the generations as these were orally transmitted for the greater part of history and were not systemically laid down on paper. Mythological tales were one such example, even though they had several versions, a lot of them faced severe criticism for some major issues. Some of them included things like almost all mythological stories had plots revolving around youth and women being “taken” by gods for punishment, pleasure, or conquest. This was very problematic as it made things like the sexual identity and consent of the victims or survivors redundant. Furthermore, the Vedic religion was considered to be very materialistic, it focused only on “obtaining power, prosperity, health, and other blessings by means of rituals and sacrifice.” This was significantly changed by Buddha though as Buddha addressed the problem and suggested the solution to be living a disciplined life and giving up one’s desires. This forced the Brahmins to incorporate his ideas and as a result Hinduism a modified polytheism with three major gods — Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Indian Gods and Hinduism in general had some serious issues too, like the birth-based caste system, the status and the role of women and children, gender discrimination in ritual practices, etc. These have raised quite a lot of questions in the recent times. Another issue is “the absence of formalized leadership and institutions, which are universally and formally acceptable and which can dictate policy and principles of the doctrine to all Hindus.” This causes a lot of confusion and right now, there are way too many formal, informal, private, and public organizations related to Hinduism, and without something like a Church to guide, most Hindus rely on their own subjective opinions to practice their faith. This has also caused confusions regarding traditions; some Indians follow traditions as a part of their daily life while others feel uncomfortable to even associate with them, they think its meaningless, promotes superstitions, and make people engage in collective mentality which leaves no room for individual freedom.

Opportunities

Even though Indian languages have always prospered, they could have become even better. One very recent instance of this is when the Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ introduced the New Education Policy or NEP in the year 2020. There were several significant changes that were introduced, one of them being renaming this Government body to the Ministry of Education but the change that should really have an impact is the introduction of online courses in eight major regional languages instead of limiting the online material to just Hindi or English. These courses will be developed in Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Kannada, Tamil, and Telegu. Furthermore, talks are going on to set up an institute which will emphasize on more Indian languages like Sanskrit too. All of this will take place with the held of new technology to aid translation and interpretation efforts. Now, Indian literature also had many similar opportunities to shine even further. There was a time during the British Era when the influence of western thought was very high and the printing press was slowly becoming widespread too, many Indian writers took advantage of this to talk about their struggles to gain freedom, to overcome the evils existing in the societies at that time and whatnot. If this would have been utilized properly, with perhaps a more mainstream approach, Indian literature might have looked very different today. Moreover, it is also very commonly believed that Indian literature would have been way more popular today if the British had not oppressed the Indian writers as much as they did. Not just this, Indian is full of incidents like these, the Gupta Empire was considered to be the golden age of Hindu literature and if subtle efforts would have been made back then, it would have had a significant impact on our literature. Another landmark incident was when Ram and Krishna were identified as avatars of Lord Vishnu on Earth, because of this Ramayana and Mahabharata became two chapters of the same story which was called the Vishnu Purana. The Bhakti movement refers to the theistic devotional trend that emerged in medieval Hinduism and later acted as the de facto catalyst to the formation of Sikhism and this was the time when writers like Mira Bai emerged who devoted their lives to Gods. This made the idea of following a God very common. Many films and documentaries have also contributed greatly. For example, in 1988, a television series named Mahabharata was broadcasted which led to astonishing levels of popularity. There are numerous examples like these that gave a boost to Indian Gods’ and mythology’s relevance and made it what it is today. Since the evolution of these mythological tales, one group that has contributed a lot to it is the Brahmins. They wrote several texts which helped in furthering Indian Traditions to the masses and even though it is arguable if it was all in good sentiments of not, it definitely did help India’s traditions become more prevailing.

Threats

Something that is very undermined is how important a community’s culture is. When we look at it from the perspective of languages, we notice that the situation is quite severe. Approximately six hundred languages in India are potentially endangered right at this moment and it is not just limited to the language itself, when a language dies, so does its history and its cultural value. At first, the speakers migrate to a different language, then they eventually migrate to different places altogether. Secondly, the customs and values die down too and lastly, in some way a part of the world does too. Once this happens, it is almost impossible to bring a language back and in India, more than two hundred fifty languages have already died over the past sixty years and if we do not take this seriously, that number will only increase from this point on. It is somewhat similar to literature, even though things have become better in the recent history, what we should focus on is to learn things from a non-eurocentric perspective and look at Indian literature the way it was actually meant to be. If we lose the originality, we are losing something that was created with a lot of human labor and it does great injustice to our predecessors and ancestors who worked so hard for everything we have today. However, to conserve all these things we need to be united first and that is a major issue in India because of its magnificent diversity. This is very clearly visible when it comes to mythology as there are a lot of mythological tales that have different versions because of the regional differences as it was mentioned earlier. Even though this might not sound like much at first, it has the potential to cause serious devastation. People in India are very invested in mythology because it has sentimental value to them and it is attached to their religious beliefs. Religious riots have occurred in India time and again and if we are not careful enough, it can happen because of mythology too. At the end of the day, mythology should be open to interpretation and we need to accept these differences for our own good. This divide sadly only gets worse though, the Indian Caste System has been criticized constantly over the decades for its discriminatory problems, and it is not only problematic for Hindus but for other religions too. There are so many differences between all these religions and hoping for everyone to exist together with peace might be a little utopian but we should still work towards it. However, these hopes have been crushed several times and they could have gotten way worse too. For example, Christian evangelists and political leaders like Akbaruddin Owaisi have delivered very controversial speeches that only divide us further apart. Lastly, people getting busy and not making time for these traditions and the constant romanticization of western traditions over Indian has led to its downfall and things can get even worse if we are not careful.

Conclusion

All in all, India is truly a land of culture and religion. It is genuinely so fascinating how Indians differ from each other so much and yet we are so alike. Culturally, Hindus are often not similar to Muslims or to people from other religions, not just that, many Hindu sects differ from each other too. Brahmins in Tamil Nadu are quite different from their counterparts in Kashmir. Similarly, Muslims in Kerala and Uttar Pradesh are dissimilar in several aspects of their culture. Despite these differences, there are some uncanny similarities. For example, the Bhangra dance of Punjab, the Pongal of Tamil Nadu, and the Bihu dance of Assam, they are all celebrated after a rich harvest of crops despite so many cultural differences. This is because religion is just one of the dimensions in which people in India differ. As we have discussed before, India is arguably one of the most diverse places ever, people are different from each other in multiple dimensions altogether. Sometimes it turns out to be a good thing, sometimes not so much but what we should really appreciate is how we have managed to stay together as one family even after everything. We tried looking at the Indian culture from different aspects and it is absolutely beautiful how something like it can exist with such peace and harmony and I think this unity in diversity is exactly what makes India so special and unique.

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