Cultures Losing Their Identities

I think it is natural for a tourist to go to another culture and see something different, unique, and perhaps ancient. However, we should understand that what we (as tourists) might value might be useless to the residents.

Don Boudreaux of Café Hayek made this point beautifully in his post Blarney, a letter to Mr Ebnet [link via India Uncut] who thought Ireland was losing its identity:

This friend of mine – like you, Mr. Ebnet – selfishly wants other people to be museum pieces for her enjoyment. You and she dislike signs of material progress in Ireland because you live in the United States, with ready access to an abundance of material wealth that the Irish are just now beginning to enjoy themselves.

You blithely wish that the Irish had remained poor so that you would have continued, during your visits from America, to luxuriate in their quaint languages and enjoy gazing upon Ireland’s natural vistas unaffected by advanced commerce.

And you want other peoples to reject the wealth that the Irish (and Americans) now enjoy so that they retain their "identities" – identities as poor, peasant-dominated societies.

Why should other people want to make these sacrifices for you, Mr. Ebnet? Are you willing to make like sacrifices for them? Are you, for example, willing to go off to live in the Minnesota woods in an unheated log cabin with no running water or electricity? No car? No supermarkets? After all, I’m sure that visitors to America would really appreciate gazing upon a true American pioneer, living just the way our great-great-grandparents lived.

Minnesota without heat - I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. He could have easily changed Ireland to India above and made essentially the same point.

Gaurav Sabnis (who writes a very nice blog) writes:

This post on Cafe Hayek (link via Amit Varma) describes perfectly the sentiments I felt a few chapters into Mark Tully's book 'No Fullstops In India', and the reason I chucked the book.

He describes the royal treatment he gets at a wedding he attends in an Indian village. Later on he laments how Indians, especially those in the cities are "losing their identity" by "copying the West". I find a link between the royal treatment and this desire for a status quo.
[…]
A person defines, discovers and shapes his own identity, and is proud of it. By hinting that anyone "loses one's identity" because of some changes made in lifestyle or thought process, the very definition of identity is turned on its head. All these changes are made out of choice.

Now here is a little piece from Nilu’s blog:

I met a foreign student today. She totally agreed with me that Bangalore was indeed the Pretence Capital of the world. Suzane is from Tanzania and she is studying Law at Bangalore University. She actually told me this (I swear am not making this up) - "People here are simply losing themselves in the name of whatever it is that they are aping. In the last five years that I have been in Bangalore, I have seen it go from bad to worse".

Of course, it could be that Nilu is merely agreeing with Tanzanian foreign student because young men tend to agree with whatever young ladies say, especially if they find them interesting. But it does sound like Nilu and the Tanzanian student are disappointed with the choices that people in Bangalore have made.

Here is a little piece from that excellent blog Sepia Mutiny about the new Infosys campus in Bangalore, with some excellent photos:

News.com just posted photos of the Infosys campus in Bangalore. Wow, Karnataka really can be sterilized so it’s just as boring as Santa Clara. But it’s nice to see homo technorati in their natural habitat.

Most people might have looked at those photos and been rather impressed by the progress than Indian IT corporations have made. But implicit in Manish Vij’s piece is a disappointment that India was looking too much like California.

What I’m trying to do with these various posts is to show varying levels of acceptance of the changes that are sweeping India and the world. While people like the increased wealth that Globalization brings, they decry the loss of “local color” that comes with it. But as Gaurav Sabnis said: “A person defines, discovers and shapes his own identity, and is proud of it.”

As someone who will (hopefully) visit India in the coming months, I will keep an open mind about what I see. I hope I see some happy people, that's all.