Article: The Cringe Factor

Ex-colonies tend to suffer from 'cultural cringe'. This is a persistent feeling of ‎inferiority to the former rulers. It does not appear to have an economic dimension, for ‎even prosperity does not dull the sense of worthlessness - the feeling of being 'culturally' ‎inferior. At the individual level, we all have seen the attempts of the nouveaux riche to ‎ingratiate themselves with those who beat them to it - the pathetic attempts to imitate ‎their superiors, pick up their accent or even their language, their taste in clothes, in books ‎‎(this is the hardest part)....‎

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), the first American novelist, knew all about ‎cultural cringe, and was probably the first person to articulate the phenomenon of cultural ‎imperialism. Consider this footnote from his novel Afloat and Ashore:‎

‎'The miserable moral dependence of this country on Great Britain, forty years since, ‎cannot well be brought home to the present generation. It is still too great, but has not a ‎tithe of its former force. The writer has himself known an Italian prince, a man of family ‎and high personal merit, pass unnoticed before a society that was eager to make the ‎acquaintance of most of the agents of the Birmingham button dealers; and this simply ‎because one came from Italy and the other from England...'‎

More recently, it's been Australia's turn. When the Minister for Foreign Affairs ‎had the temerity to suggest that Australia would in future be closely involved with Asia, ‎the Bulletin, on 22 January 1950, berated him thus: "We are a European people who look ‎to Europe for our origins and our culture. Our religious faith and our national philosophy, ‎our whole way of life is alien to Asia". The question of Australia's identity arose because ‎some Australian writers were fed up with playing the poor relative to the rich aunt, Great ‎Britain - in short, cultural cringe.‎

If the Minister for Foreign Affairs was right, a neat little syllogism appears, ‎whose ineluctable conclusion should be cause for concern. If Australian culture is ‎unAsian, and if Australia's culture mimics that of Britain's, then Asian cultures don't; ‎therefore, the culture of South Asia is alien to British culture. Then what about those ‎South Asian writers who are successful in Britain and her cultural dependencies? In fact, ‎what about the South Asian elite as a whole? ‎

The South Asian elite are in a parlous state. Spare a thought for Martin Kamchen, ‎who wrote from Santiniketan: "Several daily newspapers of Calcutta flashed the news of ‎Jhumpa Lahiri's wedding in Calcutta as their first-page leader, complete with a colourful ‎photo of the happy couple. First I thought: O happy Bengal! You still honour your poets ‎as the ancient civilisations used to do. And for a moment I remained in this innocent bliss ‎of satisfaction. Then it dawned on me that not any writer's marriage is accorded such ‎flattering coverage. Only expatriates who have 'made it good' abroad, who have 'done ‎the country proud', are subjected to such exaggerated honours." Jhumpa Lahiri had just ‎won the Pulitzer, as we all know. ‎

When Mohammed Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize, even the supermarkets in ‎Dhaka were announcing the fact! Article after article appeared on Yunus in every ‎newspaper, penned by people proud that a Bangladeshi had won the Nobel! No longer ‎would the west regard us as a hopeless failure, they would now begin to respect ‎Bangladesh. The cover of one magazine read: "Hail Prof[essor]. Yunus, Our Own Nobel ‎Laureate". Inside, we find that the first line of the article reads thus: "You mention the ‎name Bangladesh to a westerner and wait for his or her first reaction and what you ‎may hear will not please your ear". But, of course, all that changed when Yunus won the ‎Prize. When photographer Shahidul Alam's picture of the prime minister made the ‎cover of Time magazine, the Daily Star announced with pride: "We would also like to ‎take this opportunity to commend Mr. Alam for being the first Bangladeshi photographer ‎whose work has been featured on the cover of Time magazine." This preoccupation - ‎indeed obsession - with what the west thinks of us can only be understood if we take ‎British rule into account. ‎

Taj Hashmi, a noted intellectual of Bangladesh, suffers excruciatingly from ‎cultural cringe. After the recent death of democracy here in Bangladesh, he wrote an ‎article that began with a remark by Winston Churchill (a figure more alive in South Asia ‎than in his native country): "Winston Churchill, known for his arrogance and colonial ‎hangover, once observed that there could be no democracy east of Suez. However, there ‎is nothing axiomatic about Churchill's aphorism that no democracy could flourish in the ‎Orient." The colonial hangover the author refers to seems to be one he himself suffers ‎from - if our culture is at odds with democracy, then why should we bemoan that fact? ‎My grandmother, for instance, repeatedly confused Churchill with Hitler: to her they ‎were both "foreigners"! ‎

And, as we all know, the South Asian elite is a British creation. After the ‎Kandyan revolt and the Sepoy Mutiny, the need for a go-between was felt by the rulers. ‎And that go-between was the middle class, created in the new universities. Pherozeshah ‎Mehta observed "the strong Anglicizing undercurrent which has begun through the ‎deeper instincts of Indian students." He predicted with satisfaction: "there will ere long ‎be produced in India a body of men out-Heroding Herod, more English than the English ‎themselves". Well, we have all met the Herod, haven't we? The man who keeps dogs, ‎takes them out for walks and says "Old boy" at every opportunity. ‎

The mass education that followed - and which persists to this day - would have ‎swelled the breast of Henry Ford with pride. "The students of the present day never open ‎their mouths in the class room....They take down the professor's words. Commit them to ‎memory - often without understanding them - and reproduce them in the examination ‎hall. A copying machine would do the same." So commented Lal Behari De in the 1870s.‎

This slavish devotion to the professor's words was the beginning of cultural ‎cringe. The certificate at the end of the process might have led to unemployment, but it ‎lifted one above the hoi polloi - closer to the masters. Then, of course, apart from the ‎various degrees (BA, MA, etc), there were a plethora of awards in the British bag: 'Sir', ‎OBE, MBE, Khan Bahadur, Nawab....Here, in the subcontinent, it is almost as if it had ‎been yesterday that the British left. How many families does one know that cannot boast ‎a not-too-distant ancestor blessed with one of the titles - and who serves as a source of ‎pride even today, pathetic as it may seem? ‎

But, surely, it will be argued, if America could outgrow its cultural cringe, so can ‎we. The example of Australia serves to remind us that the process can be very long-‎drawn-out. Take the Booker Prize. Australian writers still crave this British award. ‎Americans, thanks to their fortune, publishing history and cinema market, have come up ‎with an abundance of prizes, such as the Pulitzer and the Oscar, that have rid them of any ‎overt signs of cringe. Still, in matters of art, for instance, the judgement of Paris matters ‎more than that of New York. ‎

The dependence of the South Asian elite on the West can be seen most clearly in ‎films. From the realism of Satyajit Ray in Panther Pachali to that of Shekhar Kapoor in ‎Bandit Queen, the pay-off has come from the west. The former won an award at the ‎Cannes film festival; the latter opened there, and won accolades in North America. The ‎curiosity regarding an ex-colony lay behind the popularity of the early American novels ‎in Europe. A similar reason lies behind these awards. And that also explains the emphasis ‎on realism. Western intellectuals want to see India as it is - in documentary detail.‎

Therefore, our intellectuals have a strong stake in keeping things as they are - ‎they benefit from the poverty, the injustice, the squalor. Poverty, as we all know, is big ‎business in South Asia; so is injustice. The number of NGOs in Bangladesh is, according ‎to The Economist, probably the highest in the world. The author personally knows many ‎individuals who have made substantial amounts of money by running NGOs. Ostensibly ‎set up to help the poor, they succeed in enriching the elite and purchasing their loyalty for ‎western donors: only 25% of donor money reach the poor; 25% go to western consultants ‎and suppliers and 50 % to the locals (The New Nation, 26th September 2003, page 6). ‎Two prominent groups thrive on the two evils - artists and politicians. Which explains ‎why whenever democracy slips here, the loudest yelps come from them (Ray's Hirok ‎Rajar Deshe was a thinly disguised attack on the Emergency). And isn't voting a lot like ‎keeping dogs and saying 'Old chap'? ‎