This course presents some important vignettes of a complex, highly diverse India that is also witnessing unprecedented changes since its formal independence in 1947 from Great Britain. The lectures revolve around social dimensions of change, the continuing influence of ancient texts on contemporary India, political democracy, economic transition from the state to the market, gender relations, India's economic globalisation and changing world view. While one of the objectives is to capture the multifaceted process of change, the course also critically examines some of the tensions inherent in these changes. For example, how does gender inequality play itself out in a changing Indian society, how do the modernist conceptions of art entailing market valuation challenge the more socio-centric values found in South India, what are the politics linguistic identities, and how might India address its myriad development challenges such as poverty and unemployment. No specific prior knowledge is required. However, it would be helpful if students are aware of the socio political dynamics at play in contemporary India and keep themselves abreast with current affairs and debates in the country to fully appreciate the various dimensions and contours if the subject matter in the course. This course is taught in English. View the MOOC promotional video here: http://tinyurl.com/hx8mhxb
7.6 Conclusions
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Do curso por The University of Melbourne
Contemporary India
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The past in the present: traditional art forms in today's India
We will use arts as a lens to look at some of the general transformations in today’s India. The focus in this section will be to negate the modernity/tradition dichotomy and instead argue that traditions in India are constantly changing. These traditions adapt to the prevailing conditions, which present its own complexities. To understand them, specific concepts and tools will be introduced to better explain the realities of contemporary India, which simultaneously remains connected to its ancient past.
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Anthony D'CostaProfessor
School of Social and Political Sciences
Welcome back.
So in the last section, we had talked a little bit about
about the related practices of conservation and heritagization.
And now, we're going to move on to
some concluding comments that will wrap this up.
First of all getting back to the theme of economic imperialism,
neoliberal mythology and the mythopraxis that rests
on this mythology tends to see markets as morally neutral systems of exchange.
It, supposedly, it doesn't effect the significance
of the work of art the, way in which it's bought and sold.
The way in which it's auctioned, the way in which it's exhibited.
The historical context that shade that reframe the object.
That's isn't supposed to make any difference,
because the object is imagined to be inherently defined by its own essence.
It is independent of its surroundings.
And if the object is independent of its surrounding,
independent of context, independent of history and the flux and
flow of change of transcendative and whether or
not the culture is more economic in nature or whether it's more religious.
Or whether it's more political in nature or whether it's kinship oriented.
All of that isn't supposed to make any difference as far as the mythology of
the market is concerned.
The markets are simply a morally neutral system of exchange.
And the more that you buy into that perspective,
the more you tend to lean toward accepting the abstract universalising
context-free perspectives of the neoliberal marketplace,
the more you're likely to believe that the,
market does not effect, had no moral effect on
the objects that are being exchanged had no moral effect on people.
It's just an impersonal system of exchange.
So modern people are likely to believe this, but
most traditional people are skeptical.
As we've seen this mythology is evident
in the reclassification of ancient visual culture as art.
So treating these objects, which were produced in antiquity or
even produced today for sacred purposes, for religious purposes.
They are made for darshan, the give and
take of seeing and being seen by the divine image.
From Puja various types of sacrificial relationships to objects.
Objects are made as supports for being able to imagine the divine.
Imagine virgin aspects of reality, forces of reality.
All of these Hindu Gods, for example,
they are forces of nature.
They are the forces of the wind and the sky and the sun, and
forces of fertility and prosperity.
They are forces of they are powers.
Of creation or the power of preservation or the power
of destruction.
These three aspects of time.
Each are one symbolised by, by a different God.
So this mythology, this ancient mythology is
is displaced increasingly by a system in which
the representations of these invisible forces
are taken as works of art reclassified.
And then they are subjected to a whole set of processes that we simply take for
granted.
They are collectibles and so they are collected and they are insured.
And then they are given as gifts to museums or
they are sold at auction.
And then they, in a sense they be, they are turned into commodities and a temple.
How can you commodify a temple?
You can't buy and sell it at auction.
But you can monetise it, you can commodifise it,
commodify an ancient temple by turning it into a tourist attraction, that then turns
it into some sort of economic resource for economic growth and economic development.
And all of these things, once Indian art is turned in
is co-opted by the market, then it begins to be treated
as if it possesses some sort of a static essence.
Some sort of a meaning or
a value that is independent of circumstances is timeless and
that timelessness is expressed in acts of conservation
that makes the object seem as if it is moving through time unchanged.
It is what it is in itself.
Independent of any kind of changing historical circumstance.
We've also seen that traditional Indian values and
practices tend to lean toward pragmatic relations to the material world toward
content sensitive perspectives and which values are relevant.
It depends on the circumstance.
So, in different circumstances at different stages of life in different
roles.
So, I'm not always a professor.
I'm sometimes, I'm a husband.
Sometimes, I'm a father.
Sometimes, I'm a pedestrian.
Sometimes, I'm a motorist.
Sometimes, I'm a citizen.
I have different roles in and these different roles in different aspects of
my identity are not independent, but they're relational.
They depend on certain circumstances.
Certain concrete, pragmatic contexts in which certain aspects of who I am arise.
And there's a whole set of expectations of norms, of practices, of behaviour,
of values and so on that are irrelevant to those contexts.
And this is how most traditional societies operate.
This is certainly how Indian practices still
continue to be to be pursued.
So in this way of looking at things, symbolic values are not essences.
They're not independent.
They can't exist independent of context.
They can't exist independent of changes.
The world is a place of concrete flux and who I am is not fixed.
What anything is is not fixed.
It's not something that's really timeless.
However, the mythology of a market is that there are these universal values.
The universal, timeless kinds of essence that universal human nature as
economic man that is independent of whether or not you're a hunter or
gatherer or whether you belong to a communist society or
whether you live in a very religious, you know, Islamic society.
And no matter what society you live in according to the modern mythology,
everybody is an economic person.
A trade-off talking rational economic person, who calculates
value by looking at price and looking at quality and all sorts of,
of rational procedures, that lead toward economic decision making.
So this notion of human nature is independent of any of these roles,
independent of contexts.
And this modern view of reality is gradually becoming more and
more prevalent in Indian practices as we've seen looking
at the fate of the, of traditional Indian art.
It is increasingly being taken over by the forces of economic imperialism and
art still is performing its sacred functions, but
the economic sphere is becoming more and more potent.
And even in temples that are still in worship,
there is a domain of value that is associated with,
with cultural tourism and with economic values that is becoming
increasingly important and increasingly dominant.
In this light at the end of this lecture, there are two takeaway questions
that are worthy of consideration, something to think about.
And in light of what's been presented here we can ask whether or
not India's traditional mythopraxis that tends to be and
I'll remind you of, it's a praxis of pragmatic context sensitivity.
An expectation that, that the meaning and significance and
value of things shifts according to context, particularly historical context.
So there's this form of mythopraxis, which is characteristic of India.
This so called compartmentalisation or context sensitivity.
Does this make India more or
less vulnerable to the forces of economic imperialism?
Another question is whether or
not non-market domains of value and
practice can continue to
flourish in a compartmentalised manner.
So, another way of putting this is that can Indian culture, it's
historical, sacred, traditional culture.
Can it manage to keep the economic sphere in its place?
Where economic values serve as means to human ends.
Means to other ends and not become the ends of everything.
That life exists for you know, the purpose of pursuing economic gains.
Politics exist for this purpose of economic gains.
Medicine, sports, law everything is reducible to economic goals.
It’s not say that this is lot to be anti-capitalist or anything.
A neo-liberal market can be a very useful tool.
It could be a great servant, but it could be a terrible master.
If these means and ends are reversed where money becomes the end,
then it has a corrosive effect on everything that it comes in contact
with all of these domains of life tend to be eroded and corroded.
If the economic values tend, begin to trump the values
of whatever sphere of life that they're being applied to.
Money is a useful servant.
So, a neo-liberal market can be a very useful tool, but
can it still be because it's impulse is universalising,
because it wants to standardise, because it tends to homogenise,
can these values be successfully compartmentalised?
Can they still be constrained?
Can they still be kept in their place, so
that non-market domain of value and practice can still flourish in India.
And in this case, in this sense if India can't do it, then nobody can.
So, India in a sense is a laboratory and experimental space.
Where we're going to be able to see whether or not the recent shift toward
neo-liberal policies by the Indian government is something that
that can stay constrained.
And keep the forces of economic imperialism under control.
One of the key things to ultimately achieving that aim is awareness.
Being aware that it's happening.
And the challenge to being aware that it's happening is
ethnocentrism, is the problem of taking things for granted.
It's so built-in to our common sense, so
built-in to our ordinary routine, everyday activities
of production and consumption that we don't even see it
as something we can do anything about.
We just throw up our hands.
It's just inevitable.
It's just nature.
It's human nature.
It's natural.
It's not in the nature of things, it's in the culture of things.
And because culture is something that is historically constructed,
because human beings are the agents, we're the ones who are doing it.
That means that we can do something about it and we can we can take some
measure of control over it, but only to the extent that we're conscious of it.
So as long as we don't see that economic imperialism is a problem or economic
triumphalism even, we don't even see it, then there's nothing we can do about it.
So, India is going to be in one of the places in the world to pay attention to.
Because contemporary India how it deals with,
with the forces of a neo-liberal economic system is going
to provide an interesting lesson for the entire world.
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