This message was forwarded to you from Straits Times Interactive (http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg) by [EMAIL PROTECTED] Comments from sender: There is no shortage of breathless commentary on India - this being India's season under the sun. But this piece might have a special resonance for netters - you might recognise the individuals mentioned. I must mention that I have been very suprised to see that the number of Axomias mentioned in the article is vastly disproportionate to their number amongst the expat Indian population. Or one can also argue - maybe a disproportionate number of the young have found spouses outside the community, thus contributing to the celebrated "Pan Indian Culture". Pan-Indians ready to take on the world by Asad Latif
HE WAS born in the state of West Bengal, in India's east, in 1970 and grew up in different parts of the country because his father was in the civil service. She grew up as a 'nomad' with stints in Assam, her home state in the north-east, and in Iraq and Bangladesh, also because of her civil servant father. The two paths crossed in Delhi in 1990, and Mr Sanjeev Sanyal and Ms Smita Barooah got married. Meet a pan-Indian couple. Their taste for the cultural diversity of a civilisation spanning a sub-continent feeds their confidence in making the rest of the world home as well. The gregarious Mr Sanyal studied economics at Delhi University before he won a prestigious Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. Now the director and senior economist for Asia at Deutsche Bank here, he has also worked in London, Hong Kong and Mumbai. His wife is an art photographer whose lenses move seamlessly from an ancient Indian observatory, an Oxford alley, a Balinese door, to a temple entrance in Singapore. Or take 34-year-old Mr Gautam Hazarika, an Assamese whose father was in the civil service. He met Ms Hena Hoda, the daughter of a civil servant from the northern state of Bihar, at Delhi's elite St Stephen's College, where both studied economics. He went on to the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, in the western state of Gujarat, and she to Cambridge University. He works for Citibank here and she for ING Private Bank, where she heads the India Desk. As India emerges as an economic power, couples such as these two make an important point: The confidence that comes from transcending cultural and other boundaries within it is an asset in a world where guarded economic borders are on the wrong side of history. Of course, it is absolutely untrue to think that Indians who have grown up entirely in Chennai or Mumbai are parochial or less world-savvy than pan-Indians. India's cosmopolitan cities are a demographic microcosm of the country and windows to the world beyond. Even dusty district towns are part of an extended family of communications that plugs them into news and views from the four corners of the world, to say nothing of India. However, the pan-Indian is interesting because his or her cultural sensitivities have been sharpened by having to live with the country's immense diversity, rather than merely having to think and deal with it second-hand, as someone in the northern state of Punjab who has never lived in the eastern state of Orissa might imagine Oriya culture to be. Language is another factor that explains the cultural comfort which pan-Indians exude. Hindi, the national language, has become a pan-Indian vehicle of national rediscovery. It creates a sense of confidence when Indians negotiate with the rest of the world. The rise of Hindi is due not a little to the attraction of media such as Zee television, whose Hindi drama serials and musical shows resonate with Indians across the country. Then there is Bollywood, of course, whose Hindi films are so deeply rooted in Indian civilisation that even Indians whose Hindi is not very good recognise the shared values and mores which they portray. Hence the appeal of such films. True, English remains the ultimate lingua franca of Indian success, and vernacular books, newspapers and music enjoy the almost religious devotion of their audiences. However, Hindi popular culture is creating a new basis for Indian unity. Hence, Mr and Mrs Sanyal are likely to opt for a good international school for their two boys, 4 1/2-year-old Varun and 18-month-old Dhruv, so long as it offers Hindi as a language option. Mr Sanyal wants his children to be exposed to other cultures and nationalities, but the couple plans to return to India eventually. Hindi, a language which was once associated with the heartland of a stagnating India, is today a passport to the future for the children of a globalised Bengali and his equally globalised Assamese wife. The creation of a truly pan-Indian culture is a source of reassurance to Indians who worry about Western cultural encroachment. Bollywood's appeal, not only among more than one billion Indians but also among the estimated 20-million-strong Indian diaspora across the world, helps to create an international balance of soft power, the cultural equivalent of the hard power represented by guns and missiles. So great is this power that, according to an article on the Internet, Hindi films found in grocery and video stores across the US often carry subtitles in Arabic, 'one language which is indubitably not spoken by any Indian community in the US'! But what is Indian culture? That is debated. The qualities of Indian culture are certainly not exclusive, but in one description on a Net forum, it consists of diffidence, respect for age, self-deprecation and self-criticism. The pan-Indian does not only India but the rest of humanity as well a favour when he cherishes those qualities and projects the confidence born of them into a globalising world. IP Address:202.156.2.58 _______________________________________________ Assam mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam Mailing list FAQ: http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/assam/assam-faq.html To unsubscribe or change options: http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/options/assam
