V R Narla on culture

Late V R Narla was a critic of culture who observed different cultural patterns from cosmopolitan angle. Here is one such critique on culture:

TRADITIONAL INDIAN CULTURE








What is Culture? Culture is, no doubt, a much used, and we may even say often abused, word; but are we all agreed about its meaning, its scope, and its significance? I have yet to come across two definitions of culture that do not differ in some vital element or other.
Culture, according to Matthew Arnorld, has “its origins in the love of perfection”, and it is “a study of perfection”. If this is rather delightfully vague, his further elaboration that “culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light”, does not, I submit, leave us with a clearer notion of culture. John Cowper Powys, who has written a whole book to explain the meaning of culture, warns us in his preface that “it is perhaps unwise to attempt a single dogmatic definition of culture”, and proceeds to give us quite a few of them. One of these equates culture with self-control; another identifies it with perfect union between an individual’s life and his opinions; while the third describes it as “the calm refuge, a patient, skeptical, but not cynical standing – ground, from which you can survey the tract of our journey through the years without too much self-abasement and without too many regrets.” Though Powys refuses to be bound down to any single dogmatic definition of culture, he considers the following one “rather felicitous” and quotes it with approval : “Culture is what is left over after you have forgotten all you have definitely set out to learn.” This is indeed felicitous, but hardly an all-inclusive or fully acceptable definition of culture. Nor can we wholly agree with T.S.Eliot when he tries to make culture more or less synonymous with religion. Eliot is probably nearer the truth when he says that broadly speaking culture could be described as “the way of life of a particular people living together in one place.” But could even this be acceptable to all? M.N.Roy, for one, questions this. He thinks that culture is neither national nor racial in its sweep. He asserts that it manifests itself differently in different individuals in spite of all of them belonging to the same national or racial group.
Though there is such wide divergence of opinion about the meaning of culture, it could, I suppose, be taken for the purposes of our discussion that culture is that which helps the inner growth of man, conditioning at the same time his reactions to, and relationships with, the outside world, and through the man in the aggregate putting its own deep and unmistakable stamp on the social, national, or racial group to which he belongs. On some such working basis only we will be able to start our discussion on the impact of technology on the traditional cultures of South-East Asia. But there is still room for considerable difference of opinion as to what could be called a “traditional” culture.
Though tradition implies a certain continuity and, may be, even an element of stability, it cannot defy the laws of change, growth, decline, and even death. A tradition may be vigorous or senile, healthy or diseased. It may be a living tradition or one that is dying or dead. Even when there is no violent break with the past, there may be subtle changes in a tradition which, though slow and imperceptible, may in a generation or two alter it so thoroughly as to make it unrecognizable in its original form. To take an example from our own history, the traditions of the early Vedic Age are not the same as those of the later part of it. The first and last hymns of the Rig Veda are not sung in praise of the same set of gods; the old gods were demoted and dethroned and new ones were invoked to preside over the sacrificial fires. This period is indeed strewn with many broken idols, overthrown divinities, and forsaken faiths. As beliefs changed and horizons widened, as new insights were gained and new experiences acquired, the pattern of the Vedic culture underwent subtle changes until in the period of the Upanishads the child-like naïve Vedic folk-poet gave place to the questioning and rejecting, the arguing and postulating Upanishadic sage. Tradition is thus subject to change. It may change for the better of the worse, but it does and should change; otherwise tradition ceases to be living; it becomes a dead-weight that drags down man and arrests his onward march.
If it is conceded that a living tradition and, much more so, a living culture are subject to continuous change and adjustment to a changing environment, it is, I take it, not correct to associate our traditional culture with any particular period in our history, whether Vedic, Buddistic, Classical, or Mediaeval. It cannot even be equated with what was obtained in the pre-British period. I would like to lay special emphasis on this as I find a general tendency to associate our traditional culture with some earlier period or other according to one’s preferences or predilections. Rammohan and Bankim Chandra, Ranade and Telang. Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, Veeresalingam and Venkataratnam and towering over them all, Gandhi and Tagore belong to the modern age, and yet their life and thought are a part of my traditional culture, no less than what has come down to me with infinite variations and adjustments from earlier times. But if I were to draw a broad line between traditional and modern cultures, I would unhesitatingly say that traditional culture ceased to be purely traditional when the quest for scientific truth led directly to a new and revolutionary economic technique, for it altered the material basis of culture.
As Will Durant says in Our Oriental Heritage, the first volume of his monumental work. The Story of Civilization, “the first form of culture is agriculture.” Man has existed for about a million years but he took to agriculture only about 6,000 years ago, and “it is when man settles down to till the soil” – here I am again quoting Durant – “and lay up provisions for the uncertain future that he finds time and reason to be civilized. Within that little circle of security – a reliable supply of water and food – he builds his huts, his temples and his schools; he invents productive tools and domesticates the dog, the ass, the pig, at last himself. He learns to work with regularity and order, maintains a longer tenure of life and transmits more completely than before the mental and moral heritage of his race.” And I may be pardoned if I supplement the words of Durant by saying that what we call our culture is this mental and moral heritage.
But let me revert to the origins of culture. Agriculture, while it undoubtedly removed the hazards and uncertainties of a hunting and food-gathering life, and provided a modicum of security, as also leisure, to form the seed-bed for the sprouting of culture, also led not only to private property but to slavery. “The rise of agriculture and the inequality of men”, to quote again Durant, “led to the employment of the socially weak by the socially strong; not till then did it occur to the victor in war that the only good prisoner is a live one. Butchery and cannibalism lessened, slavery grew.” Side by side with slavery culture also grew. But it was basically the culture of the classes who had leisure to think and to plan, and not that of the masses who were, by and large, condemned to hard labour. This culture, in spite of the heights it reached, could not altogether escape the deadening influence of slavery that formed its bedrock. How else can we explain a classical philosopher like Aristotle defending slavery as natural and inevitable, or a pious man like St.Paul blessing it as a divinely ordained institutions, or the compassionate Buddha barring the entry of slaves into his order?