Westernisation

What is Westernisation?

Westernisation is the set of changes that British colonial rule brought to Indian society and culture over more than 150 years. The sociologist M.N. Srinivas defined it as a broad term that covers changes occurring at many different levels — technology, institutions, ideology, and values. These changes were often paradoxical and strange, as you have already seen in the colonial encounter.

Two Kinds of Westernisation

Srinivas distinguished between two broad kinds of westernisation.

1. The emergence of a westernised sub-cultural pattern

A small minority of Indians came into early contact with Western culture and formed a distinct sub-culture. This included Indian intellectuals who adopted not only Western styles of life but also Western cognitive patterns — ways of thinking — and actively supported the spread of these ideas. Many of the early 19th-century reformers belonged to this group.

2. The general spread of Western cultural traits

Beyond this small group, Western cultural traits spread more widely across Indian society. These included:

• Use of new technology
• Changes in dress and food
• Changes in habits and styles of people in general

For example, across the country, a very wide section of middle-class homes now have a television set, a fridge, a sofa set, a dining table, and chairs in the living room.

Westernisation and Values: A Key Contradiction

Westernisation often involves the imitation of external forms of culture — clothes, appearances, household items. But it does not necessarily mean that people adopt the modern values of democracy and equality that are part of modern attitudes.

Consider these examples:

• People who are western-educated may still hold very prejudiced views about particular ethnic or religious communities.
• A family may adopt external forms of Western culture — like the way the interiors of houses are done up — but may have very conservative ideas about women's role in society.
• The practice of female foeticide combines a discriminatory attitude towards women with the use of very modern technology.

This contradiction is not unique to India. Racist and discriminatory attitudes exist in Western societies as well.

Western Influence on Indian Art and Literature

Apart from ways of life and thinking, the West influenced Indian art and literature. Artists like Ravi Varma, Abanindranath Tagore, Chandu Menon, and Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay were all grappling with the colonial encounter.

Ravi Varma's portrait of Kizhakke Palat Krishna Menon's family (1870) is a good example. This painting blends:

• Elements of a flatter, two-dimensional style popular in earlier water-colours
• Newer techniques of perspective and illusionism made possible by oil paint
• A spatial organisation of seated figures in deference to age and hierarchy, reminiscent of 19th-century European portraits of the bourgeois family

The striking thing is that this portrait was painted in matrilineal Kerala, at a time when most Nayars (Krishna Menon's caste) would have been unused to living in patrilocal nuclear families. Yet the painting shows a family that resembles the very typical patrilineal nuclear family of the modern West — father, mother, and children.

Generational Conflict and Westernisation

In contemporary India, conflicts between generations are often seen as cultural conflicts resulting from westernisation. The book asks you to think about whether westernisation is the only reason for such conflicts, and whether conflicts are necessarily bad.

Box 2.3 gives a powerful example from Assamese writer Anima Dutta's story "As Days Roll On". The narrator feels she has nothing in common with her children — Pallav, Kallol, and Kingkini. Pallav lives in a different country and culture. Kingkini, a Business Management student, wears pants and buggy shirts instead of the mekela-chadar the narrator wore from age twelve. Kallol sports unruly hair. When the narrator wants to listen to Meera bhajans or sing Bargeet, her children choose Whitney Houston pop numbers or play western tunes on the guitar. The narrator loves her children but feels like a stranger to them.

Westernisation and Caste

Srinivas suggested that while 'lower castes' sought to be Sanskritised, 'upper castes' sought to be Westernised. But in a diverse country like India, this generalisation is difficult to maintain.

Studies of the Thiyyas in Kerala — who are by no means considered 'upper caste' — show conscious efforts to westernise. Elite Thiyyas appropriated British culture as a move towards a more cosmopolitan life that critiqued caste.

Western Education in the North-East …