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The Rediff Special/ Amartya Sen

Does the use of penicillin amount to Westernisation?

The irrelevance of origin

Why is it important to worry about the geography of origin of an idea or an object? If Westernisation is seen as a legitimate source of concern, then some bad effects would have to be identified, rather than simply noting the fact of foreign origin. Does the use of penicillin amount to Westernisation? What about the enjoyment of Shakespeare? On the other side, was Goethe getting de-Europeanised because he was so moved by his reading of Kalidasa? Is Indian cooking deeply Westernised because chilli was unknown in India till the Portuguese brought it to India? Are Bengali sweets not Bengali because the use of chena (or cottage cheese) in this form came with the European settlements in eastern India? Isn't there a difference between cultural contact and cultural dependence?

Even if something were distinctly a product of a particular country or culture, to assume that its use elsewhere must undermine other countries or cultures is a completely arbitrary presumption. Rabindranath Tagore put the main point with great clarity:
Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin.
I am proud of my humanity when I can acknowledge the poets and artists of other countries as my own.
Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine.

This is not to deny that we may have ground to resent the importance of a practice from elsewhere when it stifles or obliterates some local practice or tradition to which the regional people have reason to attach value. Each such use has to be judged, on the one hand, by what it offers (what valuable things we learn from others), and on the other, by what it may stifle (what valuable things of our own we forget as a result of outside influence). The precise origin of an object or an idea or a technique is not crucial for this judgement, and has to be distinguished from the assessment of its impact and creative and destructive effects.

The problem cannot be dealt with simply by disapproving every cultural import, nor by regarding every import to be just fine. The main issue is surely to increase the freedom that people have to choose between alternative life styles and ways of being.

To some extent this is best dealt with by leaving the choices to the individuals involved. But there may be cases in which the survival of local cultural forms may be threatened by strong-armed or better-funded competition from foreign sources. It is, then, up to the society to determine what, if anything, it wants to do to preserve old forms of living, even as significant economic cost. Lifestyles can indeed be preserved if the society decides to do just that, and it is a question of balancing the costs of such preservation against the value that the society attaches to the objects and lifestyles to be preserved.

There is, of course, no ready formula for this cost-benefit analysis, but what is crucial for a rational assessment of such choices is the ability of the people to participate in public discussions on this subject. There is no compulsion to preserve every departing life style at heavy cost, but there is a need -- for social justice -- that people should be able to take part in these social decisions, if they so choose.

Amartya Sen, the world renowned economist, delivered this UNESCO lecture in Delhi, recently.

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Amartya Sen, continued

The Rediff Specials

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