Single page handout FIRST SEM. M.A. Phil.

Satya Nilayam.

Indian Religions & Cultures

Unit 1: Cultural Dimensions of India
06. Tradition and Modernity
20 Sep 2021

Tradition:
§ What we have received from our ancestors as beliefs, customs, attributes
§ It offers a sense of comfort and belonging. It reinforces values
§ It fills us with a sense of history- of our roots, and of our cultural heritage (both tangible and intangible)
o Tangible cultural heritage- buildings, monuments, landscapes, literature, art, and artefacts
o Intangible cultural heritage – oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals,
festivities, knowledge and practices concerning nature, language, etc.
Modernity
§ Modernity refers to a time period (1500 to the present) (modernism is a social and cultural movement
that spanned between 1890 and 1939)
§ Max Weber understood modernity as rationalization.
§ A fundamental change in standard of living, in worldviews, etc
§ It is often a replacement of some past practice (and thus abandons a tradition)
§ Four types of modernization: technological, institutional, valuational, and behavioral
§ Modernization seeks to modify traditions and claims better efficiency, better reason, and making life
better for all.
§ The downside of modernity:
o it deracinates (uprooting someone from their natural geographical, social, or cultural
environment) the person, intoxicates the person with ideas of relativism, and gets them into
the trap of capitalism.
o It also has made the gap between the rich and the poor wider.
o The lure of privatization has seduced the govt and today it has further complicated our culture.
o It mystifies economics as the only goal, consumerism as the only way, and success and
achievement as the ultimate desirable values. Happiness is equated with money.
o Impersonal approaches – you don’t know for whom you are working for!!
o We have now ‘created’ risks by our own science and technology, in addition to the natural
risks we have to face (earthquakes, cyclones, floods, etc.)

Interplay of tradition and modernity:

§ We have neither a pure tradition or a pure modernity. A mixture of both is what India has today, and
there is a tension between both.
§ Debates over what traditions we need to uphold and what modernity we need to be away from have
always engaged intellectual discourses.

Tradition we hate but still have

§ Caste based Hierarchical rigid structures, Notion of purity and impurity
§ Sanskritization, parochial attitudes, justification for oppression from materials taken from scriptural
texts such as Vedas, Puranas, Upanishads, epics, folklore, etc.,
§ Women held to be custodians of tradition; dominance continues.
§ The abuse of tradition by vested interests

Emancipation because of modernity:

§ Increased awareness of human rights, personal freedom, caste dominance, and other kinds of
oppression. Conflicts and protests over inequality are signs of modernity. The unwillingness to remain
silent is a good sign.
§ Demystification of hierarchy and divisions (including gender divisions), demythicization of national
identity

India facts:
§ Community, food-clothing-shelter, indigenous health care, Indigenous science, the doctrine of karma

Robin Seelan SJ