The Hindu Business Line : Price of reticence

THE problem with an ancient civilisation like India is the observance of reticence about its own heritage and achievements. The result has been to foster an impression of primitiveness around the world, while the cultures-come-lately, especially of the industrial nations of the West, manage to create an illusion of being know-alls in every sphere by blowing their own trumpets at every opportunity.

Even after Max Mueller came on the scene and gave the West some idea of the splendour and depth of India's epics and scriptures and Goethe's translation of Kalidasa's Sakuntalam became a rage in Europe, the British colonists proceeded on the assumption that the natives needed to be civilised with a heavy dose of their language, literature and lifestyles.

If at all India slipped from being the richest and intellectually, spiritually and scientifically the most advanced country to relative backwardness, it was because of the ravages to which it was subjected by foreign invasions and occupations for over half-a-century.

The people of India were also at fault in that they were too trusting and unresisting, and unable to see through the stratagems adopted to divide and weaken them. This was exploited by foreign rulers for furthering their own imperial and commercial interests.

Even today, we meekly allow ourselves to be lectured to by smart-alecs from abroad who come with instant fixes for our problems, with little idea of the complexity and diversity which daunt even an Indian.

It is not that we must be resistant to new ideas; but we must also be ready to speak up for ourselves when occasion demands. We should not become a party to allowing those who presume we lack their wisdom to persist in their ignorance and condescension.

Take our election or the tsunami relief. They are monumental achievements by any standards. If they had happened in the West, by now dozens of glossy books would have been written making world renowned heroes of the functionaries concerned, and we would have also lapped them up, without giving a thought to the mess the US made of the Presidential election of 2000 or the frightening fraud and mismanagement coming to light in arranging relief to victims of Katrina.

While empty bragging is certainly undesirable, undue reticence also is equally so, because, then, we default in giving credit where credit is amply due.

B. S. RAGHAVAN