50 Shades of Morality in India

Recently I came across an article by one of my favorite bloggers, Sharell Cook. She is an Australian, settled in India and writes extensively on Indian idiosyncrasies. She was making and observation on “Morality forRich vs Morality for Poor in India”.

This triggered some stream of thoughts in my mind and I scribbled a response to her blog.
Here is what I wrote:

Hi Sharell

A thought provoking article as always.

I am merely trying look for reasons for Indian double standards (or rather quadruple standards) and not to justify any of the practices. To begin with; Indian society is a far more complex mix of cultures, civilizations and schools of thoughts and accepted moral values than any other contemporary civilization or state.

There was culture of Indus valley civilization; it went through its own diversification/degeneration over time and then got forcefully impacted by the Arabs. Forced conversions; forced imposition of a foreign moral system. The place of women in Indian society has been influenced by Arab incursions. The system of purda; woman remaining indoors; having poor education is a mix of Indian and Arab culture. Then came Christians from different parts of Europe and ruled different parts of India. They came with their own agenda of influencing; controlling the behavior; put value system in Indians mind to make their job of ruling the country easier. One of the common characters of invaders is that they try to shame, insult and demoralize their subjects. Arabs called the mountain range between North West Pakistan and Central Afghanistan as Hindu Kush; which literally meant “kill the hindus”. If you read some of the memoirs of the Arab invaders; they described the Indians as very ugly; dark people fit to be either killed or converted. White people, at height of their success seriously thought they have the “White man’s burden” to colonize and “civilize” rest of the world. Of course there is free will and freedom of choice but in any culture; a very small percentage of population has that wisdom and majority fall under the “follower” group.

It is remarkable in some sense that India was able to retain its core character while still being impregnated by all the foreign influences. India is a country; always in transition; from being ruled to becoming independent; from being poor economy to emerging economy; from being under supremacy of Hinduism; to being under Islamic influence to being under control of Christians to becoming a secular state. It needs time to stabilize. Is like the new mountain range of Himalayas which is still growing; active; having landslides, earthquakes, tectonic imbalances; while many others have reached stability of a plateau. (I don’t know if I overshot in the comparison!).

In India; not only is there gap between rich and poor (which probably is there everywhere to different extent); we even have generation gap; gap between regions and on every parameters. I see in west; the society is stabilized. There is off course gap between the generations but not as pronounced as in India. In Indian society; within the same family; mother and daughter would have different moral judgment and point of view about choice of clothes; smoking; drinking, body piercing, tattoo, partying, live in before marriage; vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. Where else do you see such pronounced differences?

Interestingly; Indian culture has historically emphasized on having different yardsticks or morality for different people (for good or for bad!). We have so many Gods or deities that everyone can afford to have a personalized God. Hinduism also divides people in 4 castes (In ancient times; we are told that people had choice of their own caste. They chose their caste by the profession and occupation rather than by birth.) These 4 castes were prescribed different moral values. What was moral for one caste was immoral for the other.

Within the same caste; each individual’s life was divided in 4 stages or ashram; Brahmcharya (celibate), Grihastha (family man), Vanprastha (elder of the family) and then Sanyas (renounced). In the later part of Sanyas; a person would desire death voluntarily. There are prescriptions about in which stage of life of your son, you should treat him with love; which stage you should beat and discipline him and at which stage you should treat him like your brother and equal.

Before Arabs came to India; there was no tradition of stitched cloth in India. Being topless for women was the norm (even for the richest ruling class) rather than some taboo. In Ramayana; in the episode where Surpanakha (sister of Ravana) went to the brothers Rama and Lakshmana and expressed her desire to have sex with them; his brother Ravana felt offended when he came to know that some men have refused his sister’s desire to have sex with them. That was the moral value of the time. In Mahabharata; Krishna and many of the Kings had multiple wives and we have cases of Draupadi who had multiple husbands (5 brothers married to one wife). That tradition is still carried in some north Indian communities and it is accepted to be perfectly moral by that community.

I also realize that some of the moral dictates have been just enforced to do larger good to the society as it is assumed that not everyone has the capacity to figure out the best for himself/herself. I will give you one example from my life. I grew in a lower middle class family and as a child; I always saw that those who liked to have meals in restaurants were considered spoiled; those kids who liked outdoor sports were considered bad and they were reprimanded and refrained from their life vocations. I realize now that it came from self-preservation and the fact that for the lower middle class people; being more academically inclined and having a restrained life style would help the kids to have a brighter future and a possibility to afford all those vocations in future.

Bringing the same thought to having different moral yardstick for rich and poor; if poor people continue to give into indulgences; they would never save enough to invest in their kids’ education; elevate their living standards; save for old age; health expenses etc. This is a reality in many of the slums; daily wage workers; coolies etc. They slog whole day to spend their earning on alcohol; spend on dance bar or gambling or other things like that and are not able to come out of it for whole life. Off course end of the day; it boils down to each individual’s responsibility for his/her own life. May be; educating and motivating these people for a better life strategy is the most ideal thing; refraining them in name of morality might be a practical tool which perhaps does more good than bad to those individuals and their dependents. There is a method in Indian madness. Is not the most ideal one; is not universally acceptable, is questionable and debatable but probably this is what keeps India moving.