In Search of Cultural Roots

Early this month I attended a cultural event at Chelmsford, Massachusetts. The festival was organized by Odisha Society of New England (OSNE). OSNE is a cultural group of Odia people, who originated from India’s eastern state of Odisha, in New England region of USA. It started functioning in 1983 in Boston. It is part of the larger Odisha Society of America, the body representing Odias all over USA.

I am an Odia, but I am not parochial. One can come cross parochial people in parts of India, who are closed to other cultures and ideas, and protest migration of people from other areas as they are afraid of losing job and other opportunities. This parochial mentality prevails not only in India, but also in many other countries. I do not bracket myself in this category. I am an Odia, and at the same time an Indian. Both these identities do not contradict each other. Rather my larger Indian identity embraces my Odia identity. When I rise higher, I consider myself not only as an Indian, but also a member of the globe, a global citizen. To put in a different way, there are diverse identities of one person, and they are not necessarily contradictory. In one direction, this identity may start with oneself identifying with his or her village or town, then expanding to province, country and even the world. Drawing from Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy, I am a human being, and my identity does not stop at my village or closed community as it expands further towards an ideal human unity encompassing whole world. Hence, when I say I am proud to be an Odia – this does not contradict or undermine my other identities.

I got an email from OSNE that there is a regional drama festival organized in the first week of June 2015. I was prevaricating as to whether I should attend the event or not as the place was far from my place, and I did not have a suitable transport system to reach the place. But when I talked to the association president, an energetic and affable person, he suggested that I should come and enjoy the event. He offered to arrange my travel after I use public transport to a certain point. From the red line Savin Hill train stop I took train to Alewife, and from there I took a bus to Burlington Mall. The president picked me up from there in his car, and drove around 15 to 20 minutes to reach the festival venue. When I reached the event, the key members of the association were busy arranging various items for the event. I tried to help them. One lady told me to bring a small table from the outside of the auditorium to the dais. She placed on it a beautiful wooden statue of Lord Jagannath. I was very happy to see the statue. I would not dwell here about Lord Jagannath as one can come across huge material in Internet. Lord Jagannath is the reigning deity of Odisha, and every Odia prays Him. Puri, the city where the Jagannath temple is located, is considered one among the four holiest places for the Hindus. In Odisha, I have seen people remembering the Lord before starting any new venture. I have also seen people touching the ground and uttering His name before embarking on any journey.

Before the program started at 4 PM, there were refreshments. I could see the number of Odias swelling as the time moved ahead. I interacted with some of the kids, who came with their parents to participate in the event and/or enjoy the event. While enjoying the delicious refreshments – particularly the chat and masala – I started chatting with two young boys. I asked them what they wanted to be in future, what are their career goals, etc. One of them – the elder one – said that he wants to be a mathematician. I asked whether he knows Srinivasa Ramanujan, the mathematics legend from India, he replied yes. The other boy replied he does not know what he wants to be. I interacted with some other Odias.

There were very few known faces; hence I was almost a stranger. But I could develop quick rapport with some Odias and started chatting with them. I started talking to a couple, siting next to me. Their daughter participated in the program. I asked the lady whether she misses Odisha. She replied, ‘there is no time to miss Odisha. The life is so busy here – taking care of daughter, managing family and job – all these leave no time to think about other things, including Odisha’. Perhaps that was a true confession. The people are so busy here that they do not have time to devote to other things. But, I took solace in thinking that despite their busy schedules they could organize this event, and prepare their kids to participate in the event, and devote time and energy for it, and this is not a small thing. That itself shows that their hearts and minds are embedded in the Odia culture.

I found the programs that night not only entertaining but also educative. The Odissi and Sambalpuri dances I watched after a long time. I liked the children’s drama Hari Darshana, literally meaning the sight of Hari (the Hindu God, considered to be one among the supreme trinity in Hindu pantheon – Brahma, Vishnu, also known as Hari, and Brahma). The theme of the story is this: the son of demon king Hirankashyapu, Prahlada did not relent in praying Lord Vishnu, despite pressure and ploys to kill him. Finally, the Lord emerges from a pillar as a testimony of faith of Prahlada and kills the king. The morale of the story: a true devotion to God can save from pitfalls. I also liked the dramas – Gopal 60, Muktidana and Elo Elo Mo Boulo. All of them drew from Odia narratives. In Muktidana, a girl fights against patriarchal system; in Gopal 60, three friends search and find their father-figure and mentor; and Elo Elo Mo Boulo reflects a deeper sense of humanity in a member from LGBT community. Some other programs like Bollywood dance, band and karaoke were equally heart-touching.

The message I came across was that despite being far from their native place, the Odia people love their culture, and work hard to retain their cultural memory in their daily lives. The organization of such events reflected this. The first generation Odias are strongly rooted in their culture, and are eager to impart it to their children. While I was watching the children’s drama, I could see many of them born and brought up here speaking native Odia. Only few of them had Americanized Odia. I commend the efforts of the first generation Odias who work hard to retain their culture roots, and impart the culture to the next generation. I also commend the efforts of the second generation Odias, who are American citizens by birth, to learn their parents’ language and culture. As I mentioned in the beginning, different cultures and different identities can survive, or rather prosper together, in same person. Hence, for me it is an amazing experience to see how these children navigate through their American identity and Odia identity, and how they are reconciling these two identities.

After the cultural program, we had a lavish dinner. It was a good experience to see so many people, about 150, from the same community. One Odia professor who teaches at a university in Boston gave me and another Odia ride back to our homes. We had a lively discussion in her car. The professor lamented that some Odias prefer to speak in English  with another Odia even though they know Odia language very well. She was not against the English language, and we all agreed that English is a necessary language, and is considered a global lingua franca, but when one is comfortable in his native tongue, why not use that? When I reached my home, it was late night. I was still relishing the cultural event and reflecting on Odia culture and language, but my eyelids were heavy and soon I fell asleep.

Long Walk to Freedom

Last month while travelling to Baku I finished reading Long Walk to Freedom, the autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Mandela’s life story is perhaps known to every person aware of freedom movements or about developments in the last decades of the 20th century. Though I do not remember everything that Mandela wrote in the 500 page book, I certainly remember certain messages that Mandela gave in the book, and which he perhaps wanted to impart to his readers and future generations. 

Every culture has its uniqueness, and its utility, for the people who practice it. Mandela was born into Xhoa tribe, one of the tribes among numerous tribes in Africa, and practiced its customs. For him the customs of his tribe were not hindrances rather they had values for his tribe and his society. For Mandela culture has two major purposes. First, it provides regulation for the conduct of social life of the people who adhere to it. While elaborating, particularly, the rituals including the circumcision ritual he argued he is not going to criticize such practices because for him it has a purpose for regulating life in his society. In another example, he says when he met his mother after a long gap he did not run to embrace his mother (as a person might do in some other cultures), but that did not imply that there was no love between mother and son. That was part of the culture. The same thing I have observed in India. Second, for Mandela culture too has implications for political life of the society as well. Culture determines the relations between old and young, between male and female, between village-elder with others. Its main location may be in society but its political role is obvious. As it, in case of the culture Mandela describes, tends to emphasize on a hierarchical society, it also puts premium on old age, which is akin to experience and wisdom. Hence, in this culture the elders have a dominant voice in public affairs.

For Mandela democracy is a not Western invention because he could witness the purest form of democracy in tribal meetings. Those meetings were purely indigenous in origin and conception as none of the participants were well versed with Western system of governance as many of them were illiterate. Mandela while staying in his guardian’s house after his father’s death used to listen to the debates in the tribal meetings. His guardian being a headman, it provided Mandela the opportunity to listen to the elders. He elaborated these meetings: that everybody in the meeting enjoyed freedom to raise his voice without obstacle or intimidation from the chair. He could speak at length without interpretation. The chair would listen to all the arguments, summarize them, and try to develop a consensus among the participants. He would never impose his views though he might put forward them during his speech. If no consensus was reached, the members might disperse and meet another day. The meetings were democratic and free, and the leaders would often draw from their experience and wisdom, from history and tradition. Madela’s argument that he witnessed pure democracy in tribal meetings may baffle some of his readers but not me. I could draw a parallel between those tribal meetings with the Indian Jana Sabhas or Gram Sabhas (meetings of people or village) in Vedic period in ancient India.

Mandela’s life history is life of tolerance and dignity. A Mandela would never compromise his dignity. Though he was humiliated umpteen times whether during his long time in jail or outside, Mandela would never stoop low for exacting a privilege. He was a mass leader and he always put the interests of the masses before him. His sense of African dignity was vivid when he expressed anger, in his book, against the assault on Chief Albert Luthuli, the leader of the African National Congress, by a security man. He wrote that this security man is not, in any measure, near the great African leader but it is the tragic system that leads to his assault. It needs mention that Luthuli was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1960. Mandela was a proud African and he admired African values. But at the same time he harbored no revenge, no hostility towards his colonizers. Even his method of underground warfare under the banner of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), as detailed in the book, was to paralyze the administration so that a plural and non-racial administration comes to power. His strategy, as he argued, was not aimed at killing any person, whether civilian or armed government official, but to paralyze the administration in order to hasten the goal of freedom. 

I found in Mandela a great negotiator. During his last days at Robben Island and later during incarceration when he was shifted to the mainland, he pursued relentlessly various methods of negotiation with the administration which was not always friendly to him. He was the weaker party in the negotiation, at least from a government perspective which enjoyed absolute power though there were pressures from the United Nations and other countries to dismantle the apartheid regime. Mandela singlehandedly, even at times when his trusted friends disagreed with him, continued pursuing his negotiation tactics. He never gave up, even when his letters gone unanswered from the Botha regime, or even when his voice was not taken seriously by the regime. He was optimistic during his negotiations, and he followed a method of incrementalism, i.e. slowly moving towards the target. There were many occasions of uncertainty but Mandela in his purely Mandelasque fashion never gave up.

From another point of view, the book is a treatise on a freedom struggle, and also a treatise on life in a jail for about three decades. I am not elaborating those here. The tortuous life in jail, the exploitation of jail inmates, both general and political, the ingenuity of jail inmates the evade to notice of the authority while performing ‘illegal’ activities like reading newspapers, the perseverance of Mandela and his friends in continuing their mission provide insights into the freedom struggle and also into the life of Mandela and his friends in the struggle. I also found Mandela an emotional and caring person, who cared for his family and friends. His longing for his wife and children was vivid on many pages in the book. His narration how he missed his children and how he cherished the moments when he was with them displayed the emotional and loving side of this great and sturdy freedom fighter. There was also humor lurking throughout pages. His courting of his first wife before marriage or his comparison of his seafood with jail mates while working in the quarry with the royal marriage party or some of the tactics to evade jail wardens offer rich mine of humor in the book. They also bring out the lighter side of Mandela, one of the great figures of our time.