Whenever I watch Gandhi, or for that matter when I read about pre-Independence India, I was always surprised by the fact that there were a lot of Indian soldiers and policemen who were employed by the British. "How can Indians not just stand by while people of a different nation were subjugating their countrymen, and not just stand by but actually help beat up the Indians, or fire at them etc?" I wondered.
When I landed in Pune three weeks ago, my boss and another co-worker (both White Americans) came to pick me up. It was day of the immersion of Ganesh statues that day and the roads were pretty clogged up. They managed to get to the airport well, but apparently got stuck earlier in the day. Even as they were driving me to my guesthouse, we almost got trapped in a small street, but luckily our destination was behind us and we managed to get to the guesthouse.
As they were giving me direction to get to work the next day, the co-worker said, "It shouldn't be too hard I imagine, we should be done with this Ganesh crap by then."
That stung me. And a part of me wanted to lecture him on respecting the local customs, and at the very least, not to express such sentiments out loud. But I chickened out since my boss was right there and I didn't want to create an issue even before my first day at work. So I let it pass. And I felt like crap for doing that. No matter how much of an inconvenience it is, Ganesh Chathurti is a big festival in India. It was popularized during the Independence struggle and played a big role in creating a feeling of community in the country. Not to mention the religious sanctity of the festival. And I let an outsider pass a negative comment on the festival without reprimanding him because I wanted to keep my job.
Of course, this brought on a big internal discussion about foreign investments and the way we are ignoring the cultural erosion that's a consequence of this. At what cost are we creating jobs and improving the economy? After seeing myself stay silent, it's not hard to imagine Indian soldiers and policemen wearing British uniforms and beating up their countrymen. The bottomline is money and everyone has a selling point.
3 comments:
really enjoying your blog, dude. hope you're having fun!
I am surprised Haliburton is not more sensitive about these kinds of comments. Say what you want about Uma's diversity stand (which she picked up from Cummins) but a person could have come close to getting fired for saying that here! That means that they would have been a lot more careful with what they said in an informal setting as well.
I guess in his defense he has been in India for just over a week. But that's a weak defense.
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