Comment

The british, it seems are trying to bring their multi-culti ways to India

Perhaps it is a welcome change. The last time marauding hordes of Britons arrived to pillage India they had a collective sneer on their faces. The sentiments of the natives were hardly paramount on their minds, as they came looking for spices and other riches. In the centuries before the first war of independence or the sepoy mutiny of 1857 — depending on your perspective — some of course did go “native”, others discovered the sophistication and depth of Indian thought, religion and culture and still others dreamed of how the natives could be educated to rule themselves — as if they had not done so for millennia before.

Still, it is not polite to bring all that up again. Especially now that British businesspeople are being taught the correct manners before they visit India by a special British government initiative. Clearly, these are not the same people who tried to civilise India. Now they’re taught intriguing curiosities. It is, apparently, “unacceptable” in India to stand with your arms akimbo or to open a wrapped present in front of your Indian hosts. Kissing Indian women at first meeting could be a more understandable no-no.
Some Indian women like to decide that for themselves, although one would imagine that women everywhere would prefer that privilege. Perhaps women in Burkina Faso love being kissed by unknown foreign men. A ‘Namaste’ with folded hands, they are being told, is the preferred greeting for all Indians, since men may not want to either kiss or be kissed. It is not clear whether British businesswomen are being given the same lessons.

But this is fine as it goes. There are cultural niceties in every society and although shaking hands has become a fairly common business practice among Indians themselves, it might be wiser for a visitor to be prepared for the odd stickler for some arcane caste or community hoodoos and don’t dos.

It is when the etiquette classes reach attitudes that the matter becomes really interesting. Do not, visitors are warned, “patronise or be pompous with or look down on your hosts”. Indeed. One might imagine that that’s bad manners anywhere in the world, not just in India. We’re all guilty of behaving in a superior manner at some point and we all know that we shouldn’t be doing it. Besides, it also makes good business sense not to patronise your hosts, no matter which country they belong to and however weird their local culture. If you want someone’s money, marauding through their country with sword and stone no longer works as well as it once did, as even George W Bush discovered recently in Iraq. Speak softly and carry a big stick, as the other man said.

Of course, we all know what this is. It is the white man’s burden being carried in another way and the trend of multiculturalism being extended to India via the Indians who have migrated to Britain. Now perhaps those people of Indian origin who live in Britain deserve multiculturalism. After all reports go that they eagerly await the day when the British royal family gives up Christmas and celebrates Diwali instead or exchanges Easter for Baisakhi. Does it matter so much to us back here in India? Do we want to belong to a multicultural Britain?

Let’s stick our necks out and hazard a guess that more people in India read PG Wodehouse than they do in Britain. Already we know that the children’s writer Enid Blyton is frowned on in Britain for being racist, sexist, anti-anyone else-ist. She was devoured in India until recently, and has now been replaced perhaps by Harry Potter. So you might say, we know a bit about the ancient and arcane British tradition of manners — at least when it comes to the Drones club, village fairs and the goings on at large country estates, where his lordships are wont to natter with pigs.

The UK-India Business Council understandably though is in a dilemma. It must smoothen the paths of its members so that they do not blow a deal with needless boo-boos. But surely telling people not to be patronising or wear conservative and formal dress a bit obvious? I have yet to see big business magnates worldwide signing deals wearing froufrous and flip-flips. Boring blue suits seem to be a global affliction when it comes to the corporate world.

There is one more somewhat strange thing. After running through this country with a few swords and a bit of fire, colonising it, imposing their imperialist ideas on us, is it not shameful and patronising that the British now have to go to classes to be told that Indians greet each other by saying Namaste? That they think that India is a strange country, who they connect only through the Asians who have now overrun Britain and by coming to Rajasthan for hash and camel-ride holidays? They might do us the courtesy of remembering.

Maybe, then, it is true after all: multiculturalism is a form of revenge for colonialism. Jolly good, then.
Email: b_ranjona@dnaindia.net