The Argumentative Indian

by Amartya Sen

  A deep respect for distinctiveness is combined in Ray’s vision with an appreciation of the importance of inter-cultural communication and also the recognition of much internal diversity within each culture. In emphasizing the need to respect the individuality of each culture, Ray saw no reason for closing the doors to the outside world. Indeed, opening doors of communication was an important priority in Ray’s work. In this respect his attitude contrasts sharply with the increasing tendency to see Indian culture (or cultures) in highly conservative terms – wanting it to be preserved from the ‘pollution’ of Western ideas and thought. Ray was always willing to enjoy and learn from ideas, art forms and lifestyles from anywhere – within India or abroad.

  Ray appreciated the importance of heterogeneity within local communities. This insight contrasts sharply with the tendency of many communitarians – religious and otherwise – who are willing to break up the nation into some communities and then stop dead exactly there: ‘thus far and no further’. The great film-maker’s eagerness to seek the larger unit (ultimately, his ability to talk to the whole world) combined well with his enthusiasm for understanding the smallest of the small: the individuality of each person.

  Distinctions and Communications

  There can be little doubt about the importance that Ray attached to the distinctiveness of different cultures. He also discussed the problems that these divisions create in the possibility of communication across cultural boundaries. In his book Our Films Their Films, he noted the important fact that films acquire ‘colour from all manner of indigenous factors such as habits of speech and behaviour, deep-seated social practices, past traditions, present influences and so on’. He went on to ask: ‘How much of this can a foreigner – with no more than a cursory knowledge of the factors involved – feel and respond to?’ He observed that ‘there are certain basic similarities in human behaviour all over the world’ (such as ‘expressions of joy and sorrow, love and hate, anger, surprise and fear’), but ‘even they can exhibit minute local variations which can only puzzle and perturb – and consequently warp the judgement of – the uninitiated foreigner’.1

  The presence of such cultural divides raises many interesting problems. The possibility of communication is only one of them. There is the more basic issue of the individuality of each culture, and questions about whether and how this individuality can be respected and valued even though the world grows steadily smaller and more uniform. We live at a time when ideas and practices spread across boundaries of countries and regions with great rapidity, and the possibility that something extremely important is being lost in this process of integration has aroused understandable concern. And yet cultural interactions, even in a world of deep inequalities, can also create space for creative innovations, which combine construction with vulnerability.2

  The individuality of cultures is a big subject nowadays, and the tendency towards homogenization of cultures, particularly in some uniform Western mode, or in the deceptive form of ‘modernity’, has been strongly challenged. Questions of this kind have been taken up in different forms in recent cultural studies, especially in high-profile intellectual circles influential in the West (from Paris to San Francisco). While these questions are being asked with increasing frequency in contemporary India as well, there is perhaps some irony in the fact that so much of the Third World critique of ‘Western modernity’ has been inspired and influenced by Western writings.

  Engaging arguments on this subject have recently been presented by a number of Indian authors, including Partha Chatterjee.3 These arguments often display a well-articulated ‘anti-modernism’, rejecting what is seen as the tyranny of ‘modern’ society (particularly of ‘Western’ forms of modernization). Among the diverse Indian critiques, there are some arguments, amidst others, in which the defiance of Western cultural modes is combined with enunciations of the unique importance of Indian culture and of the traditions of its local communities.

  At the broader level of ‘Asia’ rather than India, the separateness of ‘Asian values’ and their distinction from Western norms has often been asserted, particularly in east Asia – from Singapore and Malaysia to China and Japan. The invoking of Asian values has sometimes occurred in rather dubious political circumstances. For example, it has been used to justify authoritarianism (and harsh penalties for alleged transgressions) in some east Asian countries. In the Vienna conference on human rights in 1993, the Foreign Minister of Singapore, citing differences between Asian and European traditions, argued that ‘universal recognition of the ideal of human rights can be harmful if universalism is used to deny or mask the reality of diversity’.4 The championing of ‘Asian values’ has typically come from government spokesmen rather than from individuals at a distance from established regimes. Still, the general issue is important enough to deserve our attention and scrutiny.

  Critical Openness

  Even though he emphasized the difficulties of inter-cultural communication, Ray did not, in fact, take cross-cultural comprehension to be impossible. He saw the difficulties as challenges to be encountered, rather than as strict boundaries that could not be breached. His was not a thesis of basic ‘incommunicability’ across cultural boundaries, merely one of the need to recognize the difficulties that may arise. On the larger subject of preserving traditions against foreign influence, Ray was not a cultural conservative. He did not give systematic priority to conserving inherited practices.

  Indeed, I find no evidence in his work and writings that the fear of being too influenced by outsiders disturbed his equilibrium as an ‘Indian’ artist. He wanted to take full note of the importance of one’s cultural background without denying what there is to learn from elsewhere. There is, I think, much wisdom in what we can call his ‘critical openness’, including the valuing of a dynamic, adaptable world, rather than one that is constantly ‘policing’ external influences and fearing ‘invasion’ of ideas from elsewhere.

  The difficulties of understanding each other across the boundaries of culture are undoubtedly great. This applies to the cinema, but also to other art forms as well, including literature. For example, the inability of most foreigners – sometimes even other Indians – to see the astonishing beauty of Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry (a failure that we Bengalis find so exasperating) is a good illustration of just such a problem. Indeed, the thought that these non-appreciating foreigners are being wilfully contrary and obdurate (rather than merely unable to appreciate across the barrier of languages and translations) is a frequently aired suspicion.

  The problem is perhaps less extreme in films, in so far as the cinema is less dependent on language, since people can be informed even by gestures and actions. But our day-to-day experiences generate certain patterns of reaction and non-reaction that can be mystifying for foreign viewers who have not had those experiences. The gestures – and non-gestures – that are quite standard within the country (and understandable as ‘perfectly ordinary’) may appear altogether remarkable when seen by others.

  Words, too, have a function that goes well beyond the information they directly convey; much is communicated by the sound of the language and special choice of words to convey a meaning, or to create a particular effect. As Ray has noted, ‘in a sound film, words are expected to perform not only a narrative but a plastic function’, and ‘much will be missed unless one knows the language, and knows it well’.

  Indeed, even the narrative may be inescapably transformed because of language barriers, especially the difficulty of conveying nuance through translation. I was reminded of Ray’s remark the other day, when I saw Tin Kanya again, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a festival of Satyajit Ray’s films (based on the wonderful reissues produced by the Merchant–Ivory enterprises) was being held. When obdurate Paglee – in the sparkling form of Aparna Sen (then Dasgupta) – decides to write, at last, a letter to her spurned husband, she conveys her new sense of intimacy by addressing him in the familiar form ‘tumi’ (as he had requested), rather than t
he formal and overly respectful ‘apni’. This could not, of course, be caught in the English subtitle. So the translation had to show her as signing the letter as ‘your wife’ (to convey her new sense of intimacy). But the Bengali original in which she still signs as ‘Paglee’ but addresses him in the familiar form ‘tumi’ is infinitely more subtle.

  The Audience and the Eavesdropper

  Such difficulties and barriers cannot be avoided. Ray did not want to aim his movies at a foreign audience, and Ray fans abroad who rush to see his films know that they are, in a sense, eavesdropping. I believe this relationship of the creator and the eavesdropper is by now very well established among the millions of Ray fans across the world. There is no expectation that his films are anything other than the work of an Indian – and a Bengali – director made for a local audience, and the attempt to understand what is going on is a decision to engage in a self-consciously ‘receptive’ activity.

  In this sense, Ray has triumphed – on his own terms – and this vindication, despite all the barriers, tells us something about possible communication and understanding across cultural boundaries. It may be hard, but it can be done, and the eagerness with which viewers with much experience of Western cinema flock to see Ray’s films (despite the occasional obscurities of a presentation originally tailored for an entirely different audience) indicates what is possible when there is a willingness to go beyond the bounds of one’s own culture.

  Satyajit Ray makes an important distinction on what is or is not sensible in trying to speak across a cultural divide, especially between the West and India. In 1958 – two years after Pather Panchali won the Special Award in Cannes, and one year after the Grand Prix at Venice for Aparajito – he wrote the following in an essay called ‘Problems of a Bengali Film Maker’:

  There is no reason why we should not cash in on the foreigners’ curiosity about the Orient. But this must not mean pandering to their love of the false-exotic. A great many notions about our country and our people have to be dispelled, even though it may be easier and – from a film point of view – more paying to sustain the existing myths than to demolish them.5

  Ray was not, of course, unique in following this approach. A number of other great film directors from India have followed a similar route as Ray. As an old resident of Calcutta, I am proud of the fact that some of the particularly distinguished directors have come, like Ray, from this very city (I think of course of Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, Aparna Sen and others). But what Ray calls pandering to the ‘love of the false-exotic’ has clearly tempted many other directors. Many Indian films that can fairly be called ‘entertainment movies’ have achieved great success abroad, including in the Middle East and Africa in addition to Europe and, increasingly, America, and Bombay has been a big influence on the cinematographic world in many countries.

  It is not obvious whether the imaginary scenes of archaic splendour shown in such ‘entertainment movies’ should be seen as misdescriptions of the India in which they are allegedly set, or as excellent portrayals of some non-existent ‘never-never land’ (not to be confused with any real country). As Ray notes in another context, quite a few of these traditional Indian films, which attract large audiences, ‘do away wholly with [the] bothersome aspect of social identification’ and ‘present a synthetic, non-existent society, and one can speak of credibility only within the norms of this make-belief world’.6 Ray suggests that this feature ‘accounts for their country-wide acceptance’, in a country with such diversity. This is so, but this make-believe feature also contributes greatly to the appeal of these films to many foreign audiences, happy to see lavish entertainment in an imagined land. This is, of course, an understandable ‘success’ story, since acceptance abroad brings with it both reputation and revenue.

  In fact, the exploitation of the biases and vulnerabilities of the foreign audience need not be concerned specifically with the ‘love of the false-exotic’. Exploitation can take other forms – not necessarily false, nor especially exotic. There is, for example, nothing false about Indian poverty, nor about the fact – remarkable to others – that Indians have learned to live normal lives while taking little notice of the surrounding misery.

  The graphic portrayal of extreme wretchedness, and the heartlessness of others towards the downtrodden, can itself be skilfully exploited, especially when supplemented by a goodly supply of vicious villains. At a sophisticated and elegant level, such exploitative use can be seen even in that extremely successful film Salaam Bombay! by the wonderfully talented director Meera Nair. That film has received much acclaim, as it should, since it is very powerfully constructed, beautifully absorbing and deeply moving. And yet it mercilessly exploits not only the viewers’ raw sympathy, but also their interest in identifying ‘the villain of the piece’ who could be blamed for all this.*

  Since Salaam Bombay! is full of villains and also of people totally lacking in sympathy and any sense of justice, the causes of the misery and suffering portrayed in the film begin to look easily understandable even to distant foreigners. I should add that this feature of reliance on villains is largely avoided in Meera Nair’s next film, Mississippi Masala – another great film – which raises some interesting and important issues about identity and intermixing, in this case, involving ex-Ugandans of Indian origin. The underlying philosophy in Salaam Bombay! takes the viewer straight to the comforting question: given the lack of humanity of people around the victims, what else could you expect? The exploitative form draws at once on the knowledge – common in the West – that India has much poverty and suffering, and also on the comfort – for which there is some demand – of seeing the faces of the ‘baddies’ who are causing all this trouble (as in, say, American gangster movies). At a more mundane level, Roland Joffé’s The City of Joy does the same with Calcutta, with clearly identified villains who have to be confronted.

  By contrast, even when Ray’s films deal with problems that are just as intense (such as the coming of the Bengal famine of 1943 in Ashani Sanket), the comfort of the ready explanation through the prominent presence of menacing villains is altogether avoided. Indeed, villains are remarkably rare – almost completely absent – in Satyajit Ray’s films. When terrible things happen, there may be nobody clearly responsible for the evil. Even when someone is clearly responsible, as Dayamoyee’s father-in-law most definitely is for her predicament, and indirectly for her death, in the film Devi, he too is a victim – of his misguided beliefs – and by no means devoid of humane features. If Salaam Bombay! and The City of Joy are, ultimately, in the ‘cops and robbers’ tradition (except that there are no ‘good cops’ in Salaam Bombay!), the Ray films have neither cops nor robbers, well illustrated, for example, by Ray’s Mahanagari (The Great City), set in Calcutta, with many distressing events among joyous moments, leading to a deep tragedy, but with no villains on whom responsibility can be immediately pinned. One result of this absence is that Ray manages to convey something of the complexity of societal situations that lead to such tragedies, rather than seeking speedy explanations in the greed, cupidity and cruelty of some very bad people. In eschewing the easy communicability of films in which nasty people cause nasty events, Ray provides social visions that are both complex and illuminating.

  Heterogeneity and External Contacts

  While Satyajit Ray insists on retaining the real cultural features of the society that he portrays, his view of India – indeed, even of Bengal – recognizes a complex reality, with immense heterogeneity at every level. It is not the picture of a stylized East meeting a stereotypical West, the stock in trade of so many recent cultural writings critical of ‘Westernization’ and ‘modernity’. Ray points out that the people who ‘inhabit’ his films are both complicated and extremely diverse:

  Take a single province: Bengal. Or, better still, take the city of Calcutta where I live and work. Accents here vary between one neighbourhood and another. Every educated Bengali peppers his native speech with a sprinkling of English words and phrase
s. Dress is not standardized. Although women generally prefer the sari, men wear clothes which reflect the style of the thirteenth century or conform to the directives of the latest Esquire. The contrast between the rich and the poor is proverbial. Teenagers do the twist and drink Coke, while the devout Brahmin takes a dip in the Ganges and chants his mantras to the rising sun.7

  One important thing to note immediately here is that the native culture which Ray emphasizes is not some pure vision of a tradition-bound society, but the heterogeneous lives and commitments of contemporary India. The Indian who does the ‘twist’ is as much there as the one who chants his mantras by the Ganges.

  The recognition of this heterogeneity makes it immediately clear why Satyajit Ray’s focus on local culture cannot be readily seen as an ‘anti-modern’ move. ‘Our culture’ can draw on ‘their culture’ as well, as ‘their culture’ can draw on ‘ours’. The acknowledgement and emphasis on the culture of the people who inhabit Ray’s films is in no way a denial of the legitimacy of seeking interest in ideas and practices originating elsewhere. Indeed, Ray recollects with evident joy the time when Calcutta was full of Western – including American – troops in the winter of 1942:

  Calcutta now being a base of operations of the war, Chowringhee was chock-a-block with GIs. The pavement book stalls displayed wafer-thin editions of Life and Time, and the jam-packed cinema showed the very latest films from Hollywood. While I sat at my office desk … my mind buzzed with the thoughts of the films I had been seeing. I never ceased to regret that while I had stood in the scorching summer sun in the wilds of Santiniketan sketching simul and palash in full bloom, Citizen Kane had come and gone, playing for just three days in the newest and biggest cinema in Calcutta.8