Fallacy of equating Modernity with Westernisation

Just because the western world had a head start in science & technology is no reason to believe that their's is the only way to be modern. One can be true to one's national roots, but strive to be modern in that framework, abandoning only the outdated beliefs.

For example, an Indian woman can be modern, while wearing a sari. In fact many sari wearing women have achieved more in many fields in their lifetimes than their jeans & T shirt clad grand-daughters can achieve in many of their lifetimes. Modernity is a state of mind of being receptive to new ideas & being constantly creative. It is most unfortunate that jeans & T shirt or salwar & kameez have become the normal female attire, the sari being relegated to ethnic status.

The fact is one has adapted to a superficially western way of life, while holding onto the really anachronistic ancient beliefs. It was strange to see a film star, who had dated many men, like her western counterparts, suddenly turn a pious hindu wife, praying for her husband's longevity (itself a patriarchal idea) by peering at the moon through a sieve during Karva Chauth!

It was commendable to see Girish Karnad, the quintessential modern man, always donning Kurta Pyjama. Even at Oxford, he wore a close collar coat & never a jacket with tie.

The same goes for musical tastes. Nowadays, the young always wear earphones, listening to what? Probably western rock music, completely alien to Hindu culture with frequently abhorrent lyrics. A true modern young man, with refined tastes, can listen to western classical music, which is universal like all great art. Of course, it may be an acquired taste.

As George Eliot says in her "Daniel Deronda", "Popular music is a form of melody which expresses a puerile state of culture, the passion & thought of people without any breadth or horizon. There is a sort of self satisfied folly about every phrase of such melody, no cries of deep mysterious passion, no conflict, no sense of the universal. It makes men small as they listen to it."

Nirad Chaudhuri describes his first encounter with Western Music. He had gone to his favourite bookshop in Kolkata & accidentally heard Massenet's Gavotte, sung by Amelia Galli-Curci, played on a record player. He fell in love with Western classical music then & there. He adds acidly "If I had heard pop music then, my chance encounter with Western music would not have any sequel. A man moored to the highest in one's own culture does not go over to barbarism, nor is he beaten by it."