Indian Culture – What Does it Mean? *

There is a joke doing the rounds on the internet about Laxman Narasimhan, the freshly-brewed CEO of the global coffee chain Starbucks. In the joke, Narasimhan prohibits anyone from using the name ‘Chai tea latte’ for one of Starbucks’ most popular beverages. As Indians, we know immediately why the name is absurdly funny. But for Americans the term ‘chai’ has to be added to their tea, to give it that fragrant whiff of India.

In fact, if there were a list of things that are quintessentially Indian, an indivisible part of our culture, then chai would be right at the top. And where there is chai, there is samosa. Not just any samosa, but samosa filled with aloo. The two are such an inseparable couple that the former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav once coined the slogan, “jab tak rahega samose mein aloo, tab tak rahega Bihar mein Lalu.”

Yet, these two Indian icons – not Bihar and Lalu Yadav, but chai and samosa – were not known to Indians just a few centuries ago. Tea was a colonial gift, brought by the British to balance their opium trade with China. While they got the Chinese addicted to opium (they even fought two wars over it), they got Indians addicted to tea. So much so, that an irate Rabindranath Tagore wrote an essay about it, at the dawn of the 20th century, complaining about how the British were distributing free ‘cha’ to Indians. Yes, the terms cha or chai are not ours; they come from the Chinese. But now, all the world thinks of chai as Indian.

What about the samosa? That too was brought from the Arab world, by the royal chefs in the kitchens of the Delhi sultans in the 13th century. But no chef would have ever imagined that the royal ‘sambusak’, which originated in the Persian word for ‘triangular pastry’, could be filled with potatoes. That is because our tryst with potatoes took place in the 17th century when the Portuguese brought it with them. They also introduced the other ‘Indian’ staple – chillies.

But what have chai and samosa got to do with Indian culture? They represent a fundamental truth about our culture, that we Indians have always let global winds carry various influences to our land, and we have moulded them into something that is uniquely our own. Take our classical music, for instance. Its origins can be traced back to the ritual incantations of the nomadic peoples who migrated to India several thousands of years ago. Over the next millennia, those musical traditions became cross-pollinated with the music of the indigenous peoples. Later, the Turks, Mongols, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Persians brought their own influences. What emerged was a composite tradition that the great Western classical musician Yehudi Menuhin called “the original source” of all music.

Our art and architecture are other great examples of this amalgamation of traditions from across the world. When the Mughals began to lay Persian-style gardens in the cities they founded, they started off as pure imitations. But over the years, their designs incorporated older Indian styles and motifs. The buildings around the gardens would be built in red sandstone and marble and often had ‘chhatris’ or dome-covered pavilions, which originated in India. Even the architecture of the colonial period is a perfect blend of European and Indian aesthetics. The buildings of Lutyens’ Delhi are the greatest examples of this amalgamation of Indo-British ideas.

That is why there can never be any ‘authentic’ or ‘pristine’ Indian culture. Everything that we call our own is a product of innumerable influences. They are ours because we shaped them to our needs, our beliefs, our aesthetics. Chai is as Indian as the Mahabharata. The Taj Mahal is as Indian as the Sanchi Stupa. Indo-Anglian novels, which have taken over the English-speaking world, are our authentic creations, as much as the plays written by Shudraka or Kalidasa. They have been created by people who considered the Indian subcontinent to be their home, and they are all things that the rest of the world identifies as Indian. Perhaps, this is what Mahatma Gandhi meant when he wrote,  “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any” 

In reality, all cultures are like that. Every national culture has traces of influences from other regions and other territories. Take the so-called ‘national’ dish of England, Chicken Tikka Masala. It is a dish made with shop-bought chicken tikka, canned tomato soup, and Madras Curry Powder. It cannot be found anywhere in India, and Indians wouldn’t recognise it, except for a vague familiarity with the flavour-profile. Chintz, the fabric that is identified as typically British, comes from Golconda. Today, we have brought these back to our homes as cultural ‘imports’ from England.

That is why the pursuit of cultural purity is a spurious mission; it can only lead to self-defeating narrow-mindedness. My idea of Indian culture is of a rich and intricate tapestry of myriad traditions. Because our nation is not an undifferentiated homogeneous mass; it is a layered union of different languages, cultures, food, clothes, beliefs and even histories. For India’s culture to flourish and for our traditions to be alive, we have to emulate the openness with which our ancestors accepted everyone who came to this land, whether in peace or in war. This is especially important today when the fabric of our nation is in danger of being torn asunder by communal conflict. We need to embrace whatever is worthy in other cultures, assimilate them and make them our own. To me, ‘Indian culture’ is like a garden, where myriad flowers blossom, and fill the world with their fragrance.

* (This essay got me into the finals of the Nanhi Chhaan essay competition in 2022. I was among 15 chosen from across the country)