Jignasa Journal Of History Of Ideas And Culture Part 01

Author(s): Vibha Upadhyaya and Others
Publisher: University of Rajasthan

Page 184

146 / Jijāsā
it does not seek to reduce Indian national identity to a mere pursuit of immediate material interests and the resolution of conflicts arising out of that pursuit. It locates the fount of national identity in Indian culture. It also shows sensitivity towards the fact that a durable sense of national identity can not arise without a robust sense of belonging. This sense of belonging comes from history. Consciousness of past and history thus is a strongpoint of this view. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that invocation of past or history consciousness by itself is not a sufficient condition to produce a sense of belonging. The invoked past has to be commodious enough to give people at large a sense of participation. If a large section of people feel outsiders or deprived with no positive roles for themselves in the past invoked then this history consciousness instead of producing a sense of belonging will end in producing the opposite effect. In the context of Indian history and culture this is a very serious issue. This issue needs detailed and independent treatment. Our present discussion does not offer the scope and space for it. For the present it may suffice to state that the compositeness of Indian culture itself holds the answer to this problem. It may also be added that history consciousness, in our view, does not mean becoming blind to the shortcomings in one's past history. In the interpretation of Indian history and culture, of late, there have been some disturbing signs of the sprouting of a new variety of blinkered view that refuses to see any fault in India's past.
Let us revert back to the point we were discussing the compositeness of India culture. Unfortunately, the proponents of this view have not cared to state clearly what they really mean by the notion of *compositeness'. Does it mean a mere hodgepodge conglomeration, a kind of hold all that shoves every thing in without any order or system? Or, it means an inclusive outlook that shows a readiness to accept diverse elements following some system of synthesis? These two alternatives are fundamentally different. The first of these alternatives really does not qualify to be counted as culture at all. Any and every kind of identifiable feature or features. This implies that culture must have some kind of identifiable feature or features. This implies that culture must have some durable quality. It is this quality that gives culture its cognizable personality. The process through which a culture acquires its personality and retains it over time has been explained more cogently by Professor Pande than the anthropologists. Anthropological interpretations do not go beyond the externalities. Culture, in anthropological interpretations, becomes either a statistical summation or a mechanical and unavoidable product of environment. These interpretations do not really touch the levels of mind and attitudes. The moot question that arises is how far can the external modes of life and mechanical patterns of behaviour without being leavened by thought and spirit be counted as expressions of culture? It is not necessary here to again go over the hackneyed matter-idea ebate. Modern science, in any case, is making much of this debate increasingly obsolete. Moreover, the anthropological approach is basically a static approach; it presents culture within a 'frozen frame'. It lacks the historical depth to adequately reflect the dynamic side of culture. It also fails to give a satisfactory account of the source of that dynamism beyond man's perennial struggle to eke out an existence. Such a view reduces man to some sort of subhuman level.
Professor Pande's theory of Culture:
Value, society and history are the three major components of Prof. Pande's concept of culture. These three are inherently and internally related with each other and are thus integral parts of a single whole. Although conceptually separable, at factual level they can not be separated. Therefore, they are not components in the sense of parts of a mechanistic formation or of an assortment; they are