This essay is published in OpEdNews
There is concern among certain quarters of the western
and eastern world that the we are headed towards a dull uniformity.
These people are anti-globalisers, and Jose Bove, the French farmer
who trashed a McDonald's restaurant, is their hero. Their bugbear is
'corporatisation'.
ý"How can they corporatise a saree?" wails Arundhati Roy.
Quite successfully, in fact. Mass production of sarees like readymade garments will make apparels affordable for the ordinary woman, and her standard of living will rise.
Arundhati Roy bewails the future disappearance of masala dosas and sundry other indigenous grub: McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell ýwill dish out standardised fast food to be gobbled up by the unthinking masses.
Doomsayers had similarly predicted the 'globalisation' of entertainment. Soon, they prophesied, we would all be watching Hollywood sex-and-violence on the small as well as the big screen.
A gloomy picture indeed.
More and more young people are wearing Levi's jeans and denim skirts. Pizza Hut has opened a branch in Dhaka, and the custom is said to be grand. Wimpey has several branches, and they can't be doing too badly. And, of course, fast food shops have burgeoned all over town. The days when Canton and Chung Hwa were the only foreign restaurants in Dhaka have long been over. And these western meals are washed down with plenty of fizzy (western) drinks. Prima facie, the standardisation of the world has already come to pass.
This shocking indictment calls for a meditative pause, like a lower-court verdict reaching the appellate division of reason.
On Satmasjid Road, there was a time when only one shish kebab house dominated the street. Then there were two. Now, I reckon, there are at least six that I know of. Every evening, as you wait for your order, the embers glow and the smoke rises to the heavens and the aroma tickles your nostrils. And this proliferation of kebab ghars has occurred on only one street.
In my peripatetic tours of Dhanmandi, I notice that the footchka and chatpati sellers are still serving their food to lovers by the lake like they used to twenty years ago. The purveyors and producers of biriani, morog pilau and tehari are doing brisk business business that Pizza Hut must envy.
O globalisation where is thy sting?
As for clothes, I notice no slackening in enthusiasm among women for the traditional saree (sorry, Ms. Roy): the jamdanee sells for thousands; handloom sarees are ýmuch sought after. The shalwar kameez has held its own against the trouser and shirt. Brides look like sylphs on the stage in their lehangas. The skirt is yet to be spread wide.
As for entertainment, I notice a large number of housewives eagerly watching the very traditional soap operas aired by Rupert Murdoch's STAR-TV: Rupert Murdoch, an ýAustralian national, controls a third of newspaper circulation in Britain and many Britons resent being influenced by a foreigner. (After all, the Sun once boasted on its front page that it had won the election for the Tories; so, just in case, Tony Blair made sure he met Rupert Murdoch before his first election, which he then went on to win. Coincidence?) On the Indian subcontinent, Mr. Murdoch has had to give in to local tastes. He couldn't, it seems, corporatise the Indian joint family out of existence: instead, he has had to idealise it on TV, and serve it up as the locals like it.
As for fizzy drinks and ice-cream, news of the demise of the lassi and kulfi are greatly exaggerated. At weddings, borhani is still de rigueur.
Yet there is a globalisation of a different sort an insidious, malign variety with which the likes of Arundhati Roy and Jose Bove have no (hamburger) beef. Indeed, they welcome this more sinister globalisation.
Firstly, the Anglicization of the world is a sinister form of globalization: it introduces words like 'freedom' which other cultures do not understand. For language, meaning and a way of life are inextricably connected. In Bengali, we have no word for 'freedom' - when we use a similar word, it means collective freedom, not individual freedom. Similarly, in Persian, azadi connotes collective liberty - the language reflects the values. The Battle of Plassey was, therefore, our first brush with globalization. ý
Something is lost in translation....
Anthropologists are supposed to be sensitive to the peculiarities of a society they are supposed to highlight what is distinctive about it, and to understand it in is own terms, to practice what Max Weber called verstehen. No sooner do anthropologists graduate and join an aid organization than they discard all fidelity to their discipline and become instruments of western imperialism. It is like a doctor who, in contravention of the Hippocratic oath, uses his medical knowledge to torture human beings rather than heal them. I know of only one anthropologist the Harvard expert on South Asia, Stanley J. Tambiah who had the professional integrity to announce: "A social and cultural anthropologist of my sort will necessarily advocate that a collectivity's cultural practices are historically rooted...." 1,400 years of Muslim culture today stands ready to be buried
under an avalanche of western notions such as democracy. We are told
that to be ruled by military men is barbaric: the implication is that
for 1,400 years our civilisation has been barbaric. TIME magazine, in
an article on violence and corruption in Bangladesh, recently observed:
"As the feeling of helplessness grows some businessmen, recalling that
extortion was less prevalent during the years of military rule, are
nostalgic for the days when the army ran the country". To be
nostalgic for one's civilization, language and history may appear inane, if not insane, to TIME magazine, but it constitutes human
nature, alas! Everyone is nostalgic for the days of the army.
Everyone, that is, except the minions of the west, the intellectuals
and NGOs who profit handsomely in spreading the west's universal message.
We are naturally nostalgic for military rule because that has been our culture for 1,400 years. From the dawn of Muslim civilisation, we have been ruled by military men. However much TIME may disapprove of our nostalgia, the ineradicable fact remains. Worse than Pizza Hut and Taco Bell are the globalisers who spread western political ideas here, bringing murder, rape and arson where once there was peace.
http://iftekharsayeed.weebly.com
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MonocultureBy Iftekhar Sayeed (about the author) Permalink (Page 1 of 1 pages)OpEdNews Op Eds |
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ý"How can they corporatise a saree?" wails Arundhati Roy.
Quite successfully, in fact. Mass production of sarees like readymade garments will make apparels affordable for the ordinary woman, and her standard of living will rise.
Arundhati Roy bewails the future disappearance of masala dosas and sundry other indigenous grub: McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell ýwill dish out standardised fast food to be gobbled up by the unthinking masses.
Doomsayers had similarly predicted the 'globalisation' of entertainment. Soon, they prophesied, we would all be watching Hollywood sex-and-violence on the small as well as the big screen.
A gloomy picture indeed.
More and more young people are wearing Levi's jeans and denim skirts. Pizza Hut has opened a branch in Dhaka, and the custom is said to be grand. Wimpey has several branches, and they can't be doing too badly. And, of course, fast food shops have burgeoned all over town. The days when Canton and Chung Hwa were the only foreign restaurants in Dhaka have long been over. And these western meals are washed down with plenty of fizzy (western) drinks. Prima facie, the standardisation of the world has already come to pass.
This shocking indictment calls for a meditative pause, like a lower-court verdict reaching the appellate division of reason.
On Satmasjid Road, there was a time when only one shish kebab house dominated the street. Then there were two. Now, I reckon, there are at least six that I know of. Every evening, as you wait for your order, the embers glow and the smoke rises to the heavens and the aroma tickles your nostrils. And this proliferation of kebab ghars has occurred on only one street.
In my peripatetic tours of Dhanmandi, I notice that the footchka and chatpati sellers are still serving their food to lovers by the lake like they used to twenty years ago. The purveyors and producers of biriani, morog pilau and tehari are doing brisk business business that Pizza Hut must envy.
As for clothes, I notice no slackening in enthusiasm among women for the traditional saree (sorry, Ms. Roy): the jamdanee sells for thousands; handloom sarees are ýmuch sought after. The shalwar kameez has held its own against the trouser and shirt. Brides look like sylphs on the stage in their lehangas. The skirt is yet to be spread wide.
As for entertainment, I notice a large number of housewives eagerly watching the very traditional soap operas aired by Rupert Murdoch's STAR-TV: Rupert Murdoch, an ýAustralian national, controls a third of newspaper circulation in Britain and many Britons resent being influenced by a foreigner. (After all, the Sun once boasted on its front page that it had won the election for the Tories; so, just in case, Tony Blair made sure he met Rupert Murdoch before his first election, which he then went on to win. Coincidence?) On the Indian subcontinent, Mr. Murdoch has had to give in to local tastes. He couldn't, it seems, corporatise the Indian joint family out of existence: instead, he has had to idealise it on TV, and serve it up as the locals like it.
As for fizzy drinks and ice-cream, news of the demise of the lassi and kulfi are greatly exaggerated. At weddings, borhani is still de rigueur.
Yet there is a globalisation of a different sort an insidious, malign variety with which the likes of Arundhati Roy and Jose Bove have no (hamburger) beef. Indeed, they welcome this more sinister globalisation.
Firstly, the Anglicization of the world is a sinister form of globalization: it introduces words like 'freedom' which other cultures do not understand. For language, meaning and a way of life are inextricably connected. In Bengali, we have no word for 'freedom' - when we use a similar word, it means collective freedom, not individual freedom. Similarly, in Persian, azadi connotes collective liberty - the language reflects the values. The Battle of Plassey was, therefore, our first brush with globalization. ý
Something is lost in translation....
Anthropologists are supposed to be sensitive to the peculiarities of a society they are supposed to highlight what is distinctive about it, and to understand it in is own terms, to practice what Max Weber called verstehen. No sooner do anthropologists graduate and join an aid organization than they discard all fidelity to their discipline and become instruments of western imperialism. It is like a doctor who, in contravention of the Hippocratic oath, uses his medical knowledge to torture human beings rather than heal them. I know of only one anthropologist the Harvard expert on South Asia, Stanley J. Tambiah who had the professional integrity to announce: "A social and cultural anthropologist of my sort will necessarily advocate that a collectivity's cultural practices are historically rooted...."
We are naturally nostalgic for military rule because that has been our culture for 1,400 years. From the dawn of Muslim civilisation, we have been ruled by military men. However much TIME may disapprove of our nostalgia, the ineradicable fact remains. Worse than Pizza Hut and Taco Bell are the globalisers who spread western political ideas here, bringing murder, rape and arson where once there was peace.
Iftekhar Sayeed teaches English and economics. He was born and lives in
Dhaka, "ŽBangladesh. He has contributed to AXIS OF LOGIC, ENTER TEXT,
POSTCOLONIAL "ŽTEXT, LEFT CURVE, MOBIUS, ERBACCE, THE JOURNAL, and other
publications. "ŽHe is also a (more...)
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