Modernization vs Westernization

Saturday 23 January 2010 20:00, Coimbatore

We took a train today from Fort Cochin to Coimbatore this morning, about a 4 hour ride.  We rode in 3 tier AC class, which was comfortable.  By the way, I revise my previously stated opinion that the Southern India trains are usually on time.  Further experience has shown me that they are often as not significantly late, but not horribly so.

We shared the compartment part of the way with a nice young couple from Bangalore.  He was an IT professional who worked for Dell.  It sounded as though he worked in a call center.  His English was excellent.  They had their baby boy with them... a beautiful child, but a bit cranky at first because, as his parents explained, he got the idea that the train compartment was a doctor's office, and he didn't like going to the doctor.  His wife had retired from her teaching career (she had an M.S. in Engineering) when they had the baby.  Theirs was an arranged marriage, just like every Indian couple we have had extensive conversations with on this trip.  And like all the others, they think it is a good system.  All the relatives are involved in the search, Vedic horoscopes are computed and castes are taken into account (although I get the feeling that the whole caste thing is a touchy subject, so I usually don't ask).  The potential bride and groom have veto power (at least with the couples we spoke to), so there is no coercion there.  Although there may be coercion in the villages, where brides are sometimes very, very young. 

This brings up a point that was made in "In Spite of the Gods, The Rise of Modern India".  The author makes the point that India is going through a period of dramatically quick modernization, but that modernization is very different than westernization.  In the western mind, we tend to mush the two concepts together.  I, like the author, don't see any evidence that India is throwing away its culture in its headlong rush into modernization.  Sure, the employees of a cutting edge call center or software development firm in Bangalore may learn the American version of English and call themselves "Tom" or "Jane" when trying to help a frustrated American computer user on the phone, but they see no conflict between that and arranged marriages, caste systems, Hinduism and Vedic astrology.  None of the young twenty or thirty-somethings we spoke to showed any signs of even questioning those things.  Indian youth value their traditional culture, while wholeheartedly pursuing modernization and education, particularly technical education.

Compare that to the more extreme forms of Islam (such as the Taliban and Wahabism), where modernization is rejected, perhaps due to its implied association with westernization.

I'm still drinking the water in restaurants (not bottled water, this water is poured from stainless steel pitchers into stainless steel tumblers) with no ill effects.