What an engaging career teaching is.............it teaches you more about yourself and how you think, than maybe what you teach others. As I wind down a course on Cross Cultural Management, at the Alliance Business School, I like to belive, the students and I furthered our intellectual curiosity and knowledge.
Some topics of discussion in the class-
What cultural traits do German Mangers have?
They are punctual, hardworking & have a fetish for quality!
The English?
Great Ethics & character!
The French?
Efficient & Emotional!
Wonderful & the Indians?
Share similar characteristics to the English because we were occupied & Indian managers lack transparency & do not share information, easily.Very dismissive!
I'm going to change tack here & talk a little about a gent called James Mill......who wrote the bestseller of his time, two hundred years ago, which was the training manual for any Brit heading out to India.( The book is not too India friendly and is quite stupid in much of its sterotyping of Indian's)
The History of British India is a monumental work in which James Mill set out to display the history, character, religion, literature, arts, and laws of India, also explaining the influence of the Indian climate. He also aimed to locate the accumulated information on India within a wider theoretical framework.
The work begins with a preface in which Mill makes virtues of having never visited India and of knowing none of its native languages. To him, these are guarantees of his objectivity, and he says –
A duly qualified man can obtain more knowledge of India in one year in his closet in England than he could obtain during the course of the longest life, by the use of his eyes and ears in India.
However, Mill goes on in this preface to say that his work is a "critical, or judging history", encompassing singularly harsh judgements of Hindu customs and denouncements of a "backward" culture notable for superstition, ignorance, and the mistreatment of women.
I would have breathed a little easier had Mill set foot in India and experienced this country, before writing his magnum opus on India & the Indian's. The book, to boot, also influenced every Brit, who visited India, during the Raj.It's amazing how people can talk endlessly, about events or things that they have never seen or experienced or felt?
The last laugh- To add insult to injury, many of our Universities still use an abridged version of the book, to teach young Indian's, British Indian history!!!!!!!
It's time we jettissoned what I call a - Colonial Hangover and really understand culture before we stereotype!
6 comments:
Nice one .. Had he (Mill) been to India, he would have probably realized to write volumes about this country - Just the diversity for instance !
Also, it kindles my thoughts on how rich our tradition and culture is.
Cant agree more on what you have said about the universities still following the book !!??
can see your anguish there as a teacher.
Anguish & anger.............also rage that we have to learn about ourselves from people who did not have a clue about Indians!
The point is, humanities as a career, was jetissoned & you see the results...........
Unless, Indians with an aptitude take up the social sciences, we are heading for serious trouble!!!
A little disconnected I felt though it may not be. I could not figure out what James Mills book had to do with the topic. Anyway if his book is worthless then better ignore it. India being a multiracial adn multicultural society you may get Yes as well as No to every aspect in every direction.
Today Indians have to be startified as professionally organised groups, craftsmen, indidual service providers, farming community, households - dependants in various economic strata and find streams of patterns which would provide guidance to engage with those community.
In my view, we are more goal oriented and bigger visionaries than before. The cultural aspects,according to me, are the result of vision, ambitions and goals. Those three set everything else rolling.
Shankar .
The biggest irony we live in.. is that we as Indians do not respect or understand our culture well.. which is why we are still looked down upon other cultures.
a bigger irony-
Who wrote British history?
The Brits.
Who wrote French history?
The French.
Who wrote American history? ( Of whatever there is to write about)
The Americans.
Who wrote Indian history?
The British again..........
not only history they will write our future too if we keep on allowing them to do so. We know our culture and we need to put forward it in front of all ignorants who still consider India to be land of snake charmers!! We cannot wait for other's opinion about who we are..and would be good for us to stop following their perceptions about us by not encouraging their biased and myopic literature about us.
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