After a hiatus of a few weeks, the pesky/friendly neighborhood insect (a glowworm, yours truly!) flits across your screen once again. The delay was a function of business (work and family chores) at some times and plain laziness at other times. I must also admit to being thrown off-track by Sister Premarupa’s request for clarification after my pot shot at the practice of Western devotees taking Indian spiritual names in Part 12. Left to my own devices, I would probably have done a hit-and-run but now that I have been called to account, I have to come up with something superior: Obfuscation? Explanation? Damage Control? I could not narrow down between these choices, so I decided to do a bit of everything. What follows is my pot pourri, aviyal for the Malayalees.
First, a few words on the generalization that I made, and those that I will make now in defence or elucidation of that first one. The reality is that people, myself included, tend to make generalizations - "Westerners are like this, Indians are like that" and other statements of that ilk. This is not necessarily something that brings Global Understanding & World Peace any closer but it is a human tendency. Stereotypes, where accurate, are usually constructed with a kernel of truth, surrounded by layers of extrapolation. A stereotype may provide a reasonably accurate description of a class of people in a limited context but individuals are almost never described 100% by a stereotype. In other words, stereotypes are good descriptors of the average and poor descriptors of individual data points. Confused? Well that means I have attained at least one of my objectives!
What I have just talked about - accuracy, is just part of the story. One third of the story, to be really precise. There is more to expressing a view than mere veracity. Let me explain. I remember a message from one of those feel-good, spiritual emails that someone forwarded to my mailbox a while ago. You know the kind? Powerpoint slideshows with nifty spiritual messages featuring soft-focus angels and pretty floral arrangements in the background. Well I remember one such slide that stuck in my head: Before you voice an opinion, ask yourself whether it is (a) true (b) necessary, and, (c) kind. A critical self-appraisal suggests to me that while I may have scored on (a), I probably erred with (b) and (c), when I made my sweeping statement. And therefore, I think an apology is in order. To Sister Premarupa and all other Western brothers and sisters who were injured by my broad, unnecessary and unkind barb, I offer heartfelt apology for any hurt I may have caused. On reading Sister Premarupa’s account of how she came to acquire her Indian spiritual name, I realized that the act was imbued with deep personal significance for her and also bound up with intense feelings, and that I had basically played the role of a bull in a china shop.
Whew! It is a relief to get that off my chest. I confess that I was a little oppressed by the thought that my playful poke in the Western ribs may have been insensitive. I guess that, more than anything else, is what really kept me away all these days from the list/group. I do not think that I am blessed with enough self-control to promise reliably that such sins will not recur; the best that can be hoped for is that the circle of my stupidities contracts, and that the group's forgiveness expands over time. I seek your continued indulgence, dear brothers and sisters!
Now, on to some of the social and spiritual implications of the process of acculturation I referred to in the previous episode. The social first. Name changing is but a subset of a larger project - the effort to adapt to or blend or identify with a different culture. The larger project of adaptation, which is something that many of us (especially those whose lives have a greater interface with foreign cultures) are engaged in, to varying degrees, is really rooted in the question of identity. People may undertake these transformations for material or spiritual reasons. Brother Keval provided a hilarious example of the former - "I am Devendra but you can call me Dave!" Since I aim to restrict my discussion to the spiritual, I do not intend to inquire too deeply into that particular category ie. the Westernization of Indians for social and material reasons. Rather I expect to take a look at the Indianization or Hinduization of Western devotees, since that has more salience from a spiritual standpoint. However, even for devotees, such shifts, irrespective of whether they are driven by material or spiritual reasons, have undeniable consequences in the social sphere that are worth examining. The practice of taking spiritual names is not very common among non-monastic Indian devotees, as far as I know, so I plan to leave that out of the discussion as well.
Some correspondents have already touched upon some of the obvious limitations of these attempts to slip under the skin of an alternate culture. For instance, you cannot use your spiritual name as freely as you might like, outside the spiritual community to which you belong. At work, or even among family, the resort to alien nomenclature and custom might give rise to reactions ranging from benign wonder to active hostility. While I have not undertaken anything as radical as a change of name, I could cite one example in illustration. My use, in these fora, of "Dear Brothers/Sisters" as the preferred form of address represents something of an acquired culture. Prior to my spiritualization, I was not in the habit of using this kind of address. My use of this address is however limited to this setting; I would not dream of using it with my colleagues in the office, for instance. If I did, they would surely think I am totally nuts, even the Indians among them.
Even on this devotional list/group, my first applications of this cultural change felt stilted and contrived. As I persisted in the habit, however, I found, over time, that I became more comfortable with the usage. Oddly enough, there was more to it than just becoming comfortable with the usage; what began as an artificial device, ended up having a real effect in terms of influencing my feelings towards this community. I began to feel more brotherly love. That actually brings me to a point that I should be making, when the discussion moves from the social implications to the spiritual ramifications of attempts to redefine self-identity to meet the spiritual purpose: sometimes the tail can wag the dog. In my case, what started as an empty ritual, ended up changing my real-world perspective in a small way.
Coming back to the social implications, it must be stressed that identity formation or redefinition is an activity that requires the expenditure of energy. Even Indians, snugly ensconced in their own culture, need to expend a certain quantum of energy to maintain their identity, but those from Western or other cultures who seek to effect a crossover must necessarily expend a greater amount of energy, to break with old habits and acquire new ones. Whether it is worth the deal is a question that can only be answered by the individual seeker, in the light of his/her own situation.
As an objective matter, since discontent provides the impetus to change, it is often the case that Westerners who cross over to Indian culture are alienated from their source traditions, for reasons good or bad. I guess the same could be said, for Hindus who convert to Christianity or Islam. However, the reigning orthodoxy of the Semitic religions does impose a certain pressure for conformity upon the new arrivals, that is largely absent for outsiders making the transition towards Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism), since the architecture of the latter is based on a version of the open systems concept. In other words, the gradient is very gentle in the case of the Western-to-Eastern transition; it is possible for a Westerner to imbibe the Hindu ethos, in bite-sized nibbles at a pace that is convenient.
The point to take away in this context is that the identity project is charged with a certain amount of tension. In order to adopt the customs of an alternate culture one is required to repudiate, however mildly, the customs of the native culture. The process, therefore, may be described as exothermic (to borrow a term from chemistry) ie. heat-generating. When actuated by the lofty goal of spiritual transcendence, the project is well worth taking on as the seeker's ego sublimes in the heat of transformation. But when the project is guided purely or primarily by the social imperative, then there is a risk that one may be seared by the heat. In its extreme versions, the process can result not in transcendence, but in the substitution of the individual ego by the group or collective ego, with a net increase in egoism.
Om Amriteshwaryai Namah
