Tamil Nadu and Indian culture

The first thing that struck me about Tamil Nadu is the way people dress. Literally all women wear traditional clothes, as do many men, and you will virtually never see a man who doesn’t sport a thick black mustache. The most commonly worn clothing by women is the sari - for those who don’t know this symbol of Indian culture: it’s a long piece of cloth wrapped around the body. Women also wear a lot of jewelry: golden earrings, necklaces and bangles, silver chains with tinkling bells on both ankles, and toe rings. A lot of them wear flowers in their hair; the first day I asked Bhanu if there was some kind of a celebration, so cheerfully dressed everybody looked. Many men – I estimate around half of them – wear a lungi, a simple piece of cloth they tie around their waste. This forms a skirt that normally covers their entire legs, but often they fold it to make it shorter, so that it reaches just above their knees. The most formal dress for a man is a dhoti, a kind of lungi, usually white –that's what most politicians wear. Not only the clothes have barely altered in many years. Tamil is one of the oldest living languages in the world; the earliest records date from about 200BC. According to some scholars, its ancestor, Proto-Dravidian, is related to the language of the Harappans, the people of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization.


Men vs women:



It’s fascinating that people keep century-old traditions in these modern times, but the downsides of tradition seem to be kept alive as well. Even the clothes reflect an inequality between men and women, deeply rooted in their society. While women are wrapped up like candy – I’ve been told that a sari is very uncomfortable and hot, because of the many layers of cloth – men walk around in their short kilts, often proudly parading their fat brown bellies. As for the anklets, although they are my favorite piece of their jewelry, I can’t help but interpret them as “I want to hear wherever my woman goes”, a bit like a cowbell – but that's probably exaggerated. Either way, the relations between men and women are very restricted. Girls and boys are not really allowed to interact until they get married – a marriage that is, in a vast majority of the cases, arranged (official numbers are hard to find; many sources on the internet say 95% in India). Arranged marriages are, as I understand it, a consequence of another well-known source of inequalities in India: the caste system. Three main elements define communities in India: language, religion and caste. Marrying someone from another community, and especially from a lower caste, is regarded as a disgrace. That’s why marriages are arranged, and that’s why contact between boys and girls is restricted: falling in love with the wrong person could ruin their lives. Bhanu, my host in Cuddalore, comes from a Hindu family and married, out of love, a Christian, supposedly from a lower caste. According to what she told me, she seems to live in permanent conflict with most members of her family. I lived and worked on a university campus, where the canteens were separated for boys and girls - as were, of course, the dorms. And – with my legendary sense of observation, it took me a while to notice it – in buses, the front seats, where I usually sat at first, are exclusively occupied by women (yes, it took me a while to notice; and even when I did notice, the first few times I just thought :"wow, I'm surrounded by ladies! It must be my magnetic charm....").

Religion and caste influence more than just relationships between men and women. One day, at the copy shop, I saw someone printing his resume. Apart from mentioning religion – that alone is pretty unusual to us – the personal data included “community”, a two-letter abbreviation. I questioned Bhanu about it, and she told me that it was, in effect, the caste. If someone from a higher caste applies for the same job as you, she said, you will never get it, no matter how qualified you are. On the other hand, there seems to be some positive discrimination, as political actions are being undertaken to improve the situation of people from lower castes. The Indian law contains a controversial quota system for employment and education, referred to as “reservation” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India). I didn’t realize the caste system was official; indeed, it’s Indian government that gives you a “caste certificate” and thus puts you in a fictive category with names like “backward classes”. I must admit the caste system is complex, and I would need to do much more research to fully understand it. Apparently, the use of castes by the government was initiated by the British, who grouped the population into communities, equivalently to their own class system, to facilitate the organization of the country. This grouping was based on existing religious castes and tribes. There was a certain hierarchy in these castes, but the British made it more rigid than it was. So any person in India is a member of some caste, usually associated with the occupation of his ancestors. And this caste is classified in one of the big groups, like “backward classes” or “upper classes”. These big groups are the ones that determine the quota for employment and education. When it comes to marriage, people usually stay inside their specific caste. (I’m sure some of you understand this better than I do; feel free to explain!) Another tradition that is still in use is the payment of a dowry. The family of the bride pays a sum of money (or gives a car, or a TV, ...) to the family of the groom; the higher the caste, the higher the sum. The couple usually moves in with the husband's family; so I guess the dowry can be considered as a payment for the wife's food and accommodation. What people don't really seem to know, is that Indian law prohibits the payment of dowry since 1961. The dowry system unavoidably led (and leads?) to sex selection. That's why prenatal determination of sex is illegal here in India - to prevent sex-selective abortion.

Apart from caste, I have mentioned religion. “What is your religion?” is a very common question in India. I have met many Hindus, Muslims and Christians, and they have one thing in common: all of them are very dedicated to their religion. When I answer, as I always do, “no religion; I’m atheist”, they usually look at me as if I came from another planet. It’s funny, by the way, to go to church and see all these Indian people being more devoted Christians then our grandparents ever were. It makes you realize how little religion has to do with culture, I guess – religion is shaped to fit the local culture, and not the contrary. People who are scared of “the Muslims” or “the Hindus” should come to India: people here are Hindu, or Muslim, or Christian, or Sikh, or Sufi, or whatever, but in the end I find it similarly hard to interact with either one of them, simply because they are Indians, and Indian culture is so different from European culture (and even that last statement, I realize, is probably an unacceptable generalization).

Now, all of this – the religion, the castes, the chasteness – is just the cover, the official truth. Not all the young people actually want an arranged marriage, or to have no contact with the opposite sex until they get married, or to be able to marry only someone from their own caste. But they don’t really have a choice. The way I see it – but I’m just guessing; I wish I was an anthropologist, and a historian, and a theologist – people got stuck in this community-based system. No-one ventures not to be religious, or to marry someone from another community, or to wear jeans, or they will be expelled from their community and become outcasts. This means conflict, struggling to find a job, and not being able to marry their children; so it’s just easier to play along. The risks are just too high; if the truth comes out, and you get a bad reputation, you will have a very hard time getting married – especially if you’re a girl. Sometimes it gets even worse; every couple of weeks, I read things like “girl hacked to death for eloping with lover”, “couple shot dead in honour killing in Punjab”, “yet another ‘honour killing’ in Haryana”. It used to be not so very different in our society (apart maybe from the killings). I know my grandmother’s marriage was kind of arranged, and when they went dancing it was never without the company of chaperons; and I suppose that if she would have fallen in love with a factory worker, she wouldn’t even have to think about marrying him. How did it change, then? The sexual revolution, I guess? The only way to break out of that system of hypocrisy is when some strong personalities, some rebels, say what everybody thinks and do what every wants to do. Many of the heroes of our recent generations are rebels: Elvis Presley, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Bob Dylan, Serge Gainsbourg, Jim Morrison, Madonna, … That’s the kind of people who push radical changes in society, where everybody gets rid of those self-imposed handcuffs and finally breaks out of that vicious circle of hypocrisy. I asked one of my friends about singers and actors here in Tamil Nadu, and he told me they are just as hypocrite as everybody else, if not more. They try to look like ideal son-in-laws, while they probably take drugs and party more than other people. Their pop stars are (or pretend to be) conformists, who are religious, chaste, and care about their family. What a contrast with the Lady Gagas, Paris Hiltons and Kurt Cobains of our Western culture! I'm not saying that they should have Lady Gagas – I begging them not to – but I think maybe some rebellion wouldn't do harm. There is hope, though. Especially in the cities, things aren’t that extreme anymore - actually, these things I talked about hold mainly for villages. In big cities, people dress however they want, have boyfriends and girlfriends, and even marry out of love sometimes. This is slowly spreading out to the rural areas. Parents of the next generation will probably be much milder to their children, and the old system will slowly disappear. I hope they will keep wearing their traditional clothes every once in a while, though, because it's a pleasure to the eye.