Culture Shift India
(Image: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times)
The World section of the New York Times recently featured a wonderful piece called “Farewell to an India I Hardly Knew,” which is told from the perspective of an American of Indian descent. The article shows how India has greatly changed in the past several years: “farms giving way to factories; ultra-cheap cars being built; companies buying out rivals abroad. But the greatest change I have witnessed is elsewhere. It is in the mind: Indians now know that they don’t have to leave, as my parents left, to have their personal revolutions.”
The writer’s experience points to a vast cultural shift, much of which translates to an increased popularity of individualism, as the rigidities of caste are unraveled and modern technologies foster modern ideas, which lead to non-conventional behaviors. However, these non-conventional behaviors soon became the norm for a large portion of India, which is how the pillars of culture slowly shift from one focus to another.
