Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Foreign Phobia

This is the quite ritual in india if anything does not work we look for foreign coach for cricket,foreign university and institution for other work.I'm not against off them but is it really?Are we insufficient to cope with problems we face in differnt walk of life or we just live on old complex that westerner are more advanced than us.In reality often we overlook our institution,individual who are capable of doing things better than others.Pratap bhanu Mehta argue in his article on this point:
"There is a great current of anxiety over just how foreign ideas are influencing India. Often this can express itself in pathological forms, whether in the suspicion in some sections of the Left of everything that has an American provenance, or in the overblown anxieties of the Right about the contamination of Indian culture. But it would be a mistake to use these expressions of anxiety over foreign influences to altogether dismiss the question of how exactly we handle these influences. There are some legitimate questions that practices of the Indian public sphere raise. Why is it that the government consistently thinks Indian institutions cannot do a decent enough job of re-training Indian civil servants? Why should we be paying huge overheads to universities like Syracuse, Duke or Harvard for experiences that have more brand value than substantive logic? Why is it that Indian newspapers, rather than producing more knowledge about the world, and shaping global debates, are content to simply carry discourses produced elsewhere? Even the intellectually deadend controversy over foreign coaches in cricket had half a point: is it that we don’t have indigenous talent, or do we have a real problem in accepting the authority of our compatriots?

Nirmal Verma made a distinction that should be the starting point for any sensible reflection on this subject. The real question is not what has influenced a writer, what multiplicity of sources go into the construction of his world. The real issue is whether the writer has been able to handle them with self possession. A similar thought underlies Gandhi’s statement to the effect that he wanted the winds of many lands to blow, but he also did not want to be swept away by any. What is the point of freedom if you cannot make a whole range of sources and experiences your own? Therefore the question of “foreign influences” is misplaced. The question is why do we think we do not have the self possession to handle them?
Read More:http://www.indianexpress.com/story/28427.html
Posted by Ajay :: 4:51 PM :: 0 comments

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