Tradition And Modernity

How are we to engage with contemporary reality in a purely traditional idiom? The first of a three-part series.

- Makarand R Paranjape

INDIAN MODERNITY IS Janus-faced, even schizophrenic. On the one hand, it looks to the West and to the future, but on the other hand, it looks to India and its past. Arguably, the single most significant problematic in recent Indian intellectual history is that of tradition vs modernity. After nearly 200 years of debate and discussion, it seems fairly clear that India can have neither pure tradition, nor uncontaminated modernity. Whatever we are or have become has to be some combination or amalgamation of both. But in these contestations between tradition and modernity, it is not always clear what tradition is or what it stands for. In this and the following columns, I attempt to redress this lack.

It might benefit us to engage with the idea of parampara, which is the Sanskrit word, also used in many other Indian languages, for what we call tradition in English. While tradition is not exactly an equivalent, it is also quite resonant. Methodologically, it is useful to make key concepts across cultures and meaning universes to converse with each other, rather than subduing or supplanting each other—in our case, the Western idea superimposing and superseding ours. There may be some real, not merely cosmetic, advantages for retaining key Indian concepts which are not so much untranslatable as lacking in adequate English equivalents. But right at the outset, the question we may ask is how does parampara influence, even shape individuals and in what ways do individuals carry it forward, break, or re-shape. More specifically, I try to explore what happens to Indian traditions in modern times. Should they survive or die and under what circumstances? I walked bang into this conundrum in a rather unusual way.

THE (DIS)INHERITANCE

 I was once offered the Honorary Directorship of an NGO set up to promote “