By Barnes Mawrie
Human culture is never perfect or faultless because it is a human product. No one culture can claim to be without defects. A community that thinks itself so is living in a make-believe world. This is why we say that every culture, ancient though it may be, needs to correct itself or modify some of its elements from time to time. Indian culture with its rich and ancient history and with its many praiseworthy aspects, has some subversive elements which need to change in due time. Let me list down a few of these subversive cultural habits which are being forcibly changed by the Corona pandemic. By subversive culture I mean those habitual practices pertaining to a group of people which do not help a community but instead damage not merely the health, but the image of a nation itself. In India we have a number of such socio-cultural habits which pose a great threat to our mainstream culture. Thanks to the Corona virus many of these subversive habits are being unlearned gradually.
The first subversive cultural habit of Indians is lack of hygienic practices. Before the advent of the Corona pandemic, we Indians did not have the practice of sanitizing our hands regularly. Very often persons eat with hands not properly washed. In most rural areas, parents do not insist on children washing their hands after their play time. One can imagine the hygienic condition in slums where children play in garbage filled areas or in slushy grounds and in most cases lack of water would also hinder them from washing themselves properly. However, with the advent of the Corona pandemic, sanitizing of hands has become obligatory and in fact Indians have gradually adopted this practice as part of culture. Ironically, it has taken a pandemic to convince us of the need to wash our hands regularly.
The second subversive cultural habit of Indians in general is the ugly habit of spitting or blowing noses on the roadsides or in public places. This habit has, in fact, put Indians in poor light in the eyes of the world. Foreigners who visit our country are appalled by these unhygienic habits and consequently they construe a pitiable image of our country. The Corona pandemic has come as a blessing in disguise in this regard, reminding Indians that such a subversive cultural habit is detrimental to the health of a nation. Perhaps we Indians will henceforth learn to be more hygienic whenever we come into public places. With the new normal of wearing face masks, it will greatly help in preventing people from spitting and blowing their noses in public places as they were used to doing.
Another subversive cultural habit that is characteristic of Indians, is the manner we heckle people in public places, be it the markets, shopping malls, railway stations, bus stations, public parks, tourist spots etc. In fact, we Indians do not even know what “social distancing” is. It is enough to visit Howrah Station to know what this culture is all about. I remember when I was coming out of a train at Howrah way back in 1998, it was a sea of people and I was literally carried by the crowd without any effort to walk. This is the reason why pickpockets thrive in such places where physical contact is so rampant. Think of an Indian queue and we immediately get an image of persons pushing each other with little sign of patience. With the pandemic comes a new normal known as “social distancing” which obliges people to stay about two metres away from each other either in queues or in public gatherings. For people of Norway it is said that social distancing at queues is nothing new for they have such a culture already. For us Indians this is a drastic cultural change which only the pandemic has succeeded to enforce. It looks rather strange to see Indians these days queuing at a distance from each other.
These are the most prominent subversive cultural habits which I can recall as of today and which are gradually disappearing because of the Corona pandemic. They say that “old habits die hard” and that is why it takes a global pandemic to help us overcome these odd habits that have stained our culture for centuries up to now. As Indians we are also proud that a cultural custom of ours, namely, the “Namaste,” has been adopted by many nations in the world during this pandemic. This shows that certain cultural customs or habits that are positive will always remain and even learned by others. On the other hand, certain subversive cultural habits like the ones enumerated above, need to be unlearned for the good of the community. Let us hope that these changes will continue in our culture even after the pandemic. We would love to see Indians henceforth, using face masks, cease to spit or blow noses in public places, sanitizing their hands regularly and respecting social distance in queues and in public gatherings.