Learning Indianism Global Way

I recently met one NRI friend – almost after thirty years. This lady of my age left Calcutta thirty years back after leaving school, received higher education in one of the developed countries of the world, settled in one of the developed countries, got herself adorned with their citizenship after marrying one suitable boy from the developed world but still did not forget motherland and the friends she left thirty years back. We met, we had a nice time together and then, I realized, she did not forget her duty to motherland as well. And her recent duty to her motherland has been making Indian women aware of their rights. I learnt a lot about women’s rights that day - that women should stop cooking at home, should stay at home as less as possible, should wear clothes that reveals at least half of the body etc.

This meeting made me remember another meeting – I was working as an exhibition assistant for Calcutta Goethe Institute in Indian museum. I was enjoying while this work provided me scope to learn about  and medieval German  history of art. One day we have less number of visitors. Among the very few one fair person seemed more interested about medieval India than medieval Germany. He started chatting with me about India. He was doing research on Vedanta philosophy, invited me for lunch notifying that he has turned into a vegetarian while basic principle of Hinduism supports vegetarianism. I did not go through all Vedic scriptures, so could not remember which one of them gave such an instruction, also could not remember which of the scriptures instructed Hindus to go for lunch with unknown people. So forgot the story instantly.

I also Remembered experiences earned during my corporate days: in one company an US-educated manager instructed me to visit particular Gurudev to cool down my ‘hot temper’, another suggested me to become a disciple of a spiritual leader to ensure promotion (I swear I never asked for a promotion!) and another advised me to change my ‘religion’ to get “God’s” help. I came to learn that visiting spiritual gurus and temples is a must for Indian Hindus. Also Indian-ism is very much a subject to be learnt from  management people who have experience of living abroad for years.  In one company, we as a German speaking team met a EU client who tried to convince us during lunch hour that all Hindus should turn to Vegetarianism as per “Hindu philosophy”. To my surprise, couple of my strictly vegetarian colleagues removed their blanket politeness – “You see, in India we have people with all kinds of food habits – you have to practice tolerating diversity in dining table if you want to work with us.”     

And as I remembered all experiences one after another, I found something common in them – dutifulness. All want to give the world around them something back – by disseminating the knowledge they have earned – by assuming that everyone around them is ready to follow their path and by losing interest in other’s knowledge.

But what makes these knowledge earners feel that they should convince other to follow them? Does developing a group of like minded people makes the "knowledgeable" feel secure in this wild world? But what is the reason behind spending such an effort to convert those who are not ‘like-minded’? Why people preaching non-violence become so aggressive against ‘violence’? I am not psychiatrist – also my old psychiatrist friend is no more in this world to answer my queries about individual traits. There lies no option for me to trace individual cases, but as a whole, I assume many in the globalised world find ‘Indian-ism’ irresistibly interesting as a discipline. We should be proud about that.

A resident of a developed country learn ‘Indianism’ as a package in Yoga schools or after visiting spiritual leaders in a convincing way as there is hardly any difference in approach of preaching missionary Christianity and Hinduism there. Religions and cultures are going global – Indian housewives should choose the beach-attires of their western counterparts and westerners should learn our Indian-ism – and both should learn the Indian-ism from other countries except India; ‘ism’ that they could conceive. If Indians provide software service to the developed nations, why can’t the developed nations introduce some Indian-ism to India? Outsourcing bothways is best practice to reach a win-win situation! Learn from others, reproduce here - we are truly Global Indians!