Talking about ‘Culture as Domination’ , as part of the Frontier Lecture Series organized by the University of Calicut, Dr. K.N. Panicker, historian and Vice Chancellor of the Sree Sankaracharya University emphasized the need for cultural introspection to understand the rapid and intense change embracing all coterien practices in society- changes which encompassed patterns of consumption, leisure, worship and the changing concept of cultural heritage. Dr. Panicker went on to identify two major factors influencing these changes, 1) the first being due to economy and technology as a result of globalisation and a hold on it by Transnational capital(T N C) ; 2) while the second was due to ideological reasons propagated by religious fundamentalism. These changes were not homogeneous and could be distinguished by geographical and economical divides of a) metropolis and hinterland b) class divides c) religious and caste divides. Cultural hegemony could be understood only within this background of unequal change.
Dr. Panicker stressed that the ‘ middle class’ of the society primarily formed both the a) agency of interest of the TNC and b) the base of the religious fundamentalism. These two bases typified respectively a) a celebration of culture by an uncritical internationalization of T N C and its world order, and on the other hand b) an anxiety over cultural loss which formed the impetus of a tendency to return to all that was indigenous. Unfortunately , the middleclass, he ruled, doesn’t posses the ‘cultural capital ’ to resolve the ensuing dichotomy resulting from the two, above mentioned , streams of thought. The overwhelming tendency, on the other hand, was to resolve these two patterns of a) assumed modernity and b) solution in revivalism through politics. It was in this situation that ‘culture’ functions as ‘ domination’.
Clarifying the concept of ‘dominance’, Dr. Panicker explained that the meeting of two cultures could have any of the following results of 1) synthesis 2) appropriation 3) acculturation 4) incorporation. These were fundamentally voluntary processes by which cultures enrich each other. Domination happens only in situations where there are ‘ power differentials’ between the two cultures. This was certainly not due to cultural superiority but due to superior technology to promote and enforce cultural practices. Thus forces external to culture determined ‘ domination’.
The classic example of ‘domination’ was the role of the colonial state which was coercive in character, exercising control through the state apparatus. Education acted as the most effective apparatus of the ‘ cultural bomb’ which results in an annihilation of the practices and beliefs of people. The Indian response of ‘cultural struggle’ against colonial dictates also typifies the characteristic response to ‘domination’.
The germs of resistance , against domination, are always first through culture. And ,in these struggles were located the seeds of secular nationalism or cultural nationalism.
Given this colonial history of domination ,one can better understand the role of the post colonial state, if one may use that nomenclature to describe independent countries. Dominant features include:
- a constant search for new areas of capital investment, where 1 out of 5 draws money from the cultural industry;
- an emerging cultural market;
- a new cultural veneration, to which India too has unconsciously been a part; and
- a middle class which is again the base of colonization.
It is noticeable that the hegemonising potential of colonial culture increases, with the method and locale only changing, whereas the essence remains the same.
Simultaneously, cultural hegemony is evident within the efforts to create a cultural identity where the culture of marginalized is not evoked at all.
In India there is not cultural uniformity and differences’ are a character of India. Thus culture is directly effected by any effort at homogenization. Cultural identity can only happen when we recognize the differences. Secular cultural nationalism takes into account the differences and takes a synoptic view of the two types of recording taking place influenced by a)the interest of the TNC and b) the political interest of the religious fundamentalists.
Dr. Panicker concluded his lecture by stressing that the challenge, therefore, lay in an effective interrogation of this condition of rendering through a deep cultural introspection into the factors contributing to cultural domination and change.