Culture
is a word much before the public recently, very often qualified with adjectives
denoting region or religion. We hear of Chinese Culture, European Culture,
American Culture, Hindu Culture, Islamic Culture and so on. The indiscriminate
manner in which the word is used raises a doubt whether the users have a clear
conception of what Culture really means. Not very long ago, a leading
politician submitted a representation to the States Re-organisation Committee
protesting against the inclusion of Bellary in Mysore State. His argument (as
reported) was as follows:
“Bellary
was a part of Rayalaseema. Rayalaseema now belongs to Andhra State. The
inclusion of Bellary in Mysore is a rupture of its Rayalaseema Culture.”
On
this argument, the inclusion of the Civil and Military Station of Bangalore in
Bangalore City is a rupture of its British Cantonment Culture. Srirangapatna,
in being transferred to Mandya District suffered a grievous loss of its Mysore
District Culture. If each State has a separate recognisable Culture, why not
every village? Why not every house for that matter? It is easy to laugh at this
fantastic folly, but sometimes the results are catastrophic. When the Muslim
league raised the slogan of Islamic Culture being different from, and
incompatible with, Hindu Culture, India split asunder as with an earthquake.
Distrust deepened into hatred, and rivers of blood separated us and our former
fellow-citizens.
What
then is Culture? This paper is an attempt to furnish an answer.
Culture
is an old English word, but it has not always had its present content. It is
derived from the Latin ‘Culture’ which means tillage. Gradually it came
to mean worship, physical exercise, cultivated lands, and education. To the
best of my knowledge, it did not, before the nineteenth century, have its
present meaning of intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual attainment. So far as
I know, neither Chaucer, nor Spenser, nor Shakespeare nor Milton used
it in this sense. Probably Wordsworth was among the earliest to give the word
something of its present significance, and Matthew Arnold made the connotation
ampler and more definite.
How
did this word, which meant ‘preparation of the soil’ come to be able to carry
its present rich and varied freight? What analogy is there between tillage and
what we have come to understand by Culture? Tillage, we know, draws out the
natural excellences of the soil, eliminates its faults, and enables it to
produce food for man and beast. Culture draws out and develops what is best in
human nature, eradicates defects, and makes it capable of
raising the human race to its highest stature, and of making life richer and
happier.
Sri
Shankaracharya proudly proclaimed that Man is the noblest of living beings.
Pascal not only re-asserts that claim but gives the reason for this primacy.
Man is not first because of his physical qualities; for, in these, many animals
are far superior to him. He is a reed in strength; but he is a thinking seed.
Thought is infinitely superior to strength and the capacity for it has made man
first among living things. Yet there is one quality of which he is capable,
which is as far superior to mental power as the latter is to physical
strength–and that is Goodness, the power to discriminate good from evil, and
the desire to prefer the good to the evil at all costs.
An
ancient Western philosopher called man a spirit burdened with a corpse, meaning
by corpse, of course, his body, subject to birth, old age and death. A striking
statement, no doubt, but the truth is really far worse. A dead body, poor
thing, is harmless enough, and could be cast away at pleasure. The reality,
however is that what the spirit carries is a wild animal, the heir of our
animal ancestry of long ages of a grim struggle for existence. The qualities
which make for survival in such a struggle are not mercy, kindness, patience,
or divine knowledge; but physical strength, fierceness, and above all
ruthlessness. Nature, without goodness, is “Red in tooth and claw.” It is this
wild beast, the bloody conqueror of millions of pre-historic fights to a
finish, that the human soul carries on its gentle wings. This beast breaks
loose when wars are fought. Then the blameless Yudhishtira tells a lie, the
chivalrous Arjuna slays a disabled foeman, and Bhima revels in an orgy of
blood. Then, again, a so-called civilised country rains indiscriminate
destruction on lakhs of non-combatants and reduces flourishing cities to ashes.
Even
a more fitting figure is the famous text in our scripture:
“The
soul is the rider in the chariot which is the body. The intellect is the
chariot-driver and the mind is the controlling rein. The senses are strong wild
horses which draw it, and the objects of sense are the course they have to
travel.”
The
function of Culture is to strengthen the intellect, which is the driver, and
the mind which is the rein; to tame the wild horses which are the senses, and
to keep the chariot itself, which is the body, in good order. As culture of the
land is concerned with potentialities of the earth, human Culture is concerned
with the potentialities of the soul.
The
next question is, how should we set about it? Says Matthew Arnold:
Find
out, study, admire, imitate, and excel, if you can, all that is best in what
has been thought or said, or done by mankind. Make the best your leading light
in life and follow the light without fear or faltering, and, above all,
remember that it is not enough merely to
know what is good. We must live it and make it our constant endeavour to
leave the world, were it but the merest trifle, better than it was when we
entered it.
In
this conception of Culture, thought, study, good conduct, service, strenuous
endeavour at improvement, are all included Art, literature, philosophy,
science, history and biography are all there, harnessed to the great chariot of
existence. In another place Matthew Arnold calls Culture ‘Sweetness and Light’,
and goes on to say that Culture is co-extensive with humanity, irrespective of
region, race or colour. Anything which breeds difference, distrust or hatred is
not Culture, but its opposite.
The
social objective of Culture is to make human beings Aryas, that is to say,
ladies and gentlemen. Cardinal Newman, in discoursing on Universities, has a
beautiful description of what constitutes gentlemanliness. According to him,
the chief excellence of a gentleman is that he avoids causing
pain to others. With this should be combined modesty, compassion, benevolence
and urbanity. Our own scriptures, with deeper analysis, thus
define what constitutes a noble nature:
“Fearlessness,
cleanness of life, steadfastness in the Yoga of wisdom, alms-giving,
self-restraint and sacrifice, and study of the Scriptures, austerity and
straightforwardness, harmlessness, truth, absence of wrath, renunciation,
peacefulness, absence of crookedness, compassion to living beings,
uncovetousness, mildness, modesty, absence of fickleness, vigour, forgiveness,
fortitude, purity, absence of envy and pride, these are his who is born with
the divine properties, O Bharata.”
Bhagavad
Gita, XVI. 1-3. (Dr. Annie Besant’s translation) Sri
Buddha has a similar numeration of the qualities of a gentleman.
Culture
is not mere learning. The merely learned man is often vain, and scorns persons
less accomplished than himself. It is not affluence, for, see the lives of some
rich people, the way they use their wealth, the books they read, the things
they admire. Nor is it at all orthodox piety, whose champions are often ready
to send heretics–that is, people not accepting their own brand of religion–to
eternal torment. It certainly is not power, for, man clothed with a little
brief authority plays such pranks as makes the angels weep. But all these can
become Culture. Knowledge is Culture if it strives to combat ignorance and illiteracy
for the good of mankind. Wealth, if employed to relieve suffering, can achieve
Culture. Even orthodoxy can do good, if it ceases to be fanatical superstition,
and helps in spreading compassion and faith in God’s love. Power can become
Culture if it upholds Justice and is employed in improving the lot of man. What
is it that raises these earthly things to the divine plane of Culture? It is
goodness, and love ‘in greatest commonalty spread’. Sri Shankaracharya’s prayer
is–“oh! Vishnu, take away my self-conceit and bring all things within the range
of my love.”
This
paper may well close with Coleridge’s Testament of Faith:
“He
prayeth well who loveth well
Both
man and bird and beast;
He
prayeth best who loveth best
All
things both great and small,
For
the dear God who loveth us
He
made and loveth all.”