By Abhirup Bhunia

Globalization is a phenomenon that has evolved over time to assume superseding centrality in the political, cultural and socio-economic lingo. Yet, merely asserting that the world has ardently taken to globalization does not provide a sense of finality; instead it begs a question as to its outcome.

Some scholars have conveyed the need to focus on the impacts that globalization might be having on local communities and regional attributes. 

At a time when voicing against globalization amounts to sounding obsolete, few have the nerve to pass judgments on globalization. However there have been concerted attempts to portray globalization as a means of annexing local cultures. There exists a hypothesis that globalization chips away at localized characters. Clearly, such views are often overstated in a bid to discredit the embedded cultural integration that globalization has brought about.

Peace guardian, Mahatma Gandhi had famously said: “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.” It is a sentiment aptly applicable to all debates on community, culture and character vis-à-vis globalization.

Firstly, the exposure to global mores isn’t reason enough for local cultures to disappear. In this very epoch of free enterprise, local goods throng the markets and continue to do well alongside global brands. This brings up the theory of coexistence in a world where community fabric largely remains unscathed. The proposition here is that the American Starbucks culture and the traditional easygoing coffee culture of Argentina, an Italian pizza and a South Indian dosa, the Hollywood James Bond and a Tollywood feluda, can live harmoniously.  

Globalization has its positive influences that are often buried under the blanket cynical commentary against it. Socio-cultural globalism isn’t anti-local. There is no evidence indicating that community characters cannot exist in the era of globalization; in fact there is evidence to the contrary.

Tourism, a principal claim to globalization, has a cherishing role in preserving local characteristics. The escalating numbers in international inflow and outflow of tourists can also be unswervingly credited to globalization. Generally, the uniqueness of different communities and their identities, rooted in the histories of regions, is something international travelers look forward to exploring. Thus, tourism can be seen as upholding communities and even promoting local characters. The sight of American and European women in the alleys of Rajasthan flicking through beads and trinkets handmade by traditional Indian artisans, serves as a pictorial metaphor of ‘good globalization’. Similarly, in Santiniketan – the birthplace of Indian bard and one of world’s earliest internationalists, Rabindranath Tagore – visitors from across the world are spotted during the traditional Poush Mela festival.

The early twentieth century was not a globalized one – far from it, it was an era of colonies, empires, and independence struggles in Asia, Latin America and Africa. The theory of cultural dominance can be traced back to that epoch. During the British colonization period, traditional Hindu outfits like the Brahmo Samaj made planned attempts to dispel Europeanization of pre-independent India, something they feared intensely. Conversion of locals into Christianity, their taking up foreign languages and disregard for traditional texts like Vedas and Puranas were seen to be part of a nefarious trend that Hindu scholars sought to prevent. But that was unerringly the eon of one-sided cultural influence, totally unlike the present system – driven by globalization – where bilateral and polygonal/multilateral exchange of cultures, ideals, and customs take place.

With the explosion of internet, another of globalization’s feats, e-socializing has become widespread. In this day and age, the New Yorker’s Thanksgiving, the Sunni Muslim’s Ramadan, the Bengali’s Durga Puja, or the Christian’s Halloween, all constitute a transnational cultural and ethnical melting pot. Blogs and social networking websites can integrate people from the farthest of nations in a matter of no time, thus reinforcing the idea that local characters do not go missing in the vast world of varied societies. The Iranian revolution of 2009 offered the world a passionate peek into the society, life, cultures, ideas, ethics, vim and vigor of the Middle Eastern kingdom. The stream of responses to the uprising – watched by millions on YouTube as it spread via Twitter and Facebook – from people belonging to lands afar vindicates the positive impact of globalization. People from different parts of the world now know a whole lot about other peoples’ culture. Looking at it through an optimistic prism, globalization can be perceived as an amazing movement that has exerted positive influence on and promoted local cultures.

Today, immigrants, even refugees and those on temporary visa, leave their own imprints on foreign soil. Mick Meenan reported in New York Times sometime ago how immigrants have taken kabaddi, the Indian national sport, to New York. “Successive waves of immigrants have woven ethnic sports like hurling, bocce and cricket into the New York fabric. Last Sunday, Cunningham Park in Queens became an arena for kabaddi … but an organizer of the event traced the roots to more benign beginnings in Punjab,” he wrote. This is an illustrative case of distinctive community lifestyle being represented globally. Conversely when global entities move into the regional environment, for example the penetration of an American cultural product into South Asia, there is a degree of localization that comes along with it. As Denis McQuail puts it in his tome, ‘Mass Communication Theory’, “the [global] media may even help in the process of cultural growth…the much heralded transnational satellite channels such as CNN and MTV have been forced to regionalize and adapt their content and format to cope with local requirements.” The transnational media do not actually blur different cultures; instead distinctive regional (Mongolian, Islamic, South Asian, etc) characters are propped up in their cultural end-products. Hence, even as Hollywood happens to be the buzzword among the youth globally, national films are doing extremely well in the respective homelands. India exemplifies that. The national film industry of India releases a mammoth one thousand films annually grossing billions of crores. This offers a fairly good picture of how localized entertainment is excelling even as global cinema marches into different regions. And if this is the Indian context other developing nations too have their unique places in the global entertainment bazaar that have not been, and will never be, simply taken over by American or European entertainment or lifestyle.

In any case, extreme form of nationalism works against peace. Cultural nationalism is permissible only when it is within the limits of acceptance. A severe variety of the very feeling amounts to fanaticism. Although multiple cultures can exist and prosper in a globalized world, some hardliners circulate the idea that the advent of newer foreign cultures are necessarily at odds with local ones. This perhaps explains what the world has come to call Islamic extremism. Some factions of the Islam followers resist, defy, hate and frown on Western characteristics and lifestyles that they say lock horns with the doctrines laid down in the Koran. The pub and café culture, homosexuality, lenient clothing and freethinking societies are in stark contrast to rigorous Islamic traditions and customs like the donning of burqa, a life of domesticity for women, strict non tolerance of homosexuality and other orthodoxies. But since some followers of Islam have rejected the theories of peaceful coexistence and tolerance, they feel the need to repel overseas cultures. Different explanations notwithstanding, religious and cultural nationalism of the extreme kind are one of the many causes of Islamic fundamentalism

A Nepali clad in a labeda suruwal or an Indian in a sari would almost never take offense at the prevalence of the short skirt just because it is Western fashion. Jeans, skirts and stilettos are not only immensely popular among an entire generation in South Asia, but are simply part of their lifestyles. But that doesn’t mean depletion of local fashion and traditional clothing. In what is a case of full-blown hybridism, Indian designers have been looking at how best the traditional sari can be modified to go with Western garments; and thus has been crafted many crossbred fashion clothing that take bits of the Indo-Pakistani salwar kameez, Indian harem, American jeans, French and English robes, and so forth. Similarly, the introduction in America and broadly the West of Indian motifs like a speck of vermillion on the forehead (called bindi in Hindi) has become some sort of an exotic or Oriental style.

However, while some may want to adopt it, others find it hard to adapt themselves to it.  The hegemony factor is solely dependant on how people put up with cultures of different hues – it all depends on what is allowed and what isn’t. Generally speaking, character is an abstract that is infused in one and all. And the way one’s mother tongue is always dearer than any other language local mores will always have their own distinguishable appeal! Thus, local cultures not only persist – they carry on, coalesce, combine and cultivate.