Culture and Values of India: Accepting, Assimilating and a Tolerant Society

(v) Accepting, Assimilating and a Tolerant Society

           

            An accepting group and assimilated society allows expansion of its human resources along with the physical, and knowledge from within and without. Exclusivity and intolerance are the hallmark of a stale and potentially declining system. Live and let live and toleration of that which is different but has its own value and significance allows a society to grow in its  multidimensional social life.. This process feeds enrichment of life from north to south and west to east.

            

            Indian social structures have been accepting, assimilating and tolerating ideas, people, values, cultures, music, governance, architecture, science and technology, and just about everything else from outside throughout its history. 

            

            This is perhaps so as a result of most broad and open source thinking  in the ancient Vedic system of thought and inner examination of life on earth as well as individual life and its meaning and purpose. 

             It is no wonder India became known as the ‘spiritual guru to the world’. The spirit and practice of acceptance, assimilation and tolerance continue to manifest themselves in the day-to-day life in India of 2013. 

            The modern constitution of India has enshrined these values beyond simply history into a continuing cultural legacy from as far back as one can think of social and cultural history of the Indian civilization with its known roots in the Vedic system of values.

Culture and Values of India: Inquisitive and Open Mind and Knowledge-based Enterprize

(iv) Inquisitive and Open Mind and Knowledge-based Enterprise

             

            The inquisitive and open mind is ready to receiving new and foreign ideas. It wants to know the physical, biological, sociological and artistic, and entrepreneurial  world around it. An explorer wants to know everything about the outside world to expand its reach and its benefits. Societies that gave rise to the inquisitive and questioning scientific mind have gained more economically than societies with contended and orthodox world around them.

The Hindu value system and culture have taken a long view of things in philosophy, mathematics and in reality of time and place. India has benefited through millenniums from in-migration of ideas, people, capital and technology and much less from outward migrations in terms of aggression, conquering and running other countries, etc. 

People have migrated from Africa to India to Europe but not in the same way as numerous cultures and empires coming to India. Outsiders have explored India more than Indians have explored outside. The characteristic of  an open mind has allowed India to be a huge beneficiary of knowledge created and used outside India to make its own life better. 

Cultural, administrative and management knowledge that came into India has enriched and sustained India's ancient culture as a continuum perhaps longer than any other society. India has never been a closed society and that is the key to its cultural diversity and variety.

Of course there are some 30 million people of Indian ancestry outside India in 2013 which is only 2.3 percent of India’s population of about 1,300 million.Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and Persons of Indian Origin (PIO)  are making significant contributions every where in every field-  arts, information, enterprise,  technology, business, finance, education, science, medicine, politics and government,

Culture and Values of India: Long View of Time and Space

(iii)      Long View of Time and Space

            Zero and infinity are Indian concepts or discovered by Indian mathematicians. The universe and time are unending. There are cycles of birth and death of expanding and contracting universe within this unlimited time horizon. This process of birth and decay and death also applied to  humans unless one escapes the cycle by achieving Nirvana or Moksha. This translates into short-tern daily behavior so as to taking it slow and easy. 
             The long view is held as against the concepts of continuous maximizing of benefits and minimizing of costs as theorized for human behavior by modern neoclassical economics. Self-interest of Adam Smith is universal but its application is conditioned by culture, weather, institutions, spirituality and other dimensions of life. 
              Kama Sutra originating in India, for example, is important for enjoyment of life and source of happiness but not the same way as the driving force in Freud’s analysis of human behavior. Indian view is the opposite of Sartre’s “here and now” in which you discount the future almost near one hundred percent. The US and other Western  savings rate of 1 to 3 percent tell us that people allocate almost all their income in spending it today. 
              Indians save some 36 percent where tomorrows are very important. Chinese save even more concerned about building the the future and therefore save and invest around 46 percent of current income. In India and China tomorrow is almost as important as today. 
              Not so in the Western culture and behavior of consumers. Western culture creates and destroys things, empires and systems faster and more often as against preservation of old  ways and systems kind of forever as in India and china, among other Asian societies.
              Spiritual guidance is linked to  and is a component of economic transactions. God and spirit bless it but action in this world makes economic gains and losses possible. Action is one's duty. Action is essential for progress as it will produce an outcome regardless of expectation of a particular gain and its timing. Slow and steady approach and patience are the behavioral characteristics leading to a long view of time and space in Indian thinking and value system.  It has significant implications for the inter-temporal allocation of resources, progress and sustainability of India and the world.

Culture and Values of India: Open and Welcoming Culture

(ii) Open and Welcoming Culture

            Today there is a reawakening and a paradigm change taking place – in fact a revolution taking place in global competition. It is not new. The evolutionary migrations in and out of India, Africa, and the Middle East to Europe, Mongolia and other places got the traveling and seeking process underway that continues today.  The world is one home and one family philosophy is the foundation on which Indian culture is based. 

           We can find numerous examples of explorers, sailors and conquering individuals and groups doing better by acquiring and using more and newer lands, people, resources, ideas, technologies  than stationary societies. All ancient civilizations and colonial empires are testament to this characteristic. The British Empire and the American successes are only recent examples in this process.  

            Both as a recipient of migration from Africa and onward forwarder of migrants from India to the north in all of Europe India has used its open and welcoming culture throughout its history. IN-migration of people and ideas has created a modern multicultural India while some 30 million plus Indians are estimated to be spread out around the globe where they have acquired the reputation of a friendly and welcoming community.

             Travelers to India have always admired the open, friendly and welcoming nature of Indians who are always excited to share their most inner thoughts, resources and homes with the visitor treating the guest as a most welcome godly presence. Thus the open and welcoming characteristic has sustained India and its  culture through millenniums. It will be significant in India's future role in a globalizing human family.

Culture and Values of India: Global Thinking

(i)              Global Perspective in Thinking

              

              Rig Veda, the oldest book in Vedic society, opens with the all-encompassing view that the entire world is one family. The idea is profound in itself. This explicit expression of the comprehensive view of the world and its inhabitants some estimated three to five thousand years ago is unique to the Vedic view of the world. No other culture or religion is as accepting of the oneness of the world and its people. 

              The wisdom inherent in the view and acceptance of the reality of one world has allowed the successive generations of the Hindu society through millennial time to belong to and accept all in the world as one to maintain itself over such a long period of time. 

             The statement of oneness does not put people and cultures in hierarchy either. Nor does it reject anyone as undeserving, unacceptable and lower. Most other cultures and religions take narrower, superior, inferior view towards others who are outside of their system. In terms of evolutionary theory one could say that the Vedic view is more flexible to adapt to changing reality and thus have better odds at survival than breaking down due to inflexibility in evolving systems of survival of the fittest. Live and let live within the one system is what the Hindu (Vedic) view seems to say and practice. Thus it survives through adaptation.

Globalization occurring today is strong evidence of the world becoming one through trade, investment, travels, inter-faith, inter-cultural and inter-racial marriages and unions, the role of UN and  G-20 management of the world, multinational corporations getting their capital from world-wide investors, global standards for goods and services, medicine, etc. 

The best in anything is the standard and benchmark for all countries, cultures and people. Information about the best is freely and commonly available to all around the world to pursue its achievement. 

The ancient Indian Vedic culture had already developed the global thinking and anticipated what is occurring some five thousand years later. Other cultures and societies not open to such comprehensive global thinking historically are at various stages of moving towards the Vedic thinking process  and taking action towards joining the globalization process and trend. India is original true global guru in global thinking.