The socio-cultural impacts of globalisation on Indian family system are multidimensional. So a multi-pronged approach is needed to find solutions
Swami Narasimhananda
Globalisation at the world level was followed by liberalisation several decades later in India. This has led to sweeping changes in the individual, family, social, and national lives. To understand the nature of these changes, one has to first understand globalisation itself. It is a phenomenon involving the free movement of goods, services, capital, people, ideas, networks, information, technology, culture, religion, and many other values across the people of different countries, eventually blurring borders. As can be easily understood, this leads to an identity crisis, as what is ‘one’s own’ becomes questioned at the very fundamental level.
The first and probably the strongest effect of globalisation on the Indian family is the breaking up of the basic unit of a family. In India, traditionally the family was based on a community, that is, families were based on the idea of cohesion. So, for an Indian family to be a family, it should have been based on the collective network of relations, mostly relations in the near sense of the term, not distant relatives. This ensured the passing on to successive generations of cultural mores, traditions, religious beliefs, language patters, rituals, and many other family values. Even professions were passed on from one generation to the other, and ended up being called ‘family professions’. However, the new found possibility of breaking away from set patterns for the Indians some decades after Indian independence, and more completely, after the liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991, led to the breaking-up of the Indian joint family and also its migration to distant places or faraway countries. And it is this transition that is the key factor in the influence of globalisation on the Indian family.
These transitions are of various types: geographical, national, social, cultural, educational, professional, religious, and value-oriented. All these kinds of transition do affect the family in varying degrees. Geographical and national transition changes the daily routine, food, dress, and the national and political values held by a family. For instance, if a family had to travel to a pronouncedly socialist country from India, the way one looks at a business or a profit-making venture is bound to be influenced. Indian families that migrated to the US in the 1970s and 1980s had to handle the problem of drastic changes in food and dress. Social values also change. It is common for many multinational companies to have cultural orientation programs for employees coming from outside the local culture.
The invasion of non-Indian elements into the family is the worst consequence of globalisation. Family chat has been replaced with the virtual chat. Traditional food has been replaced with junk food. Traditional family functions are being ignored in the name of modernity. Obedience to senior family members is on the decline. Values define identity. And it is imperative that to keep an identity, we hold on to the values. Family traditions and practices are where values begin for a child and family is the place where they are practised. There are some families which have maintained their traditions and values even after generations of living outside the place of their culture. That is why we see that many families in the Indian diaspora, like that in the US and the UK, are more faithful in maintaining their family practices than Indian families of today.
Beliefs about marriages and relationships are another area that has been severely affected because of transition due to globalisation. Lack of commitment in relationships, blind aping of practices in other countries, increasing promiscuity, and increase in divorces are signs of not understanding any culture properly, much less one’s own. Indians are imitating the West in the name of modernisation and following practices that the West sees as maladies of their societies.
Looking down upon indigenous faith traditions is another disturbing effect of globalisation on family traditions. Clueless of the hidden agenda of the communities in the country one migrates to and eager to impress the people of the country one migrates to, Indians, particularly the youth, ridicule their faith traditions and in effect, become people who have little or no confidence in their own faith traditions. For instance, most young Indian Hindus migrating to the US start making fun of Hinduism in an overenthusiastic effort to gain points with the US citizens.
Giving the family least priority and giving more attention to social gatherings becomes a style statement for the globalised Indian. One wrongly assumes that this is the way to show one’s sacrifice without understanding that the only people who would remain with one are one’s family members.
Globalisation has mostly been portrayed in a negative light. But it has many positive effects. The questioning of age-old superstitions, increase in economic power, the coming together for a global cause—like environmentalism—are some benefits of globalisation. Education has improved and the overall quality of life, at least in the material sense, has enhanced.
The solution to almost all problems caused by the different kinds of transitions caused by globalisation is two-pronged: internal and external. Internally, the Indian family should hold on to the value-systems that have been handed over by its past generations. However, that does not mean that one should hold on to the many evils that have crept in the family traditions, like ‘honor killing’. So, a diligent carrying forward of the family values is what is needed. But, along with this, the family should be able to adapt to and adopt higher and healthy values found in the culture one is migrating into.
So, while doing manual labour like plumbing, carpentry, and painting might be something that Indian families are not accustomed to, it can be learnt from the example of other countries, say the US. Externally, Indian families should be able to become a unique part of the community, to which they migrate to and yet represent the value-systems of their family trees.
To use an illustration often cited in the context of the Indian Parsi community, Indian families migrating to other communities should be like sugar, which when added to milk, another material, can only produce sweetness. While we should be careful not to become victims of the ills of globalisation, we should nonetheless not be deprived of its benefits.
(The writer is a monk of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission and editor of Prabuddha Bharata)
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