What is culture? Is India a culture?

We hear the word “culture” tossed about a lot.

People talk about “Western culture”, “Eastern culture”, “Indian culture”, about what is our culture, and what is not our culture, about cultural change, and about “cultural engineering”.

So the question arises: what is culture?

Let’s find out what culture actually is, and whether India has its own unique culture.

Culture is the identity, and set of values, norms, beliefs, teachings, practices, traditions, knowledge, arts, cuisine, language, literature and customs that characterizes a society.

Let’s look at these in detail.

Identity and self-designation

What do the culture’s practitioners call themselves? What is their cultural identity? Do they call themselves Indians? Persians? Turks? Jews? Chinese? Japanese? You’ll find that Indians call themselves Indians wherever they live in the world. The same goes for the Jews, the Chinese, and many others.

Values and beliefs

These form the moral, spiritual and religious framework of the society.

Customs, norms, practices and traditions

These emerge from the values and beliefs. They include the rules and laws the society follows, the framework of social organization and social roles, the division of labor, the system of governance, and the system of education.

Language

Language is an important part of culture. Every culture typically has one major or predominant language. Languages such as Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Latin, Greek, etc. are cultural languages. Language is often intrinsically linked to ethnicity.

Arts

These include literature, architecture, music, dance, painting, forms of entertainment, cuisine, etc.

Knowledge

Knowledge includes epistemology, knowledge systems, philosophies, sciences, logic, etc.

So these are the building blocks and components of culture.

Culture is the essence of society. It is a shared heritage that is passed on from generation to generation. It is what distinguishes one independent society from another.

Culture is dynamic. It is ever-changing. And yet, it has certain core elements that can persist for centuries, even millennia.

Culture gives us a good idea of how a society has evolved over a long period of time, because the elements of culture take a long time to develop.

A newly-formed society has no real culture of its own. Culture only develops over years, decades, and centuries. And in the case of India, millennia.

Culture is often intrinsically linked to ethnicity. “Indian” is an ethnicity. “Jew” is an ethnicity. “Chinese” is an ethnicity.

So the question is: does India have the unique attributes that characterize an independent culture?

Yes, absolutely. India has a unique identity, a unique and distinctive value system and belief system, a distinct set of customs, practices and traditions, a distinct set of cultural languages, which includes what is probably the world’s oldest known language, and it has a unique, distinctive, and vibrant set of rich artistic traditions.

We can therefore conclude that India does have a unique culture, and India is a unique culture.

Originally published at http://indianinterest.com on June 24, 2019.