The India problem

Some phenomena

India's cultural history has known a disastrous situation. The country and its culture have suffered a lot from the time of the sultanates. India's westerly vicinity predestined this country for the various aggressive invasions and obscurantist colonizations it has known. Eaten away by the geographical and cultural desertifications, India ensured less and less the continuation and consistency of its arts. Less and less safe, less and less fertile, the cultural terrain couldn't foster anymore an esthetic quality of always good taste. South-East Asia was on the contrary a favorable ground for the perpetuation of Indian culture and sometimes even the progress of arts. By dint of tragic events in the Indian peninsula, South-East Asia was becoming land of refuge for a lot of Indian cultural elements ; Cultural elements that are still maintained nowadays in this region.

1. Indianity not limited to India An art piece, a narrative, a dance of Indian nature, perhaps having a Hindu ritual function, doesn't necessarily come from India. But it shows that the object or the sequence has a certain flavor, shape, esthetic quality, ritual function. It doesn't matter whether the object or sequence is from India, Angkor, Campa, Java or Bali.

2. Indian and local not in a break with each other A tradition, an art style, a literary transmission coming from India and settled in a country of South-East Asia belongs well and truly to the land of reception. It has taken root locally and has stimulated the creation of new local art pieces or sequences. The Indian character still permeates these later creations, even if it knows sometimes new combinations absent in India. There is continuation between India and this receiving land. Ideas and techniques having come from India were not in contradiction with those of local origin. They have intermingled, combined, influenced one another. They have merged and we cannot distinguish them today.

3. Without clashes The transmission cited in 2 isn't the result of conquests, invasions or colonizations. It hasn't given rise to any clash.

4. India disfigured Whereas India has given a valuable inheritance to South-East Asia, the country has been on its side disfigured by the expansion of Middle Eastern culture. India has suffered, during this upheaval, the great discontinuity of its history. This fundamental discontinuity has been devastating.

5. Cessation of contacts It is perhaps the phenomenon 4 that gave rise to South-East Asia's Indianization. But the prolongation of this phenomenon, its ramifications, and its worsening, has cut off for good the current that existed between India and South-East Asia. Influences now going from India to South-East Asia are from now on insignificant but above all of an altogether different nature : Middle Eastern. In actual fact, when looking from South-East Asia, what was India has taken the air of a mere part of the Middle Eastern complex.

6. Compensation Indian elements that had arrived in South-East Asia have changed with time and local influences. India, already distant physically, stands back from local cultures (the phenomenon 5). Some traditions, art styles, stories, rituals of Indian origin have taken odd forms, sometimes degraded, in South-East Asia. But a degradation in India itself has taken place, and it has been much more serious than in South-East Asia. It has been above all a question of annihilation and regression. Thus, the loss in conformity, in esthetic quality or in exactness of Indian elements in South-East Asia is compensated for by their merit of still existing, by their being part of a still alive context. They keep their authenticity and even at times their original meaning whereas they might have died out in India, their country of origin.

7. The great break in the Sunda Islands The Middle Eastern and European cultures have arrived relatively recently and suddenly in Insulindia (Malay peninsula, southern Philippines, Sunda islands). Mainland South-East Asia, as for it, has received only the European influence except Campa that was breathing its last before Annam's complete Sinisation. These intrusions, their mood, their face, have lead to a fundamental discontinuity fondamentale with the local milieu. This is striking on the musical and denominational levels among other things. All that reminds us the events cited in 4 and in 5, as if India wasn't their last conquest. Insulindia has been caught up, but much later, several centuries later, the violence having become here a simple blatant contrast of cultures.

8. Gamelan Gamelan is born of and belongs to the Indianized Javano-Balinese local culture. The Middle Eastern, European and Chinese cultures (phenomenon 7) are foreign and subsequent to it.

9. Upheavals encore At times, history strangely seems to repeat itself. What occured between India and South-East Asia appears to have recurred between Java and Bali, but on a smaller scale and in a less violent way. When Indo-Javanese culture started to fall apart and that ideas of Middle Eastern origin started to take precedence, princes, priests and artisans have fled to the neighboring island of Bali, taking with them their gods, preserving their castes, saving their arts. But Java hasn't for all that been destroyed like India beforehand. The island has remained relatively faithful to itself. But Bali has obviously become a kind of refuge until today of traditions that go back for some to ancient India. We find there a condensed, distilled Indianity, without Middle Eastern influence, in which we recognize the air of a provincial Java. The whole is marvellous, exceptional even, but its isolation was too good to last : European culture was going to catch up the island through the Dutch. Bali has never known any discontinuity until the puputan, recent events compared to India or Java.

10. Survival Despite the breaks 4 and 7, the Indianized cultures are not dead. They are not only mere nostalgic memories of a glorious past. They still exist, alive and of current relevance. They survive in lost pockets as much in India as in South-East Asia, including Java. They tend to be unobtrusive, silent, in the minority. They can be self-sufficient during a long time, without being disturbed by expansionist cultures. Their subtility may be token of perpetuity. Their biggest strength lies in their beauty. They are more or less well from region to region, more or less hybridized with local or imported cultures. They are under threat in several places, which isn't a new fact. Gamelan reflects well all that : it is not an easily transportable music, it cannot be exported out of its cultural context. It doesn't combine well with other music. Its importance in the study of world music is limited.