Globalization and its impact on Indian Culture

Introduction

Globalization has a wide role to play worldwide. It has left back its footprints at every sphere of life. Not only in India, but the interchange of world views and ideas has resulted in a major transformation of the lifestyle and living standard of people globally. Indian culture is no bar to this transformation process. Our deep rooted traditions and customs have loosened up their hold with the emergence of globalization. India has a rich cultural background and pride of its culture is famous throughout the world. Globalization has not only inculcated the westernization in India, but conversely the Indian culture has also spread its impact globally. Culture and traditions of any geographic region hold a special significance with respect to its uniqueness and that is the differentiating factor for a population within a geographic boundary from the other. This uniqueness has been disturbed to the varying degrees in lieu of globalization. Such an impact is very much pronounced when they hit a developing country like India.

Globalization

The term ‘Globalization’ is itself self-explanatory. It is an international platform for maintaining evenness in the living mode of the people all over the world. Globalization is the resultant of the interchange of worldly views, opinions and the various aspects of the culture everywhere around the world. This is the means for providing the international arena for intermingling of people from different sectors, culture and dialects and learns to move and approach socially without hurting and affecting each others’ prestige. 

Globalization initiated with the masses travelling to other geographic areas for exploration, then with the interest of travel and enjoying the personal space, then came the era of searching employment opportunities anywhere on the globe to win the contest of ‘survival of the fittest’. With every advancement of human approach, the globalization started on rooting its footprints at every place. In today’s era the various means of telecommunication, social media, and most importantly the Internet has a big role to play in the spread of globalization.

Globalization has both positive and negative impacts throughout the globe. Right from the environmental challenges from the climatic influence, the air, water soil pollution etc., to the cyber crime; globalization has a huge contribution to all the ill-effects of scientific advancements. May it be business, trade, and work exposure or the economic and financial status of the country, no field is left behind the reach of globalization. 

Indian Culture

The culture of any country does not only portray the region and language of the region, but it starts with the mindset and mentality of the residing citizens. Indian culture is quite rich with respect to its heritage and resources, and more importantly due to the welcoming approach of its citizens. India is bouquet of flowers varying religion, dialect, edibles, tradition, custom, music, art and architecture etc, bundled into a single unit of patriotism and unity. The common factor within all these diversities is the Indian mindset of welcoming, greeting, celebrating in a united way with immense affection and togetherness. This is the rich essence of the Indian culture that has attracted many foreigners to stay back in India and mingle into its eternal fragrance.

When we analyse this rich culture with the globalization point of view, we can find many punch holes of westernization and mixing of other traits and cultures into our beautifully woven blanket. Let us closely analyse the impacts of globalization on Indian culture:

Family Structure

Let us start with the key attraction of Indian joint family culture. The joint families have become a strange surprise to the Indians especially to those residing in the metropolitan cities in the small flat culture with the nuclear families blooming up like mushrooms in the rain. We have lost the patience to get adjusted into the joint family, imbibing the values of the elders and getting the young ones brought up under the shadow of their grandparents. Children have started treating grandparents like guests or visitors, and such an upbringing is one of the main reasons of increasing old age homes, as those children consider their own parents as burden in their state of adulthood.

Marriage Values

Similarly, marriages have also lost their values. It is very much evident from the increasing number of divorce cases and the extra-marital affairs reported every now and then. Marriage used to be considered as bonding of the souls which will be linked even after the death; but today marriage is like a professional bond or a so-called commitment to share life without compromising their self-interests. The ego factor into the Indian youth is again a product of globalization. 

Adultery

Both the genders were kept at a distance, with lot many restrictions and limitations to the approach for ages in our culture. With the emergence of globalization and western culture, youth have start mixing up well with each other. The friendly approach and the socializing feature is worth appreciable. But the total breakout of restrictions have adulterated the Indian mindset, playing up with the physical relationship. This has given birth to new relationships in India like live-in relationships. Also the increased cases of rape and sexual abuse cases are a result of the perverted mind which again the imported values very much alien to our mother culture.

Social Values

We have the incorporated values of treating the guests as God, warm-hearted welcoming, greeting elders with due respect and a celebrating every small festival with great colour of enjoyment and togetherness. Such a wide gathering with full hue and light can hardly be seen today. People have highly restricted themselves in social interaction. The interaction in present generation is highly diplomatic considering the financial status and wealth. We have lost our social values and cheerful blessing of togetherness. The present generation are more happy celebrating Valentine’s Day rather than Holi and Diwali.

Food, Clothing and Dialect

Indian food, clothing and languages are varied with respect to different states. The food varies in its taste, but every food has its own nutrient value and every region is specified and rich in its medicinal preparations with the home remedies. Even the clothing varies in different states which is very much particular in maintaining the dignity of woman. The varies cuisines from all over the world though have different flavours to add, still the food ingredients that have inflicted with much popularity are the junk food items which has increased the health disorders in the country. Again the dressing like the suitings for the males are an inappropriate match for the Indian type of climate. The female dresses are again a way of distraction to the perverted minds.

Even the Indians are not very much in favour of promoting their mother tongue or our national language. Instead the youth today consider it to be a shameful condition to speak in their national language Hindi. The way the foreign languages are getting prevalent in India like the French, German and Spanish, right from the school level, is the example of how much we provide importance to Indian languages in comparison to the foreign ones.

Employment and the Agricultural Sector

India was predominantly an agricultural based country. With the advanced globalization and cropping up of MNCs, the farming has lost its prime value in India. Agricultural science has the least focus amongst the youngsters who consider farming as a shameful profession and look down upon the same. Employment through MNCs have lucrative deals attracting the bulk of manpower who are working for the other countries as their customer care representatives. We are losing our health and our status and slowly getting to the age of economic slavery due to these MNCs. This is what the globalization has provided Indians through their emergence.

Conclusion

To conclude we can call Globalization as a slow spreading risk factor that has covered almost the entire country with its severity. With some positivity of having a generalised knowledge of the culture throughout the world and the happening and incidences globally, still the major negative impacts are quite alarming for our country. Hence, we need to more very cautiously with the globalization process preserving our nation’s pride and maintain our cultural prestige.