Considering Images and Attitudes

Throughout my entire thirty-five year university-level teaching career, I began courses asking students to complete attitude surveys I hoped would capture their existing impressions of the culture, a study of the history of which they were about to embark upon over the weeks and months to come.

The images and attitudes conveyed in these surveys helped me gauge where it was that students stood, as a group and individually, at this critical departure point so that I could link the course effectively to their existing knowledge base. The exercise also provided a benchmark against which these same students could measure their future progress, at least to some degree. Otherwise students often misjudged how much (or how little) they had actually learned over the course of a semester's study of Japanese or Chinese history. Over time another benefit emerged: I could begin to see changes in general American attitudes towards Japan and China reflected in my students responses to three simple questions -- "When you think of Japan (or China), what comes to mind?"; "When you think of Japanese culture, what comes to mind?"; "When you think of the Japanese people, what comes to mind?

In introducing these surveys, I always used "India" as an example, outlining for my students the type of responses I was seeking from them by providing examples drawn from my own personal responses to the survey questions posed above with "India" substituted for "China" or "Japan." I concluded with the following set of summary observations:

I have a fairly specific view of India but in general it lacks depth. I find India as an image is largely depressing although exotic as well. The Indian people fascinate but repel as individuals -- I don't appear to hold them in the best of lights. Indian culture appeals strongly. To sum up briefly, India comes across to me at the moment as a problem area of the world while the Indian people have a favorable image -- at a distance -- and the culture of the country intrigues a great deal.

Interestingly, I have never felt the need to "revise" this set of images and attitudes during the last thirty-five or more years ... until now.

This afternoon I finished reading Mira Kamdar's Planet India which I found to be, among the several books I've read lately in preparation for our trip, to be by far the most useful and informative overview of contemporary Indian life and culture. In her concluding pages, the author sums up the transformation I have come to feel myself in how I have come to see "India" on the eve of our departure:

India has within its grasp all the elements it needs to imagine a different trajectory. Because it is still a developing country, it can chose to develop differently. India does not have to blindly follow the American agribusiness model and become another fast-food nation. It does not have to allow a military-industrial complex to dictate national priorities. It can -- it must --forge its own path, lest a world hell bent on consumption for its own sake and the dangerous vanities of military one-upmanship lead us all into oblivion.

Kamdar's overview provides much more than this, especially in its litany of specific information about the current state of Indian life and culture. I found the book so useful that, although I began reading a copy from our local library, before finishing it, I ordered a paperback version to bring with me on tour to refer to as needed when attempting to identify personalities and products and other particular interests I might want to look into while we are "in country." Her focus on India's "soft power" was also welcome -- I'm very much looking forward to exploring some of its manifestations on the ground from which they originated.

I still am perhaps more tentative and apprehensive about this travel adventure than any other I have ever been on in years past. But the excitement IS building -- and Planet India has provided much of the anticipatory momentum I'm now experiencing.