We are happy to announce a new column on Life and Culture. It is universally recognised that culture plays a significant part in our individual lives, as well as in national and international discourse.

The revolutionary philosopher Karl Marx underplayed the role of religion, and by extension culture, in nation-building. He gave primacy to economics as the key determinant of personal and public life. “Religion is the opium of the masses,” he said. Given Marx’s intellectual influence, world political thinking can almost be divided into three phases: before Marx, during Marx, and post-Marx.
With the decline of Marxism and the fall of Communist parties across the world, culture has bounced back as a central factor in social and political life. Placing culture at the heart of how we build nations and conduct international relations is now the big challenge. To unpack it, we must understand culture — its beauty and its burden. Culture is colour, flavour, and variety. As the English poet William Cowper wrote in 1785 in The Task: “Variety’s the very spice of life that gives it all its flavour.”
In the 1990s, with the global proliferation of McDonald’s, there was widespread resentment against the “McDonaldisation” of world cultures. I recall Lord Bhikhu Parekh, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Hull, writing to the US Congress in protest. His argument was simple: this was not just about taste.
A packet of potato chips at McDonald’s costs more than a kilo of potatoes that can feed a whole family. It was an assault not only on local food habits, but also on local livelihoods. The taste may appeal to young palates, but the nutrition and value are no better than what local communities already had.
The burden culture brings to national political life is more complex. I define culture as a process: an activity repeated over time becomes a habit. Habits over a period become our constitutive culture. Cultures over years, even centuries, become a civilisation. Culture consists of religion, food, clothes, shelter, caste — a uniquely Indian social practice — language, ethnicity, gender relations, and other diversities. By themselves, these are not problems.
The problem arises when they harden into identities, and when multiple identities come into conflict. That is when culture becomes a burden for governance. The challenge then is to reconcile multiple identities by transcending them in the right context.
Let us have a practical tool for managing multiple identities. Every individual carries more than one identity. Let me use myself as an example. I have at least seven: Man- gender identity, Odiya-linguistic identity, Hindu-Christian - religious identity, Brahmin - caste identity, Professor/Journalist - professional identity, Social Democrat - political-ideological identity, Indian - national identity.
I use each in its relevant context. In Delhi and Agra I speak Hindi or English, not Odiya. Abroad, I am Indian, not Odiya. I discuss ideology only in political forums. This is how it must work: transcend one identity and embrace another as context demands. It is impractical to ask people to give up any identity.
There are two kinds, ascribed identities - gender, ethnicity, caste. You are born into them. Acquired identities — religion, nationality, profession, language. You can change them.
Governance across the world must deal with both. Faulty handling leads to friction, conflict, even violence. The wars in Ukraine and in West Asia are, in large part, identity conflicts. Russia claims Ukrainians as part of the Russian race, which Ukrainians reject. In West Asia, it is a contest over land and religious heritage between Jews and Muslims.
This brings us to Samuel Huntington’s warning in The Clash of Civilizations. In a 1992 lecture and a 1993 Foreign Affairs article, the American political scientist argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures and civilisations.
Huntington’s thesis finds echoes today. But it can be countered — by drawing on the social and political goods within each culture, by building scriptural bridges, through interfaith practice, and by accepting multiculturalism as a fact of life in a globalised world of large-scale migration.
What this column will do? This column will draw on cultural assets from across the world, mainly from India. How do these assets help economic exchange, which drives international relations?
How do they aid political diplomacy, which is the key to world security? How do they strengthen people-to-people relations, which are essential for international solidarity?
The column will also explore mechanisms and resources to fight the negative interpretations of culture, the ones that divide rather than unite. Because life without culture is dry. And culture without reflection is dangerous.

Email:-------------------------dr.dkgiri@gmail.com