Friday, June 17, 2005
Brown is brown
Sajit over at Sepia Mutiny makes an excellent post on Conde Nast Traveller's article on driving in India :
2. The requisite mention of the "Indian head shake," check. To be fair, Wilkinson describes it as "a vague cock of the head." I think we should formally rename it here as the South Asian head shake because I know they do it in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka as well.
I have been somewhat surprised at these interpretations of the South Asian head shake. I mean, get over it, folks. It is just somebody shaking his or her head. I found this in the second paragraph of the first chapter of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Hinduism" (I must add that the book seems to be a pretty decent introduction to Hinduism, at least from what I have read so far) :
Here in the West we see things as either true or false, black or white, animate or inanimate - you're either logged or you're logged off. But when I asked one of my Hindu companions a straightforward question, and she shakes her head in that characteristic way that means both yes and no, my Western mind shrugs in defeat. For Hindus, life is multidimensional, and to nail things down to yea or nay is to miss the bigger picture.
First, this doesn't seem to have anything to do with Hindus. Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh seem to shake their heads this way too. Interpreting it in terms of notions of simultaneous truth and falsehood would be a mistake.
Second, I was initially puzzled about these interpretations of Indian or Hindu logic. I was even at one point wondering if people were trying to understand this in terms of a formal system that is complete, but not consistent. In other words, a system where statements may contradict each other, but where every statement can be proved. But I have serious reservations about notions of a completely different logical universe that somehow Indians alone live in. I have lived in India long enough to know that this is just somebody shaking their head differently. In India too, black means black, and white means white, and brown means brown, and you better believe this, 'your credit card has been charged' means 'your credit card has been charged' :)
Previous posts : 1, 2, 3
2. The requisite mention of the "Indian head shake," check. To be fair, Wilkinson describes it as "a vague cock of the head." I think we should formally rename it here as the South Asian head shake because I know they do it in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka as well.
I have been somewhat surprised at these interpretations of the South Asian head shake. I mean, get over it, folks. It is just somebody shaking his or her head. I found this in the second paragraph of the first chapter of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Hinduism" (I must add that the book seems to be a pretty decent introduction to Hinduism, at least from what I have read so far) :
Here in the West we see things as either true or false, black or white, animate or inanimate - you're either logged or you're logged off. But when I asked one of my Hindu companions a straightforward question, and she shakes her head in that characteristic way that means both yes and no, my Western mind shrugs in defeat. For Hindus, life is multidimensional, and to nail things down to yea or nay is to miss the bigger picture.
First, this doesn't seem to have anything to do with Hindus. Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh seem to shake their heads this way too. Interpreting it in terms of notions of simultaneous truth and falsehood would be a mistake.
Second, I was initially puzzled about these interpretations of Indian or Hindu logic. I was even at one point wondering if people were trying to understand this in terms of a formal system that is complete, but not consistent. In other words, a system where statements may contradict each other, but where every statement can be proved. But I have serious reservations about notions of a completely different logical universe that somehow Indians alone live in. I have lived in India long enough to know that this is just somebody shaking their head differently. In India too, black means black, and white means white, and brown means brown, and you better believe this, 'your credit card has been charged' means 'your credit card has been charged' :)
Previous posts : 1, 2, 3
