The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c4.s1.1

c4.s1.1

To say that a society and its culture depend on tradition is as good as tautological. Tradition, therefore, cannot but share in the flexibility and adaptiveness of culture. It is not only permissive of change, it can even be seen to be the means to formulate and legitimize change. It is not necessary to revise the long-standing and largely inconclusive tradition-modernity debate and to argue once more the resilience and adaptiveness of tradition¹. Nonetheless "traditional society," if not a term of opprobrium, for all its nostalgic value, still describes a world seen as irrationally resisting change, a world without history other than aberration, decline, and final failure. This notion, though eroded by undeniable economic and technological progress, is still applied with much conviction to India, especially when it comes to her problems and shortcomings. India continues to be seen as the repository of hallowed but obstructive tradition. This seems especially to be the case in the matter of caste, which is considered to hold Indian society in its iron grip. It may be that the lingering notion of India's persistent traditionality owes much to the observer's feeling of having lost his own traditional moorings, which makes him cast around for the certainty of tradition. India thus becomes a screen on which to project our nostalgia for a world we have lost, even when we know that the good old times were not all that good.