Changing world clashes with Indian traditions

how we live — By Bob Riel on February 16, 2009 at 4:40 pm

As globalization creeps into every corner of the globe, the traditional values of some cultures are bound to clash with the changing values and morals of a younger generation that has been exposed to a wider world. And so in India, when young women go out to a club after work, it offends the sensibilities of a more conservative segment of society that still believes in a world where single men and women don’t mingle over drinks in public. The International Herald Tribune has an interesting story on this clash of cultures within India.

A mob attack on women drinking in a college-town bar has set off the latest battle in the great Indian culture wars, uncorking a national debate over moral policing and its political repercussions, and laying bare the limits of freedom for young Indian women.

The latest Old versus New India hubbub began one Saturday last month when an obscure Hindu organization, which calls itself Sri Ram Sena, or the Army of Ram, a Hindu god, attacked several women at a bar in the southern Indian college town of Mangalore and accused them of being un-Indian for being out drinking and dancing with men…

Eventually, more than 10 members of the Sena were arrested, only to be released on bail in a week. Since then, they have promised to campaign against Valentine’s Day, which they criticized as a foreign conspiracy to dilute Indian culture, and they said they did not disapprove of men drinking at bars.

The conflict surrounding so-called pub culture in India set off nearly two weeks of shouting matches on television talk shows and editorial pages. Politicians have also jumped into the fray…

The debate comes as a new generation of Indian women steps out of the home for work or play in a rapidly expanding economy and finds itself having to negotiate old social boundaries, harassment and, sometimes, outright violence.