We Indians have been around for thousands of years, watching empires rise, fall, clash, die change. Through it all, we have kept adapting to new realities, dramatically different circumstances, craziness of every shape, size, colour, density. We have chewed the cud for aeon's on millions of ideas and ideologies, indigenous, imported and imposed and survived, often thrived. And now we seem poised to take a giant step forward to a place in the world that we perhaps never inhabited before, or vacated many centuries ago. And clearly, it's because of the way we are.
First, Indians are patient, infinitely patient. We can out wait any other race on the planet, with the possible exception of the Chinese. We seem to be genetically programmed with an alarming amount of patience. From the hermits of legend whose tapasya (meditation) went on for so long that ants made built hills over them, to hundreds making themselves at home on a railway platform with improvised mats, snacks and cards as they wait for the train to arrive eight hours behind schedule, it's almost as we can calmly outlast time itself. It is impossible to decide whether this is good or bad, but in the world as we know it , it's perhaps a useful trait .it has helped us outlast foreign invasion, pogroms, hundreds of varied and strange regimes and every sort of catastrophe. We have defeated them with patience and equanimity.
And since we have lived every day of our history with so many different ideas and opinions swirling around us, we can deal with and accept contradictions and fuzziness better than any other people on this planet. We are a collection of such varied ethnic and social groups that if we didn't develop this ability, we all would have certainly gone barking mad (a billion barking mad people!). Some of us find it sacrilege to eat anything extradite from animal, the rest of us eat anything that moves, swim or flies. Some of us go completely naked, some of us cover ourselves from head to toe with only our eyes n hands visible to the world. Religious fundamentalism, secularism (of which, again, there are many varieties) and atheism live side by side. Naturally, then, we understand that there can be infinite number of belief systems, of different levels of validity and truth, and we can understand those belief systems better than most people. This is surely one if the key reasons why, after globalization was thrust on to us, we have been able to navigate the new world with confidence, and with success.
Which, of course, doesn't mean we don't argue. We are one of the most argumentative nations of the world, from street corners to corporate boardrooms and the corridors of the highest political power. But this argumentativeness also co-exists-at worst, in uneasy peace – with our acceptance of the innumerably of ideologies. No wonder currently India is destined to have coalition governments at the centre for more than a foreseeable future.
Add to that our natural ingenuity, the ability to find nifty solution or a short cut through everything in life. The common man uses it every day to make life easier, get things done. Businessmen have used and still do to cut deals, give their way, whether it was license raj that ruled, or blow hot blow cold liberalization. And our politicians can't do without it.
This natural ingenuity, combined with innate cunning (remember, Chanakya was around 1800 years before Machiavelli) is perhaps westerners often seem naive to us. They appear to take too many things at face value, they think that when we say "Yes," it means yes, and not the beginning of CONVOLUTED NEGOTIATIONS:" Yes, perhaps we can consider that, but we think we deserve to get a better price." Our minds have been born complex and devious. We think simultaneously at several levels, and we can hold several thoughts in our mind at the same time – thought streams that can be parallel, converging or even clashing. We can shift between Uriah Heep, Micawber and David Copperfield without missing a beat.
All of this doesn't mean we are BAD people; we are just, well, COMPLICATED, and possibly think more than most other people do. Which could be a competitive edge. Since independence we have steadily gained what we had lost: confidence. Indeed as seeing ourselves as inferiors too much of the rest if the world, we have progressed in much of the last 15 years, to gain enormous self-confidence, perhaps even overconfidence. We are ambitious without the baggage of the past.
But surely this overconfidence can be forgiven. India and Indians have come an enormous distance since dawn of time, without forsaking democracy or secularism, despite unfortunate deviations. We will surely be able to figure out whether it is overconfidence or not. We may be complicated, contrary, argumentative, infuriating, but we are also hard-nosed and realistic people. As a race, WE ARE EXPERIENCED !!!
