REAL WORLD THE POWER OF TRADITION

definitely isn't postmodernist

Muslim cultural critic ZIAUDDIN SARDAR asks us to rethink the concept of tradition - and points to the high-street curry house as an example.

IT has almost become a term of abuse. "Tradition" is a word most often associated with romantics, Luddites and chauvinists who want to keep us chained to history. The very mention of tradition sends shivers of terror through all those who carry modernist and postmodernist heads on their shoulders.

Modernity sees traditional societies as reactionary, living in the past. Tradition is therefore a major hurdle towards 'development' and 'modernisation'. The classic texts of development all argue that tradition must be abandoned, indeed suppressed where necessary, if 'backward' societies of the 'Third World' are to develop and 'catch up with the West'. And in the name of this progress, traditional cultures have been uprooted, displaced, suppressed and annihilated.

Postmodernists simply consider tradition to be dangerous; it is often associated with 'essentialism' - that is, harking back to some puritan notion of good society that may nor may not have existed in history.

There is some truth in the postmodern assertion that traditions can be essentialist. But this traditional essentialism is itself a product of postmodern times - where nothing seems to have any meaning, and everything changes rapidly and perpetually. In such circumstances, it is natural for people to hold on to those things that give meaning to their lives, that provide them with some unchanging sense of identity.

Traditions become essentialist in two ways. The first is when one becomes self-aware of belonging to a tradition, and attempts to live by it. Here, only a few features of the tradition are identified and insisted upon. The St. Andrew's society of Kuala Lumpur, for example, has identified Scottish country dancing as the essential element of Scottish tradition. To attend the St. Andrew's Annual Ball as a true Scot, you have to be able to demonstrate your proficiency at the dances, and your veneration for the mindset of the world according to Andy Stewart.

For Muslim minorities in Europe, to give another example, the female head scarf has become a cardinal element of Muslim tradition. So practices which were voluntary, and came naturally in the past, now become acts of conscious awareness.

This sort of assertion of tradition can, of course, be seen in reverse - as a loss of tradition, a decline of confidence in one's culture. One becomes conscious of one's breathing only when it becomes difficult.

As traditional societies begin to fear the onslaught of modernity and postmodernity, and the associated loss of tradition in their own lifetime or their children's, they begin to flaunt their traditions more openly and aggressively. Tradition becomes the marker of one's threatened selfhood in a mass society.

The second way to make tradition essentialist is to transform it into nationalist politics. Here 'the nation' becomes synonymous with 'authentic tradition', and political expediency shapes the contents of both. It is this form of essentialist tradition - often referred to as fundamentalism - that has produced so much violence and conflict in recent times.

What is fundamental about Islamic fundamentalism, for example, is that a romantic notion of Islamic tradition is essential to its vision of

the state. State and tradition are fused into a single identity. Simi

larly, the Hindu fundamentalists, who have in recent months nar

rowly won the election in India, equate a romanticised Hindu tradition with being an Indian. There is no place for other traditions and cultures, including other traditions within Hinduism, in their 'Hindustan' (the indigenous name for India).

But essentialist tradition is not tradition - it is traditionalism. Traditionalism is an ideology; and like all ideologies, it has fixed contours, functioning solely to secure a slice of political power.

Traditions, on the other hand, are dynamic; they are constantly reinventing themselves and adjusting to change. Indeed, a tradition that does not change ceases to be a tradition. But traditions change in a specific way. They change within their own parameters, at their own speed, and towards their chosen direction.

There is good reason for this. If traditions were to vacate the space they occupy, they would cease to be meaningful. When tradition is cherished and celebrated, everything that it finds laudable can undergo change. Such change is then meaningful, because it is integrated and enveloped by the continuing sense of identity that tradition provides. Furthermore, change can be a process of evaluation - a sifting of good, better, and best, as well as saying "under no circumstances!" These adaptations operate according to the values that the veneration of tradition has maintained intact.

CURRYING FAVOUR WITH TRADITION

IN Britain we have a good example of a very strong tradition - a tradition that has reinvented itself a number of times, without losing its basic ingredients. A tradition that has playfully used the notion of authenticity to relocate itself and, in the process, rediscovered its genuine self. I am referring to the tradition of Indian restaurants.

We have a long tradition of 'eating Indian' in Britain. There is at least one Indian restaurant in every high street. The tradition derives from the historic British craving for curries - a by-product of empire. When, around 1605, Sir Thomas Roe sought permission from the Mighal Emperor, Jahangir, to trade in India, he wanted to import a whole range of curries to Britain. Over the years, curry has become something of a fetish on these isles.

When Indian restaurants first emerged in significant numbers, during the fifties and sixties, they were firmly set in a colonial tradition. Even their names suggested their colonial status - 'Indian Curry House', 'Cox Bazaar' and 'Maharajah'. These names were designed to rekindle fond memories of the empire that had recently been lost. But they also suggested that the Indian restaurants, and the curries they served, were firmly at the bottom of the league.

Moreover, the colonial legacy meant that Indian restaurants were seen as a monolithic entity: all restaurants serving food from the subcontinent of India were Indian restaurants. 'Eating Indian' meant eating anything that could lay a loose claim to be from the Subcontinent. Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan; Punjabi, Mughal and South Indian; vegetarian and non-vegetarian - everything was 'Indian', and everything was 'curry'.

And curry is what the lads had when the pubs closed, and they were looking for somewhere to vomit their intoxication. For almost half a century, the Indian restaurants put up with the most uncouth, uncivil and ignorant behaviour from their white patrons.

They did, however, employ subtle strategies of resistance. When Indian restaurants were associated with colonial tradition, they resisted by simply exploiting the ignorance of the white patrons. Curry you want; curry you'll have: the same curry was served with different labels. So someone eating rogan gosht, chicken masala or prawn curry was eating exactly the same thing with different bits of meat! (Well, if you can't tell the difference between a curry and a bhindi, and in any case if you are going to smother the flavour with tons of chillies in the mistaken belief that all Indian food must be very, very hot, and drown it with gallons of beer...you deserve what you get!)

Then the reinvention of tradition began. The tandoor - the clay oven used for making nan and roti - was dragged from the Sub

continent and proudly placed in the high streets of Britain. Now,

"real" Indian restaurants did not serve curry, but food cooked in a

tandoor. The names changed too. Tandoori resturants had names

like 'Taj Mahal', 'Agra' and 'The Red Fort'. These invoked images of the rich history and tradition of Indian civilisation. The names were reclaiming history - a history that had been masked by British assumptions about the lingering presence of empire.

But loosening Indian restaurants from their colonial moorings was not enough. They had to be placed within their own diverse traditions of the Subcontinent. In the next phase of reinvention, a new dimension to the restaurant tradition was added. Varieties of Indian ethnicities were emphasised and the karahi - the Urdu/Hindi word for wok - became the symbol of authenticity. The best Indian restaurants not only cooked their food in a karahi - they also served it in a small karahi, demonstrating that genuine authenticity was being brought to the table!

The restaurant names changed once again - revealing not only an infusion of new ethnicities, but also a certain self-confidence that invites Indians to eat Indian, complete with their families (grandmothers and grandchildren welcomed). Names like 'Lahore Karahi', 'Ravi Kebab House', and 'Bombay Brassiere'.

Next, this reinvented tradition had to be relocated on a different plane. To achieve this, a totally daring innovation had to be made. Today, all authentic Indian restaurants boast balti cuisine. Indeed, balti cuisine has become so popular that many supermarkets now sell their own brand of ready made balti dishes.

But there is no such thing as balti cuisine; there never has been. A balti is a receptacle, a pitcher, a vessel, a pail of the kind once used by Jack and Jill to fetch water. In India it is put to numerous uses. It can be used to carry water for washing, taking a bath and may even be used to flush the old fashioned squatting lavatory. The roles and uses of the balti are as numerous and as diverse as Indian civilisation itself.

But one thing the balti has never been used for is to cook food. Maybe because it is too deep, too wide, too rough and too undisciplined for the preparation of such a varied and sophisticated cuisine.

The selling of balti as a traditional and authentic 'Indian' has been part of the relocation of Indian restaurants to a more august station. By the time the balti arrived, Indian restaurants had reinvented themselves as sophisticated purveyors of traditional Indian cuisine. So the humble balti was used to give a more elite representation to Indian restaurants - enabling "balti cuisine", of all cuisines, to sit among the cordon bleu pots-and-pans of western postmodern civilisation.

In reinventing their own tradition, both consciously and unconsciously, Indian restaurants demonstrate the life-enhancing qualities of tradition in general. They have demonstrated that traditions change and transform - and even adjust to market demands.

When we take the transformation of the balti's role, for example, we note that balti itself played no active part. In its native land it still does all those many things that it has done for centuries. But in its new incarnation, it has become a pot that competes in the marketplace, to satisfy the increasing need for "authentic" novelty.

Indian restaurants have also, in arriving at this culturally legitimated state, performed a genuinely authentic miracle: they have cosmopolitanised and humanised a very parochial and sanitised people, the British. And as they got rid of the flock wallpaper, they discovered their true selves.

In 1998, restaurants from the Indian subcontinent have adopted names that trumpet their authenticity - signifying a certain earthiness, a self-confidence of having arrived. The names now incorporate Urdu/Indian words: 'Jalabi Junction', 'Cafe Laziz' and 'Karahi Master'. The cooking space in many of these restaurants, whether upmarket or more humble, is often part of the dining experience. This provides a tradition-based assurance - both that the food is freshly cooked, and that there can be a direct and tactile relation

ship between the hand that cooks, and the hand that eats.

CHANGING, YET REMAINING YOURSELF

WHAT is true of Indian restaurants in Britain is true of traditional cultures everywhere. The trouble is that outside observers, those who witness or even participate in the transformation, seldom appreciate that such subtleties represent real changes. So far as British society is concerned, it has just become more familiar with the lexicon of Indian food - as it was and always will be.

The trouble with understanding tradition accurately - that is, as an essential mechanism that permits meaningful change - is that its changes are invisible to the outsider. Therefore, observers can go on maintaining their modern or postmodern distaste for tradition - irrespective of the counter evidence before their very eyes. The contemporary world does provide opportunity for tradition to go on being what I believe tradition has always been - that is, an adapting, changing force. The problem is that no amount of adaptation, however much it strengthens traditional societies, actually frees them from imperialistic perceptions - that is, from perceptions which ensure they are marginal, misunderstood and misrepresented. It does nothing to dethrone the concept 'Tradition' as an idee fixe, a nervous obsession, for western society.

There is an unholy triple alliance between traditionalism (tradition as understood by fundamentalists and nationalists), modernity and postmodernism. They all have a vested interest in laying claim to what actually constitutes tradition, and how it should and should not operate. True, each holds a different view of its meaning and content. But they are unanimous in one point: tradition is fixed, immutable.

Their response to its challenges is to deprive it of its power; abolish it; or mock, deride and demean it as the implacable enemy. This triple alliance is a potent force. Each party knows exactly what it wants: control. The control they continue to wield is bad for all concerned, as the record of their activities here, there and everywhere amply demonstrates.

So the time has come to find a new, humane ally. To make common cause with the real face of tradition. The last best hope for a sane future is to lay hold of what traditional societies have: the adaptive ability to change, yet remain themselves. The only effective antidote to ethnic cleansing - for that is exactly what suppression of tradition amounts to (and the triple alliance are all ethnic cleansers in their own way) - is to embrace traditional pluralism.

Traditional pluralism is the apparently frightening premise that there is more than one, sustainable, sensible, humane and decent way to resolve any problem; and that most of these problems can be solved within traditions.Traditional pluralism is a mark of common respect we are called on to pay to each tradition, in a world full of diverse traditions; it is the basic idea that we might just know what is best for ourselves.

Traditional pluralists hold that inventiveness, ingenuity, enterprise and commonsense are integral to all traditions; and that every tradition, if given the opportunity, resources, tolerance and freedom, can adopt to change and solve its own problems, in ways that they find satisfactory.

So employing the traditional-society option is a new way of arriving at participatory democracy - in a most liberal fashion.

Opting for traditional pluralism is no instant panacea. It is a complex struggle to unpack all we have been force-fed for centuries. It replaces our accpetance of being an anonymous cog in a reliable system, with the need to discover who we are. It means the willingness to select things that are meaningful, and to be accountable for the meanings they are capable of bearing, warts and all. At the same time, we must strive to employ what is valuable in our identity, as the means to transform ourselves into something better.

An intelligent appreciation of tradition puts us all on the spot - facing the same problems, but with different equipment and circumstances, in which we can find our own solutions.

Ziauddin Sardar is the author of 'Cultural Studies for Beginners' (Icon Books, #8.99)