SoCultures Magazine 2018 SoCultures Magazine November 2018 | Page 14

SoCultures November 2018
India & Russia
How can we make our young generations more culturally sensitized?
First of all, we in India, have to show greater respect for other cultures and points
of view. It’s India’s traditional openness towards new ideas and our ability to
absorb the best of what the world has to offer that led to the growth of great ancient
civilizations here. India is growing more and more insular every single day. It’s
high time that we thought more global. Let school children learn foreign languages
from primary school, expose them to exchange students from other countries, help
them cultivate a deep interest in both India and the rest of the world. Bring in
foreign teachers and encourage our children and youth to learn what the world has
to offer.
What really inspired you to start a never-ending voyage to understand the
Russian soul?
I was partly raised in the United States and knew very little about Russian culture.
As a child, I always equated Russia with communism and after the USSR
collapsed I didn’t know what to think of Russia. It was only when I met a highly
cultured and spiritually evolved Russian diplomat at the Russian Consulate in
Mumbai in 2001 that I began to develop a deep interest in Russian culture. This
diplomat, who could speak flawless Hindi and very good Tamil, introduced me to
the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Nikolai Berdyaev. I can never express
enough gratitude to this diplomat for the journey that he set me on. Seventeen later,
I am still on this voyage of discovery.
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