JOIN USThe annual Venugopalswamy Krishna temple procession can serve as study material to understand the culture of Bengaluru, said Tulasi Srinivas, professor and anthropologist, Emerson College Boston.
Tulasi, daughter of renowned sociologist M N Srinivas, was delivering a lecture at the National Institute of Advanced Studies on Thursday.
“Bengaluru is a city of contrasts—with religious processions on one side of the coin and information technology on the other.
The City has been accommodating all aspects of life—there’s a lot of pain, poignancy, loss, and on the other side there are traditions and rituals. Bengaluru means different things to different people but one idiom that has persisted is the ‘swalpa adjust maadkoli’ attitude,” Tulasi said.
Bengaluru also lives by indigenous systems of meaning and philosophy, different from the Western philosophy, life and meaning systems. This comes out in the way the Malleswaram priests have developed the Venugopalswamy Krishna temple procession by giving it various facets. There is tradition and culture to bank upon, if one is tired of the modern narrative of excitement such as ‘mall culture’.
The anthropologist pointed out that Bengaluru was undergoing the burden of being described as an innovative city, especially in the wake of the information technology wave. “We have to understand what this innovation means and where it is heading.
Bengalureans are now most worried about crumbling infrastructure, rise in traffic problems, increasing pollution levels, etc. There is more to a city beyond these meaning systems and the search will have to be made in tradition for such meanings,” Tulasi said.