Strike two for the handshake

While the world is trying to solve the coronavirus puzzle, we in India had a phase of making ‘Indian culture’ great again as the handshake turned bad and the namaste gained momentum.

India has forever had a complex relationship with handshakes. For some, it’s not even an option while greeting others. There are quite a few though, who reserve a smirk for it, and associate it with a certain loss of ‘culture’ especially when any other gender than that of the male is involved in it.

Circa November BC (Before Corona), I extended my hand to a member of the male kin. He politely gave me the famous rebuttal in the form of a namaskaram, not forgetting to add, in “our” culture, we say namaskaram. Instead of telling him handshakes needn’t be culture-carriers but simply a gesture of affection, I introduced him to my husband. He immediately shook his hand. Curiouser and curiouser, I asked him what changed there. “With him, it’s okay,” came the golden reply. My husband’s “culture” being associated with Christianity, perhaps. Or, it could simply be about his gender.

Handshakes in India are not only culture-referenced a yawning number of times, they are also heavily gendered. Forever, men have given me the ‘lame’ handshake. Or, they would try to be cheeky like in the aforementioned instance. Sure, a handshake erodes the culture in question; being rude doesn’t.

A report by Indian Council for Cultural Relations (2016) backs this thought. It says Indian (urban) women don’t generally handshake. True, considering how more of us are taught that the folding of hands is a much better (read chaste) option than a “western” handshake—a culturally infused confusion that resonates with bad touch.

Before this takes a divisive turn into a Team Handshake vs. Team Namaste debate, let me clarify that namaskaram or namaste is a beautiful way of greeting someone—a gesture that says I welcome you and hold you close to my heart. But, are we so insecure to completely reject another form of welcome? To keep looking inward and refuting everything that ‘isn’t ours’ that we have created; if you take a closer look, you’ll see how selective this idea is even to its spokespersons.

One can only hope that the culture-upholders manage to live up to their ideals before the next century kicks in, bringing a set of new customs for the human race to adopt. Culture is, after all, the most dynamic phenomenon, as the last 200 years would tell you, unwittingly.