Arsh Saini shares a thought-provoking piece that analyses the age-old belief that Indians are traditionally unromantic.
Finishing Pearl S. Buck’s heart-wrenching novel The Good Earth, I flipped over to the student notes. It provided, along with the glossary and character sketches, excerpts from various reviews of the novel over the decades. A rare critical one caught my eye:
“Romantic love is a false center of psychology to ascribe to the typical Oriental man or woman, reared in the traditional bondage to quite different ideals…it would not even be understood by an old fashioned Chinese wife.”^
I was dumbfounded by this disregard of the Eastern romantic culture and the haughtiness of the reviewer. Solemnly, the perception of family-oriented cultures lacking individual emotions and desires is not of the West alone, but ours too. Having read works from the Indian subcontinent, Middle East, and South East Asia, I couldn’t dismiss the vague similarity of cultures and traditions.