WASP's in Shillong

Shillong's Middle and Upper class lacks culture and it's a problem tied to it's Protestant roots. 

To begin with the Christian population of Shillong are seperated mostly into Catholics and Protestant. As mentioned in another post, there are clear ideological differences between the two denominations. But there's a lot of intermixing between them. However all groups, Christian or non-Christian of Shillong are equally guilty of the problem. A better way would be distinguish them by economic class.

One of the biggest distinguishing marks of the "culture in Shillong" is the presence of WASP or White Anglo Saxon Protestant Culture among the middle and upper class of Shillong. When one talks about WASP's, in Shillong I am not talking about race or religion or ethnicity but rather a culture or the imitation of a culture.

To understand what I mean you must know that the main Protestant sects in Shillong are very orthodox and fundemantalist forms of Christianity. Most of the Protestants sects except perhaps the Unitarians are similar.

WASP was a term coined in North America to describe the descendants of the early English Puritans who colonized the "New World". These Puritans were very conservative, rejecting entertainment and fine arts for simple living and hard work. As a result of the Protestant belief of Sola Fide these people were extremely merchantile and industrious and grew exceedingly rich. They dominated the social, political and economic landscape of the New World into the modern day. However due to their Puritan beliefs, they never developed any real culture for the most part. They had no idea of tradition, sentimentalism or history. They contributed very little to literature, theatre or the arts. They made very few memorable monuments. For a people, they simply lacked any deep or authentic culture that wasn't tied to their religion. Instead they formed shallow traditions or aped them from surrounding cultures to supplement their religious traditions. They were, put simply a very plain people despite all their wealth and power.

To be clear, I am in now way saying everyone is the same but there is a pattern of observable behaviour. There are plenty of exceptions to this vague generalisation.

What does this has to do with Shillong? The Christians of this city in the far corner of India have very deep ties to the Protestants of North America and around the world. American and European Protestants routinely visit and provide charitible donations along with spiritual, moral and intellectual guidance. Thus there is a sharing of ideas and beliefs between the two groups. The locals of the region have for the lack of a better word a primitive or younger culture. When the British arrived the Khasi tribes were still at the stage of pastoralism. They lacked the sophistication of complex urban societies. It's is natural for the less complex society to emulate some the behaviour of the more complex society and this is what happened when the British colonized the land of the Khasis. Missionaries followed suit and they began to convert people.

Fundementalist Protestants were the first to arrive. They promoted a more rigid rejection of other identities other than their brand of Protestant Christianity. What this means, is that, the people who converted to these fundemantalist sects came to accept less of their ethnic culture and accept more of the culture of the Protestant missionaries. This happened over a period of a hundred years. The result is that there is a very robust ideological and spiritual friendship between these people. This in turn gives rise to a culture of WASP's.

WASP culture in Shillong is very prevalent. They may not be ethnically or racially white, but culturally they behave very similar.

Some typical behaviour of these WASP's is the adoption of western accents, infact you could claim that English is their native language. They celebrate superficial holidays like Halloween or most absurdly Thanksgiving. They know very little of their ancestors history but know alot about American or British history. They are obsessed with commerce and money. They wear mostly western style clothing and when they do wear ethnic clothes, it's mostly as a fashion statement. They are very prejudicial. They very rarely mix outside their class or social group. They are very dismissive of lower class and working class culture. There's a competition of keeping appearances.

But beyond this, it can even be seen when WASP's try to partake in the various aspects of culture like the arts. They come with very little originality; often emulating the styles of western commercial artists. Despite living in a country of thousands of cultures with scenic beauty and ancient art and architecture spanning thousands of years; these people still cannot create any style of art or music influenced by any of it. Thus you can see this when people copy western music videos or paintings with themes from the west. To be clear I am not complaining about cover bands covering songs but rather how these bands rarely if ever infuse their own influence in these songs but instead try in near precision to copy the song. This often creates quite a large amount cringe worthy material. It can also seen in the decor of their homes or businesses, one of the most hilarious example of this aping of WASP culture in recent memory was in a cafe where a signed picture of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton hung on the wall of pictures celebrities. There was not one picture of any Indian or Asian or African on that wall, all were British or American. It's one thing to appreciate some western intellectual or celebrity but wholesale rejection of their own icons seems bizzare.

One of the most recent and popular examples that I saw of WASP-ishness was in the song and music video called "Done Talking". Strangely enough it won an award at the MTV European Music Awards in Europe in a category called Best Indian Act. Why does Europe Music Awards have an award for artists from one specific country not in Europe? Especially when there exists an Asian Music Awards? I have no idea but I suspect ratings. Anyways back to the point. The song I admit is very competently made. It has high production values for a video made by locals with a shoestring budget. It's showcases their talent and ingenuity The singers have brilliant voices. But song and video simply have no soul. Looking at the video there's no indication of where the video is shot or of the ethnicity of the singers. The lyrics mention nothing about where the video takes place or who these people are. If you didn't know better you would have thought they were some westerners singing in a European or North American city. To a lot of people this would be something to be proud of. But they shouldn't really. The best analogy to describe watching this music video is that its like eating a KFC burger. It tastes like all KFC burgers made anywhere on the planet. It's alright but compared to a well made burger at boutique cafe it's not that great or unique.

That's the sad part about it, you can see all the good ingredients in there. The talent of the production team and of the artists but they managed to come up with something so generic and shallow that it's culturally insignificant. This is WASP culture.

Shillong's middle and upper class is definitely in need of culture. The sad thing is you can see the vibrant culture underneath. Walking around one can see Graffiti depicting about local themes of corruption, hardship and abuse of power. The working classes celebrate vibrant and joyful traditional festivals with ancient dances and songs.

It shouldn't be that these cultures should remain the same; all cultures after all evolve. But whatever new cultures emerge there should atleast be an attempt by the artists to add to it using their own unique identity and history. One of the ways this can happen is when the people of Shillong abandon WASP culture and come up with something better.