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A state burial, as I understand it, is given to those individuals who
supposedly expressed the highest and most prized virtues of a nation.
A state burial, in my understanding, magnifies the buried person into
a legend, serving as an idealized embodiment of the DEFINING quintessential
character and IDENTITY of the nation.
What I cannot understand is: recent Hindu and Muslim nationalistic/religious s
stirrings (often spiteful and deeply bitter) could be interpreted (maybe
wrongly) as an identity crisis in India. From such an interpretative vintage,
the state burial of Mother Theresa becomes a bit puzzling to me. I could
understand that Mother Theresa's charitable and spiritual virtues resonates
with India's luminous tradition to exalt spirituality and charity towards
the poor. Yet from the identity angle, is Mother Theresa an embodiment of
the identity of the modern Indian---in relation to his/her caste, religion,
region, economic station in life, and role in the world community? Or would
Mother Theresa serving as an idealize "otherness", towards which the modern
Indian (not unlike most peoples in most other parts of this planet) beset by
lingering difficulties in the aforementioned categories (i.e. his/her caste,
religion, region, economic station in life, and role in the world community)
may identify and thus partially escape the psychological entrapment imposed
upon them in the real world.
On a different vein: is it good international public relations for India to
stage this state funeral for Mother Theresa. India, regrettably, does not
garner as much popular international media attention as India deserves---
especially positive ones. The business media is starting to channel somewhat
upbeat reports from Bangalore and various Indian commercial centers. Yet the
popular Western media and world media image of India remains mostly dubious.
The unspoken (and some times spoken) undertext of Mother Theresa's life is
that pervasive and entrenched poverty and socioeconomic ineffectiveness
characterizes Indian society. Is this the self-image that India wants to
project to the rest world. As an East Asian coming from a "face"-conscious
culture, I am charmed by India's apparent lack of self-consciousness but
very surprised by India's disregard of its international image. In the West's
and the world's public imagination, Indians traveling aboard would be viewed
not so much as coming from the most populous democracy on the planet or from
a nation with more engineers than France, but from that nation trapped in a
pathological socioeconomic quagmire---a most unfortunate misrepresentation and
false image.
Kainam Thomas Wong,
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