Who am I?

An article I read in mint prompted me to write this post.

The author expresses an inability to defend why the notions of "Indian Culture" as espoused by Sri Ram Sene and Shiv Sena are wrong or misguided. She feels that if we, the common (wo)man, as a polity define Indian culture through a set of qualities or adjectives then that will make us more equipped to deal with such "fundamentalist" behaviour. Predictably enough, "Indian culture" does not have a universal definition, and any attempt to create one will stymie its natural evolutionary process and in a perverse way, serve the fundamentalists' cause.

I must confess that the article prompted me to ask myself how connected I felt I was to Indian culture. My immediate reaction was that a person whose upbringing and background were more traditional than mine has more authority on the topic. But then, I am not any lesser an Indian than the next person. I might think in English and have my "roots" in a city that no longer knows what it stands for but what the heck, I wouldn't feel so at home anywhere else. 

We are the moderate majority, but we are also the fringe elements. Educated and qualified, we would rather spend our lives earning money and moving up on the income strata than making the country a better place to live in. As champions of the private enterprise, we consider the public sector and the government as a necessary evil. It's been this way for generations now. We are very happy in the cocoons of our lives, going to work, coming back to family, planning for the next big holiday or the next house or car. Who wants to tell a bunch of hooligans what Indian culture means to us? We have better things to do.