Firstly, it is important to understand that the concept of culture for Pattanaik, “Culture is a reaction to nature, and this understanding of our ancestors is transmitted generation from generation in the form of stories, symbols and rituals, which are always indifferent to rationality”, so in this way, every distinctive culture has its own group of symbols, images and language referents which provide a sense of belonging and uniqueness to the individuals who live into the aura of a particular culture. This principle shows that each particular culture has its own way of understanding the world and as a result its particular point of view.
Pattanaik presents how this different angle on the appreciation of reality could bring subjective points of view depending on local values and this situation may modify the perception of what is right or not and the acceptation of this, “there is my world and there is your world, and my world is always better than your world, because my world, you see, is rational and yours is superstition. Yours is faith. Yours is illogical. This is the root of the clash of civilizations”. So this distance on the appreciation of reality is not so evident in a culturally unified society where most of the values are commonly shared by the citizens.
But in a world that is inevitably suffering the influence of globalization, where parameters from an unified world without the inclusion of local systems of beliefs have not been included in its development would tend to confront western and eastern values in its implementation. So Pattanaik exposes the concept of the clash of cultures in his culture, the one which is diverse, full of mythological meaning and the one that is emerging from internet and massive media content, “you see, this is what India is today. The ground reality is based on a cyclical world view. So, it's rapidly changing, highly diverse, chaotic, ambiguous, unpredictable. And people are okay with it. And then globalization is taking place. The demands of modern institutional thinking is coming in. Which is rooted in one-life culture. And a clash is going to take place, like on the banks of the Indus. It is bound to happen”.
Devdutt Pattanaik: East vs. West -- the myths that mystify. Taken from: https://en.tiny.ted.com/talks/devdutt_pattanaik
