Have you ever been in a cross culture? If yes then what I am about to say, perhaps, is nothing new to you; if no then, probably, here is something which you ought to treasure. I often wonder on the definitions of culture given by many different (cultural) people. Looking around the present world stuck in a sloppy muddy place of so-called ‘war on terror’ and recalling some of the deadliest so-called ‘cultural revolutions’ which the world has witnessed in recent history, it simply makes me feel that culture can be more poisonous than religious extremism and jingoistic nationalism, because culture is the most diversified stuff anybody can think of.

If every diversified social group sticks onto its own culture in an extremist manner then I see a world which is no different from the worst hell of fire and flames. No doubt, culture is an integral part – and probably the most important aspect – of any human civilization. Unfortunately, it takes no time for liberal people to criticize what they term as ‘religious extremism’ but I have never met or heard of a single person criticizing what I term as ‘cultural extremism’ – strange enough!

However, when the question of conflicts and extremism arising from culture (apart from religion) was put to one of the guest lecturers at my university, ‘Unity’ declared Dr. Hun Y. Lye (assistant professor of Religious Studies at Warren Wilson College, North Carolina, USA) ‘should be emphasized in diversity, not in ONE’. Thanks goodness. I was relieved because to me this statement was more of a preventive measurement than a solution to the arising of conflicts and extremism instigated by culture.

We all are taught to think that the more ancient our culture is the better it is. ‘Ancient’ said Professor Charles Willemen, the Vice Rector for Research and Graduate Studies of my university ‘is not necessarily good’. ‘If everything ancient is good at all times and at all places’ he further remarked ‘then we would be behaving like our ancestors – which we are not!’. I believe that culture, no matter how great it is, always has room for further improvement and even replacement if the need be. People have often been termed barbarians and uncivilized just because their so-called culture is backwardly low. People have been and still are being despised and discriminated against in the name of culture. Unlike religious and political injustices, cultural injustices are less known to us. Could it be that cultural injustice has no footing is out society? Well, I leave the answer for everyone to explore.

Cross cultural dealings are so trivial that people hardly take notice of them. They hardly realize that a cross cultural environment has jokes, funs, knowledge and even dangers to offer. These are something that we take for granted. It’s easy to hurt another than saying sorry. It’s easy to say sorry in words but tough it is to reflect the heart on the words. You may often hear people saying ‘why are so angry with such a simple stuff?’ to the very person who has been hurt. But we never know that that ‘simple stuff’ carries many things.

This reminds me of an incident happened in my class when I was in Class-V. A girl named Padma stood up in the middle of the class and asked, ‘can anybody lend me an extra pen? There is no ink in my pen’. Everyone was silent. Then suddenly a boy (I forgot his name), whose naughtiness followed by stubbornness was legendary, shouted out quite impatiently, ‘why haven’t you brought your FATHER’S PEN?’ All but Padma in class seemed to have enjoyed by throwing out a noisy laughter at this simple yet nasty sentence. As is the case, the poor girl expressed her anger by crying which she stopped only after getting an unwilling apology from the boy – an apology which was made after repeated demands. I still don’t understand why it was so difficult for that boy to say ‘sorry’ to the person whom he has hurt deep down her little heart in the first place. Yes, it was a joke but jokes for many sensitive and emotional people are hard to bear. Do we realize that? For most – no.

Trying to imitate the accent of a cross culture can often lead to jovial misunderstanding. Knowing that the Thai people pronounce the English ‘P’ as ‘B’ and ‘B’ as ‘P’, once when I was interacting with a group of secondary high school students, they asked me how many languages I knew. I said ‘about four to five’.

Then wanting to know whether they knew or understood the Pali language (an ancient Indian Prakrit language in which the Buddhist Holy Scriptures are written and is used as the religious language in Buddhist South and South-east countries), I asked them trying to retain my Thai accent, ‘Do you know ‘Bali’?’. At first, all of them were looking at each other’s face – confused! Then I heard a girl whispering to her neighbor who was drowned in a deep sea of thought, ‘It’s Bali – the city in Indonesia’.

My goodness. It took me another couple of minutes to correct them that it was not the Indonesian Bali City that I was talking about. My correction was of course received with an endless laughter. No doubt, sometimes being in the midst of a cross culture can be of more practical fun! However, one also should not forget to be more careful and selective when in the midst of a cross culture lest unintended comments can lead to serious cross cultural misunderstanding and imaginably potential danger too, as in the case of two of my newly arrived Bangladeshi friends. They, memorizing a few Thai words for a simple conversation, went to the town and got lost in the midst of the crowded town (note that you will have to move heaven to earth to find an English signboard or billboard in Thai cities). So they approached a traffic police officer to ask their way.

Introducing themselves as farang (foreigners), one of them said, ‘Pasa thai mai di’ meaning ‘Thai Language is not good’. Apparently what he wanted to convey to the officer was ‘Pasa thai mai ru’ (we don’t know Thai language). Now imagine the undesirable consequences of hurting people in a cross culture. Thai people are generally well-known for their strict patriotic nationalism. To say such even unintended negative things about Thai nationalism is only to undermine one’s own image as a farang (note that officially, a farang is termed as ‘alien’ not so much as ‘foreigner’ – good enough!).

My own experience has made me believe that a little unnoticed insensitive comment in a cross culture can be even more devastating than engaging in an open argument. Generally, higher academic institutions like colleges and universities are supposed to be the places where receptivity – willingness to listen to and accept new ideas and suggestions – plays the vital role. But unfortunately, cross cultural sensitivity often violates this principle. In my last academic year, an incident sprung from cross cultural sensitivity in the absence of receptivity is worth mentioning in this context. One of my lecturers, who was of a Malaysian national, remarked in a philosophy class of various nationals ‘I am saddened at the fact that some of the South and Southeast-Asian countries like Bangladesh, even Sri Lanka, Cambodia…are poor’.

I, being a Bangladeshi national myself, felt uncomfortable with his (I won’t say sensitive) remark mainly because I doubted whether the lecturer knew all the ambiguities encompassed in the word – poor. I was far from being got insulted or hurt, though. Nevertheless, a couple of days later, I was surprised to learn that one of my classmates had written a letter to the College Highest Administrative Body urging them to remind all the lecturers/professors/tutors not to make sensitive statements in classes. What made me more surprised was that that student does not even belong to any of the countries which were termed ‘poor’! Later on however, the lecturer defended his statement by saying it was ‘not his intention to insult the nationals of any country whatsoever’.

But I will have to admit here that being in the midst of a cross culture, the benefits are many while dangers are seemingly less. First, it teaches the talkative carefree people to watch their tongues when in a cross culture. Second, if you want to avoid being misunderstood or hurting others then the foremost goddamn thing is to adjust yourself to the local culture by learning the language and by acquiring some knowledge on the local cultural values. However, the most essential factor leading to cultural misunderstanding is – language. Recently, I was outing in the market with a friend. He wanted to withdraw some cash from the Siam City Bank for another friend but none of us knew the way. So we showed the passbook in which the name of the bank is written in Thai to a security guard of a market and asked our way signaling with our hands that we cannot speak Thai and cannot find our way. He looked at us and we looked at him back (we were mistaken as Thais due to our complexion). Then I could sense that he mistook us as a couple of dumb fellows when he, with an indefinable smile on his lips, frantically started pointing the direction in sign language, which I must admit that neither my friend nor I understood.

Another thing to be noted here is that even speaking one’s own language in a cross culture sometimes can convey misunderstanding to the other party. This is something like the Bengali saying ‘ek desher buli, arek-desher gali’ (technical meaning: a good word of one country can mean a bad word in another country). When I was in Sri Lanka a senior friend of mine told me of his cultural tragedy. He newly arrived and was accompanying his temple abbot, a senior Buddhist monk to a public function. On the way, the abbot asked him, ‘what you call this in your language?’ pointing at his hand fan. ‘Pakha’ (Bengali word for hand fan) replied my friend. ‘What?’ asked the abbot widening his two black eyes. He repeated ‘pakha’. The abbot felt so insulted that he couldn’t get on well with my friend anymore. Apparently what my friend failed to realize was that the Bengali word ‘pakha’ means ‘penis’ in Sinhalese!

When I came to Thailand I never used the word ‘pakha’ lest it would mean a different meaning in Thai but interestingly pakha in Thai means ‘pen’. However, one of my friends here had to change his name ending in ‘…moy’ (Bengali word for full) because ‘moy’ in Thai means ‘penis’!

Generally, different cultural people make no second thought in pointing out ‘weaknesses’ of another culture. People do not understand that we all are different, mentally, socially, culturally and geographically – and this is beauty. Our needs and instincts are varied. What is common in us all is that conscience thing called – humaneness. So it’s indeed unfortunate that we make comments about people based on culture. Back in 1999 when I was outing with my elder brother to a shop in downtown Dhaka, I really felt hurt when the shopkeeper commented, ‘I heard that people in those hills (referring to the tribal people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts) eat humans. Is it true?’ ‘No’ replied my brother. ‘We do not eat humans but we do eat beasts in human-disguise’ added my brother giving him a pathetic smile. Later I asked my brother why people think something like that about the CHT tribal indigenous people. The answer was ‘because we are different’. I, who was only a 13 year old boy then, simply couldn’t content myself with this answer. Why do people have to think something untrue about people simply because they are different? What is wrong in being different? I am yet to find answers to these questions.

Nevertheless, very often irresponsible comparison of people of different culture can be unfair too. As par my academic requirements, I had to do an extensive fieldwork on my anthropological paper. A lecturer who was called in from another nearby university accompanied me as my translator and interpreter. As I was interacting with a group of villagers I told them how difficult it was for me to live in Thailand without knowing the local language. Then they asked whether I had the same problem in Sri Lanka. I said no because ‘in Sri Lanka even the beggars on pavements’, I continued without being sensitive to cultural feelings, ‘can speak English!’. After saying this I felt embarrassed because their facial expressions were telling me that I was insensitive. And indeed yes. I should not have put these hardworking villagers lower than the beggars; an insensitive comparison indeed!

In cultural matters, we all can be as protective as an egg-laying hen. Nobody wants to reflect one’s own culture negatively, no doubt culture is imperfect. When I was writing my fieldwork report to be submitted to my university, my Thai translator, who also acted as my supervisor made sure that I did not report anything negative about Thai culture by going through my draft again and again. She edited all my controversial and critical reporting points. By the time the final draft copy came out, it was only a piece of hymn about Thai culture. It was no surprise because on my first day on the field I knew she knew that I would be critical in my reporting, which is why she tried her best to provide me the best side of Thai culture. However may be by mistake I was taken to the verandah of a small hut, which I guessed was the village alcoholic hut, to meet a few villagers there. Out of curiosity I asked her looking around the surrounding, ‘are the villagers here allowed to take alcohol?’ ‘Do you want me to translate this too?’ she asked me back with a pitiful smile. I knew why she was hesitating to let me know the truth and she also knew what my comments would be if I was provided with an answer.

Anyway, religion is a personal matter, so is culture and culture is one of the most sensitive subjects. The best way to avoid any cultural clashes of hurting and misunderstanding is not to claim our culture as THE BEST CULTURE. I believe we can best represent our respective cultures by being friendly and open to all cultures. Every culture, no matter how small or great, has something to give and something to take. I find the world most beautiful with all its varied cultures, great religions and people of varied races, nations and traditions.

The Writer is an undergraduate research student, Thailand. Email:  mointawla@hotmail.com