Place of the Modern in Indian Cultural Practice Gita Kapur World cultures have been ethnicised once again and they are now made to yield batteries of signs that are then reconstituted into an international, or universal culture. Through absent-minded benevolence the centre is maintained serving as it does cultural vested interests, while peripheral initiatives, national, regional, local interventions, seen as culture-specific, are assiduously appropriated for the sake of that higher universal purpose. But even in this overall local and international context of cultural pastiche it is possible to conceive of a counter-practice that resists political reaction based on the prerogative of still living traditions.
