Form over function in the subcontinental psyche

There's an argument that goes as follows. The subcontinental man (and it's always a man) is the biggest lover of manuals. When he encounters an unknown circumstance he is unable to evaluate, rather than basing his judgments upon similar experiences and circumstances, he reverts back to the 'books' and bases his decisions on the wisdom on the ancients.  Sometimes that can take absurd forms.

The first point of dissent might be to note that the subcontinental man (the Indian man at least) is quite unlike the above description. He is generally resourceful, proactive, and gets things done, even if that means bending the rules or using avenues that no one else has ever considered before. The concept of 'jugaad' applies here -- he will get something done no matter what, however he can do it. This is at first look a contradiction to the above claim...unlike what we claimed, he does not reach out for the 'manual', if anything he is 'off the books'.

The claim however is that the 'manual' does not equal the rulebooks. To turn the argument around, the suggestion is that jugaad would be our character's choice on any circumstance, necessary or not, even if that meant a longer, more roundabout, and ultimately less-than-ideal approach. The claim is made about adapting to circumstances, not necessarily using an 'jugaad hammer' to nail everything in. When jugaad works, it works, when it does not, one's out of luck for it's not in the true spirit of 'adapting to circumstances', instead it's about hammering the same 'off-the-beaten-path' approach to every circumstance. The form (or the looks of) of 'adaptation' is more important, the claim is, that the actual outcome of it.

That was the context. Here's the real meat.

Where is the weight? By what form should we judge?[...]
[...]
The Vetala stories tell us of yet another thing: where to look for the case when we find ourselves in the world of the scale
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More than other peoples, the Indian has a need to live according to norms. Nowhere is the concept of the 'manual' in the sense of a collection of rules, so vital as in India.
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[...] The burglar breaks and enters by the rules of a 'manual for thieves' -- while working (for burglary is his work), he cites single paragraphs from his 'law book',  he follows the rules, he works by the book. We no longer possess this illicit handbook; we may doubt that it ever really existed. But a world like this, in which life's fulfillment is gauged and judged against norms, must everywhere produce cases. Indeed, a great number of the cases in circulation, and partly recognizable as such despite their closure, are of Indian origin.

The great King Bikramaditya (from our Bikram Sambat) makes the following judgment in a tale from Betaal Pachisi. The story is condensed for argument's sake, but it's worth reading in several translations and the commentary on them. I don't remember where I found the original commentary for it, though it was just yesterday.

A poor farmer has a daughter of marriageable age. Three wealthy, powerful men are interested. He can't say no to either, so they all hang around. The girl gets sick and dies of some disease. The first suitor makes a cottage over where she was burned, and lives there, to live with her last remains. The second suitor takes her bones to the Ganga and releases them there, to put her eternal soul at peace. The third suitor becomes an ascetic and roams the world. He encounters a book that can bring back people from the dead, steals it and brings it back to the poor farmers house. Using the spells in the book, he brings back the girl. Now that she's back, and we know how each of her potential husbands would have interacted with her, who should marry the woman?

That's the question King Bikram was asked by the haunted spirit. His argument was as follows.

The man who brought her back from the dead, gave her life, which is what a father does. Therefore he cannot be her husband. The man who took her bones to the Ganga and brought her eternal peace, did what a son does, therefore he cannot be her husband. The man who built a cottage on her remains and slept there all this time, slept with her throughout. That's what a husband does. Therefore he deserves to be her husband.

It is a decision difficult to reconcile with our worldview. The suitors' actions are not judged for what they are worth -- for their function -- but for what they look like if those strange actions had a correspondence in the existing social hierarchy. There's no rulebook that answers who should be husband, so our King maps the situation to a situation where the rulebooks do have a lot to say, and makes his judgment. Whether that's a fair one, not just under the microscope of modern cultural analysis, but even given the circumstances of the day and time, is a judgment left as an exercise for the reader.

Sources:

1. Simple Forms: Legend, Saga, Myth, Riddle, Saying, Case, Memorabile, Fairytale, Joke [1929]