Cross-cultural Interaction: Various Responses

In our story of the tribal region of Lohiana State, the tribal people who got free elementary education from IIM adopted new aspects of dress culture before the rest of tribal people. They imitated the students of IIM more than other tribal men in their dressing and other culture. Since they had continuous interactions during their stay in the campus. A good number of tribal youth who often visited the market, where IIM students roamed around in the evening, also adopted new dressing patterns. Continuous interaction with the students of IIM in the market and youths' passion for novel things prompted them to adopt changes in their life style. However, the elder people of the tribal area who mainly depended on agricultural labours and hunting and gathering in forest were more traditional in life. Elder people had limited or little interaction with the students of IIM. Therefore changes had little effect among this portion of tribal population.

These new changes which were more fascinating for the youth among their friend circles were not similarly welcomed by their parents. Many of them defended these changes as they feared that such changes might cause fury of their deities and awkward results in their life. They directed their children to stick to their old customs, traditions and way of life. It created tensions and problems in their society. However, changes had been getting ground among local population although in a medium pace.

Such processes of cross-cultural interaction are common to every time and place. Each community living in a particular geographical area comes in contact with another community by various means. In our example ‘new educational institution’ is a mean for bringing cross-cultural interaction in practice. Similarly trade interactions, migrations, missionary activities etc worked as means for cross-cultural Interaction.