This is the latest book I finished reading, indeed a good read. The book highlights the grim & very grave reality of INDIA. Poverty & Corruption being in the forefront.
Reading this book got me thinking about our culture & we (Indians) as a society. I am not being judgmental about everybody but talking about a certain section of society.
We really boast about our culture saying "we have the oldest culture full of traditions & values”. What values are we talking about??? I am evaluating our culture based on couple of practices that we were or are still following and they are as follows
1) India is a land where "certain sections of society were considered un-touchable" (how in-humane?? and I am pretty sure this is still being followed by many of our developing or developed Indians).Who the hell gave People the right to decide who belongs to lower status or higher status??? It sickens me to think about this.
2) Child Marriages!!!!(We were the front-runners in this and never ever had competition in this regard) Shocking isn't it??? But everybody in INDIA knows that, this is a fact.
3)"DOWRY" wins hands down, .I will put dowry in the simplest form. Way of begging or stealing money from a brides father in the name of marriage (btw we INDIANS, I guess, think marriage is sacred!!! Imagine this in a country where marriage is considered so sacred .I feel like laughing out loud).This is a huge price that the bride & her family have to pay to get married. Better the amount better the prospective bridegroom. This is something nobody in INDIA and INDIANS abroad can deny.
What is shocking is, even the well educated people (who have graduated from famous missionary schools, IIT's and IIM's) indulge in this horrible practice. (I don’t mean to say the guys who graduate from missionary schools, IIT’s and IIM's are saints).
Shouldn’t we be ashamed of this?
Moving on, the country is still divided based on religion, caste, region & language. There are not one but many instances to prove this point. For your reference, switch on any Hindi news channel post 11pm and you will understand what am I trying to convey.
There is a very clichéd statement that I keep hearing time & again. It is as follows “We respect elders “.Again, I am going to prove this wrong. How many times haven’t we disrespected someone elder to us on the road in a fit of rage???
The culture was never wrong. All our great scriptures never taught or preached us to indulge in all these shameful practices. We Indians (rather our ancestors) fooled around with it and voila we are unique in our own way. We were and are too rationale and worked around things to our convenience.
I am not cynical!!! However the book got me thinking about all this and I must say I am confused now as to whether we really have such great culture!!!!!
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ReplyDeleteFirst of all it was nice to see a post from you. But I am very dissatisfied with you point of view here. You cannot blame a culture for its past. Evolution always had its own pace and flaws. And why are we only to blame our India culture? Are the other races so Superior that they haven’t made mistakes at all??
ReplyDeleteIn you 1st & 2nd point you say that "certain sections of society were considered un-touchable", What about Americans weren’t they Racists, Was it the at all civilized to just treat someone so rudely on basis of their color, who gave them the right to so when it’s a Gods Creation (Speaking Spiritually). What about the Child Molestation cases of Hispanic and Latinos in the past, that’s pathetic (Kudos to Indian culture, they came up with a better alternative). Get your History Correct.
Regarding your 3rd point about to dowry, I defiantly agree to your thought to a large extent. But Dowry being worse is just not the idea to put blame on this culture, rather is the approach to Indians towards it. Let me get prove what I mean to say here by a small comparison b/w India and American Law System, Why is it that Americans proudly say long live America: As per ALS the girl to be bride has got full right of inheriting ancestral property in equality to the her brother before or after marriage but as per ILS this law of inheritance has been very freshly regularizes after the Dowry system coming into hype and limelight of discussion. Previously the girl was supposed to have no right over her ancestral property neither could they even think of claiming it coz the poor literacy rate maybe speaking hypothetically.
You talk about why are we divided on bases on “religion, caste, region & language” but isn’t this the sole beauty of living in a secular country. Diversification of language is even abundant in rest of the countries; let me make u aware that the international language accepted by every country is “English” which is given by Britisher. I suggest u need to have walk down the sub-urban parts of Europe you will have a good acoustic experience of hearing wide diversification in their English. Aren’t they like curator of this language? Please explain that? Than why crib about different languages that we have here which are just a child of the main manuscript of India ”Devnagri & Sanskrit”, Even Hindi too comes from it which is an Indian standard language accepted by government for all official documents.
What I am trying to say here is “at times it’s not always about the past being correct” but than the other way round something’s in this 21st Century need to be lead by example left by our ancestors too. We cannot blame a Culture on what wrong been done in the past. Rather we need to see where we stand now, how much have we changed for good?
Like to continue more but I would prefer on clearing your dilution toward Indian Culture as of now and stick to it.
Looks like sourabh my friend u have been offended greatly,,sorry about that friend. want to clear cpl of things , I ain't comparing our culture with others.As well I am talking about only the section of society that indulges in these practices and not everybody.For whatever good intentions dowry might have been implemented it sadly didn't serve the purpose and it turned out to be a menace.I am not blaming only past for it ,even the present generations are equally responsible.
ReplyDeleteps:talking about the certain section of society which indulges in this.
nice post azhar. looks like you've seriously vented out your frustration.first of all, these are but only a few of the monsters hidden under a decorative closet we have come to call and accept as the Indian culture.I wouldnt even term these things as cultural practices, which by definition have to be "cultured" practices. rather, these are practices which have stemmed out from an inherently flawed but arguably well-intentioned systems created thousands of years ago.If you dig deep, you will find that the purpose of caste system was to divide labour and create a fundamentally strong socio-political structure in the society.the idea was inherently flawed and such a system would not work,even with good intentions.through the erosion of time, the caste system had come to it's most disgracful peak,in the last century to this date.like Mr.Narayan Murthy said, India is probably the only country where people fight to be called backward.what a shame.
ReplyDelete@Sourabh Munal
Hi Sourabh, your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with azhar's opinion has very little bearing on the truth.I don't think azhar is blaming the culture because of it's past. He,me and everyone who is cynically intelligent enough to look at our ugly side have every right to blame our culture for it's past, present and future as well.when your pants are torn, you dont say -" well,everone around me also have torn pants,so why should I care?" instead,you sew your pants.other countries have made mistakes too, but the best countries in the world, are in a continous process of correcting themselves and that can only be done if more people voice out their angst and opinion like the one we see here.
I seriously don't have a clue what you are talking about the dowry part there.
and finally, azhar is talking about caste,religious,linguistic and regional "divide" in the most pejorative sense. like a person of one caste having a superiority complex over the other.He is not talking about the diversity. I like the diversity too, but the problem arises when people, instead respecting and learning from each other, fight over trivial things like caste,religion,language etc.
whatever may be the case, I think this whole Indian culture myth and the people who indulge in it are hypocrites. you cannot create a set of rules for people to live. culture, sadly, is being misconstrued as a being a set of rules which people ought to live by. culture is actually ever-evolving. what people are and how people live during a particular time, becomes part of the culture.however, you cannot live the same life and practice the same things as you have to adapt your lifestyle and practices to the changing society.thus culture is ever changing. I don't think there is anything to learn from our ancestors as nothing good ever came from them.
Thx nikhil ,, well said and I strongly agree with you here !!!
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