I vaguely said to my friend: “I
think we should ban all kinds of regional meetings”. We were going to
‘Tarangini’, a meeting of all the telugu-speaking people in IIT Roorkee.
He shot back: “Are you mad? Aren't you proud of
our telugu culture. You probably have forgotten the roots where you came from”.
I didn’t know what to say. Did I
really forget my roots? Obviously NO! I really don’t have any words to describe
the awesomeness of a telugu padyam in my school text book, written by the great
poets of telugu literature. The splendidness of an Andhra-style dhoti and sari
is next to nothing. I still can’t compare any kind of food item in the world to
the home-made Gongura Pachadi eaten
with hot rice and ghee. The artistic, spiritual, philosophical and intellectual
wealth is our heritage, our culture.
“What do you really mean by
telugu culture? Aren’t we all children of Mother India? Why do you want to
gratify your own culture when in essence it’s nothing but a part of greater Indian
culture? Every region has its own cultures and traditions. Now, does it really matter
in this remote part of northern India, whether you are a Telugu, Tamilian, or a Bengali ?"
“Shut up man! Every community
celebrates their own regional meet. Why not ours?"
“There you go! In effect, the meet
was only supposed to be a platform for people of a common region to get to know
about each other. Unfortunately, regional meets, it appears to have become
meetings, intended to boast about the characteristics of their regions. Being a
true Indian in my sense is to be a great global citizen."
We stopped the discussion there
and I was lost in further thoughts.
Most of us only talk about
preserving Indian culture. What do we have to do to transform our society into a better society?
Hardly do we think or do anything about it. Let us examine our inter-personal
behaviour. In a place where it is irrelevant and unnecessary, we bring caste
into our discussions and decisions. In fact most of the political organizations
and even cinema-idol fan clubs are all rife with caste-politics. When do we
realize that being a human being is more important than being a Hindu or a
Muslim or a Christian?
What else have we forgotten in
glorifying our culture? While in scriptures we treat a woman to be an equal
half of a man, in practice, a modern-day woman can hardly dare to venture into
the night in Delhi or Mumbai or in our own Hyderabad without thinking about any
kind of crime committed against her. Birth of a girl child is still a taboo.
Majority of bride-grooms even today, take dowry before marrying a girl. I was
surprised when I heard from some of my own friends that they are willing to
take dowry for their marriage. Forget about the pressure from parents or
relatives, as educated citizens aren’t we supposed to raise our voice against
dowry system.
It is one thing to claim great
moral and cultural heritage and quite another thing to live up to it with pride
and dignity. No country is perfect in policies and their enforcement. There are
good things and not-so- good things about all the cultures. Professionally, we
Indians have done remarkably well in all kinds of fields in all the corners of
the world. Should we sit down and boast about our ethnicity or strive to make
our country a better place to live? First step in the direction would be to pause
and think about these issues.
Here is a poem of Ravindranath Tagore that inspires me:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow
domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary
desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and
action…
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
