.......but are we really cultured?

Few countries in the world have such an ancient and diverse culture as India's. It is cultural variety which is a special hallmark of India. Its physical, religious and racial variety is as immense as its linguistic diversity. In India, religion is a way of life. It is an integral part of the entire Indian tradition. For the majority of Indians, religion permeates every aspect of life, from common-place daily chores to education and politics. Common practices have crept into most religious faiths in India and many of the festivals that mark each year with music, dance and feasting are shared by all communities. Each has its own pilgrimage sites, heroes, legends and even culinary specialties, mingling in a unique diversity that is the very pulse of society.

So what one has learned about the meaning of our religion, our various festivals or our social structure? Did not it teach us about the honesty, maturity in thinking, the way to behave in this society having best social structure since decades? I find an urge to ask such questions when I try to have a look at overall modification that our culture and our society has undergone till date.

We as an Indian try to preach the value and importance of our culture to the entire world and at the same time every now and then we read the news on the rape with foreign tourists.

We as an Indian shout about the integration of different religions within a same county and on other hand we are cruel enough to chop each other heads during community riots.

We as an Indian blame American youths being uncultured when our own kids spend days and nights in pubs and hukka parlors.

We as an Indian claim to be the largest democratic country in the world when press personals are being killed openly in public.

However among all these situations the worst among all is the suffering of Indian women even in its 21st century. We as an Indian have to respect women in our society and at the same time we try to find each and every chance to misbehave with girls and women at public places, at workplace and everywhere. The overall vision of Indian men towards the girls has change drastically in due course of time. One can see girls being frequently taunted, disrespected, pushed or abused in crowded places, tortured or being misbehaved in day to day life right on streets to trains very openly. Is this our culture?

As great as our culture is, even our great government had felt a necessity to implement an act against husband having extramarital affairs but why suddenly government is also feeling a necessity to apply the same law against married women. Why so in India?

In my opinion Indian culture has changed drastically since decades but we are still overlooking it or unable to accept the bitter truth behind it. Today’s Indian doing same thing, behaving in same manner as Americans or Africans do but he or she tries to do that behind a curtain only because our traditional culture doesn’t permit that. We have live in relation ships in India, our husbands do kill their wives, there are uncountable examples of man and women having extramarital affairs, we do have rave parties here, we do all kinds of socially unacceptable acts but only one thing we don’t do is that we don’t speak about them. We try to mould dirty shapes in divine colours. Because our culture is still great.

Indian marriage system and a belief of common man on this system are among the most admirable thing in the world and marriage is a part of our religious guidelines. But are we able to live up to this belief. In our culture love marriage is still looked with some kind of hostility. But for inconvenience love marriages are termed as love cum arrange marriage only for our society to accept it.

So why to blame american culture if they are also doing the same but under some other titles. If we ask American about arrange marriage and live in relationship he or she will say that how can a couple live together with out a formal bonding like marriage. It’s absolutely crazy. Where is the commitment?

We strongly believe our culture, values and procedures are completely right. And so do americans. In my opinion we don’t have to say some culture is right or otherwise. If we clearly observe, we can sense every culture is well balanced and they enjoy few things at the cost of few other. In western countries, they have individual freedom at the peak. We can see maturity of life and discipline within people even at the age of twelve.

So guys lets not try to hide ourselves behind the beautiful tree of Indian culture and lets not make ourselves fool being under wrong impression that whatever we are doing is great just because we are the sweat fruits of our great culture. Let’s do kind of self appraisal about our behavior in this society and our commitment towards others if we really want to feel proud of being an Indian.