When I was in between an eventful discourse with my friend about the pertinence of the value and culture in our contemporary society, I saw a strange obstinacy in my friend in admitting the fact that culture is an integral part of our nation which can eventually help us to prosper and make our society a better place to live. Before going in deep I must give a brief description about her. She is a highly educated engineer working on a cutting edge technology, born and brought up in a financially superior family. She is quite accustomed to the high society party, pub culture and seldom had visited disco, pub as it is quite a natural and usual part of modern high society lifestyle. Though it will be highly speculative to grossly generalize the behavior of youth belong to higher rung of society (economic perspective) but I found similar characteristics in most cases with little exception. So my counterpart is one highly educated girl belong to a high society. Presently she is suffering from severe mental pressure due to her father’s health. We were discussing on the fact that should we discard the foreign culture or should we adopt them without any discretion. She repeated every time that one should not be forced to do something which a person doesn’t like to do. I agreed to this point. Furthermore she added that Past has no value to live in the present times. I took it compassionately by considering her mental state of depression. Finally she made a very fine point to emphasize her view by saying that why people should take charge by themselves to correct the society. Who gave them the right to correct the society and assume the responsibility of moral policing? This is actually in regard to the very recent vandalism perpetrated by some fact of so called extreme rightist group who consider themselves Hindu.
The point which she had raised is apparently very much relevant and to the point for a humanist who find no religion or faith but the pure humanity as our poet said “Nothing is Taller and truthful in the world than the Humanity”
But I would like to include few more points in the wake of so called humanitarian secularist philosophy of our contemporary society to explain the necessity of the reverence and adherence to ones own indigenous culture . Whatever I am going to write here will first answer and clarify each and individual claim made by her.
First claim that she has made is that no person should be forced to follow such custom which he /she does not like to perform. In that case I am in agreement with her. As human mind should be left free flowing .Then only new ideas can be populated and further more can be used for better purpose in much more creative way. Here comes an apt question. What is complete freedom and is it absolutely necessary to acquire complete freedom? Should there be any rules and restrictions in a society? If it is true that each and individual people must exercise their absolute freedom to do whatever they want, then what will happen? Let me put it n much straight manner.
We all posses thousands of desire but could not fulfill them due to the lack of resource, conscience and moral & ethical bindings. Each and every people has a by borne desire of proclaiming their superiority. Every people want to be rich and want to drive an expensive Mercedes. Wants to posses an expensive villa with all possible amenities. Wants to taste the costliest wine. So the point is that each people have their infinite number of desire. And to satisfy their desire people can choose any way which he thinks easier to attain their goal. If this continues then the situation could be as worse as it was displayed in the famous Hollywood movie Bruce Almighty. Can we do anything whatever we want to do? Probably not. There are some rules which must govern a society where we live and that we have to follow to make our society a better place to live.
For example you can never force someone to offer puja in a particular way. Some people love to offer puja by ringing the bell with lots of sweets for the god along with mantras. Others may love to site in calm and can meditate to feel the presence of supreme divinity. So you can never force some one to follow a particular way. Because whatever path you follow, your ultimate goal is to reach understand the divinity. Similarly you can never force some one to dress according to your own likings. Everybody must have their own boundary of freedom but it must be limited by ones conscience.
For example she said that it is utterly worthless to force someone not to wear certain dresses or displaying private affection (smooching/hugging) in the public places. Yes true .Why should society bar anybody to smooch in public or body exposing dresses when it is a widely popular activity of showing love and affection. In my opinion there is no harm in such action till it is performed inside the boundary of obscenity. Now we have to define the concept of obscenity. It is apparently very relative. In our country there are some taboos which are associated to such activity. May be it is our value which force us to refrain from perpetrating such activity in public. Let me make it clear.
Well can you tell me what is the difference between a Dog and a Human? A dog can’t think and can’t judge about good and bad and always do whatever it feel required .Thus it’s action is spontaneous rather than thoughtful. While a human being is considered as an animal placed in the highest rung of the animal kingdom for its wisdom, power of thinking and analyzing. It makes that class entirely rational. But as soon as this very intelligent animal (human being) starts working as per desire or need without judging the merits and demerits of the action. Then there is literally no difference between a dog and that intelligent human .Both are doing in the same way. A dog may not take the suggestion of satisfying its sexual urges inside a covered roof because of its inability to understand the human understanding about culture or may be because of language difference. However a man surely can. Now tell me will you consider it indecent if someone starts amusing on the road with his /her partner to show his/her love or affection .After having sexual relations is also the symbol of showing bodily love for their partner. If yes then why? There is no harm in showing your love to the entire world. After all it will encourage many people to do the same openly .No this will surely impact seriously on the part of the society. How? Let me explain. My answer could be seen as hypothetical but careful consideration may justify the same.
The open display of affection will impact profoundly on the various part of the society. We know that sex is just a bodily activity that is related to several hormone secretions (both female and male). The introduction of online pornography is the best example to illustrate that, how much today’s young generation is addicted to this open manifestation of sex. Naturally a display will raise several questions to one’s mind and he/she will start finding its answer. It will attract a considerable amount of a person’s attention which can be very destructive for specially students who will become the budding future of a country.
In our ancient culture as mentioned in Veda, our ancient sages had divided entire life into four segments. The first part of life is Bhahmacharya where a pupil must spend his life in the Ashram of Guru (The Mentor) and will learn about different shashtra (different field of education) and will try to master on them. After the completion of the stage of acquiring knowledge they must enter the second stage of life known as Garhastha, where they should marry and start a family where they should give birth to children and should nourish them as per the rule. In the third segment known as Banprastha they should start relieving the responsibility of the family to their next generation children and start practicing abstinence. In the final phase of life they should leave the family for seeking the higher spiritual truth and must spend their last days of life in the forest having complete detachment from the family affinity and with all attention flowing towards the supreme divinity. So in nutshell it is a key to the leading of a successful life. In this system the sex is considered as a required activity to be performed as a responsibility to produce the progeny and to help growing the mankind. But today the western culture is depicting the sex as an instrument of sense gratification which is making the people of the age group ranging from 12 to 70 grossly perverted. So if there is a forceful action on the eternal rule of society then as per law of nature the society will also react in the same and opposite way. Now since student are getting attracted to the sex and related activity in their early ages, they find it difficult to put their entire attention in their education. Thus their duty of acquiring knowledge remains incomplete.
At the same time the students are living in their own house with their parents in spite of spending their student life in the Ashram of Guru under the strict guidance of Guru. In most cases both the parents are working. Thus the students have become the victim of moral devaluation because of the lack of character whom they can make an ideal person to follow. So the process of building character remains incomplete which affects their further lifestyle. Thus the very basic and fundamental failure of early life can lead to deterioration of an entire society bit by bit.
Even the presence of the law and constitution proves the point of restricting people’s unbound freedom of doing whatever they want to. So we can not always do what ever we like to do. We must validate our liking with the moral and ethical code of conduct. If we violate the rule we are bound to get punishment. The force is as necessary as the enforcement of law to maintain the equilibrium of a society.
Again considering the previous example of obscenity it can be said that there is some thing which we call indecent and usually avoid doing in public. So if indecency is a crime why not one establish some rules to allow people to refrain from committing such offence. Whistling to a girl is considered as an offensive crime under eve teasing. If Police has the authority to stop such nuisance then why stopping someone to smooch in public is considered as greater nuisance.
So my idea is that forcing someone to follow a dictum is not the right way. In fact it could be performed in much better way. At least people can be made aware about their negative impact. But in some unavoidable circumstances fear can work in better way than the rational awareness campaign.
So it can be concluded that cultural and personal freedom is necessary but should not be unbound. That should be restricted within the frame of discretion. We should not receive every thing that we get from western environment without judging their merits and demerits. We must have the wisdom to receive every good and at the same time must be enough virtuous to discard the bad from the bucket. So force is indeed necessary to restore the rationality and conscience required for making decision about what is harmful and what is helpful for our society if people diverge from their natural process of gaining their rationality.
Let’s start explaining her second claim. She said repeatedly in her discussion that the past has no value in our life. I can remember the school days essay writing topic which stated to elaborate that past has some great importance in our life. She argued that when the present personal life is full of misery then why we should think about the past to make our life more miserable. Point is valid but wrongly attributed. Past has abundant of lesson for us to learn so that we can make a better future to live. The main advantage of learning about past is that it makes us aware about the past happenings and helps us to find the root of the problem. That way we can call it as a solution provider for our future problem. For example four years back I had a bitter experience with one of my friend due to some problem in relationship. So from that failure in relationship I must learn to be more compassionate and more open minded so that in future I can maintain a healthy relationship. In another example one of my friends underwent severe injury due to his rash driving. For him it should be a lesson o learn so that in future he drive within the allowable speed limit. Last two examples are very much trivial in nature. We had lots of bitter memory related to our past. If we make ourselves so busy in spending our daily life then we will never be able to learn from those bitter memories so that we can avoid them happening in future again. In the perspective of culture the influence of past is immense. In fact it is far bigger than we imagine or assume to be.
Today there is a fashion of calling every old system as dilapidated. In fact calling them meaning less, some time irrelevant. Contemporary people usually say that to keep with the pace of present day we must discard all the obsolete ideas of the past. I am not saying that evolution is not necessary. But evolution does not mean that you should discard every old in order to welcome new without even judging their merits and demerits. The percentages of people who are getting higher education today are very high. Though it is still below the mark if we compare it with the growing amount of population. Then why much of the so called educated people feel shameful in following their indigenous culture or tradition. Despite their education they actually fail to think with their rationality beyond their limited boundary thinking. You can say it is the biggest failure of the present objective education system. It actually limits the capability of thinking of the young pupil. They are not allowed to think beyond their respective allowable limit. When a strong bright light dazzled in front of their eyes they found it attractive to follow but they can’t see the future, darkest than the abyss behind the light. So in that process they follow what ever seem good and soothing and satisfying their demands. Due to this problem they become myopic and they fail to analyze the future impact of their action. Our culture is the oldest of all ancient civilization and influenced every other known civilization that flourished on this earth. It is our inability or lacking of effort to recognize our ancient culture and tradition. We love to follow again foreign historian than our own ancient rishis. Our ancient sages traveled in almost al possible part of knowledge stream. From extreme science to astronomy. From music to sculpture. From literature to spiritualism. So in conclusion it can be said that our present misery is the reason of our past action. If we follow our ancient tradition of Karma (action) as the sole objective of life then we can get out of all misery. As told in Bhagwat Geeta We only have control over our action but not on the result of our action. We must work from the beginning till our end. Then only we will be able to get rid off all the misery of life because the root cause of all misery is our desire for result of our action. In this process we can attain the ultimate bliss of life. So if we can learn that timeless lessons from our glorious ancient past, we can make our present a worthy of living.
Though the answer for her second claim is over but still I want to put some extra light on the blind following of western culture without judging their implication in the context of our life. Today most of us Indian are praising in unison to the western culture specially the American culture of gross consumerism. What ever you earn you must spend it for your present. Forget about your future. Today 50% of the people in America are not inside the circle of family. The term step mother, step father, Step sister and step brother are very common there. So due to the lack of any family system people are not at all worried about consuming. Because there is no accountability or the responsibility for the family. Today living relationship is a wonderful proposition. So a woman can live with a man and at the same time can have children. The main point is that they think that if they are feeling uncomfortable about the relationship or if they feel that it is difficult to continue the relationship then they can easily fly away from the relationship. In that case both of the partners can find out new people to start with. In this case the children can go with any one the parents .Now according to a recent statistics there are numerous single mothers who are taking care of there children . There are numerous cases reported in television and news papers that children at the age of 12-14 involve in the sexual activity with the higher/lower aged partner. So the basic intention is to show you the cause of disintegration of a family system. As we all know the family is a basic unit of a society then society will gradually disintegrate with the advent of lower moral value. The basic reason behind the gradual degeneration of the American system is that they have completely forgotten their root or their indigenous culture. They don’t where they came from. In many school of America in is taught that the Christian’s had founded the great country America. There were no ethnic people lived before the arrival of the Christian missionaries. In fact they claim that the people lived before the arrival of Christopher Colombus were savage. Don’t you think it is a great humor. The people who had been living in a place for several hundred or may be thousands of years are savages. And the people who came from out side to conquer the wealth of that land and later destroyed the ethnic civilization were all civilized. If this is the definition of the civilization then pardon me but I would always like to be with suppressed group of so called savage people. Though my conclusion is bit diverged but the main fact is that we must be able to point out the negative part of western culture and must respect our own indigenous one. But instead our present generation is following them blindly without any discretion and thus become vulnerable to unavoidable negative impact of west.
Now you must ask me what is the impact of the societal devaluation. How would it impact on our society. Now here lies the greatest point. Whichever system you wish to apply, It can only work if and only if the system controller is morally right, ethically strong and wise and full of the wealth of wisdom. Those people can only do good to the society who have achieved the art to win their sense. If the person controlling the system however wise he might be, has failed to win the desire for the sense gratification, then the system is bound to fail. So any system including autocracy ,monarchy, democracy ,theocracy all will become fruitless. So as the grooming of a child starts from a family who will eventually will become the front runner of the future leaders of a country, It is the basic responsibility of the family to grow a strong sense of moral and cultural value in the child. But unfortunately the culture of extreme consumerism is producing the result of a gradual devaluation and gradual disintegration of the family value which results in the disintegration of the unit called family. This way family and the future of society is at stake. Apparently it may look ridiculous to criticize the pub culture and promiscuous interaction of the both sexes. But if you think it while considering a broader perspective you will definitely be able to understand the philosophy.
Any way lets come to answer the last question. Who gave people the right of moral policing? Now tell me my dear friends whom will you contact when your own family member starts consuming drug. When your own daughter, sisters and brothers get trapped inside the racket of sex or drug trade then whom will you ask to correct them. Will you wait for some one to order you or direct you rectify your family members or you will assume your own family responsibility? I personally believe that no body is there in the society to make you aware except you only. Your own conscience can only guide your action. So if some people took the stance and started fighting against the slow poisoning the rapid incursion of the consumerist culture of the west and sharp disrespect to their own culture, they did absolutely right. At least we should be proud to have people like them who have already understood the basic and simple philosophy.
Now it is indeed meaning less to write about it because I lost all contacts with my friend. I thought one day I might be able to clear her idea and fallacy about the importance of culture. But I hope it will help many others to clear their own conception about the same. The one drawback of this article is the lack of substantial statistics from Social scientists. But I hope soon I will be able to furnish my article with full of data gathered from social scientists.
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