Since the day the cowardly attacks on innocent young boys and girls happened in a pub in Mangalore, I had been dreading what would happen on the Valentine’s Day. Thankfully, yesterday was largely peaceful.
It is clear however that this state-sponsored cordiality is merely a superficial dressing. Slowly but surely, the fault-lines between the self-appointed “guardians” of a glorious “Indian” sanskruti and the supposedly liberal thinking modern youth have come to run quite deep now.
It is a good time to think whether these fault-lines are as clearly defined in black and white as we think them to be? And, most importantly, where does one fit in, whose side one is on. A decade back, you needn’t have bothered to even ask me. I was young enough to root for “freedom” above all. Now, my take is a little different.
I am no closet member of Shri Ram Sene (how can they malign this name!!). I however seriously feel that in the garb of modernity, this “freedom & liberty” bit has been overplayed a bit by a small section of our populace, including the English media. After all, why do we need to be free from our culture and traditions so badly? What great purpose in life is being held from us by our allegiance to these traditions?
Forgive me for spewing clichés like a true-blue (or red?) Marxist, but it does remain a fact that the economic imperialism being perpetrated for so many years by the west has indeed skewed our reference points now, so that there is apparently no other individual goal except immediate self–gratification. And it is this exalted goal which is being lent inaccessible by the whole body of our culture and traditions.
It helps of course that the self-appointed custodians of culture are another over-zealous & misguided ideologues leading a whole bunch of equally misguided youth, most of which give in to being utilized because they are suffering from an acute identity crisis and have got nothing more worthwhile to do.
I wish we were seeking liberty and freedom for achieving some greater value addition to the society in areas where it actually matters, which would have made this fight more justified.
4 comments:
Kudos!
I mostly agree. There are 2 very fine and very different points you have managed to highlight here. First is the struggle between two schools of "thoughts", or better "lifestyles". There is this group of people who have taken to living in a particular way just to "appear" modern and another who, due to lack of opporuinity and / or resources, could not attain this "appearance". BUT - AGITATE THEY CAN!!! so they do, zealous or jealous they can tell better ;). Neither group is a part of the "thinking" society.
The other point concerns the thinking society like you and me(?) Now, these; some great thinkers others smaller ones like me, are still looking for the meaning and purpose of freedom. I now realise the depth of the scar the English left on our psyche. We endlessly seek freedom, from something or the other. Even if it is from our own traditions, we want freedom because we were deprived for so long of this one thing. We should make conscious effort to make ourselves and our generations to come, realise and enjoy the fact that we are a free nation and a free culture. Our culture is rich and superior, a distil of centuries of experience of the wisest of civilisations. And I do not totally disagree with renaming our cities, and celebrating with the Indian gang of the Slumdog fraternity as first steps in this direction. Another thing i would like done is to correct our history records. Some incidents have been largely misreported with the specific purpose of robbing us of our pride.
And yes, a great article, and so well expressed. Some of these topics are so much more intricate and a lot deeper than a single article can say. They demand more thought and discussion.
Keep posting :).
While I concur with a substantial portion of your views, I feel you have slightly erred on what actually inspires or fuels the likes of the so called 'Ram Sene': Politics, Greed, Vote Banks & Power. Overt or covert - the relationship is far too obvious. And hence while the argument itself is worthy - motives of at least one party are slightly exalted ..Cheers!
Dear Kinara
Thanks for the appreciation and such an in-depth critique.
Dear An-Ordinary-Indian
Thanks for writing in and letting me know your views.
Blaming it all on power, vote-bank, politics etc. is I think a gross simplification of the matter.
To me, this is more a sociological debate rather than a political one.
Don't you see the freedom tag being blatantly exploited by media - the RJs crying themselves hoarse day in and day out ki "youth ki freedom khatry mein hai"? And "aware citizens", who claim to be doing a great service to the society? I am talking about these.
Thanks once again for a good debate. Do keep visiting.
Completely agreeing with aargee & kinara, I would like to draw a parallel between these two schools of ‘thoughts’ with 4*4 wheel drive where both front & rear wheels driving the society in opposite directions. One set of wheel claming to be the torchbearer of modernity & other being the custodian of Indian values and traditions.
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