Forefathers' Gift - Culture series #1
This post is the Introduction to a series on Indian/ Bharatiya culture
If you are an Indian reading this English blog post on your smart device, it is apparent that your grandfather or someone older in your lineage who lived in aremote village decided to upgrade to what they thought was a better life. Such an ambition requires discipline, adaptability, focus, hardwork and perseverance. Just as much as itrequires us to break mental barriers, shed limiting habits and associations, work through setbacks, unlearn and relearn. So, it is the lifestyle and knowledge transfer of our forefathers and their successive generations that ensures we live a ‘pro max’ life with relatively minimal efforts. If we do it right, our children can enjoy the same benefits. This can be clearly understood if one visits their native village and sees the descendants of their grandfather’s peers facing the same challenges that your family faced one or two generations ago. We then feel a lot of love and gratitude towards our seniors for doing what they did and are proud of ourselves for upholding the continuity well.
When this lifestyle and knowledge transfer gets more and more refined with the contribution of plenty of families over a millennium or more, we call it a culture. It has survived the rise and fall of empires and civilizations, natural calamities, climatic changes, vagaries in human behaviour through all of this and evolved. Someone belonging to an ancient culture is most likely to be resilient and mature in comparison with someone from a relatively younger culture, the difference can be so subtle that it may take a long time for one to notice it. Indian culture is one of the oldest and has survived the test of time. A land that was once highly prosperous and advanced went through a millenium (rather generations) of trauma has managed to slowly heal is now marching steadily towards a renaissance. The Indian diaspora across the globe is known for being a key contributor to building the respective nation’s economy. Singapore, Malaysia and the Emirates have openly acknowledged this fact, NRIs own more land assets in England than any other ethnic group, or for that matter, even the natives. The average income of the Indian Diaspora in the U.S. is higher than the average income of the country. Deep down we all know that we owe it to our culture.
There was a time when I used to get exasperated at the mention of culture/sanskaar/kalacharam. As a girl, it felt more of a hurdle than a stepping stone in my formative years. And, to make any progress one may have had no choice but to break the shackles of culture appropriation; which I did, with boisterous rebellion. I also achieved a lot of what I thought was progress, shattering a few glass ceilings on the way. All was well till I found myself in a soup and nothing could help except the very culture that once felt limiting. The more I delved into it, the more I could see how it was relevant even to our modern day challenges. I couldn't help wondering,” Why didn’t we know of this before? Why did we waste so much time on superficial goals?” etc. I realised that there is much misunderstanding, misinformation and misuse regarding Indian culture. Justifiably so. The Indian subcontinent has faced invasions for about 800 years and 30 years make a generation, it means that 26 generations of our forefathers faced surprise attacks, plunders, lost their women and faced life threats. The sole aim of the people in such times would be to merely survive. Consequently, transfer of knowledge happened with default lifestyle practices while the subtle science behind it was not necessarily conveyed except as a religious ritual.
Then came 200 years of colonisation, another 7 generations of our forefathers for whom the only way to lead a respectable life was to comply with their ideology and lifestyle, shunning our own in the process. Such an attitude continues even after 75 years of Independence, which is another 2 generations.
Coming to think of it, the past 35 generations of Indians may have lost their family and all their wealth, migrated from their birthplace, changed their professions and so on, but they still managed to preserve the culture in whatever way they could.
Why?
Because it helped.
It helped them survive, cope with trauma and also flourish. Any aversion and resistance I showed towards my culture was due to the lack of right information or a skewed understanding of it. But, as I share my perspective based on scriptural knowledge and personal learnings, I hope to do my bit to preserve the culture of this great land.
More to come in the following posts 🙏
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