Jan 26, 2009
Mangalore these days seems to be grabbing much attention on national channels, and sadly, for all the wrong reasons. First, the communal violence exposed us in our ugly nakedness; second, our fellow Mangaloreans were picked up for the one thing we hoped would never find us – terror links. And now, we are back in business again, this time our young girls being the target of the so-called ‘preservers’ of our culture.
May I ask, what culture in the world allows beating girls, that too in public?
May I ask, what culture in the world sanctions molestation (allegedly) to preserve itself?
And may I ask, what culture are these hooligans portraying, if at all they do so?
Ten of the assaulters were arrested, women rights activists condemned the act and demanded immediate action, and news channels descended on our soil to watch it being dirtied again. Meanwhile, the custody term will end, the accused will be out in no time, and the city will go on being haunted by the self-proclaimed moral police which, ironically enough, itself does not seem to have even an iota of morality.
It is all very fine to say our youth is too much enamoured by the western culture and forgetting our own. It sounds very patriotic when one says we should preserve our culture. But is patriotism confined to such narrow acts of vandalism? Ah, that is something very difficult for the uneducated, unemployed young ‘activists’ to understand, who are probably paid by their masters for every glass pane they break and every girl and boy they attack in the name of culture. They will not understand that irrational jingoism will only make our country worse, that the only path it will lead to is that of more disharmony, fear and a society that will slowly be eaten by its own worms.
My professor in college said that no religion and no culture can exist unless it is tolerant towards other cultures and religions and has the open-mindedness to assimilate what is best in them. I fully agree. To take an example, the Puritans who fled from Europe to settle in America out of fear of religious persecutions centuries ago could not last for more than a couple of generations, simply because they were outrageously intolerant towards even the native Indians. Back home, the Hindu culture and religion survived the various invasions and the centuries of British dominance, only because it knew to be tolerant and even welcomed with open arms what the Mughals and the Englishmen had to give. If it hadn’t done so, we too might have faced the fate of the Red Indians of America, who were almost completely wiped off by the English colonizers.
But where has that age-old tolerance disappeared to? It is a sad fact that the major cultures and religions of the world have hoards of fundamentalists, ill-informed extremists and self-proclaimed leaders who are doing nothing but misleading our impressionist youth. What is even more disheartening is that it is this section of the society that has the loudest voice and makes optimum use of it too. The tolerant moderates watch on, either shrugging their shoulders in order to be safe in their shells, or like the three monkeys simultaneously closing their eyes, ears and mouths.
The only thing we will ever do is form human chains and cry out slogans, which will not affect even the local administration. And don’t be surprised if half the people in those chains do not even know what they are standing under the hot sun for. Post terror attacks in Mumbai, we have seen several human chains being formed, even in Mangalore. But all that happened is the same old continuation of the tossing back and forth of evidences against terrorists across the borderlines. The blame game continues, and will probably do so till we finally get so used to terrorism that a blast in our backyard would mean nothing more than a firecracker, with the only exception that a few bodies would be lying mutilated here and there. And by then, we would probably not have the patience or energy to even shed a tear, for not even the chilling cry of a mother for her dead son moves the hard-hearted, sadistic extremists.
Back to the present incident, the question that arises is, why are we so intolerant? Why cannot we accept another person’s taste and lifestyle without trying to forcibly change it? We Indians take pride in our culture, but the fact is that we are hypocrites who cry hoarse over anything external that threatens it, but inside our homes and even in public we become a threat to it ourselves. Gandhiji in his Hind Swaraj made a thought-provoking point when he said, ‘The British have not taken India, we have given it to them.’ No western culture can drive away what is ours without our permission. Acts of vandalism only make things worse – they not only create disharmony, but also cast a sorrowful reflection on our own narrow-minded society.
Is our culture so weak that a pub-going population can destroy it? It should be noted that the same young population also takes pride in what is Indian – it takes joy in celebrating Diwali and Holi, it respects its elders and its laws, it goes to the polling booths with a sense of importance, it salutes its martyrs on Independence and Republic Days, and it also takes the country forward economically. The highest number of pubs in Asia are in Bangalore, and its most frequent visitors are the well-to-do or youth from well-to-do families that pay taxes, who may watch American movies but converse in Hindi or Kannada, who eat pizza without losing their love for dosa. What good are the extremists doing for the country by smashing its own property and destroying its own population? Where were they when the country was under terror attack? Our culture is too strong and too well-rooted to be erased so easily, but if such heinous acts continue there is every possibility of the roots weakening.
As Swami Vivekananda said in his address at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, we are like frogs in the well that think our own little well is the best and anything outside it is inferior or a threat to us. Till we jump out of our wells and learn to accept and assimilate the world outside, we will not be able to see how beautiful and rich each of God’s creation is, and how lovely our own wells would become with their presence.
Related News:
More from Anisa Fathima: