"Who serves his country
well has no need of ancestors."
—Voltaire (French 1694-1778)
Word for the day
Masscult (n)
The forms of culture, as
music, drama, and literature, as selected, interpreted, and popularized by the
mass media for dissemination to the widest possible audience.
Malice towards none
Legendary Khushwant Singh
loved to use the word Ch****a in his literary works.
Anyone coming from Cow belt
would wonder what's in it to get offended about!
First random thought this morning
Mother Narmada had been particularly kind to our prime minister
Shri Narendra Modi.
Her waters played a large role in acceleration of Gujarat growth in
past decade or so. The double digit agriculture growth was not possible without
her water.
The wealth effect created by the appreciation in land value and
consequent construction boom also added materially to the world famous Gujarat
story.
Whose history is it anyways - 2
Not long ago, history used to be mostly an academic subject. The
educated elite wrote, study, discussed, debated, formed, and altered history as
per their perception and affiliations. Their perceptions were perhaps deeply
influenced by the political narrative and economic concerns of the times.
The common people were however mostly concerned with their
cultural traditions. These traditions passed through generations and generally
regarded as history. Popular art forms, like films, theater, drama etc. also
had significant influence on the common peoples' perception about history.
For example, 1960 Hindi Movie Mughal-e-Azam is an indelible
impression of Mughal history in common peoples' imagination. Anarkali, which
historian still debate to be a totally fictitious character, lives in peoples'
memory as a historical symbol of love and sacrifice.
As such, the history as taught or studied in schools and
universities had little meaning for common people.
In past couple of decades, I have observed a gradual change in
this paradigm. An intense struggle is taking place between the history and the
cultural traditions as practiced by the common people in the country.
There is a conspicuous political endeavor to overwrite academic
history books with traditional and cultural beliefs. The argument is that these
history books are deeply influenced (read distorted) by the imperialist British
academia who had interest in destroying rich Indian legacy; and in post
independence era by left leaning elite who find traditional cultural beliefs
regressive and unfounded.
On the other hand the cultural traditions have also shown a
tendency of loosening roots with rising urbanization, labor migration and
dissipation of cultural ambience (rivers, animals, trees, temple, priest,
forest, time, faith, folklores passed orally, family, austerity, etc.) The
younger people who are not rooted properly in their cultural traditions are
commonly seen adhering to frivolities, ignoring the core ideas deliberately
(for practical reasons) or ignorantly (for the lack of proper guidance and
inheritance of culture).
This dissipation of traditional Indian cultures is allowing the
politicians to manipulate people into believing that alteration of history
books would restore their dissipating traditional cultures and thus reinforce
their loosening roots.
I do not know, if this is the right approach. May be it is. Or
maybe it is not. Only time could tell this. I am also skeptical about giving
this political endeavor the garb of nationalism and patriotism.
But what I am sure about is that the process is introducing some
serious discrepancies in the Indian society. The generally affable and compassionate
populace appears somewhat condescending.
The friction in the society is rising as the grease of traditional
beliefs (tolerance, hospitality, acceptance) dries up. ...to continue
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