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Articles: My Thoughts | Be a Better Indian
- Mr. Ratnakar Sadasyula
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I grew up in a middle class family. I studied in a convent school, where we had people from different backgrounds. Some were poor, some middle class and some rich. We had Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs all together. My father being a doctor, we often had patients coming from poor backgrounds. For us Id and Christmas were as much as a celebration as were Diwali or Ganesh Puja. My parents were quite conservative like any other middle class family, nor did they claim to be liberal or progressive. But yet at no stage was an emphasis made on “us vs them”. My mother would chide me, if I behaved arrogantly with the servants or labor. My father emphasized that any one who comes to our home is a guest, and we must not make them stand outside, just because they were not of our kind. Today we claim to be liberal, progressive and modern. But yet I find we are much more exclusivist than our parents were. We want to live in closed localities, where riff raff don’t disturb us.
We like malls, because we can then avoid certain type of people whom we would meet in the bazaar. We want our children to study in posh schools, never mind the quality of education, they give, as we don’t want our children to mix with all sorts of people. We seem to become more and more exclusive and elitist. And this is not a healthy trend. A construction laborer is as important to this nation as a research scientist. A country has all kinds of people. Forget about a country, can you honestly claim that all members in your family are alike. What we are doing is creating a closed enclave, where we can feel good, and forget about the reality. Tagore had asked for a nation where the mind is open, but in reality, we are closing our minds, and when that happens, the destruction of a society begins.
When I was a student, Vande Mataram was regularly sung at the morning assembly in our school. Now before you jump to conclusions, let me emphasize, I studied in a Christian missionary school. Our school had a large number of Muslims and Christians too. For us Vande Mataram was our national anthem, that all. At no stage, did we have the debate about it being secular or not secular. For us Republic Day and Independence Day were a matter of pride. Not just another holiday to go and spend at the mall. We had flag hoisting, cultural shows, displays. Our teachers used to explain to us the importance of those days. Nowadays I really doubt how many of us know the significance of these 2 days, other than the fact that we get a free holiday. Its time we teach to our children, the importance of these national days. We need to bring them up with a sense of pride in their country. Why is that we have to denigrate everything that is Indian ? I see people taking great pleasure in being modern, and making fun of Indian customs, traditions and values .
We ape the West, we want to be like them. When I see such people I am reminded of the crow who wanted to be a peacock, and who ended up neither here nor there. We blame foreigners for looking at us, as a nation of beggars and elephants. But who gives that impression to them, its us only right. We take great pleasure in running down our nation, our heritage and our culture. When we don’t respect ourselves, how can we expect other people to respect us? We had great intellectuals and reformers who fought against the evil traditions propagated in the name of culture. Yet at no stage did they denigrate the nation or pander to the West. Today we are saddled with intellectuals, whose sole aim is to denigrate the country in the West, and make money from it. What a disgrace.
We need to get out of the “I, Me, Myself” attitude, which has begun to afflict many of us. That sort of attitude is clearly not acceptable. There is a very thin line between individual freedom and individual responsibility. We seem to be more interested in our rights and freedom, but not our responsibility. We need to recognize the fact, that there are people out there less fortunate than us, and in India, that’s a large number. Every small step we take for making their lives better, would benefit you and the nation in the long run. Too often I have seen, that we tend to be our worst enemies. We take great pride in running down our country in front of people from other nations. I want to ask such people, one thing. You have problems in your family, maybe differences with others. Would you go about running down your family members, in front of other people? Too often I feel, its this lack of pride in our country, that has been it’s biggest bane. We are Indians, we belong to a nation. We need to understand that no country in the world is perfect. Let us understand that wherever in the world we are, we will always be Indians. Yes, maybe British India or American Indian but, at the end of the day we are Indians.
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