Individuals are the back bone of a society. A nation is not great by itself. Its greatness is well justified by its individuals' respect towards its heritage and culture. As far as a country like India is concerned, it is respected for its diversified culture and tradition. Individual of this country must thank the cosmic conspiracy to have made them a part of such a beautiful nation that holds such huge bandwidth of culture and tradition that symbolises unity in diversity. There were certain old rules and norms in Indian culture like child marriages, depriving women from education, restricting widow re-marriages etc that prohibitted overall development of an individual. In course of time we have almost managed to overcome all these social menances. All these things have been made possible because of open society.
Open society is definetly a bless when we come across a new norm that sounds better and revolutionary and in that case we use to give the proposal to the executive to implement the same in our society. The best conseqences of the same have already been sited above. So no doubt that open society has got a lot of possitives but it basically depends on the people which one they take and the one they reject.
Now I am going to throw light on a few instances/case studies thats going to show you how our people have actually responded to this open society:
#1 Indian culture basically stressed on joint family i.e a family where children stay together with their parents and grandparents under a common roof. It was the general trend followed in india till independence. The children got affection and love from their grandparents and also learnt the primitive disciplines of life that shaped his/her thinking as an individual. But all these things changed drastically after independence with the interference of western culture. Now a days if you will go for a survey then you will find more than 60% of the people prefer nuclear family rather than joint family. Out of them there will be 15 to 20% who prefer staying in joint family but unpreferrable circumstance might have forced them to do so. But what about the remaining........If I am not wrong most of the nuclear families of India are concentrated in metropolitans where both the parents go out for work. So in that case they either hire a maid to look after their kids or look for other options in their neighbourhood. The most undesirable conseqence that comes out of it is that their kid is prohibitted from the love and affection and also the ethical values that he could have attained from his/her grandparents if they would have stayed in a joint family. This defficiency gets reflected in the child's behavior as he grows old.
#2 Earlier marriage was considered sacred in India. When two people married they used to take seven oaths which they promise to follow throughout their life. Most of them were arranged where the couples hardly knew each other. Then with the arrival of western culture came the era of love marriages where individual got the liberty to select his /her life partner. At the beginning there were strong opposition regarding inter caste marriages but soon provisions for that was also made in form of Arya samaj to encourage such type of marriages. Up to this every thing was alright but this much of liberty was just not enough for we Indians. We started following the culture where an individual had the liberty to give up his/her relation with old partner and then look for a new one. This trend was not so popular in small cities and villages but became familiar in metroplitans mostly amongst the rich people and celebrities who were considered to be the most learned and respectable persons of our society. While undergoing debates and discussions in different forums or with friends I have very often encountered statements that those preffering love marriages are considered to be broad minded than those preffering arrange marriages. But there are a large number of cases of successful arrange marriages where people hardly know anything about each other before marriage. Don't you think they are broad minded enough? I must say they are the people with broader mind and holding a migthy heart within them.
Then comes a very important question to my mind. Is our current generation, basically the youth, capable enough to safeguard our tradition and culture?
While interacting with one of my close friends once I asked what sort of marriage would he prefer? First of all he told me he has got hardly any interest in marriage but soon after that he added in case he ever gets a chance to marry then he would go for a love marriage rather than an arranged one. He also told that success rate of love marriages is higher than that of arrange in current scenario. Then I gave him some real time examples of successfull arrange marriages including his parents and also told him that in India marriages are considered to be sacred that has been clearly mentioned in our sacred Vedas. I was trying to extract some possitivities out of him. After listening to me and my instances he concluded by saying that marriages mean nothing but mere prostitution. His reply was more than anything for me to conclude that the sayings of vedas, culture and traditions hardly means anything to him.
#3 A very good feature of Europeans that makes them different from Indians is that they are very hard working and dedicated. No doubt that we in India are very quick learners but till date we have not been able to inculcate it. Today's generation especially the youth loves to be a part of “hand to mouth” society. They never prefer drawing water out of the well instead they wait for someone to do it for them. The youth today has raised several slogans and propositions that reads, India despite being the largest democracy in this world stands bottom in the table of human rights. But what sort of freedom are they talking about? Is it all about liberty of the youth to participate in politics and their freedom to express? Is it all about the liberty of an individual to question the government or a leader whenever he feels it necessary? Or is it about qestioning the government about resources to sustain research works in our country? If being a reader you somehow feel, yes these may be the freedoms which our youth today are fighting for. Then I must say that you are still in a world of oblivion. Whatever may be going in the countryside it hardly bothers them. In a debate in CNN IBN taking together a bunch of youth qestions were raised ralated to women liberty and security. At that time one of the young girl highlighted the discrimination between men and women by saying that when a man is caught doing open sex it's alright on the other hand when a girl is caught doing the same it is considered to be a sin. Well this clearly shows what liberty means to youth of today.
From this can we say that future of India rests in safe pair of hands?
Now comes the question: who is to be blamed for such situation? Is it only the current generation, their parents or anything else? Our people gave up the old practice of having a joint family due to intervening of the open society. In a way they had nothing to loose instead they improved their way of living. One who had to loose were their children who unfortunately happen to be the youth of today. They never learnt the real things i.e. the ideals and the morals which they could have learnt from their grandparents. Instead they learnt all sorts of negative things that neither contained any hint about their morals and cultures nor made them realise the essence to safeguard them. The time which they should have spent learning the basic ideals and disciplines they spent it by by watching exclusive channels in televisons that included air music and fashion programmes with semi nudity and adult content that polluted their mind right from the very beginning as an individual.
Open society erases all shorts of barriers and leaves everything for the people to decide. For instance when I ask my friends whether they have seen the indian documentry “smile pinky“ that is based on a little girl that won Oscar this time. Many of them simply say actually we want to see it but time is not permiting us to do so and others say not interseted. In the mean time, whenever a new hollywood movie comes they watch it the very next day it is released. From this it would not be wrong in my part if I say that the character and psychology of our youth has been "hardened" at a very tender age................
Very often we used to observe,when someone has something in excess he doesn't know how to conserve it and starts loosing respect towards it. Same is the case with people of our country. The issue is not just restricted to the fact that our people have lost respect towards their culture but have developed fantasy towards the western culture. No doubt that the change is part and parcel of our life and in course of time the old one should make way for the new ones. Change sounds good when it is required. Our youth must remember that our culture and morals are the identity of our nation. So they must learn them and try to safeguard them. Demand for liberty is essential but in proper sense and that too within certain limits. Beyond that it proves to be disastrous for an individual as well as to the society. India is respected for its diversified culture and morals by philosophers and researchers that is considered to be its all time identity. So being the youth of this country it's our prime responsibility to safeguard our heritage instead of violating them.
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