As I want to write ‘disclaimers’ for my posts all the time, here are few disclaimers for this post too. The important one being, “I am not trying to say that all other countries, other religions and other cultures are useless. I am just saying about and quoting things that I know & see. I agree to the fact that I don’t know lot of things.” Moreover, I might have included ‘everyone’ in the entire text below. Every line that I am going to say below is known to everyone who is capable to read this blog/post. Its just that I am reiterating the facts. Its just that I am reminding things. Its just about you, me and people around us in India.
At this moment, I am in a confusion about where to start this post as the title contains the WORD, India. May be the word WORD is very lightly weighed when followed by a great country’s name. Yes, definitely, I am proud of my country. I never heard anyone saying they hate their own country. There might be people under such category. I am writing this post after seeing the various articles in new papers daily and couldn’t understand what is happening to our people. Just to remind the history and what we are, here are few points.
- We are the descendants of one of the oldest living civilizations in the world.
- We are among the firsts to have a script for a language, firsts to build cities and firsts to have one of the finest drainage systems.
- We are the ones who invented the digit ‘zero (0)’ with out which we cannot live now. Imagine how the world would have run on the most complex Roman numerals.
- The religions that were born here never differentiated human beings with other life and even, the environment. In fact, apart from bringing the most decent and scientifically advanced practices, our religions wanted to pray the omnipresent in each and every thing that you see. The most important of all the practices is monogamy and we understood how important it is.
- We have given the world, our own natural medical system i.e, Ayurveda which not only includes various points about general medicine but also details about surgeries.
- Yoga and meditation are the gifts to the world from India. Do you know how much response you get if you start yoga training abroad?
- It is a fact many non-Indian writers/researchers did research about our culture, civilization, religions and gods. They have published articles describing how crucial in making one’s life happy and peaceful. Stories, especially about Hindu gods, are told popularly to children and adults to develop their personality and positive attitude.
- We have developed our own ways of life without depending on any other foreign country. Luckily, we provided with the abundant resources as well.
The above points are just few feathers in the cap. There are many to add these. What do they all say? Ancestral Indians included very intelligent, research oriented scholars, writers, scientists, priests, labor, technicians, artists and the most (of the) common people who practiced the best ‘VALUES’ of life and who were good at heart. Consequently, they prospered with material luxuries, money and happiness. I saw a post in Facebook which contained an original picture of a British high commissioner writing about the togetherness among the people and how healthier and wealthier they were here before they actually occupied the entire Indian territory.
But, what is happening to us? From an individual who wants to occupy personal space of others in any way to a person who is sitting at one of highest positions in terms of power or governing bodies trying to bluff people and take no care about the people he is ruling, why is everyone thinking in the wrong ways? Why is an individual’s attitude getting close to what is called as bad?Why someone wants to go to higher positions at the cost of others? Don’t you have any idea about morals and values or Do you think that being bad is being great? This is how people you interact daily with are.
When you travel in a packed train, and someone standing beside you requests you to adjust a little so that he can sit beside you. With a good heart you give him/her a seat. But they start taking advantage of it. After sometime when you go out to buy a water bottle and come back, that person would have occupied 90% of the seat and shows you some other seat to sit. People like this sit in reservation compartments and demand that its their seat. TC of the train never bother about these as they get money too.
A person brutally kills his girl friend because she broke the relationship with him understanding that he is the wrong guy.
A public servant needs additional money from the public apart from his salary in order to accomplish his responsibility.
An IAS officer amasses money to favor someone or get involved in a fraud.
A CEO of a group of companies illegally manages the company’s money and cheats his shareholders.
A common auto driver molesting foreign tourist. (Where is Athidhi devo bhava?)
Some people use phrases like “No matter who ever come and tell me, I do not change my decision”. Some people doesn’t give respect to their parents, at any cost. Most of the students never respects their teacher/lecturer. Some people do not show respect towards the old and elders. Some people show arrogance and head strength in their words. Some people never care to listen to his well wishers. Some can never identify and differentiate a good and a bad friend. To be true, these are not part of our Indian culture and in Hindu mythology, these were proven to be symptoms of evil (Rakshasa or Asura).
A group of ministers watching porn in a place where they are expected to discuss about people’s problems. We have so many ‘Sabha’s like Loksabha, Rajyasabha, vidhanasabha more generally called as Parliament and Assembly. What is happening in assemblies, parliament these days? Is there a single proper useful discussion happening? Every party/member wants to walk out, start abusing each other. It has reached to a peak level that people started throwing their footwear at speakers and among themselves. They all knew that people’s money is behind successfully organizing an assembly and they are wasting it. Its our misfortune that we are living in such times. How should one organize a ‘Sabha’ and how should one behave in such Sabha? We do not need lectures from foreign universities to answer that question. Our own ‘Ramayana’ has a clear answer. Just before onset of war with Raavana, Maharshi Valmiki compares two ‘Sabha’s in Yuddhakanda. One by Raavana and the other by Rama. You can refer to those verses and you can exactly identify which type of Sabha is currently running in our Parliament and state assemblies. You can also identify how a ‘Sabha’ should run.
A change in the mindset of every Indian at the root is what we need now. The way in which people greet each other, the way in which people talk to each other, the topics about which a group of people or friends or families discuss etc, everything should change. That is what will happen when your mindset inclines towards positive attitude. That is when your personality develops. The first step towards a high valued life is the way in which you talk. If you lose some’thing’ important in your life, you might get it back but if you lose your word, you would never recover the damage caused by it. For example, again from the same Ramayana, Hanuma has wiped out the thought of committing a suicide from the mind of Sita, only with his words. Another example from the same epic, Lord Rama says to Sugreeva like this “Sugreeva, there is no brother like Bharatha, no wife like Sita and no friend like you”. This is in a situation when he wanted to contradict a statement made by Sugreeva. Understand the depth and sweetness in the words and the way in which he contradicted his friend’s statement.
In spite of these many mentalities around us, we are still respected only because of our own traditions and culture which is also our heritage; only because there are at least few people who are good at heart; only because of epics like Ramayana are still being preached everywhere to develop the personality. But I got a fear that this might get worsened and hence I wanted to give a precaution to everyone. I would really love to see if many stories of Ramayana are included as a part of curriculum to school students to develop their personality. I want to add few points about Ramayana as well in this post as I coined it above. Although people might think that this post is something that promotes a religion, I want to say its not a promotion but a precaution. Someone might say “Ramayana is story of Lord Rama who is the incarnation of Lord Vishnu, a God. But I am not a God and I can not follow all those principles”. For those who say this, please understand that the incarnation is a human being. No where in his life, he showed himself as God. He proved everyone that a human being can live with values. If you read Ramayana as story of God, you do not get any thing to change in your life but if you read it as a story of a human, you have got something to change in your life. Also I agree that there are many changes that our culture underwent because of various invasions, scientific improvements etc. But there is no one who said to leave the good in you.
All in all, I just want to say “Be good to yourself and be good to others”.
“There can be a time when there is no person to listen to a good word told by someone but there should not be a time when there is no person to tell a good word.”
