“No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive”, a terse quote thought upon by Mahatma Gandhi, something so bland and having a profound and absolute meaning altogether. A culture can be coerced to be exclusive if it’s maneuvered by two kinds of people: 1.the egoists and 2.the individuals searching for ego using the Indian culture as a conduit.
In our country, we are actually short of the first category of people who put up efforts to keep their culture exclusive just because, in their view, any influence of a foreign culture’s ideas on their own one is a mutilation of their imperial pride which they have in being an “Indian”. According to them, it adulterates our pristine Sanskriti.
But, as I said, such persons are wanting in our country because the number of persons having such pride and belief in our sanskriti is a meager one. Even this deficiency can be considered as a point down for India.
On the contrary, the ones belonging to the second group are proliferating these days under the very trending tag “Hindutva”. From here on let’s call a specimen of this group a Hindutvan. Now, a typical Hindutvan is generally affiliated with either BJP or RSS or can even be an independent candidate. A Hindutvan necessarily carries a saffron lining on his forehead and also a saffron chunni across his shoulders. And most vitally, a Hindutvan has great repugnance for anything, in any way, linked to the term: Western.
The problem is that a Hindutvan is as illogical as the summit of your imagination and tries to meddle even in the personal affairs of his fellow countrymen. For example, he creates great havoc on seeing an innocuous girl wearing anything other than salwar-kameez while spitting the red scum of the tobacco that he generally serves on. Level of hypocrisy! It isn’t really a cause of concern that what a girl wears but your spitting and passing despicable remarks does bother many people!
Besides, a Hindutvan preaches you to abruptly start banning all the western products from your toothpaste to your four-wheeler. But he fails to understand that abolishing good western products can’t really help his or anyone’s cause. For example, I would always prefer a Google or Apple or HTC phone over that of Micromax, an Indian company. That’s my view and what’s wrong in it if it’s beneficial for the buyer?
Similarly, the Indian buyers are prudent enough to choose an Indian product over a western product if the former is actually better. In this case, the hold of Bajaj scooters in its respective field is a perfect precedent manifesting that good Indian products get what they deserve. So just stop being a busy body peeking onto the nationalities of the products used by the people. Also, it’s somewhere the inefficiency of Indian manufacturers if their products aren’t preferred by their own countrymen, let alone abroad!
The Hindutvans are also sanctimonious. Sometimes, knowingly or unknowingly or mostly I think in their imbecility, they roam around criticizing things which they themselves are using just because they are western. For instance, I’ve seen them post content on Facebook which demands every Indian to stop using “western” apps like Whatsapp and rather start using desi social networking apps. Now this is the height of irony. Spreading the word of banning something using that something itself! LOL is the word for such idiots.
Another blunt argument that these Hindutvans put forth is the key role of western dresses in the occurrence of rape cases in India. So let me tell you that it’s not the attire of a woman that makes rape imminent but the sinister thinking of a morally loose man because had it been the dresses, then countries like USA, Scotland, Spain, etc. would have been the haven of rapes and not India!
The conclusive advice is to be away from these Hindutvans because they not only irrationally despise the positives of western culture but also flout the principles of Indian culture by their acts of vandalizing and others on seeing anyone refusing to abide by their thought process.
The need of the hour is to keep our thinking broad enough to transcend the paltry culture differences and rather learn from other cultures the methods of development and progression. And finally, let’s admit that even shamelessly adopting the development plans of a developed country might help India but the act of banning German and forcing Sanskrit certainly won’t!
