DESERTING ONES SELF

WE DESERTED OURSELVES, WE IGNORED OURS

We have been deserting things that we should be proud of. What is ours is ignored. What is not is praised. Instead of taking pride we are ignoring those values. Every race in this world is born on some values, which we think it its identity. For example a black man can never be a white even if he wants it to be. Unless and until his race mixes with other race for years together, it will remain black. He should be proud of his colour, complexion, physique and other rare qualities that are connected with race only. Like wise our Indianness has some rare qualities which we are tarnishing out of fashion and ignorance. Let me narrate some of them, which you will not deny.

MATHRU DEVO BHAVA:
We are not giving sufficient respect to our Mothers. It is Indianness to respect every woman as his own mother. We have a tradition to call even a five year old female child as ‘Amma’ (meaning Mother), which cannot be seen in any other part of the world. A mother who has a higher place of respect than the God is not respected by us. In the urge of worldly things we forget to nurture the mother. The modern day mothers too forget to nurture their motherliness. They avoid breastfeeding their children giving preference to their beauty. They forget that motherliness is the most beautiful thing in this world.

PITHRU DEVO BHAVA:

Father is equally important to any child in India. The father and mother are sent to old age home by their offspring. The family hierarchy is running from time immemorial around the father, which is commonly believed in India as Gothra. That’s why we avoid marrying members of same gothra, stating that they are our brothers. That family tradition is destroyed by us.

ATHITHI DEVO BHAVA:

We have a tradition of respecting the guests (Athithi). Normally we think that guest is some of our relatives who visit our houses. It is not true. In sanskrit ‘thithi’ means a day. Athithi means a person who visits without appointing a day. That is he is a stranger comes without notice. Such person should be honoured suitably with all respect. Our olden day houses are constructed with ‘Thinnai’ (A raised platform) in front of the house. The visitors will take rest on the thinnai. Now a days we have become greedy and stopped building thinnai. The compound wall extends up to the road. Even our small houses have no place to give space to the stranger. The houses are directly proportional to our heart, which decrease day by day in love. Even we have ‘sumaithangi’ stones to help a person having heavy load on his head to rest on. There are ‘sumaithangi’ stones on every road between two villages all over India.

Our Athithi satkar was not limited to a human being. It extends to all the living animals. We have stone pillars in every meadow which will help the animals, cows and sheep, to scratch them. There were water ponds to help them drink. There were trees for rest on the way. All these are past history in our period.

CHILDREN:

We would have seen elders blessing the just married to live with enough children. In the name of modernity and progressiveness we have limited ourselves with just two children. Even there are families which have one or no children. They think children are headache. But our tradition was to have many children. We can notice all our great leaders were born in big families. Gandhi, Ambedkar, Tilak, Gokhale,et al were born among ten or fifteen children. This has been criticized by our modern day leaders. Now we have only one or two children. Let me narrate the draw backs of small family of having one or two children.

Advantages of Small family:

There is no advantage of having small family. Though the modern day leaders encourage this norm, they say we could concentrate on two children and bring them up. They can be fed nutrient food, health and education. Big population will lead to poverty and no food. These are the only arguments put forward by the advocates of two family norm.

Advantages of having more children:

All of us think that a child is born out of male and female fusion. This is just a truth. Fusion in a test tube will give a child. But how far it will be intelligent, brave, liberal, strong, etc. we do not know. The mentality of the father and mother has relations with the child born. We have example in Mahabharatha, how Dhrithrashtra and Pandu were born with deficiencies. The big family gives us choice of having different child. One intelligent, one strong, one cunning, one wise, etc. Now our villages are filled with aged people. Their only one child is away, in America. They have no one to look after them. But the story was different a few years back. Those who are highly educated have migrated to the cities. The ill educated remains in the villages. The aged parents will live with them. That charming truth has been eroded by us. We have no other child to look after the parents.

All of us educate our child in most modern schools/colleges, thinking only professional courses. Now education has become burden in every house. About sixty to seventy percent of a family’s income has been siphoned to education. Knowing this well, the educational institutions have become commercial establishments. They rob our penny. We do not know this fact. We invest lakhs together for our only one child. Due to his nature, he could not cope up with the subject. Despite this we thrust him in a field, giving donation to the institutions. Finally he ends up in a menial job. As all the parent are aiming for professional courses and spending more on that, we could not find labours for day to day activity. There are engineers in a village, but no labours. The labours are hard to find. Even the one or two labours demand more money.

Instead of Think of a past where we have more child. The one or two educated will go to higher jobs. The ill educated will look after the farms and villages. The uneducated will work as menial labour. Labours will available in all spheres of life. The Middle East and gulf countries rely on Indian labours. The Americans, Germans rely on our skill. Major cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai rely on Bihari and Bengali labours. How this situation arose. In the name of family planning we have no labours in our cities. Those who have such heavy population will surely dominate the world one day. If there are demands for Indians all over the world, it is not because of their skill or any thing; it is just because they are wanted. There are no people in those countries where Indians are wanted. We should at least acknowledge the importance of having more children.

The next important thing is ethnic cleansing. Though this word seems to be big, it is the truth. We ourselves have diminished our caste, creed, race, religious population. One day there will not be any Indian, One day there will not be any Tamilian, One day there will not be any Hindu, if we reduce our population like this. Recently our parliament stalled demarcation of Parliamentary Constituencies, when objections were raised by the low populated states like Tamil Nadu. Why? If such a thing happens there will be addition of constituencies in UP and Bihar and reduction of constituencies in Tamil Nadu. If this trend continues there will be a little representation to voice the Tamil People. Even in Tamil Nadu, two new constituencies were added in Chennai district reducing two in Kanyakumari. What is the reason? Population. Population can never be a curse. It is a boon. We have to raise cultivation and irrigation to feed the population. We should not cut ourselves in to size. This is cutting the feet to suit the Shoe.

Like wise we have made fun of many thing that we should really proud of. Our language, our attire, our family relations, our culture, our eating habits, etc. were ignored in the modern day westernized, colonial imperialistic world. We should be ashamed of such attitude.

Language is not just a medium of expression. It is like breathe. We feel shy of teaching our children our language. We shy of speaking. Some parents took pride when their child speaks in English. The rich tradition and vocabulary cannot be found elsewhere as is in our Language. We should teach and spread it all over the world. We should help our child speak our language correctly.

We should sit in the floor, legs crossed and take food. This will avoid bone and joint related diseases. This will help us take more food.

Like wise there are many things that we should proud of. Readers may send their comments and record the things that I have failed to mention.