By Utsav Chaudhary:
India, the birthplace of many languages and cultures, is known worldwide for its ethnicity. But in its quest to catch up with the fast moving world, is it losing its traditions & moving towards hypocrisy?
The above argument arises because of the fact that India is in a confounding situation, it neither wants to turn completely towards its ancient culture nor does it want to turn totally towards the western practices, hence it fails to make a turn and bangs straight into the wall of hypocrisy.
The question which arises now is why hypocrisy?
The people of India often claim to be modern, broad minded & welcoming towards criticism but where were these benign dispositions when the launch of Taslima Nasrin’s book ‘Nirbashan’ was blocked by the protesters, even without knowing the content of the book. They claimed that the content might evoke agitation amongst masses just as the author’s previous works did, but is it legitimate to do this without even knowing a bit. Aren’t these people mere hypocrites?
India is a secular nation where the right to express one’s views is given by birth, so banning a Taslima Nasrin or a Sulman Rushdie for instance is just a display of the nation’s hypocrisy.
When Anna Hazare stood up against corruption, the whole nation stood by him. It was for the first time that the common population showed their dissent and agitation against corruption openly. But when caught breaking a traffic law, it is this common population that instigates bribery to the officer in order to avoid the long procedure to pay the challans or to save some money. This is just one of many examples in this case and it shows nothing but the hypocrisy in Indian public.
The film censor board of India has banned on-screen smoking & the reason behind it was that it foments smoking amongst children. If a protagonist puffing a cigarette would foment smoking, then an antagonist performing a heist, kidnapping, murder or rape should definitely instigate these rueful crimes among the youth. So in order to have a ‘sin’ free cinema why not ban all these crimes as well?
If a child won’t see his favorite hero fagging on-screen, he can still catch this habit by watching people around him smoke. Why haven’t actions been taken against people who smoke in open and foment smoking? It is because the government wants to show that it has taken steps to reduce this deadly habit by banning it in movies but in reality it is just being a hypocrite.
Moving on to sex, it is one thing that the people here always refrained from talking about. Osho was given the notorious tag of a guru who talks about sex and promotes it. Does it need any advertisement or promotion? It is a natural process & thus should be discussed with kids so that they possess adequate knowledge about it. The right knowledge.
The moral police who get active during the Valentine week beat up couples who are sitting in parks, and claim it to be against our culture. Is our culture against love?
These vandals have even attacked many exhibitions of painters who painted naked women or homosexuals, MF Hussain was even sent to exile for this offence. Is displaying this form of art an offence? According to these people it is against our culture. Here I corroborate my point; ‘Kamasutra’ originated from India and is a part of our ancient culture. Still these pieces of art are against our culture? These vandals are nothing but hypocrites who themselves enjoy everything against which they protest but do all these stunts to gain public attention, like they did here.
India has a great culture & we are blessed to have taken birth on this holy land but in order to match up with the fast paced world, we have to modify our thinking & lose these double standards without compromising on our culture & without giving up on the modernization of our nation, which stands imperative for the future. Our neighbor across the LAC is the best example of this kind of adaptation. China is believed to overpower USA by 2025 & yet it never fiddled with its culture while modernizing. It’s high time we should open our minds letting India break down this wall of hypocrisy & embark on a journey toward progress and more progress.