Depleting Culture and Tradition: A Concern

Dr. BHARAT KUMAR PRADHAN, Member: IUCN - WCPA

Embracing the culture and tradition of others is always good but not at the cost of our own
Linton states that “the culture of a society is the way of life of its members; the collection of ideas and habits which they learn share and transmit from generation to generation.” With the civilization, humans learned to socialize with each other as well as other group of animals which benefitted mankind the most. They learned to make use of anything and everything available around them for the sustenance. With a desire to explore more, the humans segregated into small groups or communities and moved away from each other leading the nomadic life. During the course, they developed distinct dialect, ritual, food, medicine, costumes, tools, weapons, music and arts, etc., according to the environment they lived in which we call it a culture in wholesome. Interestingly, there was no or very less similarity in the culture of different communities and that became the unique identity of each of the communities which gave them due recognition. The culture, tradition and the traditional knowledge which were developed and learned through experiences were transmitted from generations to generations without or with little alterations. Today we boast of having rich culture and tradition, which is the most valuable gift to us from our ancestors. The past generations did their best to conserve the same; even lots of sacrifices were made by them for its preservation. They preferred to die for their culture they were born and brought up; nevertheless, the so-called modernization or globalization has led to its slaying; very few communities have retained their culture and tradition intact whereas most of the communities have gone ahead and have massacred their rich and diverse culture. We must not forget that our culture, tradition and traditional knowledge is our greatest wealth and nothing in the world can replace them.
India is a multi-cultural and multi-linguistic country; its culture is one of the oldest and richest in the world due to which, it attracted and is still attracting people from all over the globe. However, younger generation call our culture, tradition and the traditional knowledge as backward but they tend to forget that our old literatures like Vedas, Puranas, Upanishads, etc., which teaches us the value of life were written thousands of years before the modern science were born. For example, the composition of Vedas dates back to 12000 BC and Ayurveda, the science of life was composed some 5000 years ago. These literatures are full of science and medicine and it has remedy to every modern disease and solution to every problem, faced by us today.
In the context of the Himalayan region, where the modern technology reached very late, majority of the people still have dependency on nature and natural resources for their basic subsistence needs such as food and medicine. The people in the Himalayan region have developed wide array of knowledge and key skill to identify the plants of utmost importance; however, such traditional knowledge, which has the potential to provide economic benefit to the society through access and benefit sharing mechanism, is fading away gradually due to the loosening interest amongst the youngsters. On the other hand, the people from western countries are adopting our rich culture and tradition; they are showing up immense interest on our traditional knowledge. If this continues, we will soon lose everything in their hand and there will be severe identity crisis in the very near future. There have been many instances where India had to spent huge sum of money and time to claim ownership over its own bio-resource based traditional knowledge, as developed countries like US had patented the knowledge base on many of our bio-resources; the typical example is the case of turmeric.
The state like Sikkim which is the hub for the tourists due to its natural beauty has maximum chances of losing our long-conserved culture, tradition and the traditional knowledge. Many foreign tourists and students from across the globe come to Sikkim for learning and experiencing our culture, food, traditional agro-farming practices and village life. They involve themselves in the day-to-day life of the villagers; they work in the agriculture field, milk the cow, learn even to cook our traditional food, wear our traditional dresses and actively participate in celebrating our traditional festivals; however, our youngsters are least interested in such activities. For us, our tradition and culture has become one-day show where we gather in masses and pretend that we are really concerned about it and we are doing our best to conserve it. But, in reality the scenario is completely different and the irony is that it has just become a folklore or a show-piece to be kept in the museum. Our‘atithi devo bhava’ attitude has cost us in the past and there have been cases where foreign tourists involved in bio-piracy were caught; on the other hand, the knowledge piracy is still happening in our state but no one is really concerned about it because most of us have become materialistic. Even we do not give recognition to the knowledge of our traditional healers or the Vaidyas who have been practicing it since many generations. Our preferences always would be on the allopathic system of medicine but we tend to forget that it is based on the traditional system of medicine. We have completely ignored our traditional system of medicine like Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha. Of all the ancient medicine, Indian system of medicine is considered as the most methodological and the most holistic, both in its ideas and its curative methods. Even Yoga and meditation, which has its root in India, is not valued in our country but it has gain wide popularity in the western countries because it keeps oneself relaxed in stressful condition and away from the diseases. So is the condition with our food habit and lifestyle. The wide popularity of pub-culture, disco bar, casinos, etc. has devastating effect on our culture and tradition and hardly any such thing now exists that depicts our pure culture and tradition. The food we eat, the dress we wear and the language we speak is not ours. We have even borrowed the religion from the foreign countries despite the fact that India is the land of ‘devis and devtas’. It is an irony that the people from western countries know the true value of our religion and culture and come to India for seeking peace and salvation; they have mastered in everything including our very own Sanskrit language, the mother of all the languages but we call our culture, a backward culture. We celebrate occasions like new year, Christmas, valentine’s day, friendship day and others with utmost joy and great enthusiasm but when it comes to our own traditional festivals like Dasain, Tihar, Maghe Sankrati, Asar pandra, Chaite dasain, Paila Baisakh, etc., their celebration is limited to few family members that too, inside the closed room.  Further, our traditional dishes are so varied and nutritious but it has become the occasional menu of our diet; rather we have included burger, pizzas, noodles, bread butters, etc., in our daily diet.
Not only the younger generation, but in most of the cases, the parents are also responsible for the depletion of our culture and tradition. The concept of joint families, which teaches us to celebrate every moment together and be part of joy and sorrow of one another, is vanishing from our society and the families are breaking up into neutral families. The grandparents have a great role in upbringing of their grandchildren; they teach and share the knowledge and experiences they have learnt or gained from their own parents with their grandchildren, which helps in shaping the character, values, culture and spiritual life of youngsters. In a situation where both the parents are working, they have no time to teach their children about values of families and our culture and tradition. Nowadays, the relation between parents and the children are compared with materialistic things and there is no love and affection between them. Everyone has become self-centred and our tolerance level and patience has decreased significantly. The relationship like marriages, which is considered to be sacred, are breaking up due to which the children are brought up in stressed and isolated environment. Sometimes, a child becomes the victim of the increasing competition amongst the parents. They are sent to such schools where high priority is given to social status and the income of their parents; the children are made to think that they belong to the high-class society and are different from other children. Once such thinking overcomes a child’s mind, social gaps get created and they do not socialise and prefers to remain away even from their parents and easily becomes the victim of adultery, drug abuse and alcoholism. Not all, but in most of the high-class societies, people are more inclined towards western culture and the same is inherited to their children. The parents feel proud when their children develop command over foreign languages and adopts the western culture but when they speak their mother language and decked up in traditional attire, the parents feel distressed and humiliated in their social circle, which is very unfortunate. Today, the younger generation lacks the knowledge about our culture and tradition and it is not their mistake but of the parents, who keep them away instead of teaching them about our culture and tradition.
With modernization, generational gap between the older and the younger generation has widened resulting in the development of the uncivilized society. The younger generation shows hostile attitude towards the older generation; they differ in their opinion and considers older generation as the burden or the hindrance to their autonomy. They hardly interact with the older generation leading to communication gap as well as less emotional attachment of the younger generation to the older generation; nevertheless, the older generation will always have sympathy over the younger generation despite their hostile attitude. Due to existence of such gaps, the younger generation loose an opportunity to learning about their culture, tradition and the traditional knowledge. On the other hand, the older generation gets isolated and such social isolation and loneliness causes high rate of mortality in the older generations because they become susceptible to various diseases and illness.
Advancement in technology also has negative impact on our society and culture. It is always advantageous to adopt modern technology for keeping oneself updated about the latest happenings; however, today, it has more of disadvantages. The modern technology has led to decline in the social interaction; even there is no interaction amongst the family members and between the parents and the children to talk about their culture and tradition. There are many things that is learnt by seeing; however, today the children spend most of their time with their gadgets and rarely come out of their house due to which they completely lack conversation skill or interpersonal skill. The parent-children relationship and the husband-wife relationship has undergone tremendous changes in terms of love, respect and commitment; people have just forgotten the value of families, which is basically the strength of our culture and tradition. The internet technology has changed the life of millions; nevertheless, there has been substantial increase in extra-marital affairs due to which, divorce rate has increased significantly, even in the Himalayan states like Sikkim; children have become the victim of pornography; suicide rate and criminal activity has increased due to social networking sites. Further, the work culture and efficiency has gone down drastically because of the use of social networking sites. It was revealed by a survey (unpublished) that in the government offices, people spent almost 60 percent of their time in social networking sites. May be because of this, the technology giant, China has banned Facebook and WhatsApp in their country.
Social discrimination on the basis of caste and religion is one of the main reasons which has caused societal disintegration and the depletion of our age-old culture and tradition. In India, caste system is very much prevalent till today which is responsible for social inequality. During Vedic period, it was on the basis of the occupation of the people or family; nevertheless, today the stratification has become so rigid that the people belonging to higher caste does not give equal treatment to the people of the lower caste which compel them to abandon their own religion, culture and tradition and adopt some foreign religion.
Embracing the culture and tradition of others is always good but not at the cost of our own because western culture is based on the principal of materialism whereas our culture is based on the principal of spiritualism which stands for moral values, ethics, value of families, power to distinguish between good or bad, right or wrong, etc. It is to be acknowledged that our Indian culture, tradition and the traditional knowledge on different subject is very vast which makes it distinct from other countries; nevertheless, due to our ignorance, we will be losing it very soon and there will be nothing left for the future generation. It is high time that we realise the value of our culture, tradition and traditional knowledge and join hand and work together for its preservation and conservation because our culture is our identity. We should feel proud that we are born in the land of GODs and we have such a rich culture and tradition which is very rare and we should carry this forward and inherit the same to our younger generations, our future.
(Dr. Bharat Kumar Pradhan is a social thinker, critical analyst and an environmentalist. Email:  bharatprdhn@gmail.com)