Who are we ?

     To say that we belong to a particular race, pure blooded or a pure Hindu culture is nothing but a blatant violation of truth. The intermixing is so complex that we are unable to draw boundaries of what constitutes a pure culture.

    Before people began settled cultivation, they were nomads migrating from place to place either in search of food or water or shelter or to hunt animals or to protect themselves from being hunted or to escape harsh weather conditions or simply for the sake of exploring! Along with this movement people carried with them their ideas, culture, values, beliefs about God, materials and ways of communication. There is no necessity that all these would have been completely accepted or completely rejected. Some would have been rejected and some would have been accepted and integrated into the local culture.

    During this long process of migration, the lines of purity of any culture were severely blurred. People got accustomed to cultural change which is constantly evolving. A beautiful example for this is the recent change in the idol making of Ganesha. The recent Ganesha festival saw idols of Ganesha killing the corona virus! The corona virus was viewed as corona`sura(corona demon)! A culture has to evolve with changing circumstances, otherwise it would become redundant and will perish.

    Those who are caught up between the tussle of linking ancient way of living with the modern scientific principles think that everything in the past was glorious, awesome and scientific. Now this is impossible. There exists duality in nature. If there is light, there must be a dark. If there is life, there must be death. These dualities are fundamental to our existence. Hence when there is a society, there are people who are intelligent and adapt their culture to the changing scenario and there are others who are mired in ignorance.

    People talk about how great their ancestors were, their achievements and their glory. But the question here is instead of worshipping those ancestors, why not give them true respect by becoming someone who will become a great ancestor for the future generation? All those ancestors were very clever and made sure that their future generation will remember them through the means of prayer and worship. But they know that the distinction of purity of culture is artificial. The moment we start asking ourselves who we truly are, many things in the society which is falsely propagated will get exposed. Only self introspection with a neutral stance can expose the truth and when this happens we might understand the idea of Vasudaiva Kutumbakam !