Racism and Culture

The racism attacks on Indians has prompted me to write about this blog which has been neglected for a long time. Let me jump start the engine. I was reading this article on racism in Australia and other countries. Its not the Indians alone that are victims of racist attacks. This is not an easy task to put an end to racism. Racism is prevalent in the very nature of humans.

The media hypes are more than necessary. An article written by an Indian settled in Australia has invoked my thought process. I just checked through my entire life consisting of 25 years. The whole idea behind this is community and culture, the kind of parentage and place where the child is brought up is what plays an important role in the thought process of that person as an adult. One is taught right from childhood which community he belongs to and what he is supposed to do in life. No child is given freedom to think and pursue any thing that he likes, even gods that are to be worshipped are not spared, every child is taught to be a vegetarian or non - vegetarian by religion, caste and other intriguing relatives.

I don't consider that any culture is the greatest, every culture has its own merits and demerits one has to accept this truth and move on with life by trying to gain the best points in other cultures, usually this doesn't happen because people get attracted to the negativity first rather than positive points. I wonder the way orthodox people practice the rituals regularly but they forget to keep themselves and their houses neat and tidy. This is the reason India is still considered to be a dirty country by fellow Indians living in America and other well developed nations. The thing that puzzles me is how we consider ourselves as secular country when even now my mom looks for a bride for me she wants the girl to be from that particular caste, place and from the same sub caste.
We can never be secular and I consider ourselves as the biggest hypocrites. How can the greatest culture where sex is a taboo subject have the second highest number of AIDS cases? Isn't this contradictory to the great Indian culture where we feel shy speaking of sex and sex education?
Indians wherever they are, one can find them hanging out with the same community they belong to, like all the Andhraites stick together, the Punjabis form their own group, similarly all other Indians. When I was studying in Chennai I found myself mingling mostly with people who are Telugus although I had a considerable number of friends in the Local Tamil community. I did not realise this at that time but time teaches you a lot of lessons and I have learnt at every opportunity Life has shown me. As the old saying goes be a roman in rome, this is ought to be true for all good reasons. I dont say one has to leave behind the best values in his culture, keep the best values your culture has taught you and at the same time remove the bad things prevalent in your culture and absorb the goodness and richness of the other culture you are living with. Learn from them and make them feel humanity is the greatest culture.