Thursday 6 November 2014

Importance of Cultural Moorings

I was wondering why my position about needing to be rooted in our culture and ways was provoking strong reactions. Everyone in principle agrees in the need to be rooted. I think it is because to translate it into reality needs actions - the roots need the nurturing by following some disciplines. And these are old fashioned disciplines.
Culture is what we wear, what language we choose to speak and write in, what we eat, what entertainment means to us, what symbolisms we accept, what the practices we follow. Only in this warp and weft does culture exist. Acts like learning classical dance and music or the vedas comes only after this. By itself, sans the nitty gritty of daily living, that can just stay another artistic form.
In establishing the self identity of a community the personal becomes the political. And anchoring a civilization's identity is an intensely political act.
And in incorporating all this in life and existence, we will discover that we somehow become closer to the ordinary people, to the poor, because they are already in this space of rootedness. We had drifted away.

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