Great Indian Culture

Indians are the greatest. Indian culture is the greatest. While our ancestors were writing Vedas, flying planes, creating atomic theories that can build nuclear weapons, and using monkey armies to build bridges, the Westerners were dwelling in caves, hunting and scavenging.

Indians are not only the greatest. We are superior too. Our race is superior. We descended from Aryans, a perfect and pure race, where people are fair (and white).

We are the best in everything. Our Vedas are incomparable. There is no text written which can equal Vedas, our Ramayana or Mahabharatha. Our science is advanced, more advanced than the Western Science (also called Modern Science). In fact, our science is holistic. It takes into account the harmonies between the man and the nature, looking at them as one single wave, connected; a disturbance here will cause a ripple there. Hence, a benign planet hovering silently across the space is not just idle, it is disturbing the cosmic patterns affecting individuals, selectively choosing them by the time they were born and the place they were born. Each of those planet remembers where each human is born and when he is born and then accordingly does complex mathematical calculations to come up with various scenarios to affect his life. It decides his destiny, as to when he will get married, how many kids he will have, what kind of love life he will have, whether he will be bold or meek, good or bad, on whether he will have lots of money or not. It also decides what kind of marks he will get in an exam. It may even decide that you will fail the exam. But of course, if your chant a shlok to Goddess Saraswati, that planet will change those destinies and give your better results. Ah, those wily planets!

So, how great are we?

[I will be quoting from Meera Nanda’s article “India in the world: how we see ourselves”. All quotations are from her article]

The Pew poll asked people in 47 countries if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others.”

Indians topped the list, with a whopping 93 per cent agreeing that our culture was superior to others, with 64 per cent agreeing completely, without any reservations.

And what is this Great Indian Culture?

For some it is spirituality, for some it is our morals, for some it is great Indian family values, for some it is our religion. For some it is our traditions, rituals and customs (called Sampradaya). All in all it is called Bharat Sanskruti (Great Indian Culture).

So, let us look at our Great Indian Culture a little closely.

Indians are spiritual. It only means they are less materialistic (unlike those in the West). Hence, they go to spiritual gurus and donate money so that they can wash off their sins to go back to making more money. These spiritual gurus travel in swanky cars, own private planes, and wear really thick gold chains, and preach spirituality.

Indians are highly moral. Morality in India is everything to do with sex. Morality has nothing to do corruption, cheating, bribes, or dowries. Sex is bad. Hand-holding is bad. Discussing sex is bad. Kissing is bad. Indian families look down upon sex (though they happen to make so many babies). But then they sit as a whole family in front of a TV to watch soft porn on a daily basis. Body gyrations, pelvic thrusts, and other sexual innuendos are all lapped up. Newspapers like TOI bombard them with nude women on a daily basis. But sex is bad. And Indians are highly moral.

Indian morality also includes non-alcoholism and vegetarianism. Drinking alcohol is bad, in all forms and shapes. Those who do not drink alcohol look down upon those who drink with utmost contempt. Vegetarians look down upon non-vegetarians as killers and murders of poor animals. Of all the animals on the planet, cow is the greatest. We are like cows, bovine, peaceful, lazy, walking around on the roads, idling away our time.

Indians have great customs and traditions. They include widow burning, untouchability, dowry deaths. They will go to any extent to defend their customs. They also come up with many rituals and practices that result in ill-treatment of lower castes, women, and people of other religions. They take pride in celebration of the womanhood. They have goddesses unlike some Abrahamic religions whose gods are all men. But again, they don’t like it when they get a girl child, they would like to abort it.

Indian customs also include doing everything the way stars and planets tell them. Complex Vaastu Shastra tells you that if your plot is in the shape of a turtle then you are going do die. Therefore, one takes pains never to carve a plot in the shape of a turtle. Also, there is an obsession with a direction. Some directions are good for you and some are bad (And nobody dares to ask why, but would spend millions to correct it).

India has great family values. It means the kids will listen to the parents all through their lives without protest. Even if it means the son has to burn his wife. When he burns her up, he fulfills the grand old Indian tradition of always following the orders of one’s parents. Great Indian family means suppression of individual creativity and freedom forever.

And we are proud of this culture.

Usually people would assume that a culture so vibrant and superior will easily be taken up by others (who are currently practicing inferior culture). One would assume that it would very easy to sell this culture to others (since it is so superior in every respect). One would assume that this culture will be secure and fearless (because it is so superior in every respect).

However –

The strange thing is that for a people who think so highly of our own culture, we are terribly insecure. A startling 92 per cent of Indians — almost exactly the same proportion who think we are the best — think that “our way of life needs to be protected against foreign influences.”

One starts wondering, if our culture is so great, does it need that much protection from foreign influences. What do they fear here? Who do they fear here? Do they think the young Indian lot and the uneducated lot cannot value this great Indian culture and hence will easily get tempted by other influences?

If it is indeed so great, why the insecurity?

That’s when you have to wake up and realize that it is nothing to with our strength. Our perceived greatness is actually our weakness. We have an unnecessary and completely unrealistic grand opinion of ourselves – a sense of greatness which is completely hollow – an artificial construct so delicate it will burst like a bubble created from soap water, a castle made of pack of cards which will crumble with a small gust of wind.

Our greatness is translation of our innate inferiority. We have a hunch that we are inferior. And this is a major cover up to hide that inferiority.

Xenophobic and racist Indians

I wish this survey (cited by Meera Nanda) had done some studies on racist attitudes, because I am quite sure we would top that list too. I am quite sure that we will turn out to be the most bigoted and racist people on the planet. We are already the most discriminatory people on the planet, capable of discriminating people based on color of the skin, caste of a person, religion, ethnicity, language, gender, which high school you went, which kindergarten you attended, what accent you speak, etc.

We also happen to be highly xenophobic. Does that come as a surprise?

Indeed, we feel so embattled that 84 per cent of us want to restrict entry of people into the country.

We don’t want Bangladeshis. We don’t want Black people (they face outrageously blatant discrimination, starting from airport to all walks of life and our record of treatment of Black people in Africa is notorious). We don’t want ‘Chinese-looking’ people (Mizos and Manipuris, though Indian, face constant discrimination and ridicule in a city like Bangalore). We don’t want Pakistanis (they are found only in Indian jails).

Our racist attitudes take the form of our caste hierarchy. We see ourselves superior to the neighboring Muslim nations, all Black people, all Mongoloid races, but somehow see ourselves lower than all White people.

The only reason why Sonia Gandhi is the most powerful person in India is because Rajiv Gandhi married a White Italian woman. If he had married a Vietnamese or a Black woman, we would have booted her out of the politics the minute Rajiv got killed.

Related Posts: Vedas and Science, Astrology Vs Science I, Pseudo-science: Vaastu Shastra, Indian Media and Adult Content