western influence

I had purposely left this topic in my last blog. I am talking about westernized culture and its effect on us. I feel we are imitating the western life too much; not that western culture is all that bad, just that we are chasing our tradition away. We are instilling social and political ideas that are not indigenous to India. Those days whatever we borrowed from British were good; we realized that Government is an acceptable institution. Britishers also made us realize that Government would give us freedom of opinion, expression and the right to drive public demands in a peaceful manner. Yes! What we have borrowed so far has benefited India a lot, but now with growing IT companies and media the unwanted culture is penetrating deep into our society. We are as such sunk in ignorance and with this happening now, I feel we ourselves are eroding our own ‘self’. Yet you ask anyone about this topic they will have a ready answer “I don’t think western culture has done any harm to us, our culture is very strong and every Indian is held very tight to his/her root” but the stark reality is we are on the way loosing ourselves. The worrying aspect is some people are doing just for the heck of it. Already people are comparing Bangalore as another Bangkok! (I don’t want to dwell into this) Senior people are left on their own by the uncaring wealthy youth, and we would soon see another class poor old people and rich youth, and with this class on the rise we will see a lot of old age homes springing up. The emotional bond that we are proud of will soon die. The diversity that we are proud of will also soon die if not checked. A survey says that Indians are the most patriotic people, and with the current influence even that will change. Why is this happening? One reason is the IT industry and another is media. You see any bollywood movie made these days, but for the name of the movie and actors, it completely resembles Hollywood though in a smaller scale. Movies like murder which din have single page story line ran houseful and the reason is well known. Youth are like clay models who can be molded in whichever way wanted. Hey guys this is not the way to box office, please give us better and sensible movies. The challenge for India is to prepare itself to sit along with any other world class nation in a competitive world market. At the same time, it needs to avoid a problematic juxtaposition between cultural indifferences. Every culture has its depravations, every culture has had saints and great man today as it had earlier. Trying to imitate others will result in only one thing; we will have traditional values and cultures only in history books for our children. Lets hope we are not the cause for it.