Moral Policing

“Moral policing”, a word coined and quiet often used by media to describe the growing fanaticism. One day they stop a film release other day they stop somebody’s painting and next time they thrash a news channel’s office, who knows what’s next may be me or may be you? Everything on the name of Conservation of culture! Does that make sense especially in a country as diverse as ours? Where nothing can be called indigenous from food to languages to dresses or whatever.

Food, the most cherished part of our culture but do we know that the cosmopolitan potatoes are gifted to us by a new world (America). How will you wake up in the morning without the tea that comes to us from China? Had Amitabh Bachchan been so famous without ‘khaiye ke paan banaras wala’, does he know that paan came from Persia? The Chatwals made huge fortune in US by selling Biryani and Tandoori; do they know it came from Arabia? Had the Portuguese not brought the ‘chilies’ along with them, our dinning wouldn’t have been so spicy. There is no end to the list but don’t we enjoy eating all that came to us through invaders, traders, travelers etc.

Hey girls! Don’t show your bellies next time when you wear a jeans but your mom can do it when she does a sari. Boys don’t sit with your girlfriends in the parks in those so-called indecent postures but deities can do so in Khajuraho. Contemporary decency too is exotic to India; it came with Islam, which propagated a novel dress code in India.

Urdu, oh it’s the language of Muslims. Sorry brother, do you know, it semantically means ‘lashkar’ (army). It was the language of army that nurtured in Indian subcontinent by the amalgamation of the languages of invading armies and Hindi. It cherished in Mughal India, crafted by both Hindus and Muslims writers, be it Ghalib or Firaq, Premchand or Iqbal. The fever of revival engulfed the beautiful language. They succeeded to change the Persian script to devnagri but failed to erase the dialect, the accent, the vocabulary that are still from Urdu. Bollywood is standing tall on Urdu but calls itself ‘Hindi film industry’, an irony in itself and a disregard to a great culture, which lost its name but still, beats in the hearts of Indians.

So are with religion too, they call Islam and Christianity exotic only because its founders were not Indians. Buddha and Mahavira were Indians but Buddhism and Jainism became exotic to India. If we can live without them then why can’t with Islam or Christianity.

Friends, conservation of a culture is nothing but an illusion. Actually cultures are like fluids, which flow in its way, neither can we stop nor can we mold it. Yoga is more popular in American than in India, it’s a matter of pride for us but for them it works for their health. So don’t stop your child to learn and adopt but ask him to progress in a pragmatic way as our ancestors did.