Hello Akka,
Your withering words during our conversation on 17th July about a liberal society have upset me. Not because your opinions and prophecies were, and are diametrically opposite to mine but, your view reeks of a dangerous vice, which you are not able to identify.
I did not make any concerted efforts to substantiate my arguments and persuade you because I firmly believe- that talks disrupt but disappear afterward, reading injects and spreads, leaving a permanent mark- any person can come out of the cocoon of an unrealistic world through only dedicated and compulsive reading. I do not know whether this small effort of mine will have any cataclysmic effect on you but I could not allow my own sister to sit and concoct a cauldron of vicious venom. I am looking forward to a meaningful monologue that can pave the way for a reasonable and acceptable dialogue, which can spill some hard truths on the floor. So, here are my views on why your opinions are antithetical to the idea of humanity and a portent of an imminent disaster.
1. Your defiant opinions on maintaining ‘our’ culture, viz, ‘Badaga’ are misconstrued and flawed.
Have you ever wondered why you call yourself a ‘Badaga’? Because you were ‘ accidentally’ born as a ‘Badaga’. What if our parents had changed their religion or were an inter-caste couple, would you have maintained the same defiance? Absolutely, Yes! You would have still talked about maintaining ‘our’ indigenous culture as we have all been taught to love indefinitely the term with which we were born, be it Hindu, Badaga, Girl, and many other accidental identities. But have you wondered what this ‘love’ means?
Love for once culture is love for a ‘way of living.’ Badaga is a ‘way of living.’ So, if you love your ‘way of living’ then how do you protect that ‘way of living’? By forcing this ‘way of living’ on all those who were accidentally born under this ‘way of living?’ Certainly not. Just imagine, our ancestors, the primeval humans ate raw meat and covered themselves with figs, isn’t there an urge to follow our natural ‘way of living’? Or, to place more languidly, suppose you eat only idlies because your father ate only idlies, and his father ate only idlies; you wear only sarees because your mother dressed so, and her mother also dressed the same. So now you want to bequeath this habit of eating only idlies and wearing only sarees to your future generation, how long? And does it make any sense? Imagine, in the same situation, you share your idlies with a person who shares his dosa and saree with a kurta pajama. Who wins? It could be anyone, idly or dosa or saree or kurta, whichever is good will win, or it may blend and become used alternatively. This is how we have evolved and it is the most basic, and essential connotation underlying the theory of ‘civilization.’
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2. You would have read about how the Indus civilization was wiped out without evidence some 1900 years ago. But have you noticed the peculiarity that 1900 years later, modern humans, still follow some of the practices that date their origin to the Indus civilization? Be it the worship of Gods, baking rice, ploughing fields, usage of seals, and the importance of language, many things share a prominent similarity with the present. How is it that a civilisation, viz, the ‘entire community’ got wiped out, but some of their practices remained back? Have you wondered why we talk only about Indus, Romans, and Mesopotamia when it comes to civilization, weren’t there any other civilizations? Thousands of years but only a countable number of civilizations, why? The answer lies in the previous paragraph- ‘way of living.’ There were millions of civilizations but none persisted and crumbled like nine pins because their idea of a ‘way of living’ was corrupt.
I probably think the preceding line answers my earlier question too, about how the Indus got wiped out, yet some of their practices have been sustained. It is because their ‘way of living’ could not sustain the changes as the years rolled on. Some practices sustained as they were egalitarian and did not differ on the basis of any specific criteria.
So, your imagination that we can protect ‘Badaga’ culture by being a closed community is dangerous and will destroy the very purpose of the objective. Many people are moving out because of the infirmities in the Badaga ‘way of living.’ To protect one’s culture and indigenous identity which is Badaga in our case, we must open up. We must allow the clot to be cleared through a fresh drain of progressive ideas from other cultures. You grow stronger by removing the weaknesses, not by hiding and bandaging a festering wound. If not allowed to change and protected with an iron fist, the culture “Badaga” will surely be extinguished.
3. When you pompously said you do not mean to harm or inflict any pain on any ‘others’ even though you wanted to venerate and sanctify your ‘accidental privilege’, it showed how contradictory your views are. You belong to those innumerable fair hearts who are passionately concerned about the ‘goodness and wellbeing’ of people but dither when it comes to deciding what is that ‘goodness and wellbeing’.
The ‘goodness and wellbeing’ are the changes that one must start with oneself.
Have you ever wondered whether a person cleaning the drains, the woman washing dishes, or the child playing with dirt on the street also thinks like you? Do they also empathize with the poverty of others? Do they also pray for goodness for all, the well-being of all, to donate food, money, and clothing to an orphanage? Do they also go through bouts of mood swings where altruistic desires flood the heart? No! They don’t.
Why?
Privilege!
They are not as privileged as you to sit and even think like that. This privilege which has fallen on us unasked, has despoiled their life, and filled their thoughts of existence with miseries and despair. All they think and lament is why they were denied that privilege. Why.
Accident!
Have you ever thought how your life would have been if you had been born as a ‘Dalit,’ ‘Muslim,’ ‘Transgender,’ or any of those millions of oppressed individuals? No!
Because you are privileged to have been born in a society and a community that does not attract dirty looks. So, you are privileged to feel pity for them but not pity that they are missing the entire opportunity to live a good life because of an accident. But what did you do to earn this ‘privilege’? Did you turn the Earth upside down or gobble the Sun before birth? You just happened to be born at the right time in the right family, an unplanned incident that a dictionary honorably calls accident, and I steadfastly put it as treachery. Doesn’t this fact strike you that you are enjoying a ‘way of living’ for no reason of yours?
I had realized about this ‘privilege’ thrust on me for which I had no rightful ownership. I was ashamed about the fact that I kept on enjoying my privileges at the cost of others who were tortured, beaten, harassed, and killed for their missed privilege.
What lies the remedy, then? To share this ‘privilege.’ Earth is beautiful as it is the only place where life exists. But it is such an ignominy that we do not preserve life but our privileges. One way of sharing your privileges is to share your ‘way of living.’ Hate or treat a person badly for valid reasons but not because he was not born like you.
4. Some 80 years ago, a man called Hitler persecuted many innocent people. He tortured, gassed, and killed them in detention centers in Germany; some years later, a white ‘minority’ jailed, maimed, and brutally bludgeoned the ‘majority’ blacks in South Africa; today, a Junta regime in Myanmar has driven out millions of Rohingyas from their land, the Rohingya men are hunted for fun, women raped out of boredom and children sold on weighing scales; a conglomeration of Arabic countries are fighting each other in Yemen, every year 5000 children die due to militant attacks and another 400000 are malnourished severely; a Hindutva leader holds sway over a secular nation, result, an 8-year-old teen gets raped and murdered in a temple and a dalit gets shot for riding a horse on his marriage day.
What similarity or connection do you have with all these scenarios?
All the scenarios aforesaid started from a similar, and otherwise innocuous statement like yours, our culture is becoming extinct due to others, and we need to protect ourselves by closing ourselves to others. The only difference was that you wanted to remain close and did not want to disrupt others, but they felt, that to remain safe as a closed group, others should not exist.
Nobody has proved that life exists after death, so love the mortal life if life is only once.
I have no desire to advise you or doctor you as I firmly believe every person can change only through self-realization, which can be different for different people. And neither do I want to ruin my life by preaching what is ‘goodness and well-being.’ Still, I went ahead in writing this monologue as I could not see my sister spitting words that smacked of fissiparous ideas.
I hope I have not befuddled you with this long and tedious letter. And apologies for the onerous read.
Deepish Mani