|
Culturally
decadent and socially self-destructive
--
Dr R Neerunjun Gopee
Let
us blame none. Stand up, be bold and take the blame on your
own shoulders. Do not go about throwing mud at others; for
all the faults you suffer from, you are the sole and only
cause –
Swami Vivekananda
Admittedly, we have not reached the level of
self-destructiveness that has prevailed in Northern Ireland
and now in Iraq with their chronic feuding among “frères
ennemis”, but if the spate of internecine killings and
other acts of violence amongst Mauritian Hindus does not act
as a wake-up call for sanity and a “prise en charge”
by Hindus themselves, we will amply deserve the curse of
future generations – if there are any of us left that is!
Reacting to this continuing daily carnage a few days ago, a
non-Hindu friend of mine pulled me up with, “Eh,
ki pe arrive ek zotte banne Hindous? Zotte fine prend simin
self-destruction, zotte pe touye entre zotte meme! Ki
faire?”
There
is only one, and a simple, answer: Hindus have turned away
from their culture. As is written in the preface to Swami
Tejomayananda’s “Introduction to Hindu Culture” –
“Civilization flourishes with the promotion of culture,
but when the cultural values deteriorate, civilization
declines.”
Murders
of kith and kin along with ghastly disposals of the victims,
rapes and incest, all manner of theft, rampant alcoholism
and drugs abuse, abandonment of children, gambling,
unnecessary feuding over property, domestic quarrels and
irresponsibility, betrayals of trust… do we really need to
list all the examples of social ills that are undermining
the future viability of Hindu society? And for that matter
of society as a whole?
Three
children aged 4, 7 and 10 years are left at home in the
charge of their father, a factory worker, while the mother,
a maid, has gone to work on the eve of New Year and is due
back in an hour. The father leaves them to go … fishing.
While playing in the bathroom the four year-old pulls the
shaky washbasin on his leg and sustains a severe injury
which puts the limb in danger.
A
drunk 40-year old goes to bed with a cigarette in his hand;
the mattress catches fire resulting in burns to himself and
his young child. Another alcoholic sets his wife on fire –
a second time round!! -- because she won’t part with the
little savings she’s hidden in the wardrobe to pay for
their two children’s school needs.
During
the season of Durga puja, a drunken brawl in one of the many
mushrooming bars across the countryside results in the fatal
stabbing of a young man. The village of Trois Boutiques is
“honoured” with a prize for the maximum sale of beer
during the festive season.
A
married woman falls for a married colleague at work; they
both walk out on their spouses and children and set up
house… Another woman who had a love marriage is forced to
prostitute herself surreptitiously so as to be able to look
after her children -- because of a wayward husband.
A
tertiary level student kills his wife and buries her in the
weirdest of circumstances after consulting a “longaniste.”
Another student is charged with the gruesome murder of not
one but two elderly women…
Bodies
are found in latrine pits, in lakes, in freshly dug graves.
There are countless disappearances of young men and women,
not to speak of the associated suicides in the context of
love affairs. Infidelity, broken families, divorces… the
list is endless. We only have to import female foeticide
from the motherland and we’ll go up the league table.
Brothers
and sisters are so pitted against one another that they
prefer to see their heritage go for “vente à la barre”
rather than settling amongst themselves through a modicum of
generosity and mutual understanding. And the paradox is that
the more each has, and the more they are educated, the more
ferocious are the acrimony and the accusations.
If
there were to be a prize for the most depraved community in
this island, we would surely be the inglorious winners!
While
the community is in flames, the majority of our social
leaders play politics and our political leaders, specialists
in exploiting caste and creed divisions, have the gumption
to harangue us from social and religious platforms about
unity and values. Because many if not most of our so-called
social leaders “en mal de publicité” like to
hobnob with and kowtow to politicians, they forget their
primary role and into this vacuum then tumble the
politicians trying to consolidate their vote banks. This
makes them equally responsible for the degradation and
dishonour of the community, for failing to provide the
crucial leadership role which they are expected to –
because, in the first place they are the ones who create the
expectations. Instead of encouraging a symbiotic
relationship with the social leaders with a view on the long
term, they prefer a feudal model of ruler-ruled to their own
detriment and that of the community, and even of the
country, at large. Saprophytes and parasites could learn a
lesson or two here.
Similarly
with most of those who are expected to play the role of
religious guides and leaders. They have gone commercial and
superficial. Instead of taking us into the depths of the
wonderful teachings contained in the Vedas, they concentrate
exclusively on the rituals which they hastily perform
without bothering to explain the beautiful underlying
symbolism. Is it any wonder that the young, and even many
adults, are alienated?
But
that does not excuse the young and the educated either.
Precisely because they have had the benefit of education,
their curiosity should have been excited to go and search
for themselves the explanations that they don’t get
otherwise. But instead, all they do is to criticize, when
they could have taken the initiative to goad the elders into
fulfilling their roles more dutifully. On the other hand,
when the latter take the trouble to organise Vedic teaching
sessions, the youth and even their parents – who also
similarly criticize – find all kinds of pretexts to keep
away.
Which
brings us to the fundamental reason we set out above for the
decadence and destruction that we are going through: it’s
because we are turning away from our culture.
This
trend is reinforced by a credulous gobbling up and imitation
of all the worst that comes out of Bollywood, much of which
is in turn a cowardly imitation of the worst western trends
in dress, fashion and food – one has only to read the
recent series of articles in the New York Times about
the epidemic of obesity and diabetes for which it
fingerpoints its own homegrown western lifestyle.
Swami
Vivekananda’s response to his encounter with the West and
his advice to us was to “take the best and leave the
rest” – and we have done the exact opposite. In fact he
had already warned about the decadence, identifying the
causes and symptoms as: ignorance of our past, narrowness of
our outlook, the perversion of religion, neglect of women,
cultural heresy and fanaticism manifested as rank
materialism/arrant superstition and cowardly instead of
creative imitation, physical weakness,
laziness/selfishness/jealousy, lack of organizing
capacity/lack of business integrity and lack of love.
It
is there for all to see that India has recorded many
spectacular successes in several sectors, and we cannot
compare ourselves with such a vast country, be it our
spiritual motherland, but at least we could draw inspiration
from the best that goes on there. Instead, we mistake reel
life for real life and blindly copy what is offered on the
screen.
The
MBC-TV must take much of the blame for this perversion: it
could do better than filling our screens with the lewd
song-and-dance clips from Mumbai in particular that impact
devastatingly on impressionable young minds. Further, we
forget that reel life is not real life and that Bollywood is
about spectacle and sensation with money as the main
objective. The actors and actresses are simply playing their
roles to make the most money possible, and consent to
perform acts which are dictated by producers and directors
most of whom are also out to make money. Out of the nearly
800 films that come out of Bollywood annually, only a few
are really worth watching and even fewer can be watched by
parents and children sitting together. The standard formula
is: stale triangular or quadrangular love affairs with much
running around trees, marital infidelity, a minimum of one
rape scene, several impossible fist fights, song scenes with
see-through clothing under a waterfall or in the rain, dance
sequences à la Michael Jackson and other scenes
which border on the erotic if they are not plainly
pornographic, violence against women. Even regional films
from the south of India have taken to imitate the Bollywood
crap. We can count on our fingers the number of films like Abhimaan,
Anand, Aradhana that are made these days. The depiction
of the finer human emotions was not associated with the
vulgarity that is commonplace today.
The
tragic effect of all this – in which art is supposed to
imitate life – on the masses is that, on the contrary,
life imitates that art, much of it already an imitation. And
the irony is that those who imitate this imitation in their
dress and behaviour do not realise that many of these actors
and actresses in their real lives are involved in
humanitarian, social and charity activities, helping out
those in need through their fame and name. This positive
aspect, unfortunately, is not what the Bollywood films
project.
To
add insult to injury, the MBC is apparently going to give us
another spectacle: the Zee TV awards. With its “gharanas”,
its spiritual leaders and genuine social workers, its
globalising sectors and BPOs and its over a billion
population, India has enough reserve in its collective
cultural psyche to cope with the negative fallouts of such
an event. But not so tiny Mauritius, whose Hindu population
is exposed out of context and fails to appreciate the
commercial dimension, falling prey to the veneer and
superficiality on display and likely to ape without thinking
or understanding. Was I mistaken to think that Mr Bijaye
Madhou was more culturally sensitive?
Is
there a remedy?
The
worst-case scenario is that Hindus get irrevocably trapped
in the infernal spiral that they are helplessly witness to.
On the other hand, this series of incidents can serve to
jolt their conscience, and be looked upon as the cathartic
bursting of an abscess that needed to erupt. The next step
then would be a cultural revival, an enhanced awareness of
the need to go back to our rich cultural roots and values
which have after all, sustained our civilization for
thousands of years.
There’s
much work to be done, but there is also much that is already
being done, and we have to build on that. Those who feel
they want to bring about this much-needed reform could begin
by reading Swami Tejomayananda’s book referred to above,
and also Swami Vivekananda’s “On India and Her
Problems”, much of whose contents are as relevant today as
they were when Swamiji offered us his deep reflections on
them, including the solutions.
Concrete
action must then follow.
RN
Gopee
ngopee@intnet.mu
|
