Sunday, December 11, 2011

Faith or Fake?

Watch this Video.It is one of the shortlisted entries in a Times Of India organized competition back this year - A day in the life of India, that as the name suggests, collected photographs, videos etc which defined this theme & awarded the best.

Holy Cow - Now Packaged(HD) from UnCommonSense Films on Vimeo.


You notice how a jobless guy makes an Indian custom, which considers 'cow' as a holy animal, works for him! And it is not only him but also how the cow gets all fed & worshiped, which otherwise was feeding itself near the garbage dump.This video is not just a creative competition entry but indeed a very true fact.

India is undergoing a transformation in many ways. A crucial phase where, while developing itself & facing numerous problems concerning the politics, economy etc around it, it has to protect its 'well-known-rich' culture. As a youth of the country, I have nothing against it & in fact take pride for the same.However, I wish people would understand that thin line between the culture & myth, blindly following just anything! I mean like in this video, why do they have to queue up & pay to feed the cow? Where was this queue when the cow was feeding itself near the garbage dump? But no it is blind following which we have more trust on.

This reminds me of well something called 'Inter-caste marriages'. In this new India , growing job market, inter-state/region traveling has led to a mix culture youth.This of course has a great silent impact which perhaps we still don't understand & am afraid would take another generation to even accept.Not restricting just to marriages, but using the faith in politics, the minority quota, Mayawati's so called Dalit vote bank etc just exploit people's faith for the interests of those selfish few who simply bank upon this 'blind-faith' for their own motives. At the end it is people themselves who suffer, be it marrying the person of their choice or unable to secure admission in one of the coveted institutions coz of the so-called minority quota which when based on caste definitely makes no sense. The worse is this is not even a tangible problem that could be fought for like corruption which has seen a mass uproar recently for a better change of the country.

I would conclude, 'now-outdated' customs & cultures are something we got to change with time. People in a NYtimes article would sympathize with an under-age girl in Afghanistan being forced to marry a man twice her age in the comments section but would also comment in the same section that it is their culture & they are no one to interfere with. So there is no one else who is going to deal with these delicate matter but just us by being more accepting & participating.