Our Culture their culture

Our culture their culture, our language their language, our religion their religion, the sacred line has been drawn, the tug of war has been started, the clueless game of mindless, substance less cultural superiority has begun. Beware the human race, gone are the days of natural selection, we have now new theory of survival – “Cultural Selection”.

Culture is a very complex phenomenon that encompass everything, from the religion to the food we ate to the cloth we wear.  Human being has always been choosing the subset (in form of either language, religion etc.) of this broad set to rally masses behind them to advance their parochial interests that could be either personnel or not personnel. It all comes to this, isn’t it? All this so called Jehad, honour killing, racism, casteism, communalism etc. etc. are nothing but just a one liner – my culture is better than yours, you accept it or perish to the doom.

The mindless quest of human race or individual to achieve cultural superiority is beyond my comprehension. It’s nothing but the two neighbors fighting with each other over their Garden’s Roses by saying my rose is better than yours. Why can’t they enjoy each other roses and be elated by discovering the varieties of roses in different gardens. Just imagine how boring it would be when every house in a village just have one type of rose. Just think how ridiculous it would be when both families start baying for each other blood, just to preserve the claim of superiority of bunch of Roses in their garden.

“These roses are part of our garden, our family for generations, let’s not be there one head on their torso who tries to defy honour of our roses, let’s all vow to protect honour of our Roses till our death” – This would be the passionate and rousing speech by the head of the family to their members.

This might sound ridiculous to the core but at the macroscopic level that is what nevertheless is happening in world around us. The senseless mob goes behind their leader for some reason which is nothing but matter of establishing cultural superiority.

Instead of rejoicing on variety all around us, instead of having curiosity to grasp a vast knowledge strewn all over world due to cultural varieties, human kind has always been engaged in tussle of imposing or protecting their culture on one or other or from one or other.

Just sometimes back I read a news where author announces proudly that “A Hindu has been appointed for so and so post in US”, for a moment I felt an emotion of pride immediately followed by a pang of pain. Our mind is so socially wired to have a huge socio-cultural ego in terms of the “language we speak, food we eat, cloth we wear, song we sing, god we worship, our customs, our rituals, our beliefs, our faith etc.”.  That socio-cultural ego overpower our sense of reasoning and power of understanding. Hence the sense of cultural superiority feed our socio-cultural ego and led us to believe in our own individual superiority over others.

The propensity to overpower the human being at the other end of cultural line (some time to the extent of killing them), just because they have a different set of cultural customs and belief, which rational human mind can accept that? Who are to decide about superiority? Why do I have to proud of my heritage, why can’t I simply enjoy those wonderful heritage provided by accumulation of centuries of cultural assimilation along with having admiration of heritage of people at other side of cultural line. Every cultures are wonderful. They are not creation of one day or one year, they are the cumulative consciences of thousands of people over thousands of years. None are superior and none are inferior and World will not be complete by omitting even a tiny part of them.

Then why this madness to prove your superiority? All these dirty schemes, plots, frenziness and obsession – just to prove that you are superior, the faith you follow is superior, the ancient civilization that you have inherited is superior, the custom you follow is superior, the god you worship is superior?

As Gandhiji had said that ‘The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed’. Greed could be either material greed or so called spiritual or cultural greed. Each and every one of us are supplemented by our ancestors with wonderful heritage that would be enough for us to sustain and prosper as a community. We do not have place for cultural greed to overpower others or proclaim to protect ours, that would only take us towards the doom of human race. Human race has survived natural selection, it cannot survive cultural selection.