Venue: Lady Andal
De-battle on 2011.
Quarterfinal (?) debate against one of the PSBB schools. The judge speaks to me.
"You keep talking about culture. Can you please tell me what culture is. Can you define culture for me?"
"Sure" I promptly reply. "I would define culture as something....." I ran out of words here and there was long, awkward pause. I looked at the audience and I finished the sentence, with the best definition I could think of.
"I would define culture as.. <insert long pause> something that can't be defined".
The audience and the judges broke into laughter and before I tried to explain the judge cut me short and gave us his own drawn out definition of what culture was. (Something I don't remember but I do remember not agreeing with it then)
We lost the debate but I wasn't worried about that. The fact is, that is truly how I would define culture.
An internet search for the definition for the word "culture" gives you this:
"The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively."
Now that might be acceptable to many but we were (and I am, presently) talking about culture in a different sense. Something that doesn't fit in that definition.
"Dating is against Indian culture"
Now how does the word "culture" there fit in to that definition?
It doesn't.
Culture can't be defined for the simple reason that culture is never constant. It changes. It evolves over time and what was "the culture" a few million years back isn't our culture now.
It was culture to ruin the lives of people based on the color of their skin last century and now, we just think that that was stupid.
I'd have people stopping me now and saying "OMG but thats different. That was racism. When I say culture now I mean...."
Halt. Stop.
This is probably exactly how the people you call racists responded to their kids 75 years back when they asked why they couldn't play with "colored" kids. In fact Im pretty confident that our great-grandchildren would look at us in disbelief and call us all a bunch of sick homophobes and look at the way we treat sexual minorities the same way we look at our ancestors who treated linguistic or racial minorities.
(Im calling our previous generations that ^ already, but hopefully the entire 2nd generation after ours, or the generation before that would realise it)
Anyway, the point Im trying to make with this post is that there's no such thing as losing our culture. If a particular style of music that has existed in our country for centuries is becoming less and less popular, by all means try and save it, it's a very sad thing that an extremely beautiful art form is declining but when people say "Indian Culture is dying"- No.
Indian Culture is not dying. Indian culture will never die. It'll evolve. It'll adapt and accept new styles of music, wherever they come from. They'll get localized, modified and "Indianized".
It was our culture to treat eunuchs with respect and invite them for family functions and get their blessings as they were supposed to be holy. Somehow, that has changed and hardly anyone treats them with respect.
Music forms have changed, art styles have changed, dances have changed.
Certain local and special art forms are dying with hardly anyone giving it the respect it deserves. Does that mean Indian culture is dying? No. It's changing. It's evolving and accepting new art forms (and for those of you snickering and saying "Nothing is so pure and artisitic as our-" stop. Music, dance and all forms of art are means of communication and just like all other means of communications, there are different languages. Genres, if you will. If you know only Tamil and dont understand Latin, Latin is going to sound like gibberish to you. Doesn't mean Latin doesn't have it's own set of rules and "artistry". You just don't understand it)
What you like about your culture, save it, enjoy it and preserve it to death. But there's no point whining about what others are listening to, watching or reading. If you don't enjoy it, don't go there. Just remember that we will never "lose" our culture, or that our culture will never die.
You're all probably butthurt about the fact that the culture you knew and grew close to is changing and noone is enjoying what you considered artistic anymore but that's what happens. Enjoy it as long as it exists, or as long as you exist. If it has to go, it will.
All the social norms you lived by will change. In your eyes, it's complete disintegration of morals, but it'll happen. Doesn't mean you have to be okay with it, but there's really not much you can do about it. It's inevitable.
That's what happens. Stuff changes. Culture evolves. Never dies.
