Latent Legacy

Nowadays I am reading a book. Infact it would be unfair to call it just a book rather it is a precious gift by the author of an excellent piece of writing to the forthcoming generations. Discovery of India, thats the name of the book and am sure by now many of you must have guessed the name of the author, none other than our first Prime Minister The Jawaharlal Nehru. Though I have still been able to finish just the first half of the book, however, for me this is enough to appreciate the knowledge of this man and am really thankful to him for sharing such an excellent piece of information with the coming generations. This book enlightens us about what India was before it was ruled by Turks, Mughals and Britishers. It throws light on our religion and its origin (not many of us would be knowing that Hindu word is derived from a tribe called H-sintu), it tells us that India is not only about Mughals, Gandhi, Revolt of 1857 rather it thrills us with the fact that Indian history dates back to Turkish invasion and also tells us what India was even before that.
I couldn’t help brooding over the fact that such books have been written by Indians and it’s true that not many of us know about it. I was shocked to read the amazing facts mentioned in this book and this came as news to me. I didn’t know that the leaders of India have left such a great legacy for us.

Our newspapers are filled with communal riots, news channels are occupied with religious rivalry. We talk about being a victim of western culture and Outsourcing industry spoiling our so called INDIAN CULTURE. We call ourselves religious and we perform so many rituals without knowing the logic behind most of them. We are Hindus, Muslims, and all, except Indian, this might sound boring and reiterating to some of us however, it is appalling to realize that our culture is not known to us. Our dresses, food, traditional superstitions decide our culture. If a girl in our family is dressed in a western outfit and refuses to follow the old traditional ways which our ancestors have been following then she is being labelled as a rebellion or uncultured and vice versa. Do we really know our culture? The fact is that around me there are many ignorant people like me who do not have the slightest idea of our culture. This book compelled me to believe that we are still too narrow minded and the reason I believe is lack of knowledge and people are not aware what they belong to. If such valuable source of information is easily available then how come we are still ignorant? Mr. Nehru took the pain of compiling the Indian history into a book so that we can take advantage of it and can come to know what real India was and he might have a vision that making this information available to his next generations would help us in building a better India in future. On the contrary, we hardly know about our history, let go of the fact of using this history for a better future and this is prevelant in our day to day lives.

Yesterday I was watching a popular show in which kids are supposed to perform as stand up comedians. I believe they are given written scripts and are judged as per performance. The age range is between 6-13 years of age. Initially, I was impressed by the amazing performance of those kids and some of them were so young that its almost impossible to believe that a child of such an age can perform so brilliantly. In some instances, these innocent children were given some vulgar scripts, no doubt they did their job well, however, is it right to expose these innocent children to such information. No doubt they would be successful and their success would be attributed to their talent and then the endless journey of running after money would begin and their precious childhood would be spent in earning money. Is this all so important? Aren’t we taking them away from their own culture and most importantly from their own themselves? Is it really their own fault? Then one fine day some so called religious people would raise their voices on banning Pub culture, celebrating Valentine’s day and would blabber on news channels that youngsters are being westernized and they don’t know about our culture.How can we expect them to understand their legacies when we ourselves are forcing them towards materialistic temptations. Are we really doing our duties? Are we really giving our children what they are supposed to inherit or are we using them as a tool to fulfil our own wishes which we could not achieve in our lifetimes. Why can’t we give them their own life and stop pushing them towards money? It’s high time we must understand that there is lot more beyond money and success is about achieving our own dreams and to satisfy ourselves rather than mere money.
Imagine what our forthcoming generations will leave for their next generations when they themselves won’t have the slightest clue of their own country and their culture. How will they face their next generations when they would have no legacy to leave for their coming generations. And such a big loss is attributed to neither them nor their children rather its we people of today, who would be responsible for such a big loss. We are forgetting that this is not a loss of lifetime , rather its loss of the coming generations and then we would really be a nation without any legacy, without any history.

I strongly feel that we should take some steps to make people around ourselves aware of the legacy which our ancestors have left for us so that we can use this immense knowledge pool. We should let go our next generations to find their own path rather than forcing our own traditions which itself is not known to us in the right context. I am sure by doing so we could lay the right foundation for a better future and then we would be able to think as True Indians.

Let’s try to understand what a true Indian is and let us join hands in spreading this knowledge.