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Coming Generations
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Subject: Coming Generations
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From: Ajitabh_Pandey@baylor.edu (Ajitabh Pandey)
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Date: 8 Nov 1995 00:17:01 GMT
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Approved: srh <srh@rbhatnagar>
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Article: 521 of soc.religion.hindu
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Newsgroups: soc.religion.hindu
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Organization: Baylor University
Dear fellow netters,
I shall try to show you all a problem which is occurring with many of
today9s Indian children; however, let me tell you a little about myself
and my background. I am presently studying PreMed at Baylor University in
Waco, Texas, where I am in my senior year. My family and I came from
India in August of 1977. My parents came leaving many family members,
friends, and memories behind. I was three and one-half years old when I
came so I do not remember too much from before we came here; we have tried
to return as often as we can, about every five years. In the past 18
years that we have lived in the US, we have moved around a lot, finally
coming to reside in Augusta, Georgia. While moving around, I came to
meet many people with different attitudes and ways of life. Even with the
moving and pressures, my parents took the time to tell us about other
cultures and exposing us to our own more and more. A major part of our
cultural expansion has been religion, Hinduism. While I do not claim to
be the most learned in the field or the most devotional of followers, I do
claim to have more than general knowledge of my religion. This is due to
my parents who took us, my elder brother, younger sister, and myself, to
temples and we ourselves hosted pujas in our house. Our interaction with
many other Indian families, Hindus and non-Hindus, helped us even further
in grasping knowledge about our culture.
I was not until I came to Baylor that I realized that many of today9s
Indian children do not really know what they are saying to their friends
when they say , 3I(We) came from India,2 or 3I was born in India.2 With
these statements comes the responsibilities to uphold and maintain the
ideas and philosophies of their background. Many of the Indian students
here at Baylor are surprised at the size of the Indian student population
here, which is around on hundred and fifty(150) students. To me this
comes as a shock, since I have been raised in a community where I had a
fair amount of Indian friends and other Indian people to communicate
with. When asked why they are shocked with this relatively small Indian
student population, many reply that they did not have any Indian friend
and/or they did not interact with too many other Indians. This in many
cases is due to their parents, which did not introduce them to other
Indians in the community and their own culture. This loss of
communication with other Indian peers for these Indian students causes a
sense of loss within them. In particular, a loss of heritage including
religion. When I ask, 3What religion are you,2 to my fellow students, I
get many expected responses such as Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain, and
others. However the more and more I ask or overhear this conversation
about religious identities of persons, I hear the answer, 3I don9t have a
religion.2 I have to ask myself why these children have no religion,
while in many cases their parents are devout followers of their faith.
After a few more questions, I realize that the person is not only
religiously ignorant, but also completely or partially culturally
ignorant(Some do not even know where their birthplace is, those that were
born in India). Many times they are unable to trace this problem to its
cause, but it eventually surfaces. These children9s9 parents are one of
the primary, if not the only, link between them and their heritage. The
parents at first tried to educate their children of their culture, but
eventually as the child got older and the moral fibers connecting the
parent and child started to loosen. Afterwards, either the parents tried
to keep educating the child but with no avail or the child becomes too
3Westernized2 and too unresponsive to the parents9 teachings or the
parents9 do not having enough time or patience, so the parents9 give up
teaching the child.
While I am not trying to place the blame on anyone or trying to impose
my philosophies on anyone, I have just tried to show you a growing
problem; now let me plead for your help in stopping succeeding generations
from becoming culturally illiterate. Let us try to forge ahead not behind
in helping our children, brothers, sisters, relatives, and friend to gain
a better understanding of our very old heritage. I beg all of you parents
to expose your children to their native tongue, religion, festivities,
foods, and philosophies of their homeland, as my parents have done to
their children. It is all right to pamper the child when it is
unresponsive, but do not pamper so much that its past is lost forever.
For all of the younger generation, I beg you to be responsive and
open-minded to what your parents and elders have to teach you. I ask all
of you to take a more active role in either teaching or learning things
about our homeland. While the 3Western2 culture has bad points and good
points, I ask that all of you try to incorporate the good points into your
teachings, since we are so lucky to be exposed to two different cultures.
As my father has told us many times, 3Both Western and Indian cultures
have their good and bad points, it is up to you to correctly determine
which are the good points and gain the best of both worlds.2 Let us not
break our ties with India so soon; those ties that took, many centuries
before the Western world was important, to build. Ending, I would like to
thank my parents for exposing me to the various aspects of our background
and enriching my life. I hope to one day continue and pass their
teachings to my own children; I also hope that you all will enrich both
your lives and your children9s9 by exposing them to their culture.
--
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