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Re: Coming Generations
I am a junior at UT-San Antonio. I have been trying to start a Hindu
religious group here on campus, but I need ideas on who to contact. You
seem very interested in the hindu relgion and I respect that very much.
Please keep in touch with me, just so I feel another person my age is
also very interested in our culture. If you have any info for me please
contact me at: anas@lonestar.utsa.edu THANKS
On 8 Nov 1995, Ajitabh Pandey wrote:
> 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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