Mauritius Hindus Losing Culture

[Guest guest]

on your own shoulders. Do not go about throwing mud at others; for all the

faults you suffer from, you are the sole and only cause – Swami Vivekananda

Admittedly, we have not reached the level of self-destructiveness that has

prevailed in Northern Ireland and now in Iraq with their chronic feuding among

“frères ennemis”, but if the spate of internecine killings and other acts of

violence amongst Mauritian Hindus does not act as a wake-up call for sanity and

a “prise en charge” by Hindus themselves, we will amply deserve the curse of

future generations – if there are any of us left that is! Reacting to this

continuing daily carnage a few days ago, a non-Hindu friend of mine pulled me

up with, “Eh, ki pe arrive ek zotte banne Hindous? Zotte fine prend simin

self-destruction, zotte pe touye entre zotte meme! Ki faire?” There is only

one, and a simple, answer: Hindus have turned away from their culture. As is

written in the preface to Swami Tejomayananda’s “Introduction to Hindu Culture”

– “Civilization flourishes with the promotion of culture, but when the cultural

values deteriorate, civilization declines.” Murders of kith and kin along with

ghastly disposals of the victims, rapes and incest, all manner of theft, rampant

alcoholism and drugs abuse, abandonment of children, gambling,

unnecessary feuding over property, domestic quarrels and irresponsibility,

betrayals of trust… do we really need to list all the examples of social ills

that are undermining the future viability of Hindu society? And for that matter

of society as a whole? Three children aged 4, 7 and 10 years are left at home

in the charge of their father, a factory worker, while the mother, a maid, has

gone to work on the eve of New Year and is due back in an hour. The father

leaves them to go … fishing. While playing in the bathroom the four year-old

pulls the shaky washbasin on his leg and sustains a severe injury which puts

the limb in danger. A drunk 40-year old goes to bed with a cigarette in his

hand;

the mattress catches fire resulting in burns to himself and his young child.

Another alcoholic sets his wife on fire – a second time round!! -- because she

won’t part with the little savings she’s hidden in the wardrobe to pay for

their two children’s school needs. During the season of Durga puja, a drunken

brawl in one of the many mushrooming bars across the countryside results in the

fatal stabbing of a young man. The village of Trois Boutiques is “honoured” with

a prize for the maximum sale of beer during the festive season. A married woman

falls for a married colleague at work; they both walk out on their spouses and

children and set up house… Another woman who had a love marriage is forced

to prostitute herself surreptitiously so as to be able to look after her

children -- because of a wayward husband. A tertiary level student kills his

wife and buries her in the weirdest of circumstances after consulting a

“longaniste.” Another student is charged with the gruesome murder of not one

but two elderly women… Bodies are found in latrine pits, in lakes, in freshly

dug graves. There are countless disappearances of young men and women, not to

speak of the associated suicides in the context of love affairs. Infidelity,

broken families, divorces… the list is endless. We only have to import female

foeticide from the motherland and we’ll go up the league table.

Brothers and sisters are so pitted against one another that they prefer to see

their heritage go for “vente à la barre” rather than settling amongst

themselves through a modicum of generosity and mutual understanding. And the

paradox is that the more each has, and the more they are educated, the more

ferocious are the acrimony and the accusations. If there were to be a prize

for the most depraved community in this island, we would surely be the

inglorious winners! While the community is in flames, the majority of our

social leaders play politics and

our political leaders, specialists in exploiting caste and creed divisions, have

the gumption to harangue us from social and religious platforms about unity and

values. Because many if not most of our so-called social leaders “en mal de

publicité” like to hobnob with and kowtow to politicians, they forget their

primary role and into this vacuum then tumble the politicians trying to

consolidate their vote banks. This makes them equally responsible for the

degradation and dishonour of the community, for failing to provide the crucial

leadership role which they are expected to – because, in the first place they

are the ones who create the expectations. Instead of encouraging a symbiotic

relationship with the social leaders with a view on the long term, they prefer

a feudal model of ruler-ruled to their own detriment and that of the community,

and even of the country, at large. Saprophytes and parasites could learn a

lesson or two here. Similarly with most of those who are expected to play the

role of religious guides and leaders. They have gone commercial and

superficial. Instead of taking us into the depths of the wonderful teachings

contained in the Vedas, they concentrate exclusively on the rituals which they

hastily perform without bothering to explain the beautiful underlying

symbolism. Is it any wonder that the young, and even many adults, are

alienated? But that does not excuse the young and the educated either.

Precisely because they have had the benefit of education, their curiosity

should have been excited to go and search for themselves the explanations that

they don’t get otherwise. But instead, all they do is to criticize, when they

could have taken

the initiative to goad the elders into fulfilling their roles more dutifully. On

the other hand, when the latter take the trouble to organise Vedic teaching

sessions, the youth and even their parents – who also similarly criticize –

find all kinds of pretexts to keep away. Which brings us to the fundamental

reason we set out above for the decadence and destruction that we are going

through: it’s because we are turning away from our culture. This trend is

reinforced by a credulous gobbling up and imitation of all the worst that comes

out of Bollywood, much of which is in turn a cowardly imitation of the worst

western trends in dress, fashion and food – one has only to read the recent

series of articles in the New York Times about the epidemic of obesity and

diabetes for which it fingerpoints its own homegrown western lifestyle. Swami

Vivekananda’s response to his encounter with the West and his advice to us was

to “take the best and leave the rest” – and we have done the exact opposite. In

fact he had already warned about the decadence, identifying the causes and

symptoms as: ignorance of our past, narrowness of our outlook, the perversion

of religion, neglect of women, cultural heresy and fanaticism manifested as

rank materialism/arrant superstition and cowardly instead of creative

imitation, physical weakness, laziness/selfishness/jealousy, lack of organizing

capacity/lack of business integrity and lack of love. It is there for all to

see that India has recorded many spectacular successes in several sectors, and

we cannot compare ourselves with such a vast country, be it our spiritual

motherland, but at least we could draw inspiration from the best that goes on

there. Instead, we mistake reel life for real life and blindly copy what is

offered on the screen. The MBC-TV must take much of the blame for this

perversion: it could do better than filling our screens with the lewd

song-and-dance clips from Mumbai in particular that impact devastatingly on

impressionable young minds. Further, we forget that reel life is not real life

and that Bollywood is about spectacle and sensation with money as the main

objective. The actors and actresses are simply playing their roles to make the

most money possible,

and consent to perform acts which are dictated by producers and directors most

of whom are also out to make money. Out of the nearly 800 films that come out

of Bollywood annually, only a few are really worth watching and even fewer can

be watched by parents and children sitting together. The standard formula is:

stale triangular or quadrangular love affairs with much running around trees,

marital infidelity, a minimum of one rape scene, several impossible fist

fights, song scenes with see-through clothing under a waterfall or in the rain,

dance sequences à la Michael Jackson and other scenes which border on the erotic

if they are not plainly pornographic, violence against women. Even regional

films from the south of India have taken to imitate the Bollywood crap. We can

count on our fingers the number of films like Abhimaan, Anand, Aradhana that

are made these days. The depiction of the finer human emotions was not

associated with the vulgarity that is commonplace

today. The tragic effect of all this – in which art is supposed to imitate life

– on the masses is that, on the contrary, life imitates that art, much of it

already an imitation. And the irony is that those who imitate this imitation in

their dress and behaviour do not realise that many of these actors and actresses

in their real lives are involved in humanitarian, social and charity activities,

helping out those in need through their fame and name. This positive aspect,

unfortunately, is not what the Bollywood films project. To add insult to

injury, the MBC is apparently going to give us another spectacle: the Zee TV

awards. With its “gharanas”, its

spiritual leaders and genuine social workers, its globalising sectors and BPOs

and its over a billion population, India has enough reserve in its collective

cultural psyche to cope with the negative fallouts of such an event. But not so

tiny Mauritius, whose Hindu population is exposed out of context and fails to

appreciate the commercial dimension, falling prey to the veneer and

superficiality on display and likely to ape without thinking or understanding.

Was I mistaken to think that Mr Bijaye Madhou was more culturally sensitive?

Is there a remedy? The worst-case scenario is that Hindus get irrevocably

trapped in the infernal spiral that they are

helplessly witness to. On the other hand, this series of incidents can serve to

jolt their conscience, and be looked upon as the cathartic bursting of an

abscess that needed to erupt. The next step then would be a cultural revival,

an enhanced awareness of the need to go back to our rich cultural roots and

values which have after all, sustained our civilization for thousands of years.

There’s much work to be done, but there is also much that is already being

done, and we have to build on that. Those who feel they want to bring about

this much-needed reform could begin by reading Swami Tejomayananda’s book

referred to above, and also Swami Vivekananda’s “On India and Her Problems”,

much of whose contents are as relevant today as they were when Swamiji offered

us his deep reflections on them, including the

solutions. Concrete action must then follow. RN Gopeengopee (AT) intnet (DOT) mu

2005 Mauritius Times.

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