Yesterday I watched "Marathi BaNa" in Deenanath in Parle, Mumbai. Its a beautiful and well presented play both from choreographic and content wise. It managed to depict the variety of Marathi traditions in a concise yet detailed form. It concluded with lamentations towards how the traditions are being lost even in rural India. The director/producer declared that No action is being taken to prevent the traditions from receding into oblivion.
Now the question I asked myself was: "What are traditions? What is culture?". It is something which helps us in being a good citizen and good member of society while providing the entertainment. The traditions of Vasudev and Bharud engrained in the marathi society was to spread the moral discourses far and wide and self sustain the tradition. In the age of information technology and widespread education, the importance of 'word of mouth' spread of moral discourses have become somewhat irrelevant in the cities. And it is bound to become more and more irrelavant as time passes even in rural India. Instead of lamenting and spending effort into saving a now worthless tradition, it will be better to spend the same effort to include the same messages in our schooling system. Improve the quality of education. That will serve Maharashtrians and India better in the long run.
The society is moving away from animal dependence to machine dependence. Importance of Cows and Bulls, Sheep and goat is reducing day by day. So is the importance of all traditions celebrating the interdependence between animal and human.
Girls/Ladies and become more and more independent, working and getting more freedom in the society. They are able to meet their freinds/relatives without the need to "supported traditions" like Haldi-Kunku, Mangala-Gaur etc etc. And hence the reduce importance of these functions/puja in Urban India.
Agriculture is a thing of past. From now on more and more people will move out of dependence on agriculture and allied fields into more urban style of work environments. Today, with advent of electric machines like mixer-grinder old equipments like "jaata" etc are obsolete. And that is true in all walks of life.
Traditional 'koLi' is being replaced by Trawlers. Tribes are getting educated and moving into urban environments. Children find 'Foreign' games like Cricket more attractive.
Now do we need to lament the lost traditions? And is it worth while to spend the effort to support the traditions? At best we can achieve the traditions on life-support. Their is no way we will be able to make the system self-sustaining.
I am happy to let go these traditions. Others are sure to disagree, there is certain nostalgia attached to each and every thing. Everybody hates change. But this is the price to pay for all the conveniences we receive. Watching a "Marathi BaNa" in an AC hall, eating Vada-pav, drinking Pepsi is not the best way to show your support and cannot be more ironic. I wonder how many people clapping their hands off even have time to teach their children Marathi. Clap for the performance. Applaud the effort and creativity. But clapping in support of "lamentations of lost traditions" and "Lets save this culture" is ridiculous at best and laughable in general.
3 comments:
Traditions always exist. But they should not be used as a defence for not entertaining compelling questions. Through questions, we can unearth answers that might be very different than what we would like to believe...about us and everything else.
You write well. Keep it up :D
Traditions have always existed throughout history. In my opinion, I didn't think we need traditions any longer. Traditions hold society back instead helping us move forwards. In order fot civilizations to survive, changes must be made and and traditions are one of those changes.
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