Believe it or not, every Indian citizen talks about culture today. I thought, why not me? I have the eligibility. I am Indian.
With overflowing patriotism, I referred Oxford dictionary. To my surprise, I found the word. How can such a 'conservative' Indian word present in Oxford dictionary? I reassured myself in a typical conservative way, English must have stolen it for their dictionary. Anyhow, my findings lead to the following:
culture• noun
1 the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.
2 a refined understanding or appreciation of this.
3 the customs, institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or group.
4 the cultivation of plants, breeding of animals, or production of cells or tissues.
5 a preparation of cells grown in an artificial medium containing nutrients.
I am little confused. I thought culture is something like Creationism, by which I mean, should not be questioned. Just to be followed blindly.
Seriously, which of these are we referring to?
1 Certainly not this one as it clearly is an abstract idea of human intellectual achievement. I would not have been discussing this today had we accomplished intellectually.
2 The problem itself is a cause of no understanding at all, let alone refined.
3 We have 28 states/7 union territories. Every state has 'n' number of political groups where 'n' is large and cannot be counted. The only achievement of our country is that we are still together. And this can never be the 'culture' others are referring to.
4 There is food scarcity everywhere and farmer suicides are growing every year. If there is no food for us, breeding animals?
5 I don't quite understand this. And I am sure about others too.
Again, which one of these are we referring to? Please don't tell me 'culture' is a verb.
What is our problem with this imaginary noun 'culture'? Honestly, I do not know. I can afford only this much time to waste on culture. Further discussions might end up in uncultured comments. In my opinion, everyone has the right to have his/her own culture. Culture is an exceptional way of life. It is globally asymmetric.
To sum up:
Live simply, and let others simply live!
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6 comments:
The last two definitions of culture are more ecological/biological in nature. It is to do with plant varieties and so on and they don’t have anything to do with the definition as is defined in the first 3.
Culture, (as is defined in the first 3 ), although practiced individually is always defined for a group of people or regarded collectively. But I think the point you are trying to make is, culture is a function of people and not the other way round J
I cannot visualize culture being defined for a group of people. No two fingers are same.
I rather see it as an illusionary control that tries to bind someone for something, without any reason. It is the politest way of saying that I boss over you :)
You cannot call it bossing over, it should have been orginated with some reason, and the reason would have not be passed on, as they did the custom, among a particular group of people. There is a saying , "If you got to experience and then learn everything in life, then one life is not enough!". So to help the next genration of people, a custom, in the name of culture was passed down, I feel! Might be, You could call it advice! Not everyone follows the culture.
but to my reference the culture term in our part of world is set of protocol nothing to do with "manifestation of human or community" why because it all says of do's and dont's. It seems our wrong interpretation of religion is termed as culture, we are religious country then cultured
Fouzul:
All I wanted to convey is that, why to spoil someone's life on something that we do not even know. According to me, something that cannot be justified has no meaning.
Advices are not to be given unless asked for. A brutal force attacking people esp. women in the name of Culture -- How fair is that to call it an advice? Is this what their ancestors passed on to them?
Nagesh:
You are right. The issue itself has nothing to do with India. People who raise their voice for so-called Indian Culture might not even be aware of Indian history, let alone Culture. We always had/have problems with understanding of religion and this is one such example!
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