I feel taking pride in past/ancestors is a very human instinct. It instills some belonging and gives us shared stories. Ideally, our hearts should be large enough to take pride in entire humanity. As Rabindranath Tagore wrote:
“Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have origin”
But we are also fallible to tribalism and parochialism. So we break up the humanity and take pride from local identities. Nothing wrong. In fact, I can take pride from a few great Telugu poets but non-Telugu people wouldn’t even get to know them.
But in satisfying our urge of taking pride in the past, we are mixing up great people with others. One such instance is the Astronomy vs Astrology debate in India. People who take pride in Astrology as India’s heritage often use the astronomical achievements of Indian astronomers like Aryabhatta to justify their pride. But Aryabhatta’s work disproved many Astrological claims like Rahu Ketu (superstitions around eclipses). I wrote a blog about it - Aryabhatta would be crying.
There are a lot of wonderful things Indian ancestors have achieved. They’ve invented games like Chess, Snakes and Ladders; sports like Badminton, Kabbadi; did math with zero, infinity, trigonometry etc. But, Ancestors were also humans. They made mistakes and did bad things. I hope we all apply a filter to select the heritage of which we can be proud of. Otherwise, we would end up being proud of a lot of wrong things in the name of tradition.
The Argumentative Indian is a wonderful book that threw light on this aspect. Another tradition Indians can be very proud of is the argumentative nature of ancient India. Debate and doubt was given space. Apparently, even in Ramayana, there is a character called Javali who criticises Lord Ram. As elections approach, I hope we become more argumentative as well.
I watched Kung Fu Panda4. It enjoyed it. I want to watch previous parts also now. Heard the first part is the best.
Zomato launched a “pure veg” fleet to cater to “pure vegetarians”. At one level, many argue that there is nothing wrong in it. There is demand in the market to segregate “pure veg” food and Zomato is a business supplying to that demand. This demand is why there are many “pure veg” restaurants. I feel that the purity-impurity associated caste system is responsible for this demand. There is one argument that this demand is simply because a few people are not comfortable with the smell of meat and so want segregation. But it is not that all meat eaters enjoy smell of every other recipe. Many chicken lovers hate the smell of fish. Many Indians don’t want to eat beef. But this demand to segregate food and food parcels seldom arise here. And why is the demand to segregate food wrong? Because food is linked to culture. Food segregation might cause cultural segregation (often caste and religion).
Okay that was my brain dump. I also attempted a fun reel about this
Such a fun read this one was!