[Peptobismol]

Hi Renuka,

Glad to hear that the indian people in Malaysia follow the culture & are probably over zealous. Also Malaysia has a concentrated large population of Tamils which helps to retaining the culture.

Btn, I can see you are probably one of the flag bearers of our culture, the best of our traditions. !!

I am referrring to the west bound migrants where the Indians are spread all over.

I agree, some the first gen migrants follow the culture more than the people in India. I know some of them in USA follow this to the letter & spirit.

However when you look at the next gen - the kids born & brought up there - completely in the western world, they slowly move away from the roots !!

Most of the next gen kids dont visit the temples there let alone follow the culture.

So in 1 or 2 generations, all is lost.

Cheers,
JK

[NeroASERCH]

The problem is that with the commencement of rule of the Dravidian parties, there are virtually no jobs in government and government related institutions. Brahmins have virtually been thrown out of medical education. Thus brahmins were facing a bleak future. The rise of software industry has been a godsend gift for them to lift them out of poverty. It is okay to preach brahmins not to go abroad but who will like to die of hunger and penury even in one's homeland. Brahmins getting jobs in gulf countries, Malaysia etc which have a sizeable Indian population maintain their culture. We should only expect that to the extent possible, expatriate brahmins should try to maintain their culture. Incidentally how many brahmins living in TN maintain their culture?

Hi vsubbu,

Agree with you. Brahmins had to travel abroad for jobs due to this insane politics by the dravidian parties/lack of opportunities.

However that is not the case today. South states are doing extremely well & a large no of people from other states are coming here for jobs.

And we cannot move away from homeland just because some parties are making an issue of Brahmins. anyways I see that this rhetoric is toning down !

Infact all Brahmins like the jews need to come back & settle back in India & assert their rights. Thats the only way, we can hope to retain our community & culture. These are 1000's of yrs old & we owe it to preserve them for our kids & their kids. !!

Cheers,
JK

[LottiFurmann]

Please explain "What Is Lost"?
Like BostonShankara once wrote, "what are we protecting"?
What is Brahmanism? Why must it be preserved?


In Mr. Vsubbu's words
Incidentally how many brahmins living in TN maintain their culture? Like Renuka said:
Have you given this a thought..correct me if I am wrong.Isn't a Pattar(palghat iyer) actually a TB that had settled in Kerala?
Didnt they assimilate with the local cultural and food habits?
Did they lose anything by doing so?
I feel our Hindu ancestors adapted and assimilated much more than anyone of us. Mr. Rambadran laments:
Our brahmin culture is sacred which is still preserved in the south Please enumerate what is this culture? Is it common to all south Brahmins? Is it even common to all Tamil Brahmins?
I feel culture is local, to the extent that what one family follows is distinct from their neighbor.
Yes things change, may be for good or bad, I do not know.
We used to travel by steam engine, now we travel by diesel engine, we may travel by electric engine, the mode may be different but we reach the same destination. So what is that we are lamenting?

[PhillipHer]

Mr. Brahmanyan, even before you wrote:
I know Swami Chinmayananda personally and organised his first Gnana Yagna (seventh in India, after his return from Uttarkashi) in 1954 at Coimbatore as Joint secretary to the committee. He belongs to my generation. My exposure to religious literature is due to Swamiji only. A dynamic personality who appeared in the line of Swami Vivekananda and Maharishi Dayananda Saraswathi to revitalise Vedic Religion. There is a lot that we share, I am glad you are from Chinmaya family.

[Peptobismol]

Hi Prasad,

well I thought I clarified earlier. I am referring here to the culture of following the brahminical traditions like sandhyavandam, chanting sanskrit slokas, learning sanskrit language, the various festivals, learning our vedic texts/ramayana, mahabaratam, rituals, customs. This is common to all south brahmins, not only specific to us TB's/iyers.

I am NOT talking about dress culture, drinking, eating non veg, life style choices like premarital sex, live-in relationship etc.. - all these are individual choices & people will adopt to changing times like steam engine to bullet train

I dont have a problem if some brahmins want to discuss religion/vedic texts over Jack Daniels after all it is a bullet train/space age !!

However the issue is the disintegration of the brahmin community & its culture. It is similar to the jews in early 1900's, when they came together & created Israel. Infact Jews strongly push their kids to marry within the community to preserve their traditions & culture !!.

If a brahmin marries a chinese, japanese etc.. there is no way you can preserve these age old traditions !!

Cheers,
JK

[Drugmachine]

I am intrigued, is Sandyanavandanam defines the culture of TB.

Np wonder that you are worried about the loss of culture, by defining our culture so narrowly you have set yourself for failure. Mr. JK you will get your wish. That practice is dying even among TB who live outside Tamil Nadu. Even in Tamil Nadu among younger generation I do not find people consistently following this practice.

[Paul Bunyan]

Dear Prasad,

You have been asking repeatedly what is culture. And you have been saying neti neti to what the members have been giving as definition of culture. Here is my two paise:

As per dictionary the meaning of culture is this:1.the act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties esp. by education. 2.enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training 3. the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior that depends upon man's capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations 4. the customary beliefs social forms and material traits of a racial, religious or social group --as per websters Collegiate Dictionary. Hope this helps.

Cheers.

[Peptobismol]

Actually if I ask myself personally..do I maintain Hindu culture?
My answer will be I dont really know.
I am living a life doing what I am comfortable with.
To a certain extent my lifestyle reflects what I have been brought up in but along the way I have discarded some practices as my understanding of life and God changed over the years.

I feel as we age we discard more and more of lifestyle practices.
I will give you a simple example..I was at my mums house today seeing my son play "Backyard monsters" in FB and I was talking to my mum.

We were upstairs and we didnt realize it was getting late and we forgot to switch on the downstairs lights.
When I came downstairs I found the house in darkness and joked with my mum saying "thank God appa is not back from his religious classes yet otherwise if he sees the house in darkness he will surely give us a piece of his mind"(my father conducts religious classes on Sundays)

When I was younger I would have thought "OMG its late and I forgot to switch on the lights sort of fear that its not good to be in darkness" but today I was cool thinking after all the light at home is to make sure we can see where we are walking and the true light is actually within me.

So everything changes as we mature and as understanding changes.

If you ask me if I worry that Hindu culture is being lost..my answer is No!
Nothing is really lost in this world..there is always a blue print of culture somewhere in someone waiting to be downloaded.

Sometimes culture is much more than language,food habits,lifestyle..Real Culture is when we realize the very purpose of our existence and that can be realized right from a Kalahari Bushmen to the Eskimo and all others who are in between.

[radikal]

Dear Prasad,

You have been asking repeatedly what is culture. And you have been saying neti neti to what the members have been giving as definition of culture. Here is my two paise:

As per dictionary the meaning of culture is this:1.the act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties esp. by education. 2.enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training 3. the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior that depends upon man's capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations 4. the customary beliefs social forms and material traits of a racial, religious or social group --as per websters Collegiate Dictionary. Hope this helps.

Cheers.

Mr. Raju,
I hate to be a bore, but even your explanation is not enough. There is no one activity that defines culture. As I have been saying we all define culture in various ways. We all maintain culture in our own way. To me a brahmin way is following spiritual practice. I also feel the following of vegetarian food, and not consuming rajasic or Tamasic food is an important trait.

But that is Brahmin way.

I am still not clear as to the definition of culture.
We lived outside Tamil Nadu, following the practice of our forefathers who migrated 100 of years ago.
We live in USA carrying on the culture as best as we can. I do not see any loss.
Actually when I visit India I am saddened by loss of culture in India.
The rampant corruption, and acceptance of status quo by ordinary people. and destruction of our heritage, the filth and disregard for rule of law shocks me.

What is the use of maintaining Sandyanavandanam, when we are killing the Tigers. and destroying Ellpra caves.
Are we attaching importance to wrong things in the name of culture?

[Beerinkol]

Folks,

Dictionary meaning apart culture is very difficult to pin point from amongst a set of many values. These values are values because they have been acquired over a period of time from parents, peers and circumstances and situations validated repeatedly in the touch stone of life's experiences.

When I was a young boy I lived in a small village. A poor brahmin couple used to visit my villages at least once in a month. They were poor and had no permanent place to live in. The wife whose name was Rangam was a raving lunatic who used to beat her husband, tear him with her nails and abuse him in chaste tamil and even spit on his face in fits of anger. But the husband, whose name was Pichandi, used to bear all that with patience and take care of her well. He would go from house to house begging for food, collect whatever is offered, take it to his wife, feed her first and then eat what is left. He would meticulously change her dresses, answer all her child-like querries, and after a day or two move with her to the nearby village. As a young boy I used to wonder what was it that made that man carry that kind of a burden on himself so well without a murmur of protest. I know now that it is a value that he had picked some where in his journey of life - that he should never never let down his wife because he has married her with the vow to take her along through thick and thin and sick and sin. He might not have thought as much as I do now and drew any conclusions about his pledge and yet it came naturally to him because that was a value he had picked up. We all pick up such values in our journey of life. We hold on to many of them despite severe attacks on our values by the inexorable march of time as well as the day to day struggle for survival. Yet we hold on to them. That is what is just one aspect of culture. I think when our friends here speak about the loss of culture they speak about the loss of values. From the days of Rangam and Pichandi we have come quite far in our journey. Today we hear about incompatibility between husband and wife on trivialities, we come across men who are monsters who treat their womenfolk as door-mats, we come across women who are just nagging pests and we wonder what has happened to our cultural values. I think I am not alone in this wondering. Think about it.

Cheers.

[radikal]

Dear Prasad,

your post #29 for reference:


Somehow I missed the point that you are an Indian living in US. Culture is many things put together. Culture cannot be defined by just one activity I agree. When a majority dubs you as an advanced section of the society and denies you many benefits which it extends to others you dont just grin and bear it in western cultures. You take a gun and start shooting. But brahmins survive that kind of an injustice and thrive. A poor NB and a poor B have the same task in their hand-keeping the body and soul together. Majorityism helps the former with doles and denies it to the latter. Because it is not in their value system to take a gun in hand they struggle more against the odds to survive. This is just one aspect of cultural traits. I can mention many such. But if you point out an isolated case of a deviation and say this is not the cultural trait my answer would be that numbers matter here. Look at the majority and forget the deviants. hope you understand. Cheers.

[Slonopotam845]

I am intrigued, is Sandyanavandanam defines the culture of TB.

Np wonder that you are worried about the loss of culture, by defining our culture so narrowly you have set yourself for failure. Mr. JK you will get your wish. That practice is dying even among TB who live outside Tamil Nadu. Even in Tamil Nadu among younger generation I do not find people consistently following this practice.

Hi Prasad,

wow ~ I am amazed at your ability to nitpick, pointless arguements about silly stuff. !!. Culture encompasses a lot of things, it is just not sandhyavandanam. Pl read my post again - LOL !!

if you are not interested in the brahmin traditions & culture, you will not be on this forum reading all this. you can go to another forum called - "nothing matters", "anything is okay", "everyone can live anyway they want" run by atheists - LOL !!

Cheers,
JK

[tgs]

Shri Raju, with reference to your post #30 and #31

Very nice and clear post, making true sense of what culture means and what exactly it is, that is unique to each community/religion/region.

Frankly speaking, I wonder how come some grown up adults fail to understand what is culture? As you have detailed in both of your posts, every culture has values of its own kind and fits in well with its own culture. Religious practices does not belong only to Brahmins or Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists etc..etc. In the name of God and Spirituality, different spiritual practices are followed as per one's religion and community's believe system, as much as one can follow, give up in due course of his/her life, alter or pick them up again.

Values are the core of the culture and forms the foundation to establish and sustain.

Yes, many people in India are changing and adopting western culture. But, there exists more or equal population that carries on with Indian culture's core values. Many are the changed folks who could make a come back to the same core values, to peacefully settle on the same foundation that holds the culture, sooner or later.

We should not confuse our culture with that of our matured grown up intellect and say that, I found darkness as nothing but the absence of light in home at 6pm and there is nothing to feel about it. It can be left as it is IF we could still comfortably move around without light. We Hindus never ever keep the lights off during Sandhya time and tell the same to our kids. This is our culture and it has its own value. We tell our daughters and sons to keep patience, adjust and mange to the level best to sustain marriage. We don't tell them to discard marriage if you have to compromise a bit and have to be submissive in any way. This is our culture and it has its own values. Like wise, there are many many aspects of our culture with its own beautiful and meaningful core values.

I have come across many stories from my friends and social circle about the impact of MNC's and BPO's, where a different sort of western culture is adopted to ensure girls and boys keep working in their organization. One of my friend's friend didn't allow his youngest sister, who is qualified with BE in Computer technology, to work in any such MNC's.

If we see the recent Tamil Movie - "Mayakkam Enna" of Dhanush, many of us would find disgusting to see how his romance takes place. He ends up loving and marrying a girl who was with one of his close friends, dating him and staying together in a hotel room. The director some how has shown decently by just focusing the camera towards one disturbed bed, among the two in the room, in which the girl and Dhanush's friend were staying. Dhanus notices that too. She says that, she was just dating with him due to the guys liking and request BUT she has fallen in love with Dhanush..LOL!!!! Her heart belongs to Dhanush and that is what is all about LOVE...LOL!!!! The story line justifies that, a girls heart felt liking towards her husband can enable her withstand any challenges and keep loving him, supporting him and assist him in all the ways and means to make him a successful man. So, folks, don't have backward thinking and narrow mindedness that everything should be exclusive to you. Hope that the girls heart is exclusive to you that can give true meaning to your life.


Many folks in our society may say that I am a male chauvinist. That's why, I can't tolerate such practices in the society.

A Girl AND a BOY can try if she/he could like and love a guy/girl. She/he may like and love him/her and decide to marry or just get away from him/her. She/he need not to share bed with him/her when she/he knows that she/he still has not fallen in Love. Even if she/he falls in Love, she/he can well offer her/his extended physical love to him/her after marrying him/her. That is what a True Love is. True Lovers doesn't jump on bed together to exchange their extended physical love, before marriage, as per our culture.

After seeing such movies, girls and boys may be enlightened that, that is what is LOVE and anything goes in the name of LOVE.

To such people, I would only like to say that, don't degrade the word LOVE. Just say "partner" that need not to carry the sense of LOVE.

I am sure this is not our culture. But, I know that many of our people are changing. And I can well realize as how the western culture is influencing Indian culture. But, I am sure that many of our people still stick to our culture and would for sure sustain our culture.

[tgs]

Mr. JK I am not going to respond to your post.
Sri Ravi and Raju,
It is not that I do not lament that i miss some of the values I grew up with.
But my contention is that culture is evolving phenomenon.
I suppose each generation feels it.
There have been charge that you lost your Brahmin heritage if you left the shores of India.
If mr. JK feels that then I can not argue with that.
My feeling is that we do injustice to people who are upholding Hindu values, where ever they are.
Sometimes we forget that people other than brahmins too uphold Hindu values .

I do not believe in birth based caste system.

[brraverishhh]

If we see the recent Tamil Movie - "Mayakkam Enna" of Dhanush, many of us would find disgusting to see how his romance takes place. He ends up loving and marrying a girl who was with one of his close friends, dating him.

Dear Ravi,

This situation had happened in real life to two people I knew(both from India)
The guys ended up marrying a girl whom his room mate used to date.
It was an arranged marriage where the guys marriage was fixed with his room mates ex girlfriend.

He married her saying that he knew her nature from his room mate saying that she was a loving and caring girl(the room mate and the girl could not marry cos it was an intercaste relationship).
He never had even a crush on her before while she was dating his room mate.
He married her solely due to her loving nature.

Sometimes a person is worth much more than who she or he has been with physically or emotionally.

[Beerinkol]

Hi Prasad,

why should preserving brahmin traditions/culture mean birth based caste system or in any way discriminate others ?. are you saying, let us TBs forget about our culture ??.

I keep visiting US very often, have a lot of friends/colleagues there. In one of my visits to a Indian family, the next gen kids did not know anything about Deepavali, Ramayana, Mahabarata, had not heard the word Vedas etc.. They were the kids of a mixed marriage between a TB & Chinese.

They were all celebrating thanks giving, Christmas etc.. with gong ho !!

Some of us TBs believe that it is important our kids & their kids continue to read, learn about our vedas, puranas etc.. even if they dont perform sandhyavandam everyday !!

This is the same for Gujarati & Bengali families who I visited in the US !!

every community has a right to preserve itself & its culture. I can understand if someone says, we "cannot do everything" that is prescribed in our scriptures, but they should learn & practice at least "some of it" !!

for eg, many Muslims dont perform prayers 5 times a day, because of work etc.. which is fine, but they read the Koran, "try" to follow many of the tenets !!

Cheers,
JK

[Peptobismol]

Dear Jaykay,

Hindus still follow one important tenet that Muslims and Christians dont...and you know what tenet that is?

Its only the Hindu who will praise God when things go right and blame God when things go wrong.

That we Hindus are Number 1 !!!

[NeroASERCH]

Dear Jaykay,

Hindus still follow one important tenet that Muslims and Christians dont...and you know what tenet that is?

Its only the Hindu who will praise God when things go right and blame God when things go wrong.

That we Hindus are Number 1 !!!

Utter generalization!!!!!

[9mm_fan]

Utter generalization!!!!!

Some exceptions are there but see the movies..always a Hindu goes to temple to fight with God when something goes wrong..

Ok even in real life its always a Hindu who utters his dissatisfaction when things go wrong by saying "I did so much Pooja for You..I prayed without fail but still I get this etc!!blah blah blah"

A muslim will never even utter such a word in his dream.

[Ifroham4]

Dear Jaykay,

Hindus still follow one important tenet that Muslims and Christians dont...and you know what tenet that is?

Its only the Hindu who will praise God when things go right and blame God when things go wrong.

That we Hindus are Number 1 !!!

LOL !! - Good One !.