Positively proudly confidently Indian

Today someone forwarded a video message of the Italian parliament at Rome. The Italian flag is a tricolor with colours quite similar to the Indian tricolor, except that the stripes are vertical and the reddish colour is red and not saffron like the Indian flag. Smoke of the flag colours were released from aircrafts at an airshow around the Rome parliament. People were looking above and taking pictures. A wonderful sight, a good forward but for one issue. This was forwarded as an Indian Independence Day celebration at Trafalgar square, London. This is not the first instance of such misleading, irresponsible, erroneous forwards nor will it be the last.

But what disturbs me is this consuming yearning to be recognized by the developed world. Are we such paupers for recognition that we feel proud to share right or wrong news snippets and videos on the vedas being recited by white men, Indian festivals being celebrated by westerners, or India’s independence being celebrated by England. Our culture is rich and our ancient history speaks of great advancement in both the scientific and the spiritual. Our people are intelligent and intellectual, resourceful and resilient, ambitious and adjusting. So, it is only natural that India has a good fan following in the western world. It has a great fan following in the eastern world too. Well, we deserve to gloat.

But, by forwarding such news and videos of westerners wearing dhoti or saree and reciting the rudram, aren’t we seeking validation on our culture from the western world? I wonder if the Japanese feel validated that their concepts of Kanban and Kaizen were adopted by the western world or if the Chinese feel validated that the world took to learning Tai Chi or used concepts of Feng Shui! Whatever is good gets automatically shared and spread to the world, be it Yoga or Zen.

Let us feel secure in our love for our motherland, in our respect for our culture and history, in our pride on our way of life. Then we will not need false videos of some other country celebrating our Independence Day to feel proud of ourselves!