Snatch-and-Swallow Heritage:

April 20/2011: ‘What we leave IN our children is more important than what we leave FOR them’ is an oft quoted line. Most of us do not, usually, pay much heed nor are we prepared to ponder over the implications of these words. Today most of us believe that what we leave for our children—money, honey and everything funny like cars, bikes, homes, yachts and even private jets—are more important than whether we make them humans or demons. Many a times, it is seen that parents of young children exhibit pride when their wards are wayward, violent or disobedient. Parents feel so gratified when daughters can do a vulgar little skit in public and make dirty lecherous men guffaw.

On a larger social canvas, we are a people who can tolerate ‘khap’ panchayats and try to legitimize that thought without so much as batting an eye lid. That kind of a situation gets so out of hand that eventually we sit around helpless. Till maybe the Supreme Court asks all Magistrates in this country to get tough with those who punish inter caste couples. Luckily for all of us it even goes a step further by stating that District Magistrates who keep silent on such issues shall be suspended. In these situations we very conveniently forget what personalities like Raja Ram Mohun Roy did for the Indian society by asking the British rulers to ban ‘Sati’. Maybe if that would not have been done in the 1800s by that inpidual, our society would still have been very happily propagating Sati and both NGOs and political parties would have extended unstinted support for the ritual.

One may wonder, what do we understand as ‘history’, ‘heritage’ or ‘culture’. It is not a question. It is something that we need to think about. Red Fort, Taj Mahal, Jagannath or Lingaraj Temples and such monuments, like the Great Wall of China or Angkor Watt shrines do form a part of the World’s heritage. There is UNESCO based in Paris which notifies or denitrifies what are heritage sites. Yet the problem persists that heritage is a word least understood.

It is simply not what was left behind by our ancestors that we may consider as being our ‘heritage’. It is important that neglected monuments and edifices of ages gone by need to be taken care of and maintained. Similarly, it is what we are creating today that also matters as these may be excavated a few hundred years later as monuments of our times. We have to think whether we will be proud of the ugly buildings that are cropping up everywhere today to be seen as objects that speak to future generations about our living and work areas.

In the same breath, let us not forget that the Earth has only so much natural resources. Everything is Finite. With an increasing population, the pressure on these finite assets is also increasing manifold. It is time we become conscious that our future generations may have nothing left for them if we decide to consume everything and finish off the plate.

Time has come to teach ourselves and our next generation that heritage or culture is not just a thing of the past. It is what we are doing today that will be remembered tomorrow as being the emblem of our present day. Those will be the things that will stand up as mute witnesses when the future generations judge us.

Therefore, when we celebrate something like a ‘Heritage Week’, we must take time out and look around. What is it that we are creating, what are we teaching our youngsters, where are we leading them, what icons are we leaving behind to be judged by and so on and so forth. It is rumored that musicians, painters, architects and other creative people are the only ones who are immortal. An Einstein, Van Gogh, Byron, Bach, da Vinci or an Ustad Bismillah Khan would probably be always known and remembered. But common people will come and go. No one will be sung forever. Yet it is they who form the bulk of a society and they are the ones who create what we call heritage. And it is they who are now, in today’s world, living a life of snatch-and-swallow which leaves behind a heritage that could only create revulsion and despise in the generations to come.

Are we willing to change ourselves to be more future ready?