India Festival 2010

India Festival 2010
PRESERVING NATIONAL
CULTURAL IDENTITY
Challenges and Solutions
National Cultural identity: every individual
irrespective of his present location and country of
stay, represent a culture, which is more or less is
his identity. Few centuries back, most of the world
was unified with no borders. People used to move
from one part to other without visa or passport.
That is why we see lots of cultural similarities in the
cultures around the world such as Romuva people
in Lithuania have more than 30% Sanskrit words in
their language and good number of people follow
fire worship similar to our yagna. Even if Jews were
distributed over 70 countries around the world; they
always retained their Israeli identity for more than
two millenniums. Hindus have been in many Asian
countries for more than two millenniums but still
retain their Hindu cultural identity.
Various characteristics needed for defining
the Cultural identity: One of the major criteria to
national cultural identity is the attachment to the
land and the ancestors lived there, the traditions
which have been followed for generations, scared
places and their reiterations in daily prayers, sense
of belongingness, affectionate feelings towards
people from the land and readiness to sacrifice for
the values. If you look at the Hindu families which
have settled over more than 120 countries, all of them
show these characteristics. Similar feelings have also
been expressed by Jews and many other cultures and
its people.
Understanding the Difference between the
State and the Nation: The concept of nation is well
described in Vedas and has been a Hindu contribution
to the world. We have several references to nation in
our scriptures. The state concept was more a western
concept and had been only connected to piece of land
and more with political reference. Nation is more
connected with culture. Israel remained a nation
for two thousand years even though there was no
land for the Israelis. Same thing is with many Native
American nations here in Americas. As on today there
is no politically recognized Hindu nation but India
has been a Hindu nation since ages. Erstwhile Russia
was a state with several nations included and after
the cold ware several nations were formed including
Latvia, Lithuania and so on with very strong cultural
traditions existing for hundreds of years.
Differentiating between Religion and Way
of Life (Dharma): Two thousand years back, there
were thousands of cultures and traditions to mention
a few, there were more than 1000 African cultures,
more than 500 Native American Nations, Australian
Aboriginals, Maoris from New Zealand and hundreds
of other ancient cultures and traditions worldwide
including the Sanatana Dharma from India, all these
were a way of life. They did not have one book, one
founder or messenger or one way of worship. They
believed in dialogue between the less knowledgeable
to the more knowledgeable, like Bhagvadgeetha is
a dialogue between Bhagwan Krishna and Arjuna.
Oral tradition has been the way all these Dharmic
traditions have been maintained over thousands of
years. To understand the cultural identity we need
to differentiate between the religion and the dharma.
This will help us in understanding the difference
between the religious identity and Cultural identity.
www.gujaratisamaj.org 50 GUJARATI SAMAJ OF TAMPA BAY