The things where we failed as Indians-I

As we all know, India was one of the earliest inhabited places on the entire earth by civilized human beings. With all this glorious past, comes the wonderful teachings and way of life that was passed on to the generations for millennia. Despite a long rich history, modern India is cursed with multiple problems that we collectively face as a society. 

Education: It's been more than 70 years and we still follow the same techniques that were introduced by Britishers to educate the so-called 'uncivilized' people of this country. Education policy has barely changed in all these years. All we are taught in school is how to be competitive and how to memorize the facts that serve no purpose in adult life. We completely abandoned the concept of "Gurukulas" where students were taught modern science along with the skills not only to survive but to lead a gentle and peaceful life. We discarded this system, calling it old school and fully accepted the foreign way as the baseline model. An average 12th class student doesn't have any knowledge about finances,  politics, doesn't know how to control his/her emotions, doesn't know how to practically apply bookish knowledge. Most of the time an average student has got no clue about what he/she wants to be or do in their life, apart from following the norms of society. There is nothing inherently bad in following what most of the people do, but it limits the potential to do something big and better in your life. So, my question is, 14 years of schooling and what you learned was how to sit in a class, how to score marks, how to be insolent towards your teachers and society and a little bit of the knowledge of what is right and wrong, how to make friends and lastly how to have a good time with friends. I know that you learn some good stuff out of school, but 14 years are too much to learn only that. If advised and trained properly these things could be easily mastered within a span of 5-6 years. At present, the only "Gurukula" I know of is in Mayapur, established by ISKCON temple, I'm not a follower or fan of ISCKON but Gurukula does provide a balanced study. Children staying there learn all the daily activities like cooking, cleaning, and most important above all, contemplation. Every student is advised to contemplate from a very young age thus giving him/her a clear purpose in life. Even adults nowadays don't contemplate and that brings all sorts of problems in their lives. And lastly, don't even think that by studying there they must be lacking scientific knowledge, half of their teachers are IITians and few of them are PhDs. I hardly know any Ph.D. holder teaching school children in any of the so-called modern schools. The biggest difference between the mindset of Gurukula students and regular students is that the former talks about doing some kind of service to society whereas the latter hardly thinks about the well being of society.

Parenting: To explain this, I would take you to the generation of our grandparents and great grandparents. So, our great grandparents saw only one thing and that was misery under the British Raj. Food and shelter were the only things that mattered to them. Our grandparents were the ones who actually saw India getting free from Britishers, but that victory came at a very heavy cost, the only thing that was left in the newly formed Republic of India was poverty. People worked really hard to assimilate the little wealth they could. Our parents saw this hard work of their forefathers and getting rich became their only goal. The concept of well being apart from money never existed for them. Most of them owned a house and a vehicle after years of service and attaining this much was more than sufficient for them. In all this process, one thing our parents missed out was to teach us the life lessons that were long due, they taught us things like money brings happiness, depression ain't real, never did they discussed how was it like growing in their times. They provided us with all the monetary comforts but hardly sat with us and asked, are you happy with your life? This is not true for every family but it is fairly true for most of the middle-class families. Still, most of us can't use words like sex in front of our family because these things never got discussed. People of my generation tend to choose alcohol and friends over their family in case of depression, and it's not because these two things are dearer to them but only because of the communication gap that never got filled. The serious shortcomings of this type of parenting where parents are either strict or only provide physical aspects of caring lead to a huge depression in early adult life. Teens want to share everything with their friends, not with their families and as soon as they grow a little more, privacy becomes their most important demand. In later years they do support their parents but majorly because of societal demands, not because they feel like doing it. The number of old people being asked to live in an old age house will keep on increasing if this communication gap is not filled during the teen years. Some people may argue that it is necessary to live alone and away from home to sort our priorities and I totally agree with it. But my question is, what you'll do with all the success when you can't really savor it with your family? The amount of success anyone wants to achieve at the cost of their relationship (with family) may depend on person to person, but giving too much privacy tends to bring communication gap and if you like the idea of the west where people have to mail their parents just to come home, then you can opt for all the privacy you want.

Liberalism: This is the new fancy word everyone keeps muttering but hardly follows it. The only thing that seems to happen in the name of liberalism is to discard religion and all the traditions. It is foolish to discard anything without knowing why it was created and what purpose it served at that time. The only thing today's liberalism brings, people from all corners of the country raising their voices to get the freedom for every nonsensical whim of theirs. After-effects of actions due to excessive freedom are rarely talked about, and their only worry is that their opinion should be heard and respected even if it brings disharmony in the society. No matter how bad their behavior or actions are, they wish that equal importance should be given to their ideas like any other novel idea. This is the kind of democracy that is followed in America and I don't buy this idea, I like the idea of democracy where peace and harmony are more important than individual independence and this is the kind of democracy that is followed in Japan. Japanese people are so conscious of their behavior in public that their kindness and humility are on a whole different level. Some people may argue that this may seriously limit the possibility of rising of a great personality but I don't accept this proposition because all the great personalities of the world are very conscious about maintaining peace and harmony. We don't need to force people to stop speaking altogether but this feeling of the nation before us should be taught to us from the school level. In India, the nation is anything but last in our priority list. What liberalism has done to society, let me explain it to you by an example. There was this Temple where women were not allowed to enter and a lot of liberals called this idea as a misogynistic one and whatnot. You should understand this first, entry of women was banned because the deity present there was "Brahmchari" and by the tradition of 'Brahmcharya' women are not allowed to touch or come near these people because sexual thoughts limits their years of meditational practices. There are many other temples where the entry of males are banned because there exists a nude female deity in those temples. But all thanks to the liberals, and their insensitivity towards other people's practices. People are blatantly making fun of religious icons and deities in the name of freedom of expression without even giving a second thought about the discord it may bring in the society. And when the vice versa happens they'll complain that people are not sensitive enough about their beliefs and thoughts. Discarding every tradition has become the new way of liberalism.