Traditions

Revolutionary thinkers in the history of the world have always faced too much criticism and hardships for they usually set out to change the accepted view about any topic. And so is the case with most people trying to rationalize the superstitious mindset of the common crowd. The changes such reformers brought about in pre-independent India have become the way of life now and we have a lot to thank them for. But modern India faces newer challenges in the form of deep rooted baseless traditions which have been hard to erase though centuries have passed.

One such social reformer is Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who is one of the people responsible for the Sati practice to have been banned. Although abolished, the act is found to happen very rarely, with suitable action being taken against all responsible and fooling people into believing the wrong practices have been driven away for good. But traditions are here to stay. They, never die, only change form and continue to live on in the minds of the people, going deeper, until they become instincts!

This reformer helped abolish Sati, others worked to give widows another chance at life. Modern day Indians read about them in history books and praise them and themselves too, for believing in what they did, but all this is for the world to see. What happens inside the walls of a house is unknown to the world. Even in the 21^st century, the century of instant love over the internet, the century of instant breakup over an SMS, the century of a million live-in relations, widows are considered inauspicious!

People believe that not accepting the borrowed so called ‘western culture’ would make them narrow-minded, but would go to any lengths to keep their meaningless ‘traditions’ alive. A woman accepts her daughter’s love marriage though the entire family opposes; but on another occasion, very cunningly avoids offering kumkuma (vermillion) to a newly widowed old lady, her relative. In the process, she does not offer it to the old woman’s unmarried grand-daughters, both sitting next to their grandmother, all because she did not want to make it obvious she was upholding the tradition of depriving a widow of all symbolisms of being married. How would she feel had she been the widow? Did she pause to think how that lady might have felt on being so brutally reminded that her husband is no longer alive? Obviously, not.

This is what the world has become. It is a world of narrow-minded, irrational, selfish and foolish people! Traditions are those which change with time. Those which hurt the sentiments of people are worthless and definitely do not add to the culture of a nation. There is a need for new age reformers, those with the ability to fight against social injustice at the grass-root level. Unless the minds of the people are cleansed of such obsolete traditions, widows will be forced to commit Sati each day. It is necessary to emphasize that a woman’s identity is not associated with the status of her husband being alive or dead. Every person has an individual life and personality, which should be respected. India is making its presence felt internationally, it is time we rid our nation of these unnecessary traditions lest they bring it shame.