Thursday, November 19, 2009
Tamil culture and my view on it
In my point of view, culture is common for all human beings. It doesn’t matter whether you are wearing a saree or T Shirt or whatever it is. Whatever you are doing should be in a decent manner. So it becomes a common way of differentiating humans from other animals. Why I selected this topic is because many cultures try to force so many things on part of females and mostly they forget to talk about men. So it makes a doubt on the persons who wrote the rules and regulations and it seems cultures bit stimulate male dominance. The traditional Tamil culture had this feature and now it has been improved a lot. All Traditional Tamil literatures illustrated women as a supernatural being and they made a perception such as women are made only to worship their husbands. And they almost forced several things on part of women and taught if they fail to do, they will get hell after death. The main reason for why literatures stimulated male dominance is because the persons who had written many of those literatures were men since women were uneducated and they spent most of their time inside their homes and died without even knowing the outside world. What I am mentioning here is only suitable for middle class families. Women born in the families of kings and lords had numerous opportunities to prove their talents in polities and other areas. Queens became the advisors of kings and did a lot for arts. On the hand, women belonged to lower class families had an urgency to go outside for work and they helped men in finding sources for their financial needs. Anyway later on, poet Bharathi voiced strongly for Tamil women and against to the cast system. He was first to say women are equal to men and tried to make an awareness through his poems on the point of that women needed education. Anyhow they are the stories of past. Now the situation is changed. But the prime weak points of this culture remain the same. Here the mentionable things are the systems of dowry and cast. Still we are brave less to marry a person from a different cast. Why I am saying ‘brave less’ is because most of us are vulnerable to the society and are spending major part of our lives in asking ourselves ‘what others will think of us if we do marry a person from a different cast?’. Guys are guts less to marry girls without dowry. It is most suitable on part of Sri Lankan Tamils who belong to north and east especially the ones who live abroad. Now a mentionable percentage of us have started to feel like shy when speaking in Tamil and most importantly we started to refuse to introduce us as Tamils and at most cases we forget it is the same to killing our mums. What the funny thing is that the ones who never want to say them Tamils seem to get more dowry and they strictly follow the cast system. So they are not fully westernized and don’t like to be real Tamils and so that they are middle of the road. I have no idea on how to call them. There is no doubt in we are following the Tamils who live in Moricious. So no longer we will forget every single word in Tamil and are trying loose our identity. Anyway what I can observe in Tamil culture is that it has scores of things to be improved and some rubbish to be thrown out. Furthermore what I want to tell here is; there is no shy in speaking in the mother tongue. The best language is the mother language and there is no other option to express your feelings in a best way.
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It is a good one. But throwing out things that you mentioned is hard in practical life.
ReplyDeleteRaju
My observation is that we are absorbing bad things from both culture. There is a quote by some one says some thing like "half knowledge is very dangerous". That's what happening to majority of our people in Canada(I can't talk about rest of the west). Instead of accepting their ignorance they pretend they are better than other Tamils because they do somethings in a western way( Like dancing in Receptions wearing a saree, women drinking champagne....). But outside the dance hall their core is so absorbed in not so good things in Tamil culture(critizing other people, judging people based on castes,donating tons of money to Kovil, looking down on other people who talks in Tamil, watching all the Tamil serials and movies....)
ReplyDeleteSaying it is stupidity is an understatement .... Its 100% insanity.
What you have said is true. We are practicing only bad things from both culture. And most of people don't even realize that they need to throw some rubbish from their lives. The reason is they all are in a dreamy world and they never accept realities.
ReplyDeleteBasically from this article and the following comments were induced me to write something about what is culture. Culture is a powerful human tool for survival, but it is a fragile phenomenon. It is constantly changing and easily lost because it exists only in our minds. I would like to tell you that a person can use a “knife” for cutting some vegetables or kill some one. Like wise “culture” also depend on the purpose of the person who is using it. Culture and society are not the same thing. While cultures are complexes of learned behaviour patterns and perceptions, societies are groups of interacting organisms. Dowry is one of those social practices. In the early years one of the basic functions of a dowry has been to serve as a form of protection for the wife against the very real possibility of ill treatment by her husband and his family. A dowry used in this way is actually a conditional gift that is supposed to be restored to the wife or her family if the husband divorces, abuses, or commits other grave offences against her.
ReplyDeleteAs u said, culture is a changing factor. I do accept it. But how can u say dowry protect women? At the current world, most of the women are going to work and most of them really earn much than their husbands. (This is a favorable change in culture) So what is the point of giving dowry to men. Is there any logic behind it? So what is the point of keeping these useless things? Even some girls find it difficult to claim the dowry that they had given to men as their husbands escape with the money.
ReplyDeleteIn the North East, How many women are going to work? How many of them are widows? Who are the people look after them? Actually in case of dowry, men are suffering mostly rather than women as a father/brother of the bride and the opposite most of the women are in the front of asking dowry as a groom’s mother/sister. In our society dowry & Thesawalamai all were created on the purpose of protect the women. Don’t put the blame on the culture. Put the blame on the person who misused this thing on the name of culture. I am also against this dowry but you wrote this thing against our culture which induced me to write. Neutral judgement/criticism is always welcome
ReplyDelete