Cultural Identity and Oral Traditions

When a European or a British guy will tell you the same information-

Right

...about what happened, then you take it seriously.

Whereas when we speak about it, it feels like narrative

and a feel.

Right.

And generally, we have a tendency to look up to the West

a lot.

Correct.

Uh, their culture, we believe them more, their cinema.

Why did this whole thing happen, and how do we undo it?

We should stop talking about racism,

about how the white man treats us, because we should ask how are we treating

ourselves.

Mm.

The first racist people that we meet in our lives are us.

Hundred percent.

Because we do not take our own skin seriously.

Mm.

We don't respect our own skin seriously, whether it is literally or figuratively.

Mm.

Okay? In the country,

as I said before, you are used to now looking at yourself like a

tourist, like an

outsider.

Mm. Mm.

Frankly speaking,

but for your movie or existing traditions in rural places,

tradition

Mm.

A lot of these traditions will die.

Mm.

Okay, why? Whether you like it or not, your education

system doesn't teach them the value of oral traditions.

Mm.

One of the reasons why Indian culture has survived thousands of years of invasions

and colonization in the book,

. You can burn it, set libraries to fire, do whatever you want.

Mm.

But if there is a human brain that is constantly transmitting it from one

tradition

to another, like Smritis of the Vedas-

Mm

...uh, oral tradition

Yeah.

Where-wherever it is alive-

Mm

...that culture has preserved its identity. And we are not alone in this.

Africa,

. Difference in the . Better part of Africa is gone.

It has lost its native tradition. We are the perhaps the

largest surviving, successful living civilization

which is chanting the very same mantram it did perhaps eight thousand years ago,

which is singing the very same songs which it did maybe five thousand years

ago.

So we don't realize what, uh, what kind of a good fortune this is

and when our ancestors

. We don't know it, and that is why we think we

are a society of cowards, we are

losers or whatever it is. The answer to this is straightforward:

A society that doesn't take its history seriously is not serious

about its identity,

and therefore it is cursed and doomed to repeat its past experience.

Again and again.

That's where it goes.

Again and again.

Again and again.