Why Do We Hate Our Culture?
The left liberals have managed to convince half the world that all the traditional pillars of religion and culture are rotten and must be dismantled. In return, they offered nothing. So a thriving culture resorted to debauchery, drowning itself in all forms of addiction. Men lack courage, women lack grace, and collectively they both lack God.
So why does this happen? Why do we hate our culture so much? Generally, the left ecosystem hardly bothers about Islam, and when they do, they go ultra-soft on them, whereas they loathe the culture they were born into—the very culture from which they derived all their privileges. This is primarily rooted in an inferiority complex that originates from two primary pathways.
1. Ignorance
You are so unaware of the beauty within your culture that you think the only beauty that exists is outward. You grew up in privilege; you have never seen the struggles, never witnessed your ancestors fighting tooth and nail to ensure the culture you were born into not only survives but thrives despite all that was thrown at them.
Hinduism has suffered worse atrocities than even the Holocaust. While taking nothing away from the suffering of Jews, Hinduism has endured this for over a thousand years. So much has been robbed, so much literature destroyed. What remained was then doctored at the behest of Abrahamic preachers who only wanted to convert. And yet Hinduism survived.
There is a generation among Hindus who think they are too "privileged," forgetting that their ancestors died fighting Islam and colonialism. Worse, they also fought the mental torture that sought to destroy their culture and force them to convert. If the stories of your scriptures still survive after all of this, we owe a debt to our ancestors. But since they are completely unaware of the struggle and the stories rooted in their heritage, they have no association with the culture they were born into.
I am sure the West is going through the same feeling, and as a fellow Hindu, I have complete sympathy despite our histories not aligning with each other. When subsequent generations do not hear these stories, refuse to study their scriptures, and look at rituals with disdain, they disassociate themselves from cultural continuity and eventually separate themselves from it toward a foreign culture whose stories they are bombarded with.
To fix this, we need to revisit our stories and make them beautiful again for the next generation. They need to understand why they were great—without belittling them, without forcing them to learn. We need to handle their disagreements and arguments one at a time and resolve them instead of silencing them with authority.
2. Inferiority Complex
When the invaders and colonialists arrived, they didn't simply destroy Hindu temples, burn universities, and destroy scriptures—they went one step further. They destroyed the foundation of systems that could produce cultural scholars, ensuring the next generation would know nothing about where they belong. They would only learn where they should go, and that would be decided by the colonial masters.
The convent schools, the missionaries, the clerical system that the British feel so proud of building—all did one job: replace the indigenous education system with the British education system. This education system, a brainchild of Thomas Macaulay, produced so many educated Indians who were Indian only by skin color but deeply resented being Indian. They were constantly exposed to narratives that they came from an inferior background, that British education and the British way of life were great and fulfilling, while their native culture was pathetic and something to be hated.
On one hand, their education system was dismantled, their scriptures replaced, and their next generation brainwashed into believing they didn't matter. What you get in the end is a group of people who grew up with a severe identity crisis. They do not feel attached to their land and culture, but they also cannot qualify as Westerners due to their skin color. So they spend their entire lives bowing and pleasing their Western masters, including looking down upon their native brothers.
This is borne of inferiority complex. You were made to feel inferior about your culture and identity. You had no option but to carry it, wear it with pride, lest they take away your privileges, including the right to live peacefully. The same template can be applied to current Western standards.
The abundance of the past centuries has made them unaware of what it took to achieve so much. Abundance doesn't come naturally, and while I may hate the exploitation by the West, I understand that from a Western standpoint, they have every reason to feel proud of their civilization. But there's a generation of people who lack any awareness of their past. They grew up with the woke virus that taught them Western civilization consists of the bad guys, so instead of fixing the problems, they disassociated themselves from their culture.
Instead, they got in bed with Islamists and propagandists. The only reason Islam gets a pass from everybody is because the two major ancient powers of the world—the West and India—are both dealing with a generation that suffers from intense inferiority complex and ignorance.
How do we fix this? By accepting their viewpoint and countering them with patience. In their formative years, we must expose them to the greatness of their culture, the significance of rituals and traditions, and most importantly, why disassociating from their culture can trigger an identity crisis that will impact them for life.
The first step in building a civilization is to know where we are currently, then gradually increase awareness of what we should be, and from there take one step at a time to arrive where we should be. Hopefully this time, on the journey, we ensure we pass on the baton to the next generation along with all the stories.