“It’s about creating cultural awareness. It’s about showing people that India is more than just a Bollywood and Tikka Masala. I believe that the beauty in India is the diversity that we have with so many different states cultures and religions and that is what makes it so unique and so wonderful.”
It’s about educating our next generation and empowering them to embrace their heritage and culture while living in a western world. And empowering them to love that part of themselves that is often neglected, and becomes a skeleton in the closet. Why does this happen? Because they don’t know how to embrace and balance their heritage and culture and being Indian in a western world. So being Indian, becomes a feeling they don’t want to resonate with-it doesn’t have to be this way.
Educating them about THEIR heritage and culture is different than letting them get educated about what is the current education out there on this topic.
It’s about creating that cultural awareness that India is more than just speaking hindi, bollywood and bhangra. Many of us South Indians, West (Side) Indians grew up not resonating with any of these cultures and ended up not getting cultured, because there was no recognition and awareness of this.
Of course I’m super glad that at least this much awareness is there, but India has so much to offer, an abundance of tradition & heritage within it, and it deserves to be given the importance and awareness of its true culture.
Most of us don’t even realize how much of what we do today came from Indian Culture-heck even the person who discovered America came in search of India!
It always surprises me or maybe it doesn’t, when people from the north and south of India don’t know about it’s cultures and don’t really want to know. What I mean is, South India is not all “Madrasi” and Idly-Dosa, and the “North” is more than Punjab, and North of South India and( lol).
We have so much to offer in our country, and there is so much wealth of knowledge and and awesomeness to be shared. It’s important for us first to know about what exists in our country, and how that is relevant to ourselves so that we can share it with the world because I believe that it is something to be proud of. When people ask me if I eat naan & paneer everyday, I gladly take it as an opportunity to educate them on the culture of India. How each state has a culture, food, and language, and not everyone eats the same thing.
As I said, I believe representing these aspects of ourselves is definitely something to be proud of. (And i don’t mean pride from ego, but proud and loving of what you represent!) Sharing your culture because you love it, and want to genuinely create awareness, is different than sharing it because you want to flaunt it and have a one-up mentality. We all know this is an mentality of Indian society that we all want to change, we can be the change.
Let’s together a make a change for our culture:)
Sincerely,
“The Indian Girl”
Connect with me on Instagram: Meri Sanskriti,would love to hear from you and your experience!
