Valentine’s Day and Indian tradition – The broken link

radha krishna cp1 rUz1N 3868

I don’t want to hurt anyone’s sentiments nor I am here to judge what is right and wrong but this is really something that I wanted to talk about or rather question from everyone’s point of view. We in India, I feel, have almost split mindset regarding some set of things. I was just sitting with my friends in the hostel after she returned from Mathura Vrindavan trip wherein I noticed two major things in all of her talks. One was the ‘prasada’ that is distributed to the masses after ‘bhog’ by God which depends on the amount of ‘chadava’ or ‘shradhha’ you have for Him. And the other is – Well I am going to talk about it here.

We, in India, have strong notion of preserving our social culture and this is something in which we take proud. But while talking about Radha-Krishna, I was carried over by one thought that how double minded we are as in when it comes to worshiping. We will do everything to please God Radha-Krishna so that they shower us with their blessings (money, fame and name). But on the other side we even want to become moral police and would do anything to preserve our ‘so-called-Indian-Culture’.

Almost everyday a newspaper is filled with loads of news wherein a girl or a boy is socially beaten, is molested, sometimes killed and even are persuaded to go through a lot of things that we can’t even think (Sorry, we know what all is done to them). These are the people who would have the idols of Indian love God at their home but would not respect the same love blooming in their children.

I really don’t know why there are two shades in the same life of a person. We would enchant every kind of mantras to please God, we even have respect for Meera who was deeply in love with Lord Krishna but when it comes to our daughters, brothers, sisters and sons, it is a big no-no in rural Indian society and most of the time even in urban society.

If we are so much particular about our culture we should have started worshiping God Krishna-Rukmini who was ideally his wife. So great was Radha’s love for Krishna that even today her name is uttered whenever Krishna is referred to, and Krishna worship is though to be incomplete without the deification of Radha.

People might now raise a question or would be of opinion that the times have changed since then. There is a big difference in the love of those times and now. I certainly agree but it absolutely does not mean that you would harass them or thrash them until they are found in socially unacceptable behaviour.

Things today have changed and there is a great deal of change in the way we think and perceive love but I think it should all remain in our hands. There is no point of disregarding love all together in the manner of burning shops carrying cards with love messages and gifts on Valentine’s Day by the so called moral police and ‘samaj ke thekedaars’ or the people who say that it is against Indian tradition. Every one knows that it is very natural to try to do that one thing or two which we are always being lectured upon!

Because if it is so than I would request all those samaj ke thekedaars to ban all the foreign things from branded clothes to MNC’s providing jobs to millions of Indians and from a pen to BMW as they are all foreign to us. And than we should also stop thinking of developing and competing with the other countries of the world.

Today's Top Articles:

Scroll to Top