The Debates: culture

There was a time when the concept of the global village seemed a distant dream, but now it seem obsolete and a new concept may be in the making probably later on called the global room. The process of globalization and the advancement of technology went ahead of its target of making the world as global village, rather it has been turned into a room, where all the things are visible but needs a simple click to access to. Man too becomes comfort- prone and making most of these opportunities. But the development is not restricted to the scientific and technological field alone, it certainly tells upon the cultural, linguistic and religious aspects of man as well.

As all the communities around the world are getting closer to one other, they will certainly seek a common code of communication, in the common parlance a language understood by all, their cultural differences will gradually fade away, and a new culture will take place, and no doubts the same changes will occur in their religions as well, or they might distance themselves from the religion altogether. How long will the idea take to happen is another question, but the main concern is that the phenomenon will get translated into uniformity, which will subsequently give birth to monotony, which certainly be is boring and disgusting.

Diversity and pluralism are the main factors which keep man’s interest in adventures and explorations. Once monotony prevailed, these factors will die their natural death. Man’s creative instinct and zeal for adventures will find no room for its nourishment as all the things will uniformly be produced and functioning, identical patterns of things will grow and be appreciated.

Cultural diversity is one of the factors which enlivens man’s interest in exploration and adventures and preserves identity of various ethnic and religious denominations across the world. A person from Rwanda gets enthralled by cultural practices of India and vice versa. But when the identical patterns of cultural values and practices are to prevail all over the world, the world being a village or a room, the sense of curiosity and aestheticism will naturally fade away.

Linguistic variations again are boon to the diversity of human population on the planet. Because language as John McLeod puts it,”is more than simply a means of communication; it constitutes our world-view by cutting up and ordering reality into meaningful units. The meanings we attach to things tell us which values we consider are important, and how we choose to differentiate between superior or inferior qualities.” If linguistic variations are done away with, and a single code of communication is adopted as lingua franca, then it would definitely give a death blow this kind of diversity as well.

The world so condensed in cultural and linguistic matters, the member might distance themselves from their individual religions as well. They might adopt a religion common to all or denounce the practice altogether, the latter seems more probable. As secularism has been a common practice among the liberals, and they try to value humanity more than religious rites

The concept of world being a room may at this stage seems a quixotic scheme as the concept of the global village once seemed. Some people may be trying to get themselves stuck to their culture and make efforts to preserve the same in the face of the threat of fading away local cultures, yet local languages are alarmingly fading away, which in the technical term is called language death, as Rubin tells us “In the countries of North, Central and South America, many of the indigenous languages are also widely known to be dying at an alarming rate (Rubin, 1968; Solé, 1995).” Similarly a large scale deviation from the strict principles of the religions may be witnessed all round the world. It must be inculcated that language and religion are parts of which culture is whole, and the phenomenon is symptomatic of the cracks in the edifices of individual cultures.

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CRITICAL CURRENT ISSUES

Pashto films/dramas a boon of bane to pashtoon culture?

Art and literature are believed as the soft manifestations of a nation’s ideikigy and are supposed to reflect the history, cultural traits, likes and dislikes, social manners, language and etiquettes of the concerned community. All over the world the same purpose is served by the drama and film industry and contribute to the culture and language concerned through public diplomacy. But unfortunately there has been one glaring exception in this raged, i.e the Pashto film/drama industry- the only film/drama industry which is out in doing a great disservice to its own culture, distorting its history and misrepresenting the social ways of its people.

The motifs of the films are typical pakhton elites who are all the times indulged in merry making, encroaching over their fellows properties, suppressing people with lower economic means, and the elites always at bloody wars with each other. The cross-section into pakton society, as given by these films reflects that pakhton neither know civilization, nor possess the milk of human kindness. You will never find a character representing pakhton as doctor, engineer ,educator, philanthropist or even at least a civilized person. They are reflected as sages as had been in the pre-society era, propounded by Thomas Hobbes and Rosseau in their state of nature. The worrying bit in these dramas is the ways in which male’s behavior towards woman is reflected. Woman is never given a respectable status, but is reflected as a mere chattel for sexual satisfaction.

On the technical grounds the films/dramas are worst failure. One will not know if there is any plot in the film or various incidents taking place separately in the whole show. There is no logical unity and coherence in the events and incidents taking place on the screen. The story begins either with firing at each other, or dancing and drinking ,and after showing a couple of such isolated parts the curtain is dropped down. An interesting flaw in the films is the use of costumes of the characters. They wear hip-hugging jeans, openly drink and make romances; things which are too rare even in the bollywood movies. The girls and boys in such costume act with such songs which iterate simplicity, rural setting and dress typical of pakhton’s culture. But over here they act with these songs which are totally about, Guddar,Lawo, and forest, dressed in jeans and are among the state-of the art skyscrapers.

These things have nothing to do either with plankton’s culture nor with the very art of drama. Pakhton culture is rooted in certain well known traits, also known as Pahtonwali: Hospitality, Jirga (an informal council consists of local elites, empowered to resolve internal issues), Panah, (asylum to an oppressed person), Hujra ( a common guest house), Ashar (helping each other in laborious jobs especially agricultural ones).

If we look at the Indian movies, we will come to know how culture and language are promoted by the means of films/dramas. Everyone is acquainted with concepts like holo,dewali,sundoor,karwachod, poojam mandir and the terms pertaining thereto. They glorify their culture and present a soft image of its society.

Now if we critically examine the pushto films, do we ever find depiction of any of the traits? The answer is simply no, rather they are hell bent on destroying the time- honored institutions of pakhtons. The vulgarity they show under the banner of depicting the pakhton’s culture is by no means justifiable, and therefore the production and propagation of such materials must be checked.

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