Culture is not superstition

Being cultural is not being superstitious.

There might be a lot of things that are superstitious about your culture and the place you come from. You can try to identify those and stop following them. There might be somethings you don’t understand, you may continue to follow them or hold your belief about it, but you shouldn’t shame it. You shouldn’t be shameful about following cultural traditions. Culture is what makes us and not everything is superstitious about culture. If you cannot continue the traditions your ancestors started in your delusion for superstitions, you are absolutely making sure that the knowledge and lessons learnt will be burnt with you and it will never pass on.

You are making a big mistake of losing the resources. We have already come far away from where we have started and they have been continuing so many traditions and events without clear knowledge. They made a mistake of not carrying the complete knowledge as to why it is being done and how it helps us. They were ignorant or may be incapable of being so wise enough to understand that. They just did what came to them as natural. But you are a learned man. You know a thing or two about the world. If you are making a personal decision of not doing something merely on the basis of your thoughts that everything in culture is suspicious and superstitions, then you are as much responsible for the loss as the people who continue repeating the superstitions.

There is a thin line of difference in being superstitious and in being cultural. Understand your culture and treasure it. Don’t get carried away in the desire to be modern and losing your culture. We don’t have to stop following the rich festivals in the advent from demand of work, life and technology. We can be the best of both worlds. We can be modern yet continue to preserve that culture.

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This post is a part of series in Discovering the Cultural Significance of various rituals and festivals in India.