Awareness (or lack) of our epics / mythology …

Recently, Social Media was on fire with trollers coming hard on Sonakshi Sinha because she couldn’t answer a simple question. She was asked by Amitabh Bachchan (host of KBC - Kaun Banega Crorepati), “According to Ramayana, Hanuman fetched Sanjeevani booti (herb) for whom?” 

Sonakshi’s father (Shatrughan Sinha), family (Uncles - Ram, Lakshman, Bharat and Brothers - Luv and Kush) are named after key heros of Ramayan. Home she grew up is named “Ramayan” and still she struggled to answer a simple question from Ramayan and chose a life line to sail through.

Many other/different videos surfaced on social media after this incident, where it was obvious that many teenagers and youth had no clue about key characters and events of Ramayan and Mahabharath.

It is both disappointing and alarming that many of the later generations has no clue about our history, culture, mythology, epics, fables … (whatever else you want to call it). These folks probably know everything about Game Of Thrones, Lust Stories, Sacred Games, Avengers, Friends but nothing about Vedas, Ramayan, Mahabharath, Bhagwat Gita or even the relatively recent ones like Vikram and Betal, Panchatantra, Tenali Rama , etc., etc., And then there are lots and lots of other epics, fables, stories from every region, state etc.,

This need to be fixed, simply because Indians cannot be not-aware of their culture, epics, mythology and think it is OK to forget them for whatever reason. Questions is, who has to do what to fix it.

Who can’t fix it?

• Grand-parents are no longer around (because city and corporate life forces many parents to live away from their parents) to impart this wisdom. In this fast paced world, parents has no time to teach their kids. 

• TV, movies or any other such medium cannot teach kids because current age parents (and subsequently kids) taste and viewing habits are completely different. It is worth highlighting that there is nothing wrong with individual’s choice on what they want to view on electronic media

• Social media cannot impart any knowledge as folks (including yours truly) talk about it only when some incident happens, then gradually every one catches on new incident and move on

Then who can fix it and more importantly how?

It has to be fixed by government, both state and central. Similar to nursery kids being mandated to learn alphabets (in English and/or mother tongue) and basic numbers,

• Primary section students should have key events as a chapter/lesson of their language text books every year. Obviously, different episode/events every year in a proper chronological order. I used to have cultural courses during my primary days in CBSE curriculum, which I do not see nowadays

• Senior and senior secondary students should mandatorily have entire Ramayan, Mahabharath etc., as course content, like a complete novel etc.,

• Indian language (i.e. English) books still has heavy dose of stories and content from non-Indian author. Nothing wrong in that but slowly there has to be a good balance of Indian and non-Indian content. Indian content should be majorly oriented towards these epics. 

Why is this important?

Every other country takes great interest in ensuring their citizen know, love and respect their culture, why should India shy away? Many countries has a common culture/ancient history and share their culture, epics, mythology etc., with many other countries and hence there are more than one country to take care of preserving and educating masses.

What about India? India has been a peaceful country, never been a barbaric invader or colonial ruler and we never invaded any country with intent of imposing our culture on them. No other country shares our rich ancient history/culture with us that they will do anything to preserve and spread our culture. Hence, if Indians will not take care of this, who will?

Last but not the least, how to sustain?

These cannot be a one-time learn and forget thing, i.e. learn in school for marks and then do not care. While there can be many avenues, some that I can think of right-away are: 

• All higher education entrance tests, professional courses, job / other such tests (be by state government or central government) ranging from any clerical or mass railway recruitment to doctors to IAS entrance exams etc., needs to include these epics/mythology also

• Govt, with aid of large corporates (or extend corporate’s CSR scope) to run monthly or quarterly online / offline quiz and programs on these EPICS

• All News-papers to mandatorily include a page or two covering stories and snippets from our EPICs and other mythology / fables

• and lot more