Be aware of prejudices that colour our culture
May 15, 2005
Sunday Tribune
South Africa
The Herald article "Cow catchers fail to free New Delhi" (May 8) refers. It states, "The cow is worshiped by Hindus." This is a deliberate distortion of the truth by the foreign cultures that invaded, vandalised and occupied India.
Their contempt for, and deliberate distortion of the Hindu/Buddhist culture of India is well documented by historians such as Stanley Wolpert, John Keay, Alfred Toynbee etc.
Attempts by these foreign invaders to obliterate the culture of these "heathens" failed because they soon realised "that there were too many Hindus to exterminate" says Wolpert.
He also recounts how, in 1583, the first Englishman, Ralf Fitch, to write "home" from India said, "They have a very strange order among them - they worship a cow."
Such myths and distortions of the supposedly "heathenish Indians", says Wolpert, "were to become cliches of Western characterisation during the next three centuries".
Nowadays, the adherents of those colonising cultures, still perpetuate such myths in all sorts of insidious ways.
Jaundiced news-reporting is one of them.
Of course, this is done to insinuate their own Judeo-Christian superiority.
Yes, the cow is the most sacred of all animals to Hindus, but we do not "worship" it in the sense that we worship God, as in a formal service or in our meditation.
We revere it, we pay homage to this surrogate mother because this most useful and gentle animal was chosen to symbolise and represent the animal world, with which Indians interact very differently from those of the Judeo-Christian world, for instance.
The Bhagavad Gita, the ultimate embodiment of Indian culture, advocates a Satvic (pure, vegetarian, compassionate) diet. it advises us to be "equally disposed towards every living entity" (18:54) and says that, "He who experiences happiness and suffering all creatures as in himself is a great yogi" (6:32).
The concept of Ahimsa (10:4,5) and (13:7,11) teaches non-violence or non-injury to all living things.
For Indians, all life is sacred. These values are inculcated not through commandments and threads of punishments for trespasses, but by way of tangible practicalities, observances and action which we strive to carry out in our daily lives.
Racial arrogance is no longer politically correct but it seems that cultural/religious arrogance is alive and well in South Africa, both in the print and electronic media.
Significantly, the Sunday Tribune Herald is supposed to cater for Indians.
Therefore those employed by this newspaper should be aware of the prejudice and centuries old bias that colour cultural translations.
But many of them are quite happy to perpetuate these received notions, translations and terminology.
So, it seems, are some Hindu leaders.
Are these leaders just thick-skinned or are they unaware of how the subtleties and nuances of the English language can be and has been used to demean and insult others for centuries?
However, those aspiring to be "journalists" should know better, especially if they are employed by a supplement of Indians.
News articles from Sapa-DPA or other agencies should not be published if they cannot shed their bigotry.
Sunday Tribune
South Africa
The Herald article "Cow catchers fail to free New Delhi" (May 8) refers. It states, "The cow is worshiped by Hindus." This is a deliberate distortion of the truth by the foreign cultures that invaded, vandalised and occupied India.
Their contempt for, and deliberate distortion of the Hindu/Buddhist culture of India is well documented by historians such as Stanley Wolpert, John Keay, Alfred Toynbee etc.
Attempts by these foreign invaders to obliterate the culture of these "heathens" failed because they soon realised "that there were too many Hindus to exterminate" says Wolpert.
He also recounts how, in 1583, the first Englishman, Ralf Fitch, to write "home" from India said, "They have a very strange order among them - they worship a cow."
Such myths and distortions of the supposedly "heathenish Indians", says Wolpert, "were to become cliches of Western characterisation during the next three centuries".
Nowadays, the adherents of those colonising cultures, still perpetuate such myths in all sorts of insidious ways.
Jaundiced news-reporting is one of them.
Of course, this is done to insinuate their own Judeo-Christian superiority.
Yes, the cow is the most sacred of all animals to Hindus, but we do not "worship" it in the sense that we worship God, as in a formal service or in our meditation.
We revere it, we pay homage to this surrogate mother because this most useful and gentle animal was chosen to symbolise and represent the animal world, with which Indians interact very differently from those of the Judeo-Christian world, for instance.
The Bhagavad Gita, the ultimate embodiment of Indian culture, advocates a Satvic (pure, vegetarian, compassionate) diet. it advises us to be "equally disposed towards every living entity" (18:54) and says that, "He who experiences happiness and suffering all creatures as in himself is a great yogi" (6:32).
The concept of Ahimsa (10:4,5) and (13:7,11) teaches non-violence or non-injury to all living things.
For Indians, all life is sacred. These values are inculcated not through commandments and threads of punishments for trespasses, but by way of tangible practicalities, observances and action which we strive to carry out in our daily lives.
Racial arrogance is no longer politically correct but it seems that cultural/religious arrogance is alive and well in South Africa, both in the print and electronic media.
Significantly, the Sunday Tribune Herald is supposed to cater for Indians.
Therefore those employed by this newspaper should be aware of the prejudice and centuries old bias that colour cultural translations.
But many of them are quite happy to perpetuate these received notions, translations and terminology.
So, it seems, are some Hindu leaders.
Are these leaders just thick-skinned or are they unaware of how the subtleties and nuances of the English language can be and has been used to demean and insult others for centuries?
However, those aspiring to be "journalists" should know better, especially if they are employed by a supplement of Indians.
News articles from Sapa-DPA or other agencies should not be published if they cannot shed their bigotry.
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