It's time to clean our burdensome culture

Whenever I used to question some rituals or some rules that were imposed on us, for being a boy, or on my sisters for being a girl, I used to get a very common response, just do it, this is our culture. No one bothered to answer why. Things have not changed much in the last 30-40 years, rather I see that people have become more aggressive and sensitive about these age-old discriminatory rituals and practices. Still, certain things are questioned or imposed as they may hurt the religious sentiments of the majority or minority. Any woman not subscribing to these oppressive traditions is labeled as Western, uncultured, or worse, an anti-something (put Hindu or Muslim or any other group in the place of "something"). I wonder what fun people get in carrying the weight of this burdensome culture, why people insist on continuing with openly discriminatory practices, and why it is so difficult to understand that just because something has been practiced for centuries it does not make it right. 

Females are worst affected by these discriminatory cultural practices. In many cultures across the world, females are expected to carry the burden of cultural traditions, they are at the receiving end of any rituals that require obedience or submissiveness. They are expected to fast, expected to serve, expected to cover their body, expected to take the blame for blatant sexual assaults directed towards them, expected to bear the burden of parenthood, expected to protect their and their family's honor, the list is long and includes different things based on which part of the world we consider. The time has come for all of us to let go of this burdensome culture, no matter how old it is. Just because it is old, or going on for ages, it doesn't become worthy of protection, it does not become right, and definitely, it does not become acceptable to discriminate. Discrimination is very subtle in many of these rituals, after all, the people who designed them were not stupid, they wanted to create a patriarchal system that could go on forever, conditioned, both, men and women so that both can carry these traditions with equal faith and conviction. This is why it is not easy to fight against these discriminatory traditions because many who suffer and get discriminated against by these traditions support them thinking that these are sacred and need to be protected. My personal experience is that fighting against these discriminatory and burdensome traditions is one of the most difficult challenges one can take, mainly because many times, you have to fight against your own. One needs to stand up against their own parents or other family members, it is complete hypocrisy to speak against these things on social media or other places and keep mum when it happens within our own family. I have seen many who claim to be progressive and against any type of discrimination keeping mum when their own parents or other so-called respected relatives practice some of these discriminatory traditions. This type of double face is very common nowadays in the era of social media where people have different personalities in the virtual world and different in the real world.

The time has come to get rid of this discriminatory and burdensome culture, we need to create our own traditions and culture that suit our time and place. Old is not always gold, we need to evaluate old traditions with our current set of standards and get rid of the junk or modify it to suit the needs and demands of our time. Let's start cleaning our culture, during the festival season it is not only important to clean our bodies and house, but let's clean our culture also.

Thanks for reading and please share your opinion about this topic.