State and Society

Whilst sitting in the SGR from Nairobi to Mombasa with a few learned friends, we got into a serious talk about the happenings of today and around 50 years ago.

For example 50 years ago, my Father lived in the Old Town area of Mombasa. He says there were no locks on the doors. When going out they would just shut the door with a small stopper and ask the neighbour or some dukanwala or some handcart man to look after the house and in case some guests come they would be ushered into the house by the same neighbour or dukanwala or handcart man! Now we live in homes with 2 to 3 huge padlocks on the doors and some houses have electric fences too.

And it’s everywhere, for example, my Uncle (God bless His Soul) who moved from India to England back in the early 70s used to say that milk was delivered in milk bottles. The Milkman would come at around 5am and you had to put your empty milk bottles with the monies in the carton, and the milkman would take the monies and replace the carton with filled bottles! Now we hear of daylight robberies in London too. If a lorry carrying tomatoes from upcountry to Mombasa overturns somewhere around Mariakani, or anywhere for that matter, the villagers will gather very fast not to help, but rather to steal the goods!

So I told myself and my friends that we have gone wrong somewhere, for sure. What have we done wrong? I mean, we have made tremendous gains in technology. All the luxuries are available to the younger generation. Then what? Where have our Moral Values gone? Are we creating generations without any moral values?

The answer, I believe, lies way back to how we used to live then and how we live now.

In the golden years, we used to live in extended families in villages – in India and also in Kenya. Here we were happy with the little luxuries that we had.

The Hindu Culture has survived onslaughts for over thousands of years. This is primarily because of two main things – The Hindu Family System & The continuous line of young people giving up everything to become Rishis.

The Rishis or Saints, who had no attachments to anything, have always guided the society. The State was run by Kings, and these Kings bowed down to the Rishis. The Rishis also guided the Kings in all matters when needed.

The family System provided the adequate moral values to the younger ones. These embedded values stuck to them wherever they went, and if going out of line, the Rishi was there to guide the society; thus the culture survived.

It is a very similar case in Kenya or anywhere for that matter. The village environment, the extended family system and the elders formed the core of the society to guide the individual to stay on the right path by providing Moral Values.

That is what is missing today. We live in towns, in our smaller units of families. We don’t have, or don’t believe in the elders who are there in the village, as consider them to be illiterate. Thus there is no one to guide us. So we follow the state leaders.

Thus the whole mess!!!

The State Leaders (Kings of the olden days and politicians of today) can at the most provide systems, but cannot provide moral values. For example the state can provide you a house, but cannot guide you how to live in marriage life. These teachings, guiding on how to live is the job of Society, or Social leaders – like the Hindu Gurus, or like the elders of villages in rural Kenya.

The leaders of the State and Society are very different – but in Kenya as well as many parts of the world we have come to take these State leaders as our Social leaders – which creates a big hole which cannot be fulfilled.

Thus I believe, a journey Back to the Past is very much needed to shed light on How to live.

An education system having moral values needs to be placed ahead of the current survival of the fittest race type system. 

A revisit to our Culture is needed. This journey may seem long, may seem impossible, but can be done.They say a Society disintegrates and degrades mainly because of the Inaction of the Good people. Thus we all (The Good People) need to rise to the occasion, to start small from our homes.

What can we do?

A few points to start are jotted here

·        Practice Your own Mother tongue at home – with Children a must!!!

·        Let’s learn a bit about our ceremonies and practice them at home.

·        Regular Visits to our home village with family

·        Be proud to wear our traditional clothes at events – make it a fashion point

·        Bring some traditional musical instruments at home and get children to learn to play them

·        Once a week, sit with family and have old folk tales, or talks about culture with family.

·        Most importantly, be proud of who You are, and also let family have same feeling

Our Society is us, we are the Society. For the future generations it is paramount we do this, or the Moral fabric of our Society will die away very soon.

Let’s begin the Change, Today in fact Now!

 - Divyesh Parmar