Ashamed of our Identity

It’s been ages, since i logged onto my blog-page to express myself. Although my Job and my passion had given me enough opportunity to travel around, lazily i never took to make notes of what i observed and ruminate about what each place, culture and cuisine had to offer for each one of us.

 Living and travelling from Singapore to most of the South East Asian countries, lots of observation strikes me. Most prominent was the presence of Hindu temples and architecture all around. Curiosity got me asking myself what could have been the reason for such a prominent Hindu base being present in SE Asia. Although it was no brainer, since there has been such a lot historian records of Indian traders/sages coming to SE Asia to promote Hindu culture, that it got easily mingled with the local population from SE Asia.

 Reading through one of the historian records, I realized that Hinduism had spread its wings here in SE-Asia already by 200 BC, The present country of Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippine and Thailand had strong Hindu influence on the local ruler. Buddhism reached here around 400 AD and Islam reached only in the 12 century. Although today Hinduism has become the minority population in this region. Each countries local language & culture has a distinct Hindu touch to all of them. 

 What has surprised me a lot is that today these countries have either a very strong Islamic & Buddhist presence, but despite the small rub of Hinduism that had on them, you will be greatly surprised to see temples of Hindu God/Goddess revered all around these region. I personally have seen at Suvarnabhoomi Bangkok airport large statue of Vishnu avatar of ocean churning, at Bali huge statues of Lord Krishna and Arjuna delivering the Bhagvad Gita in the city centre. These are just the few examples that I have cited. The important underlying fact despite being non Hindu country, they proudly display Hindu culture in their city infrastructure, Just because they were influenced by the Hindu culture long time ago. 

 Whereas we being a Hindu dominant country(Secular), Nowhere outside the premises of a temple, Do I see any carvings, painting, statutes of Hindu based culture, forget Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism which all have flourished in our country. Our history, traditions and culture are not merely to be part of the curriculum till we graduate, but also a part of our identity till we breathe our last. I’m not sure what has plagued our country that our administrator have failed to recognize the rich cultural heritage that our nation has, or is it that we have become ashamed of our real identity and would love to display only our pseudo secular image.