Thursday, December 19, 2013

Why Mother Tongue is important?


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wanna know what i think of the above situation?
My First VLOG below and its a bit slow in the begining, so please bear with me.
When Globalisation Starts and people start mixing,, the competitive game of who has had a better existence kinda stops ..and the ones who have had the better existence so far wins. SO dont worry about changes in you culture and life anymore….this is a new phase and we have won the previous one. let me explain why
Success of a group ( genetic) = number of years of survival * average number of people beloging to that group * percentage of genetic make up of the specimen(1 for pure and .5, .25 and so on for mixed races) quality of life/resource accessible
Success of a trait ( language/culture/religion etc) = number of years of survival * average number of people having that trait * percentage of how much the trait contributes to the individual character * quality of life/resource accessible
We are at this moment a combination of our genetic legacy, and the traits that we feel is a part of us. One can take pride in the history of both our genetic legacy as well as our current traits, although our traits may always not be the contribution of our genetic ancestors. We strive to propagate both our genes and our traits although our genetic continuity represent a bigger portion of who we are.
Our traits such as aggressiveness or a certain type of intellectual ability are the physical expression of our genetic structure , and conversely, the adoption of our traits by a different group of people will influence their genetic structure as well. SO if you have are RESPONSIBLE for the propogation of a trait( language/culture) and thence bring about an associated mild genetic change in a different group of people(not your genetic offsprings), that is also a success for you to that mild extent. But the intellectual traits only account for this mild change in the genetics and thats why procreating genetic offsprings is much more a success than propogating a trait.
For people who are concerned about overseas tamils adopting English..I pose a question.Assume the  2 scenarios
1)Imagine if Biharis come down to tamil nadu , adopt tamil, eat our staple food, follow our practices and start to look very similar to us. But they have competed with your offsprings for resources and make up like 75% of population of TN in the future.
2) Your kids remain in Tamil nadu, but they have adopted English or some other global language and started eating pizzas and act just like a westerner or an arab or whoever is influential…and may even start to look like an foreign person with fair skin and sharp features.They still make up the majority 85% populaion in TN
Which of the above situation would you prefer.
So in the bihari eg, if I am majorly responsible for them taking shape..intellectually (and therefore contributing to their genetic change),thats a win, however, i cannot claim success for the the physical changes that take place to them as a consequence of the environment they live in , and even though they become similar to me they didnt come from my dick, so I am not responsible for that.
Another example that i have posted is the Decision of the Dog…as to whether it wants to have a dog child or the wolf child.  The strenght of the wolf and neoteny of the dog being a differentiating factor. First thing  here is that If the dog considers the wolf an outright enemy/rival, it shouldnt really mix with the wolf as it is a nurturing half a wolf’s gene. The main point is that, the Dog shouldnt consider the strength as a trait of the wolf…The Wolf didnt create ‘Strength’  like how angles created English or we created the Tamil language. Strength does not belong to the wolf, neither does weakness belong to/define the Dog – the same way dark skin does not define a Tamil or white skin the Arab or the English.
Having said that, Our affinity to siblings, cousins, members of community comes from the fact the we are all the fruits of the effort taken by our common ancestors to procreate. Just like our ancestors have taken the effort to procreate genetic offsprings, they have also taken efforts to propogate our language,culture,morals etc.And so taking pride in the success of the propagation of our ancestor’s traits is similar to the succss of our cousins and related people. So even though we have to adapt other traits-linguistic or cultural, to survive in the present world, we are losing by not passing on our liguistic and cultural traits.When a group of people has a relatively high percentage of bastards who just adopt any foreign trait without making an attempt to understand what defines them and promote those traits, it is bad for the group as a whole. In other words, just like a foreign bon tamil would have a slight affinity towards tamil people(because of common ancestry) they should develop an affinity towards tamil and try to learn them despite not having use for it in their country…but i dont try to impose this harshly, just if it is not too much trouble for them.
Hence patronizing anything that is of a foreign origin – language,culture,religion or even the smallest of thing like kissing upto foreign idols, against what was created by the efforts of your own ancestors, affects your own cause negatively. This does not mean a protectionist attitude towards trade of goods or useful knowledge, but the acceptance of traits that are foreign to what our identity is

So tamils have to try to look good..become white or strong or neotenous or whatever, but try to preserve what our ancestors/genetic line had created and tried to propogate and preserve…like you siblings, cousins,community,culture or your language. This also gets complex…I am a tuluva vellalar..once a tulu speaking community who came into CHola territory, helped him and became Mudaliyars and adopted Tamil a 1000 years ago.  To be precise we are referred to as arcot mudaliars/tuluva vellala/agamudayar. It is said that before coming to arcot, we were part of the veera ballala(hoysala) king. However agamudayar also refers to the Thevars(mukkulathor) of south tamil nadu with surnames such as Rayar. Krishna thevar raya was also a tulu king and statred the tuluva dynasty. So my immediate association would be to that of tuluva vellalars and Agamudayars/thevars. I also realise that ever since aishwariya rais and the anushka shetty’s became famous, people wanna get associated with the bunts.  So the hegdes,nairs,naidus,nayaks,Gounders,gowda,mudaliars,pillais were all part of the very ancient group called velir/vellalars, who assumed different clans and titles under different region and kingdom. I mean I guess apart from the southern tamil empires, the satvahanas,chalukyas,kakatyas and their chieftans also had common ancestry with the vellalars who came down from the north and who were called yadavas,rajputs or gujjars or whatever. This can be seen from the common surname shared by some velirs like bal,koli etc. So All in all its good that most people of south India share a recent common ancestry by the vellalar and other corresponding group in other kingdoms(like chalukya,rashtrakuta,satvahana etc).Some vellalar chieftans became stronger and big enough ti be called kings..like chera/chola/pandiya pallava or hoysala or chalukya or rashtrakuta.  Regarding the other castes like mallar or pallalars…I wud still say they are the same  group pf people coming from north to south and clearing the forests, but they were rather labourers than chieftans. ( I know that it could get very casty here, but the important thing to establish here is our common ancestry.  With so much politics involved, the history is very muddy, but overall we have to know that we came from the same original group even though later we kinda fought quarrelled amongst ourselves – until we were united by the vijaynagaram empire to fight the muslims and later the british as indians. Like I said my immediate association is with the agamudayars and tuluva vellalars, but a lot of us spoke different language at different times and assumed different titles. Im guessing before tulu, we spoke some other language – really old tamil or telugu- btw I think that since archealogical evidence of telugu existed before tamil- like telugu inscriptions were found dated 5th century BC in the satvahana empire, and group of people/chieftans who came and cleared the forests here had to first settle down in andhra/karnataka before coming down south, i wud say that tamil might have come from telugu speakers.
My affinity is still stronger towards what my parents and recent ancestors had tried to preserve and propogate, which is tamil – the same way i wud favour helping my cousins and second cousins rather than any one from the Mudaliar or Tamil community.As the lineage distance between us increases – the gradient for propogation of their traits decreases.  But if ive been a tamil speaker only for 2 or 3 generations and for 20 or 30 generations before, my ancestors  spoke tulu..when there is a competition between tamil and tulu, I would have to side with tulu. this is because my immediate ancestors only took up tamil to survive in this place and their original duty was to preserve tulu…this is like us expecting a third or fourth generation Tamil in america to come back and learn tamil even though thier second genration parents may have not had the chance to learn them. I mean As long as your future progenies relate to you in a significant way, they should try to propogate what you are trying to pass on at the moment. Since we Mudaliars have adopted and propogated tamil for over a thousand years, our affinity is towards tamil.
So apart from the physical continuity in the form of lineage, Language,culture are things that are Created by/belongs to a group and the things that need to preserved.  But it also does not end here. When two ethnically or even culturally/linguistically different people interact with each other,exist to-gether and influence and shape each other in whatever form…the influence/impact/mark of one person is left in this world through the people he influences, and a part of the person survives to the extent his impact is felt significantly. This is why even if a group( lets assume my own group – the agamudayar) may not share much lineage with some of the other groups in TN we have influenced and shaped each other and therefore the bonding for me with tamils are greater than with some tulus with whom i might share more of a common ancestry. This is why being a influential, powerful person in this world has so much appeal to it. If you were the president or a great scientist you can influence the lifes of so many others. I mean having a kid(creating a life) is still more of an impact than employing a 100 people and one has to try and find out the proper weightages for these impacts one can make. Everyone can influence the lifes of so many others and thus we are motivated to do and get pleasure out of a number of impactful things we do. So it is all about of the impact,manifestation and propogation of this life force trapped in the body of a person at the moment. At this point I would recommend you to read ‘The Medium’ post and we realise how connected everything is in the cosmos(as described by i think in some hindu philosophy – just hear rajiv malhotra use the word somewhere – i havent really read any hindu scriptures or philosophy).Now what ive said only goes to say that what humans are doing instinctively is right. If we are able to understand this and make sense of it, perhaps we could make better decisions while also following our instincts…like not blindly focus on making money and to plan and live proper lives.

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