Glorified Evil

Just read a great post about social Symbols
in India. I think we can see it everywhere, be it India or USA. The
Spirit of an action/emotion is first bound in a Symbol — almost as an
honor, as a proclaimation. The Symbol serves the beautiful purpose of
reminding us of the Spirit that was first embodied in it. initially,
the Symbol is one that is self-imposed, and granted authority by free
will. But over ages the Spirit is often forgotten while the hollow
Symbol remains, no longer serving as a reminder of the lost Spirit.
Often, the Symbol, in trying to preserve its own glory, even perverts
the Spirit and becomes a gesture of oppression and submission as it
begins to be socially imposed rather than being a personal expression. While the Spirit of an emotion/action evolves
with different individuals and changing times, the Symbols get set in
stone (sometimes literally) and unable to change, they rot. The dominance of select social identities (e.g. male, white, heterosexual, higher caste) adds an extra factor by gradually eroding the
Symbols into equations of power. So it is with the Symbols like mangalsutra, the
sindoor, the Karwa-Chauth, the sati, the dowry, the joint family, and
the heterosexual marriage among countless others.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 6th, 2006 at 6:40 am and is filed under Idle Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.