A critical juncture for Indian families
In the last decade or so, the West has started to perceive India differently. People are now viewing India as a developing state, a country with hope, which is still battling its archaic problems. While India’s impact on the West has increased ever so slowly, Occidental mannerisms have always been part of rich Indian households.
Since the turn of the century, this ideological expansion has escalated. The youth of this country now consumes a tremendous amount of content from world leaders like The United States and The United Kingdom. This content is in the form of movies, TV shows, novels, politics, and many other pop culture sources. This consumption of content has led to a gradual shift in their thought process. These youngsters live in India, a country with very different problems and lifestyles as compared to the lands where these shows stem from. Societal elements like family, the schooling system, population levels, economic stability are poles apart in these countries.
Due to these pop culture influences, the thinking of the average Indian, who has the luxury to access such content, has gone through a massive shift. People expect their professional and personal lives to mirror American patterns. Often, these expectations result in efforts to pursue the change on one’s own. As India’s IT industry grows, work culture goes through a shift, the concept of fidelity has come to be a question mark, mind you, fidelity used to be assured in average Indian individuals a while ago. While it is a change that is happening, it cannot be said if it is a negative change or a positive change, as the cause of faithfulness in old Indian marriages has a lot to do with gender roles and patriarchy.
More than a change in the workplace dynamic, we are seeing a drastic change in parent-child relationships. While Indian students going through their college life want to explore the world, go on dates, and indulge in everything their Western counterparts do, they do not pay it out of their own pockets. They do not have any source of income during their college days and find the idea of working at a store beneath them, their idea of hustle begins when they step into the corporate world. The concept of students working alongside their college is unheard of in India. While students from apex institutes get paid internships, parents still pay for the monthly expenses of an average Indian college-goer. While we want to gaze the sea on a solo trip to Pondicherry, we are not comfortable with working to earn the money for it. It is almost as if Indian students have constructed a virtual boundary that extends as long as their college goes, within which it is okay for them not to earn. Although a lot of this culture stems from the system, it needs to be kept in mind that the system is criticized for its backward ways, while this leeway given to the young is also a product of the system.
Going beyond the college student complication, the equation of old Indian parents and their married children is also changing, though not as quickly as the former problem. Traditionally, parents continue to live with their children even after they are married, but the trend is changing now. Indians now feel that they deserve a certain sense of privacy from their parents and the ability to carry out their lives in whatever way they chose to. Indian adults are leaving their home cities, states, and in some cases, even countries, for the pursuit of a better life. We shouldn’t blame the Indian adult or student for looking out for themselves or trying to enjoy their lives, but Indian parents should also not be levied the blame if they chose selfish ways. While Indian adults are increasingly becoming self-centered, they still expect all of their parents’ economic resources to be divided only among the children. The practice of giving even a minor share of your wealth to anyone but your children is unheard of. Most Indians do not make wills before they pass and the division of the wealth is done within children by default.
It is highly imperative to understand that India is a family-centric society. Traditionally, Indians value their families more than anything. It is not a society that focuses on the “I”, but the “We.” While Western Culture has its own set of ways, it has gotten there after hundreds of years of gradual change.
This selective adoption of principles from a different part of the world resounds with hypocrisy. While we choose the leisures and the personal life of developed nations, we do not take too kindly to self-reliance and our parents looking out for themselves. This is a slippery slope that India as a society, has to trod carefully. While India is doing away with practices that are unjust and obsolete, it is still trying to hold on to the just values of a civilization more than five thousand years old. Only time will tell whether India takes a better approach to absorb Western ideologies, but they’ll have to be done with a pinch of salt to all its people, the young and the old.
