India has specifically been known for its great and high standard values, folk-ways and culture, may it be nationally or internationally India has won many of the hearts on the basis of its vast and wonderful culture. By the term ‘culture’ we can simply understand that; a culture is a complex whole of vivid values, ideas, folk-ways, mores, customs, morals, laws, arts and other capabilities and skills obtained by man as a member of the society. In a broader sense culture is the way of the social life of the people or precisely it is an organized system of behaviour of the human society. Now, values are a significant part of the Indian culture, we have various values (set of attitudes & behaviour) which superbly distinguish the Indians from the rest of the people of the other countries. Almost every aspect of our lives are guarded and directed by moral, social and cultural values which teach us the right way to behave with others. Like; we have moral values of honesty, kindness, humility, generosity, transparency, truth, patience, satisfaction, self-esteem that we are supposed to follow while leading our lives then on the other hand we have social and cultural values which direct our social behaviours such as value of greeting, obeying, giving respect, modesty, group harmony, social welfare, cooperation, brotherhood, patriotism, and respect for all religions etc.
Indian values undoubtedly have undergone many modifications and shifting, people have been applying the values according to their suitability and convenience. However, in the old Indian society people were more eager to follow and give importance to their values but now in the modern times values are somewhere losing their vitality. In the modern times when firm waves of modernization, westernization, industrialization and urbanization have impacted the lives of the people, the effect of the Indian values seem to have been lost in that. The great Indian values seem to have been replaced by selfish-motives, individualistic thoughts and egoistic drives of the human beings. The young generation of the country seem to have no faith in the old established moral and cultural values their mind-sets are structured in such a way that praises only the western values. Even the old generation of our Indian society feels helpless in reforming the so called westernized mind-sets, thus some of them have accepted this fact (with no other option left) and some are still struggling with their young ones to convince them about the importance of the Indian values.
The youth of today seem to have been bamboozled by the fascinating picture of the western values which are apparently hallow and unsuitable for our society, still the young generation gives more importance to those values since they believe that western values administer more freedom, flexibility, self-promotion, newness and confidence to them. For instance, the young generation feels more comfortable in waving a simple hand or uttering a simple ‘Hi’ or even a slang “hey what’s up’ for greeting someone instead of following our cultural value of greeting with folded hands and bowing down the head with respect and saying the meaningful word; ‘Namaste’.
The young generation have not at all tried to understand the essence of own values and blindly following the foreign values. Our values are so meaningful and have been directed for the welfare of the human beings only, which intend to bring harmony and affection among the people of our country. But blaming the youth alone would not be justifiable over here, they have adopted the ways which they have seen in front of them they have many mediums through which they have learnt the western values but here we are missing one important aspect of this scenario and that is that it might be possible that we being the elders, parents and the guardian have not properly introduced our Indian values to our young generation, it might also be possible that we have not guided them properly and taught about the great implications of our own values! There might have been something missing in the process of their upbringing that has resulted in the lack of faith of the youth in the Indian values. Thus, we should also consider the other part of this scenario. Following are the points that should be taken into consideration:
- Parenting, Values and the Youth: parenting is an important aspect of the upbringing of a child because through parenting the parents create a personality of their child. Nature of parenting determines the kind of personality of the child thus, if the parenting is accompanied with the teaching of moral, social and cultural values at a very early stage of the child, there is no doubt that the child would certainly become a powerful, confident, self-reliant, generous and an amiable person. Parents should teach their young ones the importance of our values and encourage them to apply those in their practical lives.
- Inclusion of Values in Education: education makes us a distinct person with a broad vision, new ideas and thoughts and wisdom and values make us morally, socially and culturally distinct thus education should be accompanied with the knowledge of our great values as well. In schools and colleges students should be taught about the usefulness of values and should be imparted a Value based education.
Values work like a shield for the people that facilitate the best standards of attitudes and behaviours for them and make them different from other human races. Indian values have always been popular and appreciated because they are based on good and pure intentions and also based on the virtues. It is only in India that we consider even the guests as a form of God and treat them with generosity and lavishly, we bow down our heads to give respect to others, we have learnt to help and think of others welfare, we belong to a land where honesty is truly considered to be the best policy and where the action of giving care and love to the elders and old parents is supposed to give us heavenly blessings. Then how could the young generation stay so ignorant and unappreciable towards own values? All they need is the right atmosphere, guidance and motivation of the parents, elders, teachers, and other educated and enlightened people of the society who can teach the youth that identity is created on the foundation of one’s values and not the foreign values.
Today, we boast of being connected with the world every now and then due to the internet. But we can not deny the role it has played in providing an easy access to undesirable stuff as well. The consequences of this have been that the prime Indian values are losing their essence. This can also be credited to our film industry and a western impact in the name of modernisation.