Occidental aggression have torn the fabrics of the charms of joint family into pieces and over it pasted a pattern of family of two with a couple of offspring who live for some time with parents and then fly out like birdies spread their wings from the nest, when feathers of comforts are grown in the skinny body so long nourished and nurtured by their parents, thus leaving the parents with heaving long sighs and discovering the meaning of life all about anew at the fag end of life.
On occidental influence, it is often seen youngsters to seat in front of their parents and elders with swinging cross legged in abhorrent rhythm. On some occasions these youngsters are found smoking before elders and seniors treating them as 'friends' which is far from the given norms of the Oriental society.
In Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam with people belonging to yellow race, wives walk behind their husbands. In extreme cases these Oriental women are found to keep safe distance in walking behind their husbands in showing highest form of respect so that even the shadows of husbands they do not walk over by any chance.
I don't know whether this practice of Oriental culture is demeaning for women folk. By Occidental standard, it is demeaning and misogynistic. But the practicing men and women in the Orient differently interpreted it as mark of mutual love and respect to each other. This tradition was in practice in our society too in the past. It has its some remnants still left and seen in rural Bangladesh where life is as soothing as nature.
But in the urban society 'ladies first' culture is widely practiced which has been adapted from the western culture because of our 190 years of subjectivity under the British Empire. It is a controversy as to who walks whose behind. Is it man or woman? The best think is to walk side by side and hand in hand. After all the wife is said to be the better half of husband. Further, legend has it; Eve was created from the hip-bone of Adam. Men and women together weave the nest of peace in the family.
Question of superior or inferior sex do not arise here as because this debate brings chaos in the society and equally destroys social fabrics. Some traditions and culture that have been adapted out of choice and convenience of the Oriental society form the Occiedental world cannot be termed as cultural aggression.
In the West, particularly in the U.K. culinary delight of curry-culture in the eateries is the gift from Orient to Occident which equally cannot be considered as cultural aggression. Culture and tradition swirls from back and forth on its core value dawning a new era of culture round and round which are embraced with pleasure, like the earth spins on its own axis bringing forth days and nights of lights and shades creating a mystic music in nature.
Occidentalism, although tends to dehumanize Orientals in terms of education and culture and claims its superiority over Orients, but with the wind of changes blowing hard from the east, the Oriental societies are now adequately tuned to their gear in getting momentum either to walk neck to neck or on occasions with a giant leap over-stepping the Occident's in the field of knowledge and wisdom blended with galloping economic progression.
It goes without saying that the west produced famous people over the centuries in the field of philosophy, science, music, invention, poetry and literature. The names of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jack Rousseau, Voltaire, Rene Descartes, David Hume, John Stuart Mill Immanuel Kant, Leibniz, Nietche, Karl Max, Bertrand Russell, Jean Paul Sartre in philosophy; Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Charles Darwin, Alexander Fleming, Wright Brothers, and lot more other in the world of science; Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart in music; Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo in poetry and literature and many more in other fields of enlightenment are remembered with highest reverence and adulation who had brought revolution in their respective fields and contributed greatly in shaping a civilized world that we live in.
Nevertheless, the East particularly this region of the sub-continent has produced score of literary and cultural giants like Nobel Laureate Poet Rabindranath Tagore, rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam, Sharat Chandra Chatterjee, Ustad Alauddin Khan, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Sattayjit Roy, Zainul Abedin and lot many more others of their likes who side by side with the intellectual, scientific, literary and artistic stalwarts of the west, graced the world by their literary and artistic grandeur.
Contrasting to the above facts, the west or Occident also produced lot more frightening and psychopathic devils in human shape like Caligula and Nero in ancient Rome, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Slovadan Milesovic, Rudco Mledic, Radavan Keiradzic who in the name of ultra-nationalism and ethnic cleansing, stained their hands with blood and tried to destroy humanity by their vile and demonic acts.
The West or Occident, at time, come forward to provide succor to falling and distressed humanity in the East and on other occasions appears with fearful scourge of military, economic and cultural aggression to grab the lands of the East. An Olive leaf of peace in one hand and horrendous nuclear arsenals in another hand of the West is the sign of blatant hypocrisy and double standard that the world is witnessing with constant eerie feelings and fears.
It is often said that the 20th century was for the Occident's and the 21st century belongs to Orients who will rule supreme as emerging economic power in bringing a new world order. Orientalism with its inner force of combustion will thwart the unwanted portion of aggression spewing from the hot cauldron of the West or Occident in the field of art and culture and other core values of life on the cradle of which Orientalism swings and savors the sublime beauty of life with peaceful co-existence respecting equally Occidental values of life to make the world worth living in peace and harmony. Needless to emphasize that world is now a global village.
East and West cannot remain isolated and turn their faces from each other. They cannot afford to undermine or belittle each other on any false pretext. Exponents of both Orientalism and Occidentalism are endeavoring to work hard hand in hand to bring both East and West closer to each other without any aggression or overstepping into each other's culture and core values of life. 'East meets West'- a musical symphony created by Pundit Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin in the 1970s with the strings of Sitar and Violin was a little step towards making a giant leap in bringing both East and West closer to each other through cultural co-operation where cultural aggression had no place. (Concluded)
The writer is a former civil servant
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