Fear in Metro-Cities

Rebati Mohan Sinha

In the course of my visit to metro cities, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Poona and Ahmadabad, I met our BM community people and found that senior members are having a concern – they fear that the future generation is rapidly losing the identity of its traditional culture. Indeed, I have seen that although families have achieved substantial material progress, still they are unhappy. They feel strongly that their children will suffer a fate commonly known as cultural assimilation.

I told the senior members of our community that their fear might be genuine; but their present efforts were not going to yield any positive results. The real problem is that we are living in these metro cities as takers, not as givers. We strive to earn money but we don’t try to figure as giver members of these cities. In the course of a conversation, one senior remarked that the present development of metros was due to mostly to the labor of migrants. I said no, although apparently migrants seem to be working in the development activities of the metro cities, in actual, the credit goes not Mr. Migrant; but to the host.

It is a fact that these migrant have failed to perform well in their own villages/towns, where as, in the metro cities they are seen to be involved in almost all the activities of development and progress. The reason is that in the metros, every success is based on merit, so these migrants become heroes in achieving that success. 

If the BM community wants to save their next generation, they should try to make themselves a giver group of metro society. If their next generation continues to be taker members of metro cities, no efforts will ever save them from being assimilated in metro culture.

What we want today is a new pathway for the future that can accommodate our dreams and aspiration i.e., traditional culture of our society for which we, the BM people of Pune, along with Mumbaites bought a plot of land at Pune in the year 2007. We did Bhoomi Pujan, done by the Sevait of Radha Gobinda Mandir, Nabadwip, Sri Mairang Singh Debabarmana on the occasion of Sri Sri Bhubaneshwar Sadhu Thakur’s birth anniversary, celebrated in all India basis to set up a ‘Cultural Study Centre’ under the aegis of Sri Sri Bhubaneshwar Sadhu Thakur International Sevashram, where artists, researchers from all over India could come, conduct research, hold discussion on art and culture and then come out with something that will really help not only BM of metro cities but our entire community.

I don’t know, how long it will take and how it will shape up eventually. May be, it will be generations before we have something of interest, but it’s worth trying.