While I don’t usually agree with her, but I do admire Barkha Dutt a lot. She is one of those few journalists who in spite of having their own opinion, still try to present a balanced account of any situation. The other day while reading one of her articles, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that she was a fellow modernite. The article was concerning the recent "Vandemataram controversy" and talked about the presence of religious symbols in the Indian school system.
I distinctly remember the mural of goddess Saraswati, she talked about that was embedded in the wall at the school reception area. In sixth class when I started school we used to pass it 3-4 times every day. It was like an unwritten rule, that anybody who passed it, used to touch the feet of the goddess. Even when the traffic was heavy, the unordered flows of students used to converge to single orderly line then again revert to the previous chaos.
At that young age we needed to jump to be able to touch the second feet of the goddess, but by the eighth class it had almost become a reflex action. There was a joke that any body that touches the parrot on top of the mural would come first in the class. While I never touched the parrot, but I think I can count the times I did not touch the feet on my fingertips, and I must have passed that corridor more than five thousand times.
In those times communalism, secularism were words I wasn't aware of. I think what the school taught us was the respect for the knowledge that we were getting, a respect which was observed by all, irrespective of the religion. About a year back I visited the school. The reflex action is still there, the respect is still there. Is this my religion or my culture?
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