When I was in London recently my daughter gave me this book “Things Fall Apart” written by Chinua Achebe, saying that it was one of the best books she has read in a long time. Last week I read it. I could not put it down till I finished it. It is certainly a great book. Written in a story telling style, it is easy to read and at the same time has got a profound intellectual depth. The book describes the life and culture of a tribal village in the backwoods of Africa and vividly portrays the cataclysmic effect of the arrival of the missionary and colonial personnel without any incrimination or lamentation. The reader feels sad at the demise of a simple but elegant culture but also sees the inevitability of the change that the modernity brings.
Though first published in 1958 the book still feels fresh. The struggle to preserve the local culture from the external influences which constantly keep trying to insinuate is still happening all over the world. The futility of this struggle is also evident but only in hindsight. In India some people want to stop the satellite television and multinational companies to prevent dilution or outright destruction of their “culture”. In Afghanistan some people are prepared to die and kill to preserve the way of life which they had since middle ages. It is not happening only in the poor and developing nations but in every nation. In China the government is struggling hard to prevent the “subversive influences of internet “and in France the government is banning the veil. In Britain the BNP the ultra nationalist party is opposing any proposal to build a temple and Switzerland does not want any more mosques. Americans are worried about Hispanic influence and Venezuelans are banning all things American.
As evident in this book by Achebe one can not prevent the changes. It is exactly the same all over the world. One can never prevent the spread of ideas from one culture to another, from one country to another. It is inevitable.
I wish we could all rise above our pettiness and not waste our precious resources in obstructing the free flow of ideas all over the world.
2 comments:
Truly said,change is inevitable but it is also true that every change brings confrontation.We must think over the fact that how change come about and eventually change for what!Only the free flow of ideas cannot bring the change.The acceptability of ideas by the common people would bring a change in a tangible manner.
In India we are everyday experiencing the change and modernity coming(so called) around.We feel nostalgic about our past.But as said earlier change is inevitable......and it is happening fast,.....but not in a way as desired by me .
No advancement can ever be backtracked, and that is a truth of life. In fact, all of human evolution is nothing but a saga of constant adoption new things. It is amazing that people still resist change. Not only do we resist, but also, we equate change with a process of obliteration of tradition. It is forgotten that tradition itself is a crystallization & codification of a multitude of events, which evolved over an immesurably long stretch of time - long enough to be scaled in a few human life-spans.
Post a Comment