How To Be Alone

Reply to Tamilians who are convinced of their superior origins

I have left the 'nest' when I walked into university studying towards my degree. Having studied in Kharagpur, where you have students from all the country, I had a rich experience interacting with people from varied cultural, regional backgrounds. Within no time, the regional bias which makes people stick with their own clan is wiped off my head. Soon, it didn't bother if someone is from my place/city/state. That was an irrelevant detail. I started appreciating fine things of every culture I can lay my hands on. For example, I no longer had longing for the food I grew up with; I have started enjoying good food, which ever part of the country it is from. In short, I have become a citizen of nation.

Once I am out of my university, I was in for a rude shock. The world outside and around me is an exact opposite of the personality traits I grew into. People are casteist, sectarian,regionalist, petty and leading compartmentalized lives with a tunnel vision. In particular, I must say Tamilians and Malayalees are the most exclusivist. This time around, its about the former group of people. Moving to Singapore has given me another view of how Tamils feel about themselves and how others are treating them and how they think they ought to be treated as. In short, here are my observations

1. Tamilians form a closed, inward looking group who feel they are privileged for just being a Tamilian. Somehow they are special with their unique language, culture.
2. Others ought to recognize their cultural superiority without actually doing anything that can be reckoned as superior.
3. When they are not recognized for their superiority, which they haven't yet proved, they bellyache, whine  ,cry out loud and piss off people around them. Well, on this count, I might concede the superiority plank to Jews, who as an ethnic group have demonstrated it to the world, unequivocally.

Today, something happened that rubbed me at the wrong end. It was a mail from someone with an 'attitude' and I intend to give a response to the community, without making any personal references. Here you go:

Speaking about culture and racial origins, one must know about from where did we all come about. Check this out. There is also an instructive documentary on human migrations from out of Africa by National Geographic:

ANYONE who is residing out of Africa has descended from one family of gene. The results are  corroborated by  mitochondrial DNA studies.And this include Tamilians as well. So, for the last time, remind yourself you are just ALL the rest of us - Asians, Americans, Europeans, Australians, Polynesians and aborigines of Andamans. Tamils DON'T in anyway form a new species; their culture, language and everything about them has common foundations as the rest of the population no matter how much do they bellyache about their uniqueness.

Here are few points I would like to mention:

1. 'Racial Purity' and preserving it - it sounds extremely offensive. Europe has experimented with during the time of WW II (every heard of Hitler and his idea of Eugenics? Get a history lesson dude!) and they have come to their senses.
2. And btw, by preserving racial purity do you mean that the society must continue to remain as fragmented as it is today? So there must not be intermarriages ? 
3. Mother tongue that you have learnt was NOT the same language a thousand years ago. It changed. It was influenced by foreign languages and influenced other languages. And no matter how much you like to keep it in some abstract pure state, it will change.  There has never been one 'pure' language. Language is always meant to meet the needs to human communication and it evolves constantly to meet them. Btw, sage agastya is a 'mythological' character; no evidence that he existed exists.
4. As with the language, our culture, traditions (implied is Tamil culture, Tradition) has always in flux since our species has begun their migration out of Africa. They have been changing and will change. You can choose to be a part of that change but not stop it. The maximum you can do is to create a snapshot of the state of the culture and preserve it in a museum.
5. Globalization has started around 80,000 years ago when our species set off on a journey out of Africa. Be a part of it or be left behind. You cannot stop it.