The Importance Of Cultural Heritages
Culture is something that is very important to people all around the world, so important that Mahatma Gandhi once said, “A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people”. Culture is defined as the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group. Throughout history, cultural heritages have been passed down from generation to generation, and now I, along with everyone else my age, am starting to see the importance of them. Many times as I grew up I wondered why we were celebrating something or what exactly we were doing, but as I have grown older I now realize why and how we do things. I also realize the importance of culture, but doing my preliminary research and interview about this topic made me think about other cultures. This paper will closely compare and contrast my culture to the culture of one of my good friends Ritwik Jain, which came all the way from India to study at the University of Charleston.
Shockingly, there were quite a few similarities between the Indian culture and mine. Ritwik and I both went through the same type of schooling, such as elementary, middle, and high school. There was one difference in the schooling that I will address later, but for the most part they were the same. Despite the native language of India being Hindu, Ritwik, along with all of his classmates, grew up learning the English language. This is exactly the same as American schools, and we basically learned the same information as well. Ritwik’s parents are not Christians themselves, but he is an active Christian. Just like myself, Ritwik attends a local church and believes in the Bible. The Indian and American cultures are also similar in that there are tons of choices. In my culture today, you can choose between quite a few religions, just like Ritwik can in India.
Both of our cultures have very similar morals that children are taught from a young age such as respect, honesty, religion, helping, and family (14 Indian Morals, World of Moms). These are morals that I was taught as soon as I could comprehend what I was being told, and the same goes for Ritwik. While most of the celebrations and traditions of India differ from the ones of my culture, Ritwik does celebrate Christian holidays such as Christmas, which most Indian people do not. Ritwik and I had more similarities in our cultures than I originally anticipated, but the number of differences did not come as a surprise to me. I will start with something that I recently mentioned in my paper, and that is schooling.
While I attended public school my whole career, Ritwik went to an academy for his high school education. He was able to do this because of India’s economy. Ritwik grew up in a wealthy family, despite most of country being in poverty. My culture is just the opposite. Most everyone in the town I’ve grown up in are hard-working, middle class citizens. No one is wealthy like Ritiwik’s family, but it differs from his culture because every family in my neighborhood is at or around average income. In India, you have a major gap in the income of family’s, whereas in my culture we are all around the same.
One of the key differences in our respective cultures is Ritwik has lived in the middle of the city his whole life. I have grown up in a small town where hunting and fishing is a way of life for a lot of people. We have traditions such as getting with the neighbors and going to the mountains on fishing trips or going hunting with your father to learn. I started hunting when I was little and have learned many things since then. It’s something in our culture that I will someday pass down to my kids.
We also take our holidays and traditions very seriously in my culture such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. Each holiday reminds us of something that has happened in the past and we always get together for a meal or celebration of these days. In Ritwik’s culture, traditions are also taken seriously, but they are completely different from mine. When he was in India, he had to participate in the festivals Diwali and Holi. These are the two most important holidays in India, with Diwali being a five-day festival (Live Science). India is also known for their elaborate dances and unique music. In my culture, we don’t have any of those special dances or rituals.
The last few differences in our culture include food and sports. Every time the cafeteria serves Indian food, Ritwik gets excited because that’s what he grew up on. My culture includes a lot of meat such as deer and other wild game. We also eat your basic American foods, just like everyone else. In India, cricket is the main sport, but Ritwik never participated in that. Instead, Ritwik focused on golf because there weren’t any other options for him and he enjoyed it. In the American culture, there is an endless amount of sports that a kid can play while growing up. I along with many other kids in my culture, where encouraged to play just about everything we could. I participated in football, soccer, basketball, baseball, and took up golf when I got to high school. Ritwik didn’t have much of a choice for sports, but the options were endless for me, which is one reason why I love my culture.
In conclusion, I found out while comparing and contrasting our respective cultures that there were a few similarities, but most things were different. The Indian culture is something that I have learned more about while writing this paper and now have the utmost respect for. While exploring it through Ritwik, I have come to love my culture even more. I do love how we are very different people from different cultures, but our love for the sport of golf and the University of Charleston has brought us together.
