The third major development of the last few decades that led to a lack of awareness about the Ithihasams amongst the current generation, is the so called 'secularization' of education. When I was attending school in 1970s, 95% of us studied in Government Schools, and almost all of them followed the State Board. The State Board Syllabus was more sensitive to local culture, States history, and also to the hindu way of life.
With the advent of Christian missionary schools followed by those started by other minority, this changed. Also, CBSE schools started cropping up like mushrooms and parents flocked to these Private Schools to admit their kids. With Congress ruling the Centre for most parts, and with India's education content development, including history, at the mercy of the so called Left Academicians, who loathe anything that is Hindu, especially post Babri Masjid demolition to prevent the rise of BJP, the atheist, Western dominated, doctored syllabi was taught in the Schools. It became fashionable for the Schools to abuse Hindu Ithihasams and Indian Culture, while glorifying the Mughal Period, and the British Period, forgetting that both of them were invaders and looters in the first place. Students were not encouraged to learn their mother tongue, and majority of the middle class students of the last 25 years cannot read or write in their mother tongue. Most escaped the 'burden' of opting for their mother tongue as third language by opting for the alien French or German instead.
With English language dominating the Education scenario (most of the Private English medium schools punished their students if they even inadvertently spoke in their mother tongue in the School!), and with our Ithihasams not easily available for reading in English language (in any case, one doesn't get a feel of them if one were to read the translated version in English - a Classic Example being M T Vasudevan Nair's Classic 'Rendamoozham' in Malayalam, which when translated to English became a damb squib. It lost its sensitivity totally, despite the fact that the translation was excellent) and with the children unable to read in their mother tongue, couple of generations lost complete touch with our Ithihasams. It became fashionable to deride Hinduisms and to claim proudly that one doesn't know Ramayanam or Mahabharatham, but is more comfortable with Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
When these children, born in 1975 and beyond grew up to become adults and parents, they just did not possess the cultural background, or knowledge about ithihasams to pass it on to their children. They were focused on migrating to US or Europe or Australia leaving India and Indianness behind. I have asked many adults born post 1970s to recall the 10 Avatharams of Vishnu and found 99% of them struggling or unable to do so or just shrugging in indifference. That is the word - indifference. Couple of generations of Hindus were totally indifferent to our Ithihasams due to the reasons mentioned above and in the previous posts. The left dominated academicians and media, which had an agenda to promote Christianity in India, did not miss any opportunity to deride anyone who dared to rectify the syllabus in favour of Bharathiya culture, crying 'saffronisation' till their throats were hoarse, and took all effort to make anyone who wanted to learn Ithihasams feel guilty. With parents having a false set of values, is it any wonder our current crop of children have no clue as the greatness of our Culture and the lessons for life hidden in Vedams, Upanishads and Ithihasams?
