You might be wondering what all this has to do with the title of the subject. Plenty! By far, Indians as an ethnic group preach the most. This is one quality that separates us from the rest of the world.

Indians in the U.S. of A. are in the top three affluent ethnic groups. There is every reason to feel proud about our success. We impact the IT world in a major way, and we have established our presence in other not so glamorous areas too. Indians are seen as the most law-abiding group by the local law enforcement authorities. A stand-up comedian once proclaimed, "Man! I have seen everybody in a jail except an Indian. Now, what’s that all about?"

Yet, the mainstream doesn’t seem to like us from an ‘easy to get along with’ point of view. Indian presence is acknowledged, but we are far away from being accepted as a congenial group.

Because, we preach! We preach at the first opportunity available to us.

What exactly is preaching? Preaching is almost always done from a morally superior position. Like, "My ethics are better than yours." Or, "My culture is more glorious than yours." The guy who preaches keeps himself on a pedestal and looks down at the listener with a little disdain. And Indians do it with ease, sometimes without even realizing it.

All an American needs to do is ask an innocuous question about India, and we go off into raptures extolling the virtues of our Motherland. We explain to the hapless listener how great our culture is, how we respect our elders, how we discipline our children, and so on and so forth.

While we feel superior about most of the things our culture has to offer, the way the marriage system works in the West and the way sex is perceived here, is our most favorite topic.

We gush how the marriage system is a success in India, unlike in the U.S.A. where the divorce rate is steep 50+ percent. We shower contempt at the way pre-marital sex is prevalent here.

This is true, even of the most silent Indian on the block. He might not offer his opinion on a lot of other issues, but when somebody raises the ‘India’ topic, the tiger in him is unleashed.

I attended an Indian wedding performed in Florida once upon a time. A lot of Americans were present and watching the proceedings with some interest. There was an Indian guy who was explaining why certain things are being done the way they are. When the time for ‘Kanyaadanam’ came – the event where the father gives away his daughter to his son-in-law – he declared, "This is the event where the father gives away his ‘virgin’ daughter to the groom." (Quotes around virgin are mine. Kanya in Sanskrit means virgin.) There were some uncomfortable looks and a few sniggers, but Americans being who they are, they kept their poker faces intact.

India, as a nation too, has preached to other nations. Pre cold war days, we claimed we were non-aligned. Everybody knew though about the pro-Soviet tilt we displayed in all international matters. We preached to every nation about what’s right and what’s wrong. Not that we were listened to with great respect. But, that never stopped India.

In the recently released Nixon tapes, there is a juicy exchange between Nixon and Kissinger about the sanctimonious and holier-than-thou attitude of India, which gives you an idea what kind of perception all that preaching has lead to.

What makes Indians preach?

May be it’s our hoary past.

The ancient civilization we boast of, the various rich art forms we have developed, the vast literature spread over numerous native languages, the spiritual wealth we have generated. Make no mistake; India led from the front in the ancient world.

But what do we have today?

A nation that lost its course.

What we have today are rituals. Not spiritualism.

What we have today is an empty rhetoric of patriotism which reaches a crescendo come August 15th or the Republic day. Not a healthy national self-esteem.

What we have today is soul-less moralizing. Not ethics.

What we have today is a hypocritical nation; where everybody says one thing and means the other and does another.

Think about it yourselves. Corruption is a way of life in India. Every single one of us has experienced that at some level or the other. How many times did you have to bribe a cop in the U.S. to get a ticket revoked? The answer would be a big zero.

The ancient culture that we are so proud of has been replaced by a pop-culture, which looks like a bad experiment gone worse.

Even the much touted sexual chastity, we seem to be so proud of, is practiced more in its breach than its implementation.

Multiple independent surveys conducted by magazines like India Today, have revealed that our young have no qualms about having pre-marital sex. Even conservative cities like Madras, have plenty of people who indulge in extra-marital affairs. And of late, there have been reports of couples that have started swinging too.

In reality, all the talk about sexual chastity in India is just that, a talk. Indians are still more worried about preserving their caste system through marriage than any thing else.

And that’s why the need to control their young from going ‘astray’.

Most of the parents don’t care what’s happening inside a marriage as long as it stays intact. A failed marriage is preferred to an honest divorce where both partners admit that they can’t carry on any further.

I will go one step further. There are many parents in India who don’t really care what their children do, as long as they do it in stealth, and as long as they marry whomever they want them to marry.

Repression leads to duplicity on the part of the perpetrators and thereby leads to a society where lying is no more the horrible thing it’s supposed to be. One young person casually explained to me, "I am doing my parents a good turn by keeping them ignorant of my activities, since they would really be shattered if they come to know what all I am up to."

There is only one commandment in today’s India. "Thou can do any thing that will further thy cause as long as thou shall not get caught."

So, by no means, do we have any higher moral authority to preach to the world. But, that’s not even the point here. The point is different societies have different cultures and those different cultures in turn, have different strengths and weaknesses. Even assuming we fare better than a society in a certain respect, we still should not be preaching.

Indians need to understand that the general curiosity Americans express about an unknown culture, should not be mistaken with a carte blanche to pour their hearts away.

It’s better to answer a specific question with a specific answer and play it by the ear.

If somebody is genuinely interested, they will ask you the next leading question any way.

Also, India, as a nation and as a society, is such a complex entity, there are very few Indians who can claim to know about her well enough to answer somebody’s questions.

Plus, never make the mistake of thinking that you know every thing about America, simply because you have watched a few television shows or a few Hollywood movies or interacted with a few Americans at work. Indians live outside the range of America’s mainstream activities and are acutely ignorant of a lot of ground realities.

What if one day, an American turns around, breaks from his usual mode of politeness, and asks, "Is it true your is one of the most corrupt nations? Is it true you kill your girl children at birth, so you don’t have to pay dowry to get them married? Is it true, women are not respected in your country as you say, but vilified, abused, and harassed throughout their lives?"

What would you do then? Can you deny him with a straight face?

Judge not, lest you shall be judged, says the Bible. There is plenty of truth in it for the Indians to mull over.

We have made America our second home. True, we are a hard working lot and an asset to the U.S. economy. But, that’s not enough. Since, we are probably going to live here for a long time, probably raise our kids here, we need to learn to appreciate the finer aspects of other cultures, especially the American culture, and teach the same to our children. We can never be truly happy, if we keep yearning for Indian values in America. That’s simply not possible.

An open mind then, not a feeling of moral superiority.

Or else, it might very well be us Madonna would be singing about next….

More articles by Murali Chari

1. The Importance of Law and Order...
2. Do we need a movie on Bhagat Singh?
3. Raja and Rani visit Timbuktu!
4. Worshipping False Heroes
5. The English Media bites the dust
6. "Where We Indians Got it Wrong...."
7. "All this for the rest of us!"
8. Do we deserve the movies we get?
9. The 'friends' you need to dump
10. Raja and Rani visit Timbuktu!
11. "Where we Indians got it wrong….."
12. "When 98 is greater than hundred"
13. "How Easy It is...."