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Faculty members presenting a cultural item during the cultural day of Fazl Ali College on June 2.[/caption]
Our Correspondent
Mokokchung, June 2 (EMN): The assistant professor of Fazl Ali College, Dr. Lanurenla has cautioned the students to be beware of the danger in thrusting aside one’s own unique culture and copying someone else culture.
Dr. Lanurenla said today’s generation of young people who ‘exchange their roots for a borrowed culture will become a nameless generation and will have no legacy or heritage to pass on to their children.’
She asserted that a borrowed culture will lose one’s originality and it will be the death of one’s identity.
The assistant professor was addressing as the main speaker of the cultural day, organized by the Fazl Ali College Students’ Union at its college auditorium on the theme, “Rethinking Culture” on June 2.
Stating that there is rich resources in oral tradition that can be passed on to a higher level of aesthetics, she lamented that the today’s generation has become ignorant about ‘the goldmine that is in their backyard while feasting their eyes on their neighbouring garden.’
The professor was referring to the borrowed culture like emo, hip-hop, anime etc. which have no linkage with Naga’s roots or heritage.
She advised the students to maintain cultural continuity to embrace modern knowledge and technology without ignoring one’s oral literature.
Dr. Lanurenla urged the students to revamp the ancestral crafts and art forms by polishing and improvising according to the taste of present times.
She maintained that culture is the consciousness of a people, a way of life that combined the past, the present and the road ahead.
Principal of the college, S Arenla Longkumer, in her welcome addressed said that culture is a total way of life that governs the norms and customs of a particular group of people defined by language, religion, social habit etc.
If the pillars of culture are not properly followed in the society than that culture will resemble a perfume with no smell, she said.
The principal encouraged the students to value the importance of culture and how preserved it.
Folksongs, dances and dramas by faculty, non-teaching staff and students marked the cultural day.
