Glorifying Our Culture ??

On the 7^th day, I was visiting the remaining places in Hampi and was taking the phorographs I had forgotten to take. I and my friend were near the Ugra Narsimha also known as the Lakshmi Narsimha, when we met a tourist. He was from a foreign country, and knew very little about India. He was a school teacher and was on a vacation tour to India. Before coming to Hampi he had never heard about it before, and had no idea what it was.

He said, he loved this place and had enjoyed his time in India so far, but he did not like what we have done to our tourist places. I thought he was talking about the markets, cleanliness, the crowd, mismanagement etc. but it was not about that. He said, “The way you represent your culture in your tourist places in very poor.” A little shocked by his statement, I was curious to know his reasons, as we have always thought of our historical monuments as the symbols of our culture.

According to him, our country has a very rich culture. But the way we show it to others, is the problem. To glorify our culture, we try to show too many things, which probably don’t go together. This makes our tourist places look artificial and lose the soul. This happens everywhere, may it be a temple, a fort, a cave, anything.

I got a little angry after listening his opinion, however, after thinking about it, I somewhat found it true. What is that we want to show our tourists? Are we really promoting our culture?