00:00We don't give Hindu kids that pride about their religion or their culture.
00:04They go to Navratri to do Garbha and they skip Aarti.
00:08What challenges do students face in maintaining a connection with their culture,
00:14with their dharam, with their sanskriti, with their parampara and with their heritage?
00:20The parents don't do a great enough job telling the kids about their culture,
00:26their religion, why it's so great, why we do certain things.
00:29Though they shy away from it, a lot of the Hindus of my generation will be like,
00:33oh, I'm not that religious or oh, like my parents don't really tell,
00:37like I don't go to a temple with my parents because they don't make me now that I'm a teenager.
00:42So you don't attach going to the temple with like the reasoning why you're going to the temple.
00:47Like you don't show them why you do certain things or how you do certain things
00:52and you don't immerse them enough in Hinduism and Hindu practices
00:56for them to really stick with it when they grow up or when they have kids.
01:00Like I'm a first generation Hindu.
01:03My parents are both from India.
01:04I'm not saying that they didn't do a great job showing me the culture and everything,
01:10but the little that they showed me, I didn't go to a lot of religious classes
01:15because I didn't want to when I was little.
01:17I didn't really like it.
01:18But the Christian kids and all the other kids, they went to religious classes
01:22and they learned to be proud of their Hindu kids don't.
01:25And I feel like why I dug so deep into Hinduism was after discovering this hate against my community.
01:31That's when I started looking for like answers.
01:34That's why I started like asking questions to my dad.
01:37And like, that's when I started going more into the religion
01:40and knowing that this is something I really like and I want to fight for.
01:44We don't give Hindu kids that pride about their religion or their culture.
01:48And so they shy away from it.
01:50They go more towards South Asian culture.
01:53Like they don't, they're not religious anymore when they go over to that side.
01:57They leave all their traditions and their culture behind.
02:00They go to Navratri to do garba and they skip art.
02:05I've seen like college campuses where they're hosting a garba,
02:08but everyone has their shoes on.
02:10And in the middle, there's no mataji, it's a blank hoodie that they're dancing around.
02:16That's the kind of culture that happens when you don't teach your kids why you're doing certain things
02:20and don't teach them to have pride in what they're doing.
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