Culture and Cultural Assault: An adverse effect of satellites

Culture and Cultural Assault: An adverse effect of satellites

Culture stands for the pre-determined notions, norms, values, beliefs, customs, conventions, music, language and ways of behaviour of persons living in a particular zone. It denotes what is good and bad, what is to be done and what is not to be done. It is determined by the society through the day-to-day activities. It does not stand still and it varies from society to society, country to country and time to time. We can rightly boast of an affluent cultural heritage. We have our own cultural traits and its identity. We have miscellaneous songs based on rural and idyllic pictures of life. We have jari, sari, kobi, bhatiali, polligeeti, Lalongeeti, Nazrulgeeti, Rabindrasangeet, marufoti, swariati, murshidi and local jatrapala. We have our own food habits like rice and fish as well as ways of eating. We have our traditional dress like longyi, dhuti, shirt and punjabi for the male and sharee and blouse for the female. Eid, puja, Buddha Purnima, Christmas Day, Victory Day, Pahela Baishakh, Nabanna and Halkhata are some of our distinguished festivals. All these are our culture and cultural traits. On the contrary, culture which is not known and practised in a society is called alien culture. All alien cultures are not detrimental to a society. A native culture may be enriched and ameliorated enough with the influence of some alien cultures. But some cultures have profound impact on other cultures that might be harmful and then it will be a cultural assault. Cultural assault means bad influence of foreign cultures on any native culture. In the present global world it is quite tough to impede this cultural aggression. With the development of hi-tech media, it has been very easy for a society to be infiltrated by alien cultures. Many of the cultural elements may be influenced in this way. Our Bangladeshi culture is mostly affected because of cultural assault of other countries. Our dress pattern especially for teenagers and young generation has altered a lot. Now people like pop song and band music sung in the western style and with western musical instruments. Besides, our eating habits are also being changed. Today many of us like to take fast food outside home using chopstick, fork etc. Now our young generations prefer celebration of 31 December to that of Pahela Baishakh. They never mind celebrating the Valentine’s Day. However, to get rid of the invasion of alien culture, we should be very much strict to exercise our own culture and flourish our cultural elements. In addition to that, we have to accept miscellaneous alien cultures selectively, which will make our traditional culture more affluent.