An Analysis Of Hindu Brahmin Family Culture In Canada

Write an analysis of your research and interview questions including your own subjective insights and impressions. You can include personal comparison of your own culture and experiences if relevant (optional) in your analysis.

The family that I went for a research interview was involved in Hinduism cultural practice as they were from India and recently moved to Canada for job purposes.  The family practices Hindu Brahmin culture.  Head of the house is Ankit, the father, his wife Anu and sixteen-year-old daughter Anika.

They migrated from India one year ago and have settled down in a friendly environment and neighbours. They are from Delhi, India. The family had to deal with issues regarding immigration to Canada as settling down in a new environment was difficult for them. In addition, some other reasons of shifting to Canada were getting a place of their own with Indian neighbourhood (Spracklin, 2018). Indian climatic conditions are always moderate while in Canada, the temperature is too low and it is mostly freezing half of the year and Indian face this as a major cause of issue and adapting to this temperature will take some time. Getting a better job was also one of the factors for the survival in a new country. Some other issues faced by family other than employment and housing is language barriers, access to services such as hurdle in health care facilities, other than that transportation issues faced by the family and finding a new school for their daughter, as the family needed a friendly environment high school.

Child rearing practices in India is very different from Canadian rearing culture (Tudge, 2008). Back in India, they have a joint family consisting of 12 members and they had to move to Canada for better work perspective. In Indian families, especially girls of their house are considered as a symbol of luck and wealth in the home and the parents are little conservative in compared to Canadians parents. In Canada, the family are independent to each other, they let their children work at a young age and they are free spoken towards each other. While in Indian families, it is exact opposite to what Canadian family’s practices such as, they are dependent to their family and live together until they graduate or establish themselves by getting a good job and get married.

Indian families have strong traditional value and hence, they do not support everything a child wants for herself/himself. They think about the situation and take their elders permission to take any decision in their life. The role of religion is an important value and culture in Indian families. Hence, the rearing of Indian family is done accordingly by telling them learn their religion and start following it strictly, so that they can pass on this ritual to next generation.

Some important ritual a Brahmin Hindu family follows is praying two times a day and visiting temple on one particular day of the week. Brahmin Hindu is one of the most common religions in India and they have some strict rules such as cooking or eating non-veg is not permitted in home or anywhere else as well. Brahmin Hindu is an upper-caste religion of India and this religion practices their culture strictly and does prayer of Hindu god.

Challenges Faced During Migration

This family is from modern Hindu family with culture and good moral values. Hence, the family expects from their daughter Anika, to complete her studies from good reputed university and get a good job. In addition, the family also says that, we will decide when and to who Anika will get married. The family believes in arrange marriages, as they do not expect someone to get married to Anika who is not from their religion, caste or country.  Hence, they want their child to follow the ritual and traditions of the family and continue it in the future.

According to the family, they miss the touch of Indian festival in Canada. In India, people celebrate many festivals together especially in a joint family like Ankit’s they enjoy each other’s company, and gossiping the whole night. The main festival is Diwali, that is celebrated in India (MacMillan, 2008). During the festival time, families get together light up the house with beautiful candles and sparkling lights all over the house. Diwali is the festival of lights and families eat together, play firecrackers and enjoying the quality time with the each other by praying goddess Laxmi. Diwali is one of most important festival of India and other than that; people celebrate Holi, also known as festival of colours (Kalman, 2010).

A family works in a team and hence particular roles are assigned to each member of the family in different categories. The father also known as, head of the family has all the rights to take major decisions in the family and take cares of the financial status of the family (Desai & Andrist, 2010). Then comes the mother of the family, she also has specific gender roles such as taking care of family from financial as well as other aspects such as cooking and maintains the house.  While, the young daughter helps her mother in house hold work and does her studies mostly.  Whereas, in Canada the family also has similar roles in case of gender duties such as father works to support the family as well as mother that is according to her choice (Liu & GUO, 2010). In addition, the children are also not dependent to the family; mostly they also work or do some internship to earn for the family or for him/her.

Males are considered strong and hence they are superior in the family. Men work mostly in a family to support it and hence have most of the powers in Indian families. Whereas, the female is not considered superior and hence their role is needed in the family but not valued as much as male’s position in the family as per the tradition (Nickels, 2008).

The interview began at the Indian family’s home, the time was around 5 pm in the evening, and the date of the interview is December 10, 2018. The names of the family members are Ankit, the father of the house and his spouse Anu and their sixteen-year-old daughter Anika.

I started the interview by asking the first question that was, how was your experience coming to a new country? They answered it by saying it was nice and exciting as shifting to new country really makes everyone excited to see new place and people and to know their culture. In all, it was a good experience.

Child Rearing Practices

Then I asked were there any major issues while coming to Canada? They said, they had issues such as fitting into new climatic conditions that was not easy, finding new place to stay and the use of transportation was not easy as well. The services were also not provided and finding friendly neighbourhood and school for their daughter was a hard task for them. They also added that their visa was approved easily and traveling 18 hours was little uncomfortable journey for them.

My next question was how important is your religion in your culture and family? They said as we are from the upper-caste family of India that is Hindu Brahmin is it their custom, values and morals to follow our religion and culture (Lipner, 2012).

My next question to the family was is there a connection between food and religion.  In addition, how it influences your lifestyle in Canada? They answered the question by saying that it is important to follow the traditions of the religion and being from a Brahmin family, they are not allowed to have non-veg food. Food is definitely connected to religion, as we believe in saving animal not eating them and also in Hinduism we pray to animals as well (Kittler, P. Sucher, , & Nelms, 2012). It does influence our lifestyle as in Canada it is hard to find vegetarian restaurants, when we go out for dinners we have to make sure, if it is a pure vegan restaurant.

My next question to them was how important is mealtime in your family dynamic? They explained that mealtime is also one of the important factors of the tradition as sitting together, having a family get together during the mealtime is necessary, and it is a good practice.

The next question to them was how important is an education in your culture? They said educating my daughter is important for them as they believe in girl power and that a girl can achieve whatever they want too. Mostly in India, girls are not provided with education as their family thinks they will get married someday leave the family and educating her will be of no use. This is a wrong practice in Indian culture (Kwantes, 2009) and they support their daughter to achieve her goals. My next question to the family was what are your expectations for your child, when it comes to education? As they answered earlier, they want their daughter to pursue higher education and get a good job.

Next question was in regards to culture, are there any specific values that you would like to practice it here? They answered that, they always practice their cultural values wherever they go and they would like to continue in this country also. Specific rituals like going to temple on Tuesdays to pray will be continued forever (Knott, 2016).

My next question to them was, in parenting are there similarities or differences between your culture and Canada? How does it differ? According to Anita, she says parenting is very different as Indian families are conservative and hence they do not openly talk about everything such as dating life or sex education. Whereas, when she see around to her friends they are very casual about everything and are open to every talk. Parenting methods are different due to their culture and traditions such as parents give space and privacy to their children whereas in Indian families she fights for it.

My last question to the family was in taking care of children are there any childcare centres where you can leave your child? They said there are childcare centres but it is rare to find in small cities or town. It is not a common practice and is not considered as a job or source of good income (Nxumalo & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2016).

From the above interview, we analyse that Indian society was not the same as it is today. The family from Delhi is open-minded but not as much as Canadian families are. The family is supportive towards her daughter’s education and his spouse working out with him to support financially to the family.

According to my research, the family is open-minded and has good values of their culture and traditions. They believe in their culture and they follow it unconditionally.  On the other hand, in Canada, most of the families do not follow their culture and tradition strictly. Canadian families do not value culture as much as compared to Indian families does. My overall impression to the interview was amazing and it is new experience in my life. The interview can be improved by explaining more things in details.

References:

Desai, S., & Andrist, L. (2010). Gender scripts and age at marriage in India. Demography, 47(3), 667–687.

Kalman, B. (2010). India: The Culture. Canada: Crabtree Publishing Company.

Kittler, P. G., P. Sucher, , K., & Nelms, M. (2012). Food and Culture. USA: Cengage Learning.

Knott, K. (2016). Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction. (2, Ed.) Britain: Oxford University Press.

Kwantes, C. T. (2009). Culture, job satisfaction and organizational commitment in India and the United States. JOURNAL OF INDIAN BUSINESS RESEARCH, 1(4).

Lipner, J. (2012). Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. London: Routledge.

Liu, M., & GUO, F. (2010). Parenting practices and their relevance to child behaviors in Canada and China. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51(2).

MacMillan, D. M. (2008). Diwali: Hindu Festival of Lights. USA: Enslow Publishers, Inc.

Nickels, E. L. (2008). Dimensions of police culture: a study in Canada, India, and Japan. POLICING: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, 31(2).

Nxumalo, F., & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2016). Unruly Raccoons and Troubled Educators: Nature/Culture Divides in a Childcare Centre. Environmental Humanities.

Spracklin, P. (2018, JULY 18). The Top 10 Problems Faced by Immigrants.

Tudge, J. (2008). The Everyday Lives of Young Children: Culture, Class, and Child Rearing in diverse socities. USA: Cambridge University Press.