Setting a Tradition

As the saying goes, ‘It requires a lot of history to make a little tradition’. This means that if you want to establish a good tradition in society, you need several precedents to make it a social norm; moreover, if you have established a wrong tradition in society, it again needs a long process of change to abolish this wrong tradition and replace it with a healthy tradition. A society does not abide by laws but by traditions. Laws have a very limited role in social reform. The same is true of the family. Both behave strictly according to traditions and not in obedience to any kind of laws. Therefore, in the case of the family and also in the case of a society—even in the case of a nation, one must be very prudent in this regard. One example of the lack of prudence is the fostering of the present concept of freedom. In present times, people generally take freedom as the summum bonum, or the greatest good. This modern concept of freedom has broken all those traditions that have been a part of every society for the past thousands and thousands of years. For example, whereas the ancient societies were based on the concept of human duties, the present concept of freedom has wiped out the former concept of human duties, replacing it with an overemphasis on human rights. For this reason, we see that everywhere people are rights-conscious rather than dutyconscious. The entire fabric of society has been upset by this change. Be very cautious, therefore, about tampering with those traditions which relate both to the family and to society.