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India
Living in two different cultures both in India and in Britain, I was in a minority situation all my life and have experienced many challenges and insights in my journey. Let me start in India: I am from a background of Christian, clergy wife, backward caste, and middle class family from Tamil Nadu. Seeing other religious people as pagan and other caste people as different and considering clergy as having a selfless and demanding role in society, are the background to the understanding in bringing up my family.
Our mother tongue is Tamil - one of the four South Indian regional languages. Hindi - the national language - is optional and giving English education to children is considered a priority. When children are good at English they can try to avoid studying their mother tongue and national language, and their thought pattern and sometimes culture tries to coincide with western ideology. So there is a great challenge for parents to preserve our culture and family values. Sometimes that drives us to burden our children to habitually speaking the mother tongue at least in home and even in the Church.
As they were in a residential school among children of Christian, multi lingual and multi cultural background, our children had much opportunity to learn different Christian ideologies and values. They also studied in a Hindu Management school in South India where many of the children were Hindus, Muslims and from different caste backgrounds. They have learnt how to live with different people harmoniously.
Children are sometimes ignorant of their caste, but when the school asks them to submit their community certificate as they move from High school to Higher secondary school, they gain their caste identity. Many times the conflict in society between different castes challenges them as they grow up. They raise many questions and challenge the parents in accepting people as they are.
Living in Britain as a South Indian and Asian Christian is another minority situation in which we are bringing up our children. Many cultural shocks made us find the way forward without affecting our faith. Sunday is the Sabbath day and that this has to be celebrated with reverence is part of the strong faith we carry. When children are studying in the university they have to pay foreign student fees so they have to work. They have to work in the supermarket and they have to work on Sundays. This is a major conflict for us as to whether we can allow our children to work or not due to our Sabbath celebration. They go to church and after that they work.
Bringing up a family in a minority situation has much to offer. But it is easier and smoother when parents listen to their children's personal stories and accept their children as they are. This will help the children to grow in a Christian culture of love and to preserve the Christian values in their life journey.
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