Dear Bharathwaj,
You are gladly welcomed with most widely opened arms.
Please enjoy posting, exchanging thoughts, opinions, learning in the process, expanding your knowledge horizon without boundaries.
Your terms, 'like-minded', 'our community' are too big subjects to discuss in one thread.
Just food for your thought. What made us like-minded? When did we become a community? There are definite answers, no doubt. Just introspect. How sincere are we, how honest are we, how integral are we when stating 'our tb culture is getting eroded'!!!!!!!. That is a subject exclusively for a different thread.
Whosoever created our species, created us as human beings. Differences in Anatomy exists but they are external, superficial. For instance the skin colour, external features etc. But these are determined and decided by the DNA and Genes whose influence and dictates are limited to external appearance. DNA and Genes do not influence the Physiology, which is uniform and homogenous across the entire human race. But for lifestyles, no other agent affects physiology.
For some obviously good reasons, we divided ourselves into communities, with distinct practices, style of living which we term 'culture'. In recent decades the world has witnessed large-scale migrations, inter-mingling of people from various 'cultures' across the globe, consequent inter-mingling of 'culture', adoption and adaptation with 'foreign-culture'. With world transforming to a global village, this inter-mingling is inevitable. In such scenario, 'maintaining-our-community-culture' becomes anachronistic. Please perceive this as conglomeration and as progress of culture, perhaps towards a uniform culture across the globe.
Until some time in the past, we were living in communities for our convenience Our movements were limited with space, we were confined within closed circles, we lived as living in a cocoon, as living in a shell. But times are changing, circumstances are changing. Those TBs born before 90s, are not comfortable with change. But those born after 90s, let me term them as 21CGen, are not comfortable with no-change. They cannot afford to hold on to irrational, obsolete, practices and traditions. It is a burden for them. Their world is large, knows no boundaries. Their houses are shrinking in space, but their society is expanding breaking boundaries. They don't want anything to bind them. They think freely. They want independence yet within control. They want to live simple life, with limited household appliances. Their emphasis is on cleanliness and neatness. They are sore fed up with ego fights and ego battles in the name of culture, caste, religion, philosophy etc. Their time is too precious to waste engaging in ego-battles, debates, arguments which profit absolutely nothing. Casteism is uncivilizedness for them. They want to be Human. They desperately want to return to and get restored to humanism. They don't want any other 'ism' or 'ity'. These are not my subjective opinion. These are my findings on interviewing more than a hundred 21CGen TBs as samples. All these talk about 'TB Culture' is sentiment for them with no rationale. They do not want their minds to be conditioned and programmed to think with limits and boundaries. They do not want to be conservative. They do not want to be orthodox. They want to be liberal. It is no sin to be conservative. It is no sin to be liberal either. But unlike our generation, they prefer to be liberal. They have the guts to break barriers, break shells, break the cocoon, break free from all conditioning and programming. They are just exercising their guts.
They know no conditioning other than 'If' statement in Software. They don't wish to know any conditioning. Even the IT industry is done away with programming and progressing towards AI etc. Why would they want their minds to be programmed!!!!!
The 21CGen TBs want to be Brahmins. They don't want to be Pseudo-brahmins. Hence they marry across caste, religion, race, colour, nationality etc. The TB man wants to marry the suitable WOMAN. The TB woman wants to marry a suitable MAN. They don't want a hindu or muslim or christian or sikh or jain or foreigner or my-country-man/woman or my-same-caste-man/woman or any criterion that is nonsense. Their only objective, aim, ambition is to live-happily-ever-after.
There are volumes to post but wish to end here lest I digress from the thread theme.
I suggest you may also do some search, conduct a survey, distribute questionnaire among some 21CGen TBs as sample. Please share your findings.
I foresee even some terms like 'inter-caste' disappearing in a few decades. They will make no sense or meaning. We are moving towards a caste-less, religion-less, race-less, diversity-less world yet a good number of theists, who would believe in a God who made no religions, who has absolutely nothing to do with any religion, for that matter with anything man-made. Neither you, nor I, nor any 'komban' could stop it. Perhaps we can beat our chests, shout, cry, do tantrums, histrionics but to no avail. They will fall into deaf ears.
In recent times we are witnessing inter-gay and inter-lesbian marriages. With institution of marriage, deteriorating, decaying, degenerating to such levels, battling to maintain TB culture would probably end in defeat.
We are going to witness more and more of inter-caste, inter-religious, inter-race, inter-ethnic marriages in the days to come, to the point of becoming common such that caste, religion, race, ethnicity would be extinct. Perhaps the world is moving towards Utopia.