Generations

There is a tendency among us to write sweeping statements, for eg: "For generations, in the US press freedom has been upheld..."
or
"For generations, in India, tolerance has been practised..."
These two examples I want to use as the ones for sweeping statements as I believe, if for generations a country/community/people have been upholding something or at least trying to, then with each generation the process becomes easier and it can only get better at doing that upholding, to an extent that it does not feel like upholding anymore.
So, if things are in a bad shape, then probably we were not doing that for generations.
It could very well mean that for generations, we were trying to project that image, or we were keeping the image, and then all of a sudden (for those who completely missed the workings of a lie, it appears sudden) but all of a sudden, it seems like the ugly truth has come bursting out.
We can take the caste system as an example in India,
there was a generation that practised the system, practised untouchability -- let us say it is the generation before my grand mother's.
When it came to  my grand mother, due to poverty, such things were not really practisable, however, it continued in terms of "stand outside the house", eat from different plates/drink from different glasses"
Reformists are idealists. So they are of course ahead of their time. But they want to take the people with them to that place where a regressive system does not exist. They speak, write, talk to people, tell the whole world, "This is how a thing should be, or is going to be..." Come let us all go there already.
To the masses these things are good to hear, for some in the creamy layer it is not good to even hear.
But we are talking of the masses, the many. The many listen to the reformist and feel, yeah, it is a nice dream. But I have to wake up.
So in effect, despite all their good efforts, vestiges of what is not ideal is always with the society.
And hence, despite the reformists throughout the generations, the evil is not entirely wiped out.
So we come to my father's generation. My father has told me that he did want to escape from Kerala, from his village, because it was a caste-ridden society. He escaped to Ahmedabad.
There, the family can refrain from practising caste system as among the Gujaratis, we were just the Malayalis.
This kind of throwing away the caste system is not what the reformists had talked about. That is not the ideal. But many, like our family, would have done that in the face of the changing world. Where you know that a certain system is not going to work, but, you do not have enough anger against the system, to be able to uproot and throw it out. As long as it is not in your face, you are okay with pretending that it does not exist.
For that generation pretending it did not exist was a way of making sure that by the next generation, it really does not.
They pretended it did not exist so that the next generation is born without any knowledge of it, and hence can live in a world without it.
However, their plans went awry.
So every generation comes and goes into worlds that are not ideal,
or would never seem to be.