Decolonising The Mind ! - VIII

 

 l “Kumbh Mela is an unsafe place where children are kidnapped, where infection spreads disease ...” l “Diwali is a festival that spreads air and noise pollution, thanks to the cracker-bursting.” l “Naag Panchami is not a time to worship the Naag Devata but a time to use the snakes as playthings. So, it was good that handling of snakes on that day was banned.” l “Holi is an anti-environment festival since it seeks to burn wood that is acquired by felling trees.” - Some of the colonial propaganda aimed at painting Indian festivals in dark light. 

 

HUNDREDS of such narratives are found in public domain in the larger Indian society. Some of this propaganda has succeeded in maligning Indian festivals. Countless numbers of Indian people are known to have fallen prey to such narratives that are being propagated for long in the larger Indian society. All such narratives are part of a bigger colonial conspiracy aimed at making average Indian people feel bad about themselves and their festivals and traditions. But there is some good news as well from this front. Thanks to the dogged efforts by rational Indian intellectuals and spiritually-oriented persons in the past some time, the colonial narratives are failing to make much impact. The Indian narratives are winning the game, and are weaning unsuspecting Indian people away from anti-India propaganda -- slowly but surely.

 

This is the good news -- which is being noticed in almost every area where colonial mindset had created distorted pictures of India and its history and its tradition and its culture. Of course, much work is still to be done to defeat the colonial tendencies in the larger Indian society. Many carefully created misunderstandings about India and its time-tested ways are still ruling the roost -- and need to be defeated with determined, single-minded efforts by rational Indians who have the right sense to discern what is right and what is not. In the past few decades, a lobby of such individuals is getting stronger and bigger. The people engaged in this task are untying the knots of misunderstanding created craftily first by the alien rulers and subsequently by their Indian agents. They are succeeding in their mission to a marked extent -- though the process of complete decolonisation may take some more time. Unfortunately, however, what is being dished out to Indian children as education in schools and colleges does not serve even a grain of this purpose of decolonisation of the average Indian mind. History is still being taught in the most casual, and lackluster manner.

 

The curricular range does not seem to consider the reality of deep and well-researched nature of the ancient Indian sciences (that included cosmology, space, oceanography, architecture, metallurgy, mathematics, astronomy, healthcare ...). As a result of the poor input, Indian education is producing generations of youngsters who are very poorly informed about what India of the past actually stood for in the larger world as the leader-nation. As a result of this, increasing numbers of Indian youngsters are known to seek admissions in colleges in foreign countries in entry-level courses -- and spending countless crores of rupees collectively every year to feed education sector in different countries -- at the cost of our education sector. The need, thus, is for us to launch a nationwide drive to create awareness about what India actually was, is, and will be -- outside the colonial influence. In this regard, the bad news is that the larger Indian society is not even conscious of the ugly reality of the process of colonisation in general. In large parts of the Indian society, people still believe that everything India used to have in the past is of little use in modern times.

 

It is this thoughtlessness that needs to be attacked as part of the drive to decolonise the average Indian mind. That work is being done in increasing measure, all right. Yet, the general awareness about this issue in the society is very low and very casual. This certainly calls for a very serious national drive -- in addition to the work generations of volunteering intellectuals and activists have been doing -- to dispel wrong notions about India stemming from the colonial influence. There, of course, is a tendency in the Indian society to think that everything is to be done by the Government.

 

That is unfortunately the most misplaced understanding of what the Government as such can and will be able to do. Factually speaking, it is pointless to expect the politically-oriented minds to do much in this regard -- since they are geared to think only from the point of view of direct or indirect and narrow political gains in five-year time-slots. In other words, the fight against colonial influence will have to be fought at the social level with only marginal help from the political element of any ilk. In still other words, what India needs is a fresh wave of new intellectual leaders who will have a clear vision about how to demolish the colonial influence and establish the Indian signature and identity on the average mind.