THIS quotation from one of Frantz Fanon’s assertions highlighting how a colonised mind thinks or operates, best sums up the colonial influence whose shades are still evident in the collective Indian mind-space, most unfortunate though it is. Of course, in the past few decades, a very serious nationwide drive against colonisation was undertaken by nationalist lobbies not necessarily working in tandem.

 

And that drive did produce spectacular results that helped in establishing the primacy of indic thought-process in the larger Indian society. This drive also unearthed fantastic and massive body of indic knowledge and placed it in public domain. This effort -- hugely successful -- gave the average Indian people a tremendous sense of pride in themselves and their culture, tradition and history. India has travelled truly a great distance on this path for the past several decades -- some of which were also when the British were ruling the country. Yet, a silent colonial influence still seeps into the Indian mind-space even today -- like fine dust enters empty, almost-invisible spaces, which is a great concern! The present-day Indian society is still dogged by a sentiment similar to the one expressed Frantz Fanon. Countless numbers of Indian people still think like non-Indians -- or, in other words, like their old colonial masters, buying colonial narratives, concluding that India of today is not as good as the countries of their old colonial masters and their allies in different countries.

 

They think like their old colonial masters and wish to be like them -- in thought and even action. These people’s kids take pride in eating non-Indian foods and study in universities and schools in the countries of their colonial masters on the premises that the India of today does not offer them a similar quality in those areas. The biggest challenge today, therefore, is to combat this enslavement of the Indian mind -- which has continued most unfortunately even to this day at the seventy-seventh year of India’s Independence. The biggest success of the promoters of colonialism reflects itself correctly in this zone -- of the enslaved Indian mind (generally speaking). No matter the denials of this reality by political functionaries in the country, the fact of the matter is that a shockingly high number of Indian people still are not able to free their mind-spaces from the colonial influences. Countless lakhs of young Indians are still influenced and impressed by western tap music and dance, and have foreign actors as their role-models and find it extremely galling to be forced into reading of books written in their ‘native’ Indian languages -- habitual as they are with reading of books only in English.

 

This is not a superficial observation -- one would insist. This stems from an observation of the young trends in the present-day Indian society! As this series draws to its culmination, the question to be asked in total seriousness is: How do we achieve a complete decolonisation of the Indian mind? How do we clear the colonial influences from our collective mind-space? But as a preamble to this question, it is necessary to stress here that the ancient Indian ideal is of a global human family -- Vasudheiva Kutumbakam (One Earth One Family). And another ideal from the Vedic period was: Aano Bhadra Kratavo Yantu Vishwatah (May noble thoughts come to us from all universe). So, as one insists upon decolonisation of the Indian mind-space, one does not militate against the ancient ideals. Much to the contrary, one insists that if those old ideals are to be followed to the hilt, the Indian mind should be fully Indian -- free of any colonial influences and impressions that point to enslavement. Unfortunately, India’s political class is pretty confused on this issue.

 

For, almost blindly, it appears to be following western economic and social models without realising the damage such an approach may cause to the Indian identity in the long term. There, of course, a lot of political tall talk, but that only indicates ‘sound and fury signifying nothing’ (in Shakespearean lingo). On the front of actual action of decolonisation, the effort needs to be more determined and focused -- socially, intellectually, culturally, historically, and politically. The need is to create a fiercely independent model of Indianisation -- or decolonisation -- of the Indian mind-space. What India needs is the policy of “Look inward” -- that is search the national identity without a contamination of the thought-process by foreign elements. That is the only message.