Colonial Mindset

 

Hello and welcome to my blog . The year is 2022 and India is celebrating 75 years of independence. 

75 years ago, the British left India and we became free. Or did we? Would you say we are still colonized in our minds? What do you say? Our decision making is 100% free of biases and inferiority complex even. Would you say our choices are still very British or Western when the British colonized India, they were desperate to legitimize their rule, so they came up with the theory of the white man's burden. They built smokes and mirrors around civilizing India painted themselves as a superior race. 

The British were superior. 

We Indians inferior. 

Thomas Macaulay Babington

Thomas Babington or Lord Macaulay, as you would know him today, brought English education to India. His purpose was to hammer in the inferiority complex. They introduced an education system that hailed the British as superior in science, arts, even morals. 

On the 2nd of February 1835, Macaulay circulated his theory on education. He declared that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. 

Iliad(Left), Mahabharata(Middle) and The Odessey(Right)

Maybe a quick Fact Check. The Mahabharatha is lengthier than Homer's Iliad and Odyssey combined.TheMahabharatha has more than 200,000 lines. Iliad and Odyssey have 30,000 lines each. The Ramayan too is 3 times as large as Iliad.

Anyhow, Macaulay did not hesitate in selling lies spelling out his design. He said British education was meant to create a class of persons, Indian and blood and color, but English in taste in opinions in morals and in intellect. The idea was to make the West aspirational. 

Do you think Macaulay was successful? I think he was we're speaking in their language. 

After all, look around you. Many educated Indians today are very English in their taste, some have become indifferent to their own culture. 

Do you remember when Coldplay performed in India? 

That concert was sold out 

Do you remember when Justin Bieber played in India?

Newspaper said “that madness was unprecedented”. 

But year after year, Indian Classical Singers perform to empty halls. 

Indian classical dancers get no audience. 

Padmashree awadee Shovana Narayan

 

 

 

Kathak veteran Shovana Narayan once said that the Indian audience seems to have a closed mind to Kathak. But salsa flamenco those we would love to pick up because these dancers are seen as aspirational. And nothing wrong in learning another dance form. It only enriches you, but not at the cost of denigrating your own. 

Do you know Karthak was first recorded in the 4th century BC? I don't know any Western dance form that goes back so far or has evolved as much. 

You know what else is aspirational? 

National Gallery in New Delhi(Left), The Louvre in Paris(Middle)and The Tate in London

The Louvre in Paris? 

One photo of it on our Instagram and we go mad. 

But India National Gallery of Modern Art, which has one of the richest collections of contemporary arts gets just 30,000 visitors a year. The Louvre in Paris gets two and a half million visitors every year. The Tate in London has an annual visit of four million. 

What explains this gap? 

Is it India disinterest in everything, Indian or the obsession with everything Western? 

Do we still blame Macaulay for this or our failure to invest in our culture? 

The reasons are multiple and the result is clear today in Indian dreams of becoming western aping the West, or living the western lifestyle for an Indian the West has become synonymous with advancement in modern living, but these are two different things. 

Western and modern. 

If only we could cure this 75 year old colonial hangover. If only we could look through what Macaulay wanted us to learn.If only we could reconnect with our heritage, we would realize that it's us. The Indians who have always been ahead of our Times Ancient India was aspirational. 

Ancient India was advanced meet Baudhayana

Baudhayana

he lived in 800 BC he calculated what the world knows today as the Pythagoras theorem. 

Pythagoras lived in 570 BC in Greece. Most likely he picked the theorem from the Hindu sages. He studied under. 

 

 

Acharya Hemachandra

 

Have you heard of the Fibonacci number sequence?Every number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. The world credits Italian mathematician Fibonacci for the sequence, but an Indian sage named Acharya Hemachandra wrote it long before Fibonacci and Hemachandra was not the first. 

 

By the way, an Indian mathematician named Gopala-I studied these numbers long before Hemachandra or Fibonacci. 

Eurocentric textbooks will not tell you this.Macaulay would never want you to know this. 

Aryabhata

An Indian invented zero and Indian taught the world how to calculate the value of π and Indian invented the decimal system or the binary digits or the heliocentric theory about the solar system.It was Aryabhata, first proposed that the Earth is round, it rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun. 

Today we learn about Copernicus. We wear T shirts and sweatshirts of NASA. 

But 1000 years before Copernicus, Aryabhata determined the diameter of the Earth, he also determined the diameter of the moon. 

The culture of science in India dates back 5000 years. Did you know the modern English brick bonding was inspired by Indus cities? 

Sushruta

 

 

 

 Today we look westward at the very mention of plastic surgery, but it was India that taught plastic surgery to the world meets Sushruta. He was an ancient Indian physician. He lived around 800 BC in the Kingdom of Kashi. 

 

 

 

 

 

Sushruta Samhita

Sushruta Samhita is the earliest known document to give a detailed account of rhinoplasty. It also describes more than 300 different operations. 

Some 121 surgical instruments, a lot of them are very similar to modern day surgical tools, Sushruta would use herbs before an operation to prevent sepsis. He would also carry out cataract removal.This was in 800 BCE.

 

Today we have lost out on this rich legacy because of our indifference to Indian heritage. 

And the West has time and again played it to its advantage in the early 1990s. Two American researchers take the claim to the US Patent and Trademark Office. 

They said they discovered the healing properties of turmeric or haldi. These researchers were given the patent in 1995. Now here's what's funny Indian households have been usingturmeric paste on wounds for ages.But somehow we never filed a patent. Around the same time, a US company applied for another patent.This was about using neem as a pesticide.Again, something Indian farmers have known for ages this patent too was granted. 

Do you think there is a lesson in all of these stories? 

I would say there is the world we live in will always have false claims. 

History will always be Eurocentric. 

There will always be shark stealing ideas and innovations, but if we don't reconnect with our rich heritage, we would continue to be fooled by Macaulay and company.We will continue to believe that Indians are inferior. 

The world won't remind you that the industrial revolution that started in the West was powered by the cotton gin and that the machine was invented in India. 

Lothal, Gujarat, India

 

India also had the earliest known dockyard. It was at Lothal in Gujarat. Steel was made in India as early as 500 BC. 

 

 

 

 

 

Acharya Kanad

It is possible that Indian scientists Acharya Kanad devised the atomic theory centuries before John Dalton was even born. 

India was the first smelt zinc by distillation. 

 

 

 

Kashmiri Ibn Luqman

 

 

The first seamless celestial globe was made in Kashmir. It was by Ali Kashmiri Ibn Luqman and despite all of these advancements India never went on an offensive. 

India never invaded another country. 

We did not have crusades. 

Our ancestors not just taught the world science, mathematics and astronomy, we also exemplified tolerance. 

 

This is the birth place of four religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism. It is hard to find a heritage this rich 75 years ago we got the chance to reclaim this very heritage. 

But have we done justice to it 75 years ago freedom fighters led a freedom movement so that you and I could claim what is rightfully, as you know, the great Indian heritage. But 75 years on, our minds may still not be free and a spirit of innovation, not completely unleashed

 

Look at the number of Patents India filed in 2020 and compare this to the rest.

 

The world this is just one parameter, but it tells you the story. 

Freedom is supposed to nourish critical thinking.Freedom is about being proud of your culture, your color, your customs. So let's stop looking westwards. Let's look inwards. We've been free for 75 years. It's time we reclaimed our lost glory. It's time we reconnected. 

With our heritage and got back to being what we've always been far, far ahead of the times. 

जय हिन्द Jai Hind