Opinion Critics of Modi’s cultural swaraj don’t get the irony
Any difference with the Nehruvian regime shouldn’t be branded as saffron and every act of critical thinking shouldn’t be dismissed as leftism.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivers the sixth Ramnath Goenka Lecture. At the sixth Ramnath Goenka Memorial Lecture, Prime Minister Narendra Modi outlined an agenda of decolonisation, aggressively targeting Macaulay’s doctrine. The doctrine’s continuation post-Independence resulted in a big gap between our intellectual heritage and the ideas produced today. Modi has positioned himself against the political and intellectual classes who have argued that India derived benefits from colonial rule. Their belief in continuity with change is a carryover of the colonial mindset.
Modi’s speech was historic for another reason. Radical reforms in cultural, educational, and linguistic policies in less than a decade require new pedagogies and research. They also call for the state to reach out to people. Modi has an advantage: People respect local wisdom and expect education to draw on our traditions. The RSS’s grassroots activism also helps state agencies counter academically influential counter-reformists who often have the West’s intellectual patronage.
There is a fundamental difference between the nation-making perspectives of the first PM, Jawaharlal Nehru, and PM Modi. Despite opposition even from within Congress, Nehru’s project gave little emphasis to traditions and culture and equated modernity with westernisation. This led to the decline of the Vidya Bhawan, founded by Nehru’s cabinet colleague K M Munshi to promote research and publications on history and culture.
A few instances illustrate the difference between Modi’s and Nehru’s approaches. In 1955, the Portuguese arrested Mohan Ranade, a freedom fighter in Goa’s liberation movement, and deported him to Lisbon. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. After Goa’s liberation in 1961, some 3,500 Portuguese prisoners were sent back to Portugal, without demanding Ranade’s repatriation. Ranade’s mother, Ramabai Apte, was losing her sight and wanted to see her son, but she was denied. Foreign minister M C Chagla was apologetic when Atal Bihari Vajpayee raised this sad story in the Rajya Sabha.
Contrast this with a step taken by Modi. The revolutionary nationalist Shyamji Krishna Varma, who founded India House in London and edited Indian Sociologist, was pursued by the imperialists and died in Geneva in 1930. After becoming Gujarat CM, Modi brought Varma’s ashes back to India. In 1965, G Ramachandran, a Gandhian and Rajya Sabha member, wanted to know why the country still had statues of British rulers. The government had no convincing reply. Modi renamed public places that reminded the people of the atrocities of British rule. This aligns with French thinker Frantz Fanon’s critique of colonial symbols.
As a result of India’s social scientists’ surrender to Western ideas, we have ended up as interpreters and textbook writers; our contribution to world literature and social science is limited. Today, when the state pursues the cause of the Indian knowledge system with great zeal, counter-reformists attack this project as narrow nationalism.
Modi’s project has interesting affinities with two opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. In a lecture in 1931, the philosopher K C Bhattacharya underlined that without attaining swaraj in ideas and culture, no country can claim complete independence. Subaltern historians oppose Modi. However, post-colonial theorists have a visceral discomfort with the vestiges of colonialism. Modi’s mission of decolonisation, therefore, doesn’t go against their hypotheses.
Indian scholars who had long acclaimed “subalterns” are discarding the idea when it is being translated into reality. This carries a cautionary note. The comforts of power encourage sloganeering, even amongst academics, rather than intellectually rigorous engagement with their counterparts.
Any difference with the Nehruvian regime shouldn’t be branded as saffron and every act of critical thinking shouldn’t be dismissed as leftism. The objective of the Indian knowledge system should be to impact world literature and social sciences. To paraphrase R V Dhulekar’s words in the Constituent Assembly, “What will the ghost of Lord Macaulay say” if we fail this system? He will laugh and say, “Old Johnnie Walker is still going strong.”
The writer is a former Rajya Sabha MP
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