I want to take the opportunity to write about the underlying theme that the Ram Mandir represents, which, if you are not Indian, may escape your attention.
This blog is principally an appeal to all Indians, especially the Indian diaspora, to invest in learning their actual history, and figuring out what it is we want to be as individuals and how we propel our nation forward.
The number one thing that Indians agree upon is this: Western constructs of right-wing, left-wing, conservatism, liberalism, and secularism feel like a straight-jacket when applied to India.
India is pluralistic, diversified and more tolerant than it is given credit for. Given the number of things that simply do not work, the sheer size of our population, levels of inequality and the proximity within which we live (and poverty), we do much better than is widely acknowledged by the West. The NY Times cover story today is of a shooting at a celebratory sport event: such mindless violence in a country that has everything.
Indic civilisation dates back more than 5,000 years, and in the past 1,000 years, we have suffered from colonisation by the British and Mongols. Seventy-five years after the British left India, the history that we were taught was that of defeat. Every single turn at which India failed at a state and a national level was highlighted. Even our limited successes are described as failures (e.g.) The Mutiny of 1857, which is, in fact, the Indian Rebellion against a colonial power.
Indians suffered immensely – genocide, famine, looting of our resources – but the worst crime is the breaking of our spirit as Indians.
I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.
–Winston Churchill (quoted in Choudhury
https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10708-022-10803-4
There is an entire generation of Indians that feel incredible shame at being Indian because our history books were rewritten, we were dominated, and what is worse is that other Indians were complicit with invaders.
As a result, we sought to embrace everything Western. From the inadequate concepts of secularism, democracy, we have forgotten how to think under our collective weight of shame, improverishment and oppression.
In the years after independence, we suffered from largely terrible leadership until modern liberalisation reforms.
But that is not who we are.
In the past five years, there has been a definite and unmistakable trend for Indians to ask themselves, “Who are we?”
Integral to that is accepting our history – not the history written by colonisers and straight-jacketed into secularism.
Indians have never had a dialogue amongst themselves about the ills that they have suffered over a thousand years. How no one thinks that Babur, a genocidal maniac was a devout Muslim or that our temples, history and culture were repeatedly attacked and destroyed.
We have never had this dialogue about the weight of suffering that we carry in our DNA. What’s worse is that the West sees every attempt to reclaim and revisit our history as an attempt at right-wing. This has to stop.
My appeal
We do not know our history or our culture. As individuals, we need to make a collective effort to learn our own identity from before colonisation to the present day. How many of us know what the Gita is actually saying OR have read the writing of Chanakya? How many of us understand Sanskrit?
Indic culture, or Santan Dharm, is firmly routed in the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge through learning, discourse (discussing, disagreeing) and lived experience. I want every Indian not to become X (formerly known as Twitter) or WhatsApp experts but to invest the time and effort in knowing who we are.
Only then do we have a hope of becoming a nation that can be called Ram Rajya.
Our suffering will be for nought if we cannot claim our past and current identity. How can we become world-leading innovators if the spark of curiosity does not start with us?
Therefore, please comment and ask yourselves, your friends and the community, WHAT CAN WE DO to increase our knowledge?
If we do not, the West will always have carte blanche to define us.
Let’s not let that happen..
Jai Hind.