Decolonising the Indian mind: Beyond political freedom

I do not agree with many things that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat says, but I have no hesitation in endorsing what in my view is right. Recently, in a speech in Indore, he said that political freedom may have come to us on August 15, 1947, but even after that we remained prisoners of the legacy left by colonialism and were not truly free in the cultural sense.

- Ranga Reddy

In this column, I keep away from political matters, but consider the cultural dimension even of politics my legitimate arena. I have consistently argued that it is the inevitable fate of all successfully colonised countries to remain culturally enslaved to their colonial rulers, long after political freedom has been attained. This is because colonial rule is not only about the physical subjugation of a people. It is as much—if not more—about the colonisation of the mind. Thus, political freedom is only one part of the project of decolonisation.Undoubtedly, it is a very significant part. Decades of political struggle and the most remarkable acts of courage and sacrifice of countless Indians preceded the proud unfurling of the Tiranga and the descent of the Union Jack on August 15, 1947. It was not easy or quick to defeat the mightiest military power of the time, and that too principally through nonviolence and satyagraha under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. It is, therefore, not my intent, even remotely, to downgrade the political importance of our Independence Day.But the colonisers—at least the more farsighted among them—knew that the real purpose behind their political conquest was to achieve far more long-lasting goals. Nobody could have stated it with greater honesty than Thomas Babington Macaulay in his Minute on Education of 1835. Derisively, even damningly, dismi