RETURN TO INDIA
Our Macaulayan intellectuals are great in that they have learnt to mimic the West beautifully. They must now be greater by being rooted to their own heritage and culture without, of course, running to the other extreme of being parochial and vainly nationalistic in a coarse unenlightened way. But the chronicling and the interpretation of our own history must be done by us in our own way, albeit by maintaining intellectual rigour, and we must in no way be swayed by considerations of what the West may think of such self-assertion of ours in matters Indian.
We are a civilisation dating back to remotest antiquity where even history dares not peep. These nations of the West, for all their scientific advancement, did not even exist then when India reached the pinnacle of civilisation millenia ago. We must never forget this. It is time to assert our national identity in all its comprehensiveness which ought to include these Anglophiles as well, for democracy demands free discourse and never curtailment of opinion. But the counter-narrative of our nation's history needs a retelling as well to counter the fictitious Western recounting of our greatness as a people in their prejudiced parochial way.
Written by Sugata Bose
Our Macaulayan intellectuals are great in that they have learnt to mimic the West beautifully. They must now be greater by being rooted to their own heritage and culture without, of course, running to the other extreme of being parochial and vainly nationalistic in a coarse unenlightened way. But the chronicling and the interpretation of our own history must be done by us in our own way, albeit by maintaining intellectual rigour, and we must in no way be swayed by considerations of what the West may think of such self-assertion of ours in matters Indian.
We are a civilisation dating back to remotest antiquity where even history dares not peep. These nations of the West, for all their scientific advancement, did not even exist then when India reached the pinnacle of civilisation millenia ago. We must never forget this. It is time to assert our national identity in all its comprehensiveness which ought to include these Anglophiles as well, for democracy demands free discourse and never curtailment of opinion. But the counter-narrative of our nation's history needs a retelling as well to counter the fictitious Western recounting of our greatness as a people in their prejudiced parochial way.
Written by Sugata Bose
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