Two Nations

 

 

India, that is Bharat, is composed of two nations, namely India and Bharat. The difference between Hinduism and Islam was never so deep and basic as between India and Bharat. The later represents two distinct outlooks that meet the perpetual hostility to one another.

 

Cultural Enslavement

        Macaulay fathered India. In the schools and colleges set up in his design the students were taught not only to respect and adore English language but to consider Sanskrit as dead and their mother tongue as vernacular. The blaze of British furnace completely blinded their eyes. They could see only with the glasses which the imperialists provided.  Macaulay’s policy was simply to breed a handful of clerks well versed in English language for replacing the costlier white ones. His policy was only to underestimate the Indians. It implanted and cultivated a culture that equalized the west and despised the east. The native breed schooled the culture of their masters. They looked upon their fathers pigtails and bare body as traces of barbarism. Tightening up in ties and trousers became respectable for them: the loose dhoti and uttariya of their forefathers became the dress of the socially underdeveloped. Drinking wine and taking meat, which were taboo for the twice born, became the ways of life for the Indian elite. The spiritual practice which were, for the Bharatiya, part of his daily routine became only superstitions for Indians. In solemn congregation of the ‘Indian Sahibs’ the frolicsome music of the band  party and the brisk services of the butler became usual where the Bharatiya used to usher a similar function  with Omkara, the invocation of the divine spirit  through a sacrificial fire, and partaking of Prasad. The Indian began to quote chapters and verses from Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Byron and even Rossetti. Passages from Mills and Johnson became more relevant than the slokas of Gita or suras of the Koran. The Indians considered political talent of Kalidas when only Gothe extolled his works. The Indians gave a grudging recognition to the philosophy of Vedanta only after the westerners at the Chicago conference extolled the speech of Swami Vivekananda.

       Clive’s conquest was grossly limited and superficial. He had succeeded in imposing an imperial economy by seizing the tottering political power of the Nawab. Macaulay’s exploits were much subtler and seductive. His empire was cultural and his grip dangerous and devastating. He successfully enslaved the Indian mind. The Indian could no longer see through his eyes. He depended on his English masters for his vision and values of life. Macaulay had cut off the Indians from the holy stream of Bharat. The Indian no longer craved for a holy in the cool water of the Ganges. He felt more at home with a wash in closed bath from his hot water tap. The Macaulay schools are fashioned not merely to teach English language but also to impress the colonial outlook on their scholars. The product from these institutions, barring a few rebels, developed the outlook of looking down upon the indigenous institution as anarchism, if not barbaric, upon taking native culture as prehistoric and good for nothing. The west was the idol they worshiped.  Freed from the political bondage, the enlightened Indian could think nothing but the Govt of India Act 1935 as the model for the constitution of independent India. British Parliamentary democracy was adopted as the object of political pattern they aspired to achieve. Bharatiya thinkers of eminence such as Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and Mahatma Gandhi had declared time and again that this country has her own way of life to which the alien set up would be ill suited. Made free and independent, the Indian administrators could devise no other machinery for the country‘s Government than the bureaucracy of the imperialistic order to which they cling with greater vehemence than their imperialistic predecessors. In the name of furthering the educational policy, the types of schools and colleges which Macaulay devised have been multiplied turning out more and more people who are lamentably ignorant of their own cultural heritage and helplessly look to the west for developing the country’s economy. India has set herself to bring about the industrial revolution, which Europe has achieved two centuries ago, caring little for the advice of the father of nation to retain India’s age old decentralized form of life. The Indian communists aspire to bring communism to the land by taking the same path as the west, first by industrial revolution, then a socialist revolution and then a communist order. They completely ignore the fact that the highest ideals of communism were and have been a reality in every Hindu joint family or in the community life of their village leading virtually independent lives remote from the state power. They dismiss the communal life, obtainable in the land interwoven with their culture. Hatred for all that Bharat stands for was cultivated very systematically and thoroughly by the Indian nation that Macaulay seated on this soil.

 

Move of Renaissance  

    Vivekananda, Gokhle, Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo sought to turn the tide by their nationalist movement. Their efforts were succeeded in building up a psychological resistance to the culture of the imperialist by opening the eyes of large sections of people to reach resources of the Bharatiya culture, her heritage of thousand of years, her philosophy of life. The spell of nationalism brought into swing a renaissance reviving Bharat’s glorious spiritualism, her Vedas and scriptures, her Sanskrit literature and the charm of village life.

     Although the Indian and the Bharatiya made a common cause to wrest power from the alien rulers, the Indians threw the Bharatiya over board when the foreigners beat retreat. The swing of renaissance was cut with country’s political freedom. Her independence was never so lost as when the British quit the country. The psychological barrier created against the wave of foreign culture collapsed. Macaulay boys got busy in entrenching colonial culture in all walks of the country’s life. The top Indian in Delhi kept up the imperial grandeur of the Darbar, the dinner party and the school boy discarded his native dress and placed orders for a pair of trousers. The archaic elites of Bharat are now being entertained with rock and roll music and twist dances, the blowing of conch shell and hymns and stotras are things which only the old fashioned Bharatiya diehards insist upon on these occasions. “This is not the state of affairs we aspired for”, cried the leader OF THE Bharatiya movement in sheer despair but his voice was silenced for ever in the tumult of the Indian victory celebrations.

 

Is Bharat Lost? 

The streams of culture age are not only widely different in color and complexion and but one is destructive of the other. The west that was implanted in the Indian cities  and citadels  has now spread its roots and branches  to the remote villages., even to Dandakaranya and Himalayan caves. The invasion is in full vigor and seeks to sweep away all the towers and temples that the Bharatiya had built. It even threatens at Rama, the ideal of Bharat’s manhood and his benevolent rule and as Sita who stands for her womanhood as the symbol of sacrifice and devotion. The future seems to be dark and foreboding. The ancient civilization faces the dangers of complete oblivion and effacement. The Indian has westernized the country  in less than thirty years what the westerns could not do  in three centuries of their rule leading to our cry in despair - ‘Where is Bharat?’

Yet Bharat is a strange land, like Ganges, she flows on, carrying her holy burden in spite of the onslaught of hostile elements, mingling and submerging in herself all influences to form a mighty stream. Bharat’s power of absorption and assimilation is historic. Many streams have coiled in her without being able to destroy her properties. Faith in that mighty power of Bharat now seems to be the only hope for her survival.