Art has always been the mainstay of the myriad cultures of India and it continues to be so. The greatest examples of human skill is to be found in this subcontinent. It is this strength that has kept India ticking despite the complete corrosion of ethics and propriety in the public, political and administrative domain. This inner power gives us a self-confidence that helps us cope with the external horrors of life and living. If only for that reason, we must conserve, protect and nurture our collective and varied expertise.

When governments put culture on a back-burner, they expose their lack of understanding of the real causes behind the prosperity of a society. Our wealth is our music, our dance, our distinct and numerous folk traditions, our countless styles of painting, our tried and tested methods of building, our myths, legends and faiths, our philosophical systems, and astrology, which remains a science that man has not fully mastered, our languages and dialects and our unique oral tradition by which we transmit ideas and skills down the generations. It is these and much more that keep India resilient and attract people from other cultures to savour the hidden treasures, the colours and rhythm, the pattern and texture of a pluralistic civilization.

However hard they try, politicians and administrators will never be able to bury this truth. It is what allows India to stand apart and Indians will protect their rare aptitude in spite of a self-serving government. Education stems from the understanding of the diverse cultures of the country. It does not come from textbooks distributed by the National Council of Education Research and Training or from the curricula of the Central Board of Secondary Education. The latter is structured to produce generations of robot-like men and women who answer every question in monosyllables. It is a stupid system where the student does not have to think and articulate an idea but instead answer questions with an easy ‘yes’ or a ‘no’!

Forgotten legacy

The results of the defective education system can be seen all over India as the educated middle-class thinks that the newly-acquired knowledge has uplifted its mind and brightened its future. This is not so. If only this rapidly growing, entrepreneurial but volatile group could read, understand and nurture the legacy of India as it moves into a contemporary environment of business and development, we could have checked this degradation.

To understand India and its varied nuances, one has to absorb the human and cultural history of this ancient civilization. Our recent rulers, policy- makers and administrators are devoid of any such wisdom. This has forced India into a situation where the worst of everything, from language and aesthetics to values and ethics, are being thrust upon us by people who know no better, who are truly illiterate because they can read and write but cannot think.

Unfortunately, the lowering of the standard of education has been the singular contribution of the political and administrative class. The norms that were devised by a command economy and an authoritarian state machinery, inherited from the British and not revised or rewritten by Indians for Indians, destroyed the fundamentals of our civilized society and eroded all that needed to be preserved for the inheritors of this extraordinary legacy.

The ministry of culture must be put on a par with those of home, defence and agriculture. It must be reconstructed in such a way as to draw private partnership into its fold. The strength of India lies in its vast human resource bank and nowhere else. Rulers must learn to protect and respect it, upgrade and develop it.