In a recent lecture, the prime minister referred at some length to the need to free Indians of the mindset of slavery. He alluded to Thomas Babington Macaulay’s ‘Minute on Indian Education’ when he said that this had begun in 1835 when Macaulay decided to uproot the culture and the education of Indians. In this, Narendra Modi was in line with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s project of ‘decolonising’ the Indian mind. The Bharatiya Janata Party has been trying to reawaken awareness of ancient Indian culture, practices and achievements. The intent is important but the consequences have been illustrative. Efforts to change educational content began in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime, with the then human resource development minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, trying to nationalise and spiritualise education. The association of spiritualisation with nationalism is significant. He oversaw the increase of matter on Indian culture in National Council of Educational Research and Training textbooks and introduced changes such as the teaching of astrology in colleges. The United Progressive Alliance changed the textbooks, but in Mr Modi’s time, there have been extensive deletions, additions, changes and distortions — highly criticised — with emphasis on old Indian achievements in science, education and culture. The National Education Policy, 2020 was framed with Indianising education in mind but the theoretical base for a complete overhaul was absent. The changes have so far remained superficial.
Changes meant to decolonise the mind are also reflected in the renaming and much-touted reform of law. That these are somewhat cosmetic is exemplified in the return of the law of sedition in different phrasing and in a draconian form in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Obviously, the government is not willing to unlearn the lessons of power taught by the colonisers. Rather, the BJP seems to be driving at the RSS ideal of ‘one nation, one language, one culture’. Hence the insistence on Hindi as the Indian national language. This has not only provoked criticism but also strong resistance, especially from the southern and eastern states. It is perceived as a new form of colonisation, suppressing India’s diverse cultures and bringing all under the single umbrella of a Hindi speaking nation identified with Hindutva. The BJP’s rhetoric of decolonisation on different fronts is seen as boiling down to the RSS’s conception of a majoritarian republic and its impulses. This weaponisation of the idea of decolonisation is ingenious but inimical to India’s pluralism.