Decolonising the Indian mentality is the need of the hour, it is a task that must be accorded the highest priority
The colonial period was truly a dark age in the history of Bharat. It not only ravaged the once proud civilization of India, but also undermined our resolve, confidence, capabilities and ideas of how to run one’s society.
The colonial period did not really begin with the British conquering India, but commenced with the arrival of the first Europeans-the Portuguese on our soil for the first time in the 16th century.
However, in the fight for India, the British toppled every other European power and emerged as the victorious foreign power in India. What followed over the next two hundred years was the enslavement and colonisation of not just India’s economy, polity but also psyche, ethics and mentality.
Mental Colonization
Colonization is the process of subjugating the indigenous sources of knowledge, institutions and cultures. In the case of European cum British colonization, it involved undermining and destroying Indic sources of knowledge, ideas and institutions and replaces it with European ones.
The process is a psychological phenomenon that was explained brilliantly by Steven Pinker in his book The Blank Slate-The Modern Denial of Human Nature.
Mental colonization involves various facets-it begins with an individual becoming sceptical of one’s own indigenous history, science, philosophy etc.
Next thing that happens is the acceptance of the colonial narrative that the colonisation for their own benefit and that white man has come to liberate them.
Decolonization
It is the process of removing the remnants of colonization from the indigenous psyche. This is has been brilliantly captured in advocate J Sai Deepak’s book India, That is Bharat-Coloniality, Civilization and Constitution. Decolonization has a number of processes-removing the belief from the native mind that the foreign civilization, in India’s case, the British civilization is infallible. Secondly, regaining the belief in the greatness in a country’s past achievements, history, philosophy and knowledge system, thirdly, undertaking an intellectual counterattack against the colonial narrative that deliberately berates one’s native culture, beliefs, ideas and institutions.
Decolonization of the mind isn’t easy; it is a slow process with only incremental changes. As far as the Indian mind is concerned the first step was the uprooting of the British rule and establishing our country’s most important social contract-The Constitution of India.
Hence, decolonising the Indian mentality must be the need of the hour.