Parliament had an intense debate on Vande Matram because the ruling party likes to politicise events and this was with the eye to the upcoming West Bengal elections. It is somewhat like the British colonial strategy of divide and rule. But, why in independent India? Is it because the ruling party has a colonial mindset and is copying the British?Some days earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Ramnath Goenka Memorial Talk had stressed on decolonisation; a term repeatedly used by the ruling party. In his talk, he laid the blame for Indians having a colonial mindset on the use of English language. He wanted, ‘… a national pledge to “put the locks on” the Western mindset embedded in India since 1835 through Thomas Macaulay’s project of reshaping Indian thought by dismantling indigenous knowledge systems and enforcing colonial education.’ He wants the reversal of this mindset by 2035, the 200th anniversary of Macaulay’s Minutes of Education.India’s colonisationThe prime minister said English has made us ‘Indian in appearance but English in their minds’. He added that Western or foreign is considered superior and that creates an inferiority complex in Indians and erodes their self-confidence. And, post-1947 we have become ‘increasingly aligned with foreign models.’ And we need to free ‘ourselves from the mindset of slavery’.Citing the example of tourism, he stated, it has not flourished in India because we do not have pride in our heritage so we do not preserve it. He noted that Japan and Korea did not adopt Western ideas and remained rooted in their own language. He implied that India went for English and that marginalised Indian languages.Colonisation more than English useThe above references to English are about a sixth of his speech but the media has focused on it. The prime minister blames the colonial mindset for holding back India’s progress. But, that is more than the domination of English and decolonisation cannot be equated with breaking the hold of English.The prime minister again repeated his formulation of linkage between colonisation and English. The president a day later at the Constitution Day celebrations talked of decolonisation though in a broader context. The Supreme Court judgment on the governor’s role did not quote a single foreign judgment and it was hailed as a Swadeshi judgment. So, is the stage being set for the ruling party to mount a campaign against the use of English in India?Also read: Modi’s Decolonisation Rhetoric: The Colonial State Dressed in SaffronIs the use of English in India the key to the colonisation of the Indian mind? Critics of the prime minister’s statement point to the many benefits bestowed on India by the use of English such as helping India modernise and the creation of modern institutions. It has helped in the availability of knowledge, especially, scientific and technical, that has enabled Indians to compete globally and get jobs abroad with ease. The marginalised have also approvingly said that it has helped check upper caste domination.Colonisation was disruptionThere is partial truth in both the pro and anti-positions. But colonisation needs to be viewed in its totality to understand its impact.Undoubtedly, language, culture and a nation’s idea of itself are interlinked. When a local language is superseded by another, undoubtedly it impacts society’s pre-existing notions. It inevitably replaces earlier knowledge systems and thoughts with the new ones from outside. During the colonial rule in India, the medium of instruction in higher education became English language and that determined the content of education also. The use of English in governance led to the need for command over English for elite jobs. This reinforced the grip of English in India.An Indian ruling elite emerged that was trained in the West, largely in England. They brought with them the framework of Western civilisation and it became entrenched in the education system and society. Many teachers came with degrees from Britain, Army officers were trained at Sandhurst and many lawyers got their degree from London. This elite constituted the ruling class in India and was imbued with the idea that modernity was western and had to be copied for progress. Indian intellectuals largely became copiers of ideas rather than generators of socially relevant knowledge. Gandhi was among the few who argued for an Indian modernity.This decline in the capacity to generate socially relevant knowledge led to loss of dynamism in society. This was a disruption that made the nation dependent on others. Progress was occurring elsewhere and we had to copy it and that is the source of the inferiority complex that the prime minister talked of. It is not just due to the use of English language.The second form of disruption was economic. Dadabhai Naoroji pointed to the loot of wealth from India. And, India experienced deindustrialisation as the colonial masters enabled the capture of Indian markets by British industry. So, while Britain was industrialising, India was losing it and lagging behind. Sciege]|]’[‘nce and technology developed in the West and not in India where education was hardly promoted. Standards of health and physical infrastructure, like roads, railways and production of energy was poor.So, at the time of Independence, India’s social indicators and its physical infrastructure were woeful. To progress from there was difficult. The death rate was very high and literacy barely 16% in 1950. It has been shown that even in 2000, after 50 years of development post-Independence, Indian infrastructure had not caught up with what Britain had in 1950 even though it had not yet fully recovered from the ravages of World War II. That is how much India’s development was set back by the colonial loot and exploitation.The third disruption was political. The British created a ruling elite in India that was answerable to the British rulers in London and not to the Indian people. They created a civil service, police and judiciary to control Indians and strengthened landlordism to control the rural hinterland.Persisting post-independence disruptionPost-Independence the bureaucracy, the police and the judiciary, inherited from the colonial rulers was called the ‘steel frame’ and the rulers depended on it to govern. It did not transform from being masters to public servants which is what Independent India needed. It became accountable to the new political masters and not the public. Police is still ‘mai baap’ for the marginalised sections. The ruling elite remains feudal in its attitude and therefore hierarchical and non-accountable to the public which to them continues to be its subjects.People are not treated as equals. That is why high quality education and health to all has not been a goal. So, deeper questioning by the public has been missing. In turn, that erodes originality, weakens the research environment in the country and undermines high quality R&D. This is the reason for India lagging behind in technology and that undermines India’s strategic autonomy.Tolstoy in his ‘Letters’ to Taraknath Das said that 20,000 could come and conquer 20 crore because the latter were divided and did not fight back. Gandhi uses this in Hind Swaraj? In brief, India was already disunited and colonisation exploited that and disrupted society further.When benefits of British rule are enumerated like the spread of English, setting up of universities, railways and the civil services what is ignored is that with global changes, India too would have got all this on its own and faster. Just as now we have developed, space rockets, nuclear plants and internet through copying from the advanced nations.It is hard to accept that India would have remained stagnant but for the colonial rule. Actually, we may have modernised faster and as per our own blueprint if we had not been disrupted by the British colonial rule. Did some outsider modernise Britain and Europe? They modernised based on their own social dynamics and not due to outside imposition.Decolonising?The prime minister’s statement was the sharpest in its attack on colonisation and the imposition of English by Macaulay. This makes the problem one dimensional and even if it is taken care of in isolation it will not resolve the wider problem of disruption. Indian intellectuals, as ‘derived intellectuals’, borrowing ideas and recycling them in India cannot solve the problem till they break free.Decolonisation of the Indian mind cannot be achieved when society is disrupted and inferiority complex is ingrained in the rulers themselves who are chasing western modernity. Or, can India repudiated all human progress and go back to the sixth century AD and restart from there. The transformation has to start from the present. Society will become dynamic if we throw away the feudal yoke and generate socially relevant knowledge by transforming education; unfortunately the rulers are doing the opposite.Arun Kumar is the author of Indian Economy since Independence: Persisting Colonial Disruption.