India’s history as dictated by the British has largely continued its sway over school and college curricula, and thereby into mindsets.
The most successful colonial empire in human history, the British Empire, ensured that the history of India as taught in schools and colleges would reduce the imprint of both the Vedic as well as the Mughal periods, passing off most of the first as fictional and the latter as a seamless and accelerating period of national decline. In contrast, the 230-odd years of British domination of the subcontinent was presented to our young minds as a period of enlightenment and empowerment, while in reality it was marked by a steady reduction in overall historical awareness and in economic
In his zeal to stamp out any Vedic impulses from the educational structure, a Veenayak Shah has asked the Supreme Court to ban shlokas in Sanskrit from Kendriya Vidyalayas. The implication is that Sanskrit is not just a language, but is a mark of Hinduism, and hence any resort to that language would be to attempt to proselytize and spread the Hindu faith. The hymn’s words themselves are unexceptionable, calling for a transition from falsehood to truth, from death to immortality. This is a phrase that is daily used more than a few times throughout India, including by many Christians in Kerala, who have in the practice of their faith retained much of the millennial traditions of the land. Not to mention that several Muslims in India are fluent in Sanskrit at a time when few Hindus know the language. Hence it came as a surprise that the PIL in question was not ignored by the SC, but was instead accepted. Indeed, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court will hear and decide on Mr Shah’s petition, clearly indicating that the recital of a Sanskrit verse in every Kendriya Vidyalaya is a matter of seminal importance in the life of the country. In the system of governance that has evolved in India since the 1990s, in practice the government of the day proposes while the courts dispose. In effect, a government at any level lacks certainty over the implementation of a decision, unless the same gets affirmed through the court process. Courts in India have accepted for judicial review a plethora of matters, even as the final decision in several issues takes a while to be concluded through the judicial process, unless of course (as in this case) the Supreme Court itself accepts a prayer and begins to hold hearings on the same, as is the case with the matter of a Sanskrit hymn in Kendriya Vidyalayas. It must be said that Attorney-General Tushar Mehta seems to have misnamed the Vedic period as the “Hindu” period, when as mentioned earlier, the culture of those times encompassed much more than any particular faith. Justice Nariman with Tushar Mehta correctly observed that the very motto of the Supreme Court was in Sanskrit, a fact that has had no effect on the secular impartiality of the judges. Given that, why a matter which to the uninitiated seems less than earth-shaking needs to be cogitated upon by as many as five SC judges is somewhat of a surprise.
The PIL demonstrates how many obstacles will need to be faced before a history of the land becomes commonplace that is separated from the one-sided recital promoted by the British Empire and continued by post-1947 governments. In Europe, Japan and China, governments make a determined effort to showcase the past and in the process, generate self-confidence within the present. Any other country but India would by now have rebuilt the path taken by Lord Ram from Ayodhya to Sri Lanka and back, beginning with a Lord Ram complex in Ayodhya that would of course be separate from the future Ram Temple. Such a complex would be civilisational, but unlike the temple, not religious. Should efforts be made to make such a complex a reality, it is certain that some will use every available path to block such moves at reclaiming the full history of India. Viewing culture and civilisation exclusively through the lens of religion created a situation in the 1930s that led in 1947 to the partition of India. There should not be a repetition of that error in these times. What India needs is Indutva: a confluence of the Vedic, the Mughal and of course the Western. A merger of civilisational streams that is present in the cultural DNA of every citizen of India.