A Decolonisation Footprint

Till early 2019, I wouldn’t have thought of owning labels such as right-wing, Hindutvavādi, or sanghi, partly due to my general disinclination towards owning labels of any kind. But I was also operating from a space of massive ignorance, simply unaware of several historically and currently relevant truths. For this reason, I possess an empathy for those on the left-liberal side of the divide. I was once like them, and many of them are friends, family members and even people I admire (for other reasons). I want to think that they are all only ignorant, and the simple antidote to ignorance is knowledge. Further, I don’t blame them for what they think they know, for all of it is only what we’re taught in schools and colleges, and what is reinforced in mainstream discourse(s). If they too knew the truths I now do, if they too understood the Indian narrative, they too would think like I now think. At least, this is the hope.

To my mind, a very simple and short decolonisation footprint is this:

Accepted Reality: A number of breaking-India and undermining-local-culture(s) forces were active in India during the colonial era.

Posited Addendum: These forces did not simply end their business and go home in 1947. They changed form, but operate with greater vigour, nuance and complexity now.

Posited Modification of Accepted Reality: Those forces did not enter with the era of European colonialism. For a number of centuries preceding, the forces operated and caused much damage to our nation and culture, in the form of Islamic colonialism.

Final Declaration: Indian civilisation has endured conquest, subjugation and decimation for no less than 8 centuries.

Of course, the above is easier articulated than accepted, but it functions as a plausible decolonisation trajectory even as each step would have to be unpacked and understood in detail. The decolonisation process in myself, as something I was aware of, commenced only in 2019 and is not yet complete. But I can also view it with hindsight and identify a number of markers from earlier in life. I lay them out in chronological order, and my memory of specifics is obviously vague for the earliest stages. These earliest stages, though a footprint in the hindsight of decolonisation, also show how colonisation of the mind happens to begin with.

My Decolonisation Footprint

A) 1997 (possibly ’95, 5th or 6th standard): We were taught in school of the Indus Valley Civilisation and the Aryan Invasion (the old, discarded model). Having grown up to stories of the antiquity of the Indian civilisation, I proudly declared to my teacher, that my grandfather had told me that we descended from the Indus Valley Civilisation (he had not been this specific of course, only that our civilisation was thousands of years old- and so I assumed it must be the IVC). But my teacher immediately shot the proposition down. She told us of the Aryan invasion, and insisted that my ancestors would have come from these “later people.” I remember being thoroughly disappointed that, in reality, we weren’t that antique.

B) 1999 (9th standard): In Chemistry class, we were taught of John Dalton who discovered the atom. But the textbook mentioned in brackets- “an Indian philosopher named Kaṇāda propounded the theory long ago.” But the brackets were immediately closed and we moved on with Dalton. I vividly remember a few sentiments the first time I read this. For one, I thought “Why did you stop there?! Tell me more about Kaṇāda!” And secondly, I remember feeling some kind of vindication- “Oh! So at least some of those claims of my civilisation’s primacy are valid!” Some time around this period I also developed a theory of my own, which I fully believe but have never actually verified. The Sanskrit word for geography is ‘bhugolam,’ which means bhu + gola. This means the ancient Indians always knew that the earth is round.

Why then are we taught the entire trajectory of ignorance and discovery the Western civilisation took?

C) 2000–2002: Living In Jammu, in an era fresh with terrorism and the Kargil war, I look back at how interesting it was that we discussed/thought of terrorism without speaking of the blatantly religious origins of the brand we faced. I remember a rare classmate who spoke of things like “plight of the Kashmiri Pandits,” but I was distant from such ideas. But I will remain eternally grateful for what happened in 2001–02. I met a late soul named Prof. Hari Ram Verma, the first polymath and autodidact I ever knew. It’s from him I first received the idea that Aryan invasion theory was a myth, or that Indian civilisation did indeed go deep back into antiquity. Many years later, as I would read these things for myself, I would often wish he were still alive to converse with and continue to learn from.

D) 2002–04: Lived full-time in an international school with students from all varieties of countries, creeds and classes. Here, the general paradigm among Indian students of the middle-to-upper class was anti-Hindutva. In fact, it’s here I learnt of things like the right-wing and the left-wing, and was shamed for sharing views I learnt from Prof. Verma as being “Hindu nationalistic” or “chauvinistic.” It did leave an impression, for once again I thought that maybe Prof. Verma was of a special category that made false claims, whereas mainstream history was different and exactly as taught in school. One incident stands out in particular.

A few classmates, having made a poster on sex and sexual harassment awareness, depicted Gaṇeśa holding a condom in one hand.

I objected to this, for it seemed like an obviously disrespectful thing to do. I first received ridicule- what was the big deal? Why was I being so touchy? It was in a good cause. It wasn’t meant to be offensive, etc. I found myself pushed to retort when a Muslim classmate too chimed in, and I replied- “Will it be okay if I make a poster showing Muhammad holding a condom, or a pile of dog-shit?” While that settled the debate insofar as the original poster was taken down, I don’t think I truly got them seeing my POV. But isn’t it interesting that this is how things are? That taking offence at such a depiction of Gaṇeśa needs to be defended, but the offence is a priori perceivable in the case of Muhammad? If this cannot be called colonisation, then either we misunderstand the term, or Islamic conquerors did not rule India for centuries!

E) 2004–05: An interesting period when I lived in Canada. Though personally irreligious and atheistic (I still am), I became far more defensive and aware of my India/Hindu identity while there, because of many instances of weird/subtle racism and/or condescension. For example, peers brought up in Christian households would ask of reincarnation with a patronising tone- “so in your next life you could be born a goat?” And the point wasn’t to defend reincarnation. What amused me was that they could easily see problems in a differing paradigm but were not aware of the absurdities in Christianity! For example, regardless of what you understand about reincarnation, how is the idea of a designated heaven and hell any less ridiculous? I guess this was a period of “unconscious decolonisation” while living amid the civilisation that colonised us (the Western civilisation). And I was a privileged son of independent India. Imagine the plight of generations of Indians while Western civilisation(s) actually held us interminably hostage.

In the course on world religions, it was surprising to hear of Hinduism and Buddhism as two discrete, opposing religions. A paper I encouraged my friend to submit, titled “Buddha, the Perfect Hindu,” argued that nothing in Buddha’s life or Buddhism was not already a desirable Hindu concept. It received a D- failing grade- for submitting such an absurd thesis!

A note on the footprint so far:

The Hindu has an innate handicap- he/she cannot anticipate/understand the intolerance inherent in the “other.” The Hindu psyche is naturally tolerant and even assimilative, and the Hindu thinks this to be the natural and obvious state. This, perhaps more than anything else, has been the reason for the colonisation of Hindus by foreign civilisations. We simply never see the danger for what it is- the “other” would rather have it that we and our ways did not exist. No threat can be more existential.

F) 2006–09: I realised the above during my years at Jamia Millia Islamia. Don’t get me wrong- I made good friends there. I went to their homes on Eid and they celebrated with me on Diwali. Our mothers talked to each other and would cook stuff and send over to the other. But I also saw in three years a kind of latent, internal and intellectual intolerance. Both the Hindu and the Islamic psyches can indeed be “tolerant” on the surface- they can co-exist and co-celebrate. But the Hindu psyche does not inherently think of itself as the superior, the Islamic does. The Hindu psyche thinks that you, regardless of your religious belief, will receive after death what you accrue in life. The Islamic psyche thinks that you, regardless of your deeds, will go to heaven only if you have accepted the Islamic prophet and the Islamic god. Bigotry, intolerance and tolerance exist in all humans to different degrees, so I speak here not of individuals but of ideologies.

My true decolonisation journey began near 2009–10, when I read the Gita Press English translation of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. This reflects a key aspect to the colonisation process- it’s underpinned by separating you from the texts of your ancestors. Here I was, a Hindu and Indian aged 23, who was for the first time reading a native text, and that too in a foreign language translation. This is why suggestions to introduce texts such as Mahābhārata, Vedas or Upaniṣads in Indian curriculums are not Hindu nationalistic calls- they are a vital step in a civilisation’s decolonisation.

For the first-timer, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa opens up a profound and hitherto unknown world. I was introduced to the very fact that ancient Indians had their own chronologies, genealogies and time-scales. Far from being primitive or nonsensical, the Indian scales of yugas and manvantaras pointed to the horizons of modern science itself. Further- they remembered many tribes and cultures, many cakravartins, wars, rājans and samrāṭs. In fact they remembered six past ages of man, themselves nested within a cosmic cycle of creation and destruction measured through yugas. Why should Indian students not be taught these things? Why should they instead learn Western notions of creationism, intelligent design, flat-earth, and heliocentrism? Why is distancing a civilisation’s children from its native knowledge considered progress and development? And that’s the key, isn’t it? Colonisation means keeping a civilisation’s children oblivious even to such questions.

G) 2011–13: Seminal and catalytic in my decolonisation, for these were the years when I actively pursued research on the Aryan invasion theory. Having read Thapar, Doniger and a bunch of others, I internalised the migration theory instead, but then I discovered the genius of Shrikant Talageri.

Hear it here as you might in other places as well- Talageri has won the Aryan and Indo-European debate. The game is over, only there’s reluctance to accept the verdict, for a variety of reasons not excluding malice.

And in the history of the Indian civilisation, this victory by Talageri should go down as a critical milestone, regardless of when it’s finally understood and internalised. At the time, I did not understand and internalise Talageri fully, and the consequences show in the novel I published in 2013, a vital footprint in my own decolonisation journey.

Based on Ikṣvaku, the purported founder of the Sūryavanśa, the novel shows my confusion around the whole Aryan invasion/migration issue. In it, I show the protagonists as having descended from the “Solar tribes,” who are a nomadic people from Central Asia that are returning to Āryavarta. The confusion should be clear- I couldn’t make up my mind between into-India and out-of-India, so I settled for a mid-way but ultimately incorrect resolution. I speculated (and I had the license of writing fiction, after all) that several Indian tribes migrated out of India during the period of Deva-Asura wars, and that many generations later some among them migrated back to India. Now this may still be true in a manner of speaking, but this is not the bigger marker of my colonisation then. In the novel, I speak of a variety of Rākṣasa, Yakṣa and other tribes as indigenous tribes of India, which the returning Solar tribes conquered, dominated and decimated. In using this language and motif, I showed that regardless of my other reconciliations I was still completely colonised. I continue to suspect that this is why Talageri sir, who I am now in communication with, never responded to me then, once he received a copy of the novel. I take that as critique enough, his silence was only his politeness.

Post the novel’s publication I ceased all historical research, and thus got no further in decolonisation. In fact, I voluntarily colonised myself in other directions, reading a variety of non-fiction in science, philosophy and humanities that colonises you from multiple angles. Without realising it, I imbibed deeper the ideas of brahmanism vs. Dalits, invader vs. indigenous and Aryan vs. Dravidian. Between 2015–18 I wrote a number of pieces that demonstrate different states and stages of a colonised mind. I chronicle each of them here.

H) But by 2017–18: I encountered 2 thinkers with profound influence on my decolonisation. The first is Sanjeev Sanyal, simply through his book “The Land of Seven Rivers.” There is a singular page in this book which beautifully, eruditely captures critical reasons why India was a nation long before the British. It was my first true encounter with such reasoning, and it stayed with me long enough that, over time, based on my Youtube viewings, a video appeared in my recommended list. Titled “Why India is a Nation” and spoken by the brilliant Sankrant Sanu, the video was an eye opener in its first 20 minutes, and decolonises you by many % points by the end. Soon after this I discovered ideas such as “civilisation-state” and “breaking India,” though I have not read Rajiv Malhotra and/or Sanjay Dixit directly. These things were enough to bring me into the net. In no particular chronological order from there on, it helped reading works by Koenraad Elst, Sita Ram Goel, Shri Aurobindo, David Frawley, BB Lal and more.

And we finally come to 2019, by which time I had well internalised what I think are 2 necessary truths to a decolonised Indian mind. Since then I’ve thought of a third, and so the three are listed such:

1. The truth of the Aryan invasion/migration/trickling-in myth

2. The truth of Islamic conquest and then of European undermining of Indian civilisation

3. The antiquity, continuity and depth of Indian civilisation

When I say that these three are necessary truths to a decolonised Indian mind, I mean 2 things. For one, I mean that an Indian mind cannot be decolonised unless it is told the truth on at least these three things. And second, I use this now as a filter on who to engage with, on what subject, to what degree. This second point merits elaboration.

Take the issue of the Ram Mandir verdict. I am far more interesting in talking to someone who knows the truth of Islamic conquest, yet opposes the Ram Mandir verdict, or the Kashi and Mathura liberation movements. This is at least a person who acknowledges facts, and it’s all the more intriguing if such a person does not find empathy for Hindu reclamation. Left-liberal indoctrination does teach to you the concept of civilisational trauma, so it’s always interesting to know why one wouldn’t take India’s civilisational trauma into account. Contrast this to a person ignorant of the true civilisational, cultural, human, spiritual and existential damage wrought by Islamic conquest- why should I care if this person (obviously) opposes Hindu reclamation movements? There is no point wasting time with someone who does not understand the fundamental reason why people support the Ram Mandir verdict, doubly so if this person uses the labels of “fascism,” “nationalistic,” “Hindutvavādi” etc. to dismiss any opposition anyway.

And I have indeed encountered one rare person of the first category. This unnamed individual acknowledged that all Islamic conquerors including the Mughals were foreign rulers, and that they did destroy an untold amount of temples including the Ram Mandir. But she still felt that it was time to move on, and that our country needed to put all focus on things she argued were more important. Now, I disagree even with this position, and feel that it does not truly understand the civilisational-trauma underpinning it all, but it was refreshing to at least encounter her. The second category, as many readers might attest, is composed only of tragic ignoramuses, parroting a mainstream narrative that they’ve been colonised to think is “speaking truth to power.” I should know, I was once similarly colonised and would remain so- if not for the necessary truths. So what do these 3 truths achieve? How do they decolonise? Let us take them in order.

Truth 1: On the Aryan invasion/migration/trickling-in/tourism

The Aryan invasion/migration truth, for me at least, was the most influential decolonising factor. Please understand- denying Aryan invasion/migration does not mean denying some linguistic truths. Yes, proto-Indo-European (PIE) did likely exist. Yes, Sanskrit and other Indo-Aryan languages are its descendants, as are 11 other language families in the world. And no, despite shared influences, words and characteristics that developed over a long period of co-existence, Dravidian languages are not from the same group. These are acceptable and fair truths, but let us go deeper. If PIE existed, it surely existed at a place X in Eurasia, at some point in time. Consequently, over different time periods and in different ways, it and its descendants spread all over Eurasia.

But…

Do we find England divided among indigenous and invaders? Are there books being written in Germany titled “Which of Us Are Aryans?” Is half the history and culture of Scandinavia denied to it, because “it came from outside?”

The answers to all these questions is No, except in India. Here, even if this imagined invasion happened in 1500 BC, we find faultlines in modern India 3500 years later. Think of how ridiculous that is. There no longer exist faultlines between Anglo-Saxons and the indigenous British Islanders, though that migration is relatively far recent. Even the indigenous tribes of USA and Australia, though still fighting for recognition and rights, do not now consider themselves a separate civilisation- they are Americans and Australians. And therein lies the great colonisation game. The implications and faultlines drawn from the Aryan myth are illusory even if the myth were true, for if it were true- it would have drawn similar faultlines everywhere else in Eurasia that Indo-European languages reached. Both truth and myth are used only to divide India, and nowhere else.

The word ādivāsi was coined by Europeans, as a direct translation of the word aboriginal, for they projected onto India the situation they found elsewhere in the world. How funny is it that we are even taught in schools of the British policy of divide and rule, and yet we do not see it in these boxes of invader/indigenous, brahman/dalit, Aryan/Dravidian, and do not recognise it when our politicians and intellectuals play the same game even today. The facts are simple:

1. There is no such thing as Aryan vs. Dravidian, and you can happily consign to the dustbin what Periyar said or the egregious bile that Kancha Ilaiah spews. Even Ambedkar denied the existence of this divide.
2. There is no such thing as invader and indigenous. Indian culture is indigenous, period. Even if “Aryan culture” came in 1500 BC (which is false), how many thousand years does it need to stay in India to become indigenous? Our historians will insist that the Turkic Mongols, within 3 generations, could become the “Indian” Mughals. We even have a recognised category of people called the Anglo-Indians. But Brahmins living on the Gaṅgā for 3500 years need do more? C’mon!
3. While there is indeed a caste problem in India today, stretching many centuries into the past such that we have a section of population generationally-oppressed and disenfranchised, this is not a clear brahmin vs. Dalit divide. There are several reasons why the caste situation is what it is today, and none of them require that we distort the history of thousands of years ago.

In summary, though India has been visited/invaded/conquered by a variety of people throughout history, there is absolutely no reason to take 1 imagined invasion and project thousands of years of faultlines onto our society- unless one is actively seeking to break India. For readers seeking more technicalities, a few points help- 1) Vedic fire-altars have been found in India since 3500 BC, 2) Several “Harappan” seals carry motifs that are decidedly related to Vedic rituals, 3) The Sarasvatī evidence places the Ṛgvedic Aryans in India long before 1900 BC.

Given all of these, ask yourselves- what did these invading Steppe nomads of 1500 BC bring into India exactly? Understanding the answer to this question (nothing!) is key to decolonisation.

Truth 2: On Islamic and European Conquests

Here, colonised readers need to begin with understanding the amount of distortions Marxist historians have brought into Indian history. Yes, like you I have read the Thapars, Habibs and Sharmas. But like me, have you read the Goels, Sarkars and Munshis? When your answer is “no,” you clearly haven’t even tried to engage with alternate narratives. You haven’t begun to give yourself a chance to be decolonised. Sure, look at Sita Ram Goel’s account of the destruction of Hindu temples and dismiss it, on facts! Go ahead, read KM Munshi on the continuity of Indian civilisation, and point out why he was wrong! Examine Jadunath Sarkar’s takedown of Marxist historians, and tell me why you don’t agree with it! Look at the sum of Indian archaeological evidence, and explain how it affirms the prevalent narrative. But prior to all this, if you just parrot the Thapars, Tonys and Truschkes, I’m sorry to tell you- you are not speaking truth to power.

And what is the truth, exactly? Take the Ram Mandir again. Do you at least know the truth of its existence and destruction, thoroughly proved in Court on legal and historic grounds- the same court where eminent historians refused to show up and defend their rhetoric! And why stop here, do you understand that no less than 40,000 Indian temples and religious centers were destroyed by Islamic conquerors, over a period of many centuries? To add, this is just a statistic, and despite its size it cannot give a picture of the rape, plunder, destruction and subjugation of an entire civilisation. Will Durant, the American historian, described the Islamic conquest of India as arguably the “bloodiest chapter in human history.” Please contrast this with those who hold an Aurangzeb fetish, and plead we consider him a “product of his times.” Please, open the space within your mind and picture a monster- and ask yourself why Aurangzeb was a monster regardless of whatever era he existed in- even to his contemporaries!

I understand the left-liberal concern than revisiting these truths could be directed to hate and violence against Muslims today. I don’t understand why that itself is reason to dismiss, deny or distort a fundamental and existential historic truth- Turko Islamic conquerors plundered and destroyed India, and the civilisational trauma still exists. The famous/notorious documentary, “Raam Ke Naam,” begins with telling us of Ram Mandir’s “alleged” destruction, and of Tulsidās’ Rāmacaritamānas some time later. It does not make the connection and tell the full truth. Why did Tulsidās write the text, and why then? In his own words, it came from a place of deep pain and trauma, having witnessed what happened in Ayodhyā and what was being done to Hindus. Today, when the colonised Indian mind scoffs at the Ram Mandir movement, or dismisses it as “fascism,” it negates the pain and trauma of its own ancestors.

And then, before India could shake off this foreign yoke, entered the Europeans. The rest is history, of course. We are fortunate that, for the most part, Indians understand the damage that British rule caused to our civilisation and culture, even Shashi Tharoor is willing to be the foremost ideologue here. He stops there, but when we try to list what was lost over the combined centuries of Abrahamic rule over Dhārmika India, this is what we get:

• An impossible to calculate figure for the number of human lives lost. Consider even single instances such as the Bengal Famine, and think of how that compounds over centuries of neglectful/apathetic/outrightly genocidal rule. The history around “Hindu Kush” is no Hindutva fabrication. Known to the ancient Indians as the mountain range of Uparisrenya, it acquired the name of “Hindu Killer” due to the deaths of thousands upon thousands of Indian slaves while being taken back from India “post-conquest.” And these are only 2 footnotes among thousands.
• An immense cultural loss that extends itself to be a loss for humanity, in terms of the sheer amount of art, knowledge and architecture destroyed. It continues to this day, of course- in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. What do we colonised Indians think? That the Muslims of these countries began their destruction only in the last few decades? And that prior, for the centuries when they were in political and military control, they conducted themselves with tolerant grace? Why is it that the most preserved temples in India today concentrate in the south- where Islamic conquest penetrated the least? And why is it that in places where Islamic conquest ruled with an iron grip for a long time, like Kāśī, there are temples that were destroyed not once but twelve times over? What is the loss of Nalandā and Takṣaśilā indicative to us of what happened overall, across the country, in those eras? Do we think it was just these two knowledge centers, and an accident of history?
• The psychological damage and generational trauma cannot even be computed. Everything we are told that some “brahminic invaders” did to “indigenous Indians” 3500 years ago, was in fact done by Islamic and European invaders to us in the last few centuries. Our civilisation, our traditions, our beliefs, our ways of living were undermined in every single way possible. We should take the time to honestly introspect on this. What would happen to a civilisation when, for near 3 dozen generations, you keep telling it that it is primitive, it is superstitious, it is weak and it is uncivilised? You keep killing off the repositories of its heritage, and convert its protectors at the tip of the sword. You enslave, rape and rob wantonly, unchecked, fired by an ideological zeal. Is it really that difficult to see the kinds of inferiority complexes, ossifications and hardening of shells that would originate in such scenarios, that too only if the civilisation manages to survive it all?

Let us agree that India’s problems today are for India to solve, and with the increasing distance between Now and 1947, our window to blame past rulers is ever-narrowing. But let us have the grace to concede that ours is a country trying to claw back from centuries of psychological undermining and damage. We were held captive in a dungeon by rapacious predators and abusers, for so long that we lost our sense of time and no longer even understand what escape means. Let us acknowledge this neurosis instead of gaslighting it. It’s the decent and humane thing to do.

• An economic loss of the kind unknown and unimagined by our species. In as far back as 2500 BC, India was a long-distance trader with exports exceeding imports. Even in the Roman era there were more things Rome needed from India than in reverse. Genetically, Indian cows went outside India but no foreign cow came in- a testimony to the antiquity of India’s contribution to world productivity. We had within our janapadas metallurgists, traders, teachers, scientists, artisans, craftsmen, jewellers, engineers, mathematicians, doctors, inventors, lumberers, farmers, fishermen and a thousand more varieties of vocations and specialisations. This entire net of indigenous economic and commercial strength was systematically destroyed by the British, its accumulated prosperity already waned by centuries of Islamic raiding and conquest. It is not Hindu apologism to point out that the economically-backward or disenfranchised state of quite a few Indian castes has its genesis in the British era. Neither does it absolve Hindu society of problems it must solve within itself, of course.

The above then gives a sense of what was lost, but the final truth is understanding what once was- the ancient and enduring civilisation that is India.

Truth 3: On the Antiquity and Continuity of Indian Civilisation

Let us engage in a thought experiment. Imagine a society/culture/civilisation composed entirely of nudists. Not only are they nudist, they do not even possess the concept of clothing and/or covering the body. For them, the idea simply does not exist, and remaining nude is but the regular way of life. Now- it is not that these people do not possess an identity. They likely have many ways of thinking of themselves, of “us,” and of the various sub-groupings that make up “us.” In other words, whether these people are nudist or not, they have a shared sense of being one people.

Imagine now that another civilisation comes upon these nudists. This civilisation wears clothes, and indeed has highly rigid codes on what kind of clothes to wear for what condition/situation/class/etc. For them, clothes are the primary marker of identity and grouping. Those that wear the same kind of clothes are “us,” and those that don’t are the “others.” So wrapped up are they in this that they cannot even imagine the idea of identity without clothes, or when they encounter it they are aghast- how can this be, surely it isn’t! So of course, they tell the nudists- “You do not even wear clothes, you people have no identity. Primitive and nude as you are, come- let us teach of the ways of the cloth and how to drape yourselves, so that you may join our great civilisation.”

The above is but the situation with the Indian civilisation. Neither religion nor nation-state were a part of our identity-matrix, and we simply did not think them necessary markers for self-identification. But does that mean we did not possess the notion itself? Simply because we now live in a world where the dominant narrative finds identity through nationhood and religion, does it mean we too should bind ourselves to these notions, developed not by us but by the other? We may have appeared “nude” to the “clothed” people that came to our lands, but their “clothes” appear to us unnecessary, restrictive and diminishing. Today, we try to define our own identities by wearing their “clothes,” and this is a high mark of our colonisation. What’s worse, even post-Independence we continue to teach our children to wear those clothes, and thus raise generations who scoff at their ancestors’ “nudism.”

But think of a few Sanskrit words, in no particular order- rāṣṭra, deśa, varṣa, vanśa, janapada, mahājanapada, kula, gotra, janapati, rājan, rāja, samrāṭ, cakravartin, rājya

Do these words indicate a civilisation with no notions of political and/or imperial organisation? The truth is that Indian civilisation possesses a felt-experience that spans an untold millennia, and we say “untold” because unlike other extant civilisations, its antiquity goes beyond attested history. Further, the Indian civilisation was self-emergent and not top-down. It was not driven from above, with imposition of authoritarian orders. It was scaled from below, with an assimilative and accumulative impetus. And why is this so important? Because the Indian civilisation is the last and only extant civilisation of the old world, indeed of the ancient humans. Aztecs, Mayas, Egyptians, Greeks, Sumerians and countless other exist in history books and colonial museums, nothing more. If we are inclined to notions of diversity, pluralism, tolerance and the preservation of human heritage, then at the level of our species it becomes imperative to salvage, nurture and rejuvenate the Indian civilisation. If humanity loses it, it loses almost all the wisdom possessed by homo sapiens prior to 1 AD. Zeus, Ra and perhaps even Rāma may remain as names, but the existence will be superficial, and subservient to consumerism.

Realising this truth takes decolonisation beyond chauvinism and nationalism. It is essential to decolonise Indians, not only because India as a nation ought to do so- but also because humanity needs India to do so. The shared heritage and wisdom of our species, till prior to a few thousand years ago, is now captured only in the texts and cultures of India- it is the last Library of Alexandria left standing. This is where the necessity of Indian decolonisation intersects with readily agreeable notions of humanity in general.

If truly secularism and pluralism are a virtuous value for the modern world, then surely the only surviving pre-Abrahamic civilisation needs a sacred space within it. How deep our colonisation runs can be measured by the fact that most Indians would find easy acceptance for such an argument for any other civilisation or culture in the world, except our own. We will even understand the importance of the remote Senegalese tribe to human heritage (as we ought to), but not of Bhārata and dharma (as we’re colonised not to).

As for myself, the decolonisation has only begun, and I suspect there are ways in which it will never be full and complete. English is likely to remain my first language, and I grow ever distant from the Indian script. This itself implies a chasm that will always remain. Having been colonised by the Western civilisation in an independent India, through education, I suspect there are elements of such conditioning that will never be undone. But of course there is hope, for whether it is through my own bias, I sense a larger consciousness awakening in India. We are becoming aware of our status as the oldest and wisest civilisation-state of humanity, and realising that we can be proud of it in more ways than one. I too am part of that wave, one among many that are coming to realise the heritage we are born to, and also perceive the deep tragedies, traumas and sacrifices our ancestors would have suffered for centuries but resisted- such that the heritage still descends to us. There are reasons to feel optimistic, for we are the only ancient civilisation that withstood the ravages of the Abrahamic ones, for an astounding period of time when compared to what happened to others such as the Iranian and Aztec, to name only a few. It shows how strong and deep the roots are, how firm-footed the trunk, that idle leafs such as us- strewn away by colonisation- now drift back to the dharmavṛkṣa in our own ways. We are coming to see the strange clothes they drape us in, the funny categories and primitive boxes they think through, and are experiencing the liberation that comes from shedding this baggage.

For me, the way home is through Sanskrit- of this I have no doubt. The journey has already begun, but there’s a long way yet to go. And hell, this is the Bhāratīya Civilisation we’re talking about! Even if I were plausibly done with Sanskrit, it’s only one of the two eyes of Bhārata, the other being Tamil. When my Hindi atrophies, when I fail to understand the Avadhī and Bhojpurī of my grandmothers, what hope is there that I will ever master Tamil, beyond Sanskrit! Such is the tragedy of India’s children, which brings us to a final introspection:

Most of us will attest to parents and grandparents rooted in culture, indigenous to what they imparted to us. It is “us,” the Indians of an independent, English-medium India that have been colonised the most. Take some time to parse this honestly. For all the years our civilisation was actually colonised, our ancestors persisted and transmitted. It’s only in an independent India that we raised psychologically colonised generations. This is a rabbit hole. Please, dig as deep as you can go.

An Example of Decolonised Thinking

Recall my confession that I am an atheist. Now, though inherently so from a young age, I found articulation and confidence once I read Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and various other doyens of modern atheism. Though I stand by the label, I now understand that attempts to fit Hinduism, or more accurately Dharma, into any such label are, by definition, an act of colonial thinking. Theism, atheism, deism, polytheism, monotheism- these are clothes of the Western civilisation, and we can also call it Abrahamic in this context. They are notions of identity important only to a civilisation that chose to make them such, and ours was not so primitive.

Against these garbs, Dharma stands naked and beyond categorisation.

Dharma transcends the god question. It engages with it, of course, but it understands that the deeper questions and resolutions both lie beyond. It is not theistic and not atheistic. It is not deistic, and it is neither monotheistic nor polytheistic. It does not even comply with creative solutions such as henotheism.

It is simply transtheistic, a word most dictionaries do not even contain. It renders the primitive god question irrelevant, and addresses the issues beyond. This is the footing from which to talk of Dharma from.

And sure as ever, the mainstream view now penetrates this horizon. I think the notion will emerge naturally to a decolonised Hindu, as it did to me, but “transtheism” as the label for Buddhism, Advaita, Bhakti and Jainism is being talked of by suitably Western names such as Paul Tillich and Heinrich Zimmer- suitable since the names will not elicit suspicions even from the colonised mind.