Freedom From Macaulay - 4

 

 

Dehradun, December 18 (IANS): In a remarkable development, the eighth International Ramayan Conference began at IIT Roorkee on Thursday -- a unique initiative to celebrate the nation’s rich cultural and civilisational heritage and to ponder over the revered Hindu scripture Ramayana. About 150 research papers are to be presented in blended mode, and the proceedings would be published in an e-book format. The conference, hosted by IIT Roorkee, is slated to highlight the enduring relevance of the RamCharit Manas and Indian knowledge traditions in contemporary education, sustainability, ethical leadership, and the nation. EVEN as the nation begins its endeavour to wipe out the Macaulay influence from the Indian minds, epics such as Ramayan (and also Mahabharata) will prove to be great tools in our hands.

 

These classic epics have never lost their relevance even in changing times -- through the thousands of years of Bharat’s journey of history. That has been so because the story of Lord Ram has endured the test of time because of its timelessness. RamCharit Manas -- written by Goswami Tulsidas -- is a document that brought the story of Lord Ram in a language common people understood then and understand now. Highlighting different dimensions of RamCharit Manas from educational and cultural points of view will certainly mean giving the idea of India a very strong base to stand upon and act as guide to the world in general but India (that is Bharat) in particular. Such is the relevance of the story of Lord Ram.

 

The story of Lord Ram has actually been carried forward through generations after generations of the Indian people starting from Walmiki Ramayan or RamCharit Manas or many other versions of Ramayan in almost every Indian language and dialect. The charm of the story has only got heightened all the more, thanks to the magnetic attraction of the personality of Lord Ram. When the nation relaunches its fight against the Macaulay mindset, the enduring and endearing story of Lord Ram will come in as a handy tool to underline the original Indian thought on every possible subject under the Sun -- ideal conduct of the son, the ideals of good governance as established by Lord Ram, the ideals of great leadership Lord Ram provided to his ‘strange’ army, the ideal conduct of a royal prince who accepts living in exile only to honour his father’s word, the manner in which people of Bharat in those ancient times conducted their wars and handled their conflicts as per the tenets of ‘dharma’ ... ! Each of these dimensions of life and times of Lord Ram -- as originally penned by Sage Walmiki, Lord Ram’s contemporary -- can act as great tools in our hands as we seek to erase the negativism of the Macaulay influence dominating the collective mindset of Indian people in the current conditions.

 

It is our collective good fortune that a lot of people in the country are actively working for the purpose and are showing a positive impact on the Indian psyche. Just a few years ago, opposing the construction of Shri Ram Temple at Ayodhya, some politically-driven elements in the Indian society had raised the doubt whether Lord Ram was an imaginary or fictional character that actually never existed. That petition was an outcome of the Macaulay mindset, to say the least. Fortunately, in the fight for the Ayodhya temple, the Macaulay influence was not just replied to but also defeated effectively and the way to construction of the Shri Ram Temple was cleared. It is obvious that there are still among us people to contest the truth in the story of India -- and such people and their designs need to be defeated with effort. In the courts of law, those tendencies got a rebuff all right, but they still exist in the larger society.

 

Defeating them will mean working to erase the Macaulay mindset. It will also mean a successful restoration of the honour of our civilisational symbols -- that Lord Ram was and is. The chief aim of Macaulay’s educational invasion on India was to unsettle Indian people’s confidence in their own story. That will have to be defeated by bringing to fore every possible glorious story of India’s past and re-telling it for the benefit of the common people by modern tools in modern times. That effort will have to be continued tirelessly for long -- so that finally, the true story of India gets appropriate primacy and the fake foreign-born narrative is erased. In other words, the wrong story of the past will have to be erased with the help of the right story of the past. This would be a long fight, all right, but we need to undertake it with sense of focus and purpose -- say, mission -- so that we go by the word Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi has given to himself and us.

 

There are several dimensions on which we will have to work carefully and systematically -- so that the vast majority of common people will finally begin thinking on the lines of Indic or Sanatan ideals. This is not going to be a fight for any political benefit. On the contrary, this is going to be a fight to re-establish Indian ideals that have little to do with politics. True, the Narendra Modi Government will certainly lend a helping hand in this national fight. But factually, the fight will have to be conducted by ‘We The People of India that is Bharat’. This fight will take us to another freedom -- from Macaulay. This should have been done long back, but was not even thought about because we used to have rulers whose mindsets, too, were groomed by the Macaulay influence. Thankfully, the situation has now changed favourably, and the fight against Macaulayism could be carried forward with steadfast courage. This fight will have to be carried forward in every possible field. But the start of this fight will have to be made at the critical battle-field of the average Indian family. For, it is that domain that the Indian children are groomed. That is where we need to launch our fight for freedom from Macaulay.