BEYOND doubt, 2025 was India’s year -- of reawakening, of reckoning, of redefining the road ahead, of resetting priorities, of realigning national interests, of reimagining international objectives, of rescheduling economic reforms, of realising dreams that have always occupied collective psyche ! On most of these fronts, India has been making efforts for long, all right, and in the past 10-12 years, those efforts had gained a special momentum. Yet, the year 2025 saw the country waking up to possibilities of a new dawn. In other words, the year 2025 was a year of a spiritual redefinition of India’s DNA, a term Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi used in a recent speech highlighting the effort that ensured a high overall growth rate for the country when the rest of the world’s big nations were facing a slow-down or experiencing a moderate rating on the GDP scale.

 

The year 2026 is going to see the sunshine of the fulfillment of many of the dreams India saw and worked for. Thus, 2026, too, is going to be India’s year -- pregnant with great potential and greater possibilities. No matter what a few stray political elements might be saying about India’s overall performance, the practical reality is that the year 2026 is going to carry forward what India achieved during the previous year -- in national security, in strategic defence, in economy, in a positive wave of social re-engineering, in diplomacy, in high-calibre technological advancement, in refining of internal democracy -- and of getting marked by the world as a great example of practical democracy the like of which may not be found in any -- yes, any -- other country. The year 2025, in a way, should be described as a culminating point of many of the national initiatives that were launched in 2014 when Mr. Narendra Modi ascended the high point of prime ministership. But the year should also be marked for the starting point of many a new initiative aimed at propelling the country to the next level in almost every imaginable field. However, the most critical field which the Prime Minister referred to on a few occasions as the year 2025 travelled to its close was the need to achieve freedom from what he described as ‘the Macaulay mindset’.

 

Setting a ten-year deadline to achieve that (rather) abstract goal, Mr. Narendra Modi insisted that all the national achievements would remain only half-fulfilled if the people do not achieve freedom from the ‘Macaulay mindset’. In other words, the Prime Minister insisted that the country needs to free itself from mental slavery that prohibits genuine initiatives from achieving their complete fulfillment. Thus, as the country marches ahead in 2026 on the national roadmap, its people would also have to work most sincerely to defeat their ‘Macaulay mindset’ and emerge free from the inhibitions imposed on the Indian society by the alien rule of several hundred years. True, the alien rule ended nearly eight decades ago, but its emotional influence is lingering in the collective Indian mind in different forms. The Prime Minister wants to throw off that influence. Thus, in addition to other national goals, throwing off the Macaulay yoke should be the goal of the larger Indian society -- for 2026 and later up to the year 2036.

 

This ten-year assignment should be considered the most important for the Indian people. For, its pursuit would help the Indian nation blossom more brightly, more fragrantly. This is, of course, the spiritual core of India’s advancement as envisaged by its leadership. The purpose of this initiative would be to make the country turn inward and draw its inspirations from its own glorious past and prepare for an equally glorious future. True, India’s past also has had dark periods of alien control. Yet, before those dark patches was a glorious time of countless thousands of years when India was ‘Vishwaguru’ in a true sense. That time must now be brought back to make India the global leader it deserves to be.