‘India needs to get rid of colonial midset’ – PM Modi proposes 10-year timeframe to reverse the effects of colonisation imposed on Indians by Thomas Macaulay

PM Modi called for the decolonisation of the Indian mindset.
PM Modi said the colonial mindset embedded by Macaulay weakened India’s confidence and called for a decade-long effort to revive Indian heritage, reform education and restore cultural pride. (Image: PTI)

Delivering the Sixth Ramnath Goenka Lecture on Monday (17th November), Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised the need to get rid of the colonial mindset embedded in the minds of Indians by Thomas Macaulay’s 1835 project, which aimed to reshape Indian thought by dismantling indigenous knowledge systems and enforcing colonial education. To reverse the impact of colonisation, PM Modi proposed a 10-year timeframe leading up to the 200th anniversary of Macaulay’s project by focusing on promoting pride in Indian heritage, indigenous knowledge, and Indian languages while still remaining open to learning from the world.

Macaulay shattered the confidence of Indians: PM Modi

PM Modi said that Macaulay’s aim was to create a class of Indians who “are Indians by appearance but British at heart” and India “paid a heavy price” for this. He added that Macaulay shattered the self-confidence of Indians, instilling a sense of inferiority in them, and planted in their psyche the thought that Western ways were superior. PM Modi highlighted that as a result of this systematic dismantling of the Indian knowledge systems, Indian educational, economic, and societal aspirations increasingly aligned with foreign models. He said that when a nation does not honour itself, he said, “it ends up rejecting its indigenous ecosystem.”

Tourism flourished in countries that preserved their culture: PM Modi

To illustrate the adverse effects of colonisation, PM Modi mentioned how tourism industries flourished in some countries, which took pride in their heritage, while India, after independence, alienated itself from its rich legacy. “Without pride in heritage, there is no motivation for its preservation, and without preservation, such heritage is reduced to mere ruins of brick and stone,” PM Modi explained. He cited the examples of countries like Japan and South Korea, which did not adopt the Western ideology and embraced and preserved their own culture. The Prime Minister stated that India’s new education policy seeks to encourage acceptance and preservation of Indian knowledge by promoting Indian languages without opposing the English language.

Speaking about politics, PM Modi also referred to the NDA’s recent electoral win in the Bihar Assembly elections. He offered a piece of advice to all the state governments, saying that their politics today will shape the future of their parties, irrespective of the ideology they follow. Citing the example of RJD’s Jungle Raj in Bihar, PM Modi said that Lalu Prasad Yadav could have had 15 years in power, but he did not use that time for the state’s development and instead imposed Jungle Raj on the people of Bihar. PM Modi criticised the political parties for satisfying their own interests in the name of social justice. He said that true social justice lies in expanding welfare and pointed out that around 94 crore people in India are now protected by the social security net, compared to 25 crore a decade ago.

PM Modi also mentioned how the Maoist strongholds are rapidly shrinking across the states. Slamming the Congress party for nurturing and promoting the Maosit ideology across the country and planting urban naxals in premier institutions of the country, PM Modi said that the same Maoist ideology has now reduced the Congress party to ‘Muslim League-y Maoist Congress’.

Written by OpIndia Staff
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