Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity

Author(s): Pavan K Varma

Location(s): India

Genre(s): Historical, Nonfiction

Era(s): Various

Location

Content

Drawing upon modern Indian history, contemporary events and personal experience, he examines how and why the legacies of colonialism persist in our everyday life, affecting our language, politics, creative expression and self-image. Over six decades after Independence, English remains the most powerful language in India, and has become a means of social and economic exclusion. Our classical arts and literature continue to be neglected, and our popular culture is mindlessly imitative of western trends. Our cities are dotted with incongruous buildings that owe nothing to indigenous traditions of architecture. For all our bravado as an emerging superpower, we remain unnaturally sensitive to both criticism and praise from the Anglo-Saxon world and hunger for its approval. And outside North Block, the headquarters of free India’s Ministry of Home Affairs, a visitor can still read these lines inscribed by the colonial rulers: ‘Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty. It is a blessing which must be earned before it can be enjoyed.’

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