Recently, my family and I happened to visit South Bombay’s Leopold Cafe, famously known for the infamous and cowardly attack of 26/11. We had earlier while shopping seen a platoon of foreigners, (nationality unidentifiable) shooting around the same place, Colaba Causeway. While we were leaving the Cafe, they were entering. Being a big group they almost occupied the entire passage to the common entry/exit. My sister hand-gestured a woman to move aside, in whose reply the woman made a sharp reply exclaiming, “Relax!” and gave a disgusted look. Though outraged, we quietly moved out, in order to avoid chaos.
It was then when I realised that foreigners still look upon us with contempt and with a sense of domination. After all, India is a sovereign, socialist, secular, republic! India is independent! Indeed it is, but just for the namesake. The English theory of “Dogs and Indians not allowed”, still thrives outside India. An entire nexus stands out there, tall and hefty, determined to bend us. But, the question is, are we ready to bow?
After the British left, they left us in a state of total disarray, disrooted our glorious past, buried our heritage, history and literature, burnt our spirits, and threw us into the hands of cold death after ravaging our economy. These are the superficial colonial crimes they committed, the actual crimes are actually gruesome and chilling. They did not stop after plundering, looting, and committing genocides, they went on to distort India’s history to fit it into their narrative, and leave behind a trail of false theories, which today are widely accepted as our “Truth” and “History”.
Today the Indian youth doesn’t know their own past, perhaps the sense of being identityless doesn’t haunt them as it does me. We don’t know the answer to the simplest of questions: “Who am I”. That is because no one ever taught us, and the ones who tried were labelled with various offensives. From outside India appears to be a diverse country with multiculturalism at its maximum, but from within, we are hollow. No, we are not, rather we are forced to see it that way. If we identify ourselves as something, there are communities that get offended. No one is able to reach a conclusion where every Indian has a place.
Yes, it is true that the most glorious time of India was under the Hindu Empires, but this is unacceptable to some. Though distortioners have tried their best to portray them in a bad light, they have not been successful. Numerous attempts were made to glorify the Mughals, by nicknaming each one of the six major emperors and singing their praises in history textbooks and demonise Hindus. The reverse tough existant was minuscule in proportion to the former. Yet, India remembers some of the truth even after the huge scale propaganda, thanks to its practice of passing knowledge verbally.
Even after all these, I have confidence in my Bharat, that it will rise to all the challenges and prosper once again. What I still doubt is, will we ever know who we are?
