Matribhumi Samachar English
– Sidharth PK
The year 1947, when at last the two-hundred-year old colonial empire decided to give emancipation to one of her greatest possession on earth, India. Freedom, as what means a priceless hour of joy, as the midnight of August 15, moved herself giving up the traditional chains of suppression to a new life of hope. Prime Minister Nehru’s voice echoed in the four corners of free India, sending out a message for unity, progress and freedom of the masses. It was the tremendous glory that shined upon the horizon of India, and the long dissent of darkness comes finally to an end in itself.
The British government of India, once proclaimed their interest to develop India, but the blindness and vision of darkness encapsulated the minds and hearts. At the first, beginning of foreign domination, India never knew this was only a ploy to exploit the culture, tradition and plunder of all riches. It was indeed a tremendous and systematic slaughter of an ancient viable civilization. British, with each of their victory from the infamous Plessey to the very end, could ride the wave of power and consolidate the position in India.
The Indian freedom and its long story goes like a star that once and finally appeared in the blue horizon, boundless dreams that struck each Indian with its own glow. India was a product of colonial tragedy that created a living legacy, an entity that shed light, wisdom and hope. Robert Clive, who rightly called himself as the “Clive of India”, the regions of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha into a more supplicated and hardening approach. British victory at Plessey in 1757, commenced the systematic exploitation of wealth and destruction of culture also the traditional educational values. It prompted to build the English model of education replacing Indian value, as Macaulay pointed out on his “Minute on Education”; to conquer India, we must first destroy her education.
The ancient ethos and cultural notion was diffused in what came to be known as modernity, westernization. It showed a new path, certainly paving the way to an endless superiority, where the whites believed themselves to be a superior race. Both education and culture are aspects of the same process, where one truly find the progress and growth of man. It is true that education helps to identify the mastery of human mind, culture promotes values, but British system was utterly meant to make the crown more proactive. India lost her eyes, I mean the natives lost their vision to see the true color of imperialism.
The past that looms o’er the sea of thought enabling a lost world, that India once upon a time been, part of. The baffling western political idealism that British gave to India, turned her into a new administrative capacity, that divided the mind and ruled the land. Many battles fought and won, the night, day and universe stood still in the air and spin of sun, dawned upon the phrase “sun never sets upon British empire”.
One Gandhi’s arrival in the political landscape was insufficient, Nehru, Sardar Patel and Subhas Chandra Bose all of them came up with unique mass-plans and ideas to liberate Indian spirit. The British captivated the heart, soul and minds of an entire nation, it was a subjugation, it was two hundred years of loot. Historians, to the day differ in their exactness on why British left their greatest possession on earth? is much a wider speculation and the hidden truth. It is accepted in our history, that M K Gandhi, the idealized messiah brought down the mightiest of all, the pivotal role played by Gandhi’s nonviolence scripted a new version of human history.
The impactful course and time shared by the collective sense of the spirit and heart. The policy of British occupied India, first favored the native rajas and later betrayal which was greatest in every sense. Man’s civilization promised something new and the least it was a pipedream. The Indian struggle is a real source of history, a new model to inspiration that led other colonies to rise the banner up and fight for freedom, justice and equality, to be guaranteed not by the colonialists but by themselves alone.
Author is a senior columnist from Kerala
Matribhumi Samachar does not necessarily agree with the views expressed by the author
