Colonized minds!

Dr. Shashi Tharoor our favourite sesquipedalian, in his 2017 book “Inglorious Empire” has described very vividly the incalculable damage that the British colonialism has inflicted upon India. This book was conceived from a speech delivered by him earlier in 2015 Oxford Union debate which went viral over the web. The topic of this speech was “does Britain owe reparations to its former colonies”. This work won its creator much acclaim and many awards like the Ramnath Goenka excellence in journalism award and also the Sahitya Academi award as well as some criticism. Tharoor’s erudition and sheer force of ideas is beyond doubt unquestionable. I was reminded of the subject after listening to a curious tale of childhood nostalgia narrated by my brother in law. It highlights this phenomenon in an interesting manner.

During the mid 1970s when I must have been a child of 11/12 years studying in either 5^th or 6^th standard the Shankaracharya of Kanchipeeth happened to visit our town of Mansar near Nagpur. Mansar is a small town prominent only because it is situated on a national highway and has a few mineral resources in the form of deposits of manganese and dolomite within its proximity. It also is a site of some prehistorical excavations belonging to the Vakataka period. Further, it is a junction from where one has to take a turn to go to Ramtek which is a Tehsil place of some importance from a pilgrim point of view. The visit by His Holiness Shankaracharya created quite a stir in our otherwise tranquil town. The seer travelled along with his entourage and the attendant paraphernalia. The living arrangements for the entire retinue were done in the premises of our local school. The atmosphere became agog with general excitement and festivities. The evenings were marked by the discourses which the sagacious seer held daily and the hoi polloi converged at the venue to profess their piety and imbibe whatever wisdom that was on offer. His holiness ordained that every man, woman or child who accomplishes the task of writing “Jai Shree Ram” 1001 times will receive a gift. Thus all of us became busy with the exercise. Whoever completed the assignment was gifted with a copper ring to be adorned on the ring finger.

Now in my juvenile perspicuity I found that using the Roman alphabet would be comparatively easier than negotiating the twists and turns of the devnagri lipi. So I wrote “Jai Shree Ram” 1001 times in the English language and presented my work before the exalted presence of his holiness. It elicited quite a favourable response and I was presented with two rings instead of one! Although I no longer possess those rings but their memory and the accompanying implications remain forever embedded within some cerebral recess of my then young and impressionable mind.

This anecdote definitely reinforces the success of the Macaulayan strategy of colonizing our minds. What other conclusion can we derive from this obvious partiality exhibited towards the Queen’s language almost 30 years post independence by none other than a person occupying the apex position in the Hindu religious hierarchy!