“I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief ; such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage . And, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.’’
In 1835, Lord Thomas Macaulay, as President of the Indian Committee of Public Instruction proposed that the British create “a class of Indians who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern. A class of persons , Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste , in opinion , in morals and in intellect “.
Macaulay also proposed establishing bilingualism in India. He succeeded in the century of his reign . English and Western culture have not merely survived but have spread across the country.
For over 2 centuries thereafter, through treachery & deceit the British succeeded , beyond their wildest dreams , to destroy Indian culture which was in it’s time the most enlightened & sophisticated culture and education system in existence . Having consistently plundered India of it’s resources of every kind , which , apart from numerous other traumatic consequences, resulted in widespread famine and deaths on a scale never before witnessed anywhere in the World , when millions of Indians died. But all this apart, the British succeeded in reducing Indians to a nation of paupers, of grovelling, servile and corrupt anglophiles devoid of all vestige of national pride in their own culture, and self respect ; whose sole aspiration became to faithfully mimic western lifestyles, morality & value systems, and to reduce the majority of those Indians adopting the English language & ways of life to a class of Anglo-Indian bastards , as Macaulay and his tribe so fervently desired . Macaulay laid this down to ensure that Indians became “ what we want them, a truly dominated nation ”, and “the best mercenaries in the world” instead of a proud & self respecting people who took pride in their ancient culture, reviving it and adapting it progressively to meet the imperatives of modern times. Particularly restore those elements of it’s ancient culture to ensure it’s former education system would produce people of “such high moral values ” & “caliber ” that once evoked in foreigners, the British in particular, nothing but admiration !
Following what the British called “the 1857 Indian Mutiny”, to ensure that India remained it’s, ‘Jewel in the Crown’, Britain continued to ruthlessly, but infinitely more surreptitiously, the policy that had served it so well , to remain it’s major source of economic support, it’s policy of ‘divide and rule ’. It continued systematically to sow & nurture seeds of hatred between the two brothers of the same family - the Hindus and Muslims of India to ensure that it led to outbreaks of the most lethal riots of unprecedented magnitude.
Britain then enacted it’s most dastardly act of treachery, under it’s policy of ‘ divide & rule‘, and divided the country when Britain was forced to cede it Independence, and create Pakistan. In fact, as it did subsequently, it created a festering wound by wresting land from the Arabs to create a permanent home for the Jews of the World, to establish Israel which has become a major cause of international tension in the middle East between the West , the USA in particular , on the one side , and the middle & far East on the other which might well lead to the next World War .
However, following ‘Partition’ Britain continued to exploit both India & Pakistan by conspiring , in cohorts with its co-conspirator the USA, to aggravate the hatred it had created , to sustain the continuous fear of attack by one brother against the other. This was to ensure that what the western conspirators euphemistically called “Defence equipment“ became the largest, but undisclosed item in the respective annual national budgets of India & Pakistan to sustain and support the largest industries of the Western allies, to prevent the economies of both UK & USA from sliding into another “Great Recession” as the USA experienced in the 1930s , the initial signs of which had begun to emerge in the US economy after the end of the ‘First Cold War’. Is it not time that every self-respecting Indian and Pakistani does whatever he/she can to restore the world’s respect for their ancient culture, particularly their once ancient and sophisticated education system that produced people of such high mindedness & integrity, as Macaulay so spontaneously recorded after his early visits to India, after which he advised the British to systematically destroy ? This they faithfully did , apart from much else , through the flood of Christian missionaries they brought to the Indian Sub-Continent, to anglicize its culture & educational system ; not merely to make it’s people flunkies of western culture but also to convert them to Christianity. Much more importantly to destroy its ancient culture which Macaulay frankly recorded was “the very backbone of this nation” that created “people of such caliber” and “high moral values”. Surely Indians, and now no less Pakistanis, owe it to themselves to contribute in every way possible to restoring it, after attuning it (not westernizing it) to the imperatives of modern times.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
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