Vinayshil Gautam
Of the great strength in being Indian, one is simply the inimitable and invaluable DNA which one gets by virtue of being an ethnic Indian. There are, of course, the huge resources that nature has blessed India with. The list of advantages can be long.
However, there are some problems. (There always are!) Many Indians are not really in love with India. The Indian mother-in-law still dreams of a person of Indian origin or overseas Indian as her son-in-law or daughter-in-law. If you can’t get a person of Indian origin or an overseas Indian, you should at the very least get a non-resident Indian.
The youth in India are looking for credentials, if not a job outside India. Sometimes one really wonders as to whom does this country belong. Be that as it may, the level of understanding of what it takes to be an Indian is still less. Consider the people in the knowledge management field. Many of them can rattle Western references but would be strangers to things written in the Indian languages.
In an expensive restaurant, to get good service, the language of communication must be always and only English. It is just not a problem with the class-three, class-four cadre. The orientation of many who form the intellectual elite is no better.
One presumes the electronic media will have anchors who would belong to the upper cadre. Unfortunately, barring the ability of a large number of them to yell, shriek in ways irrelevant and raise unrelated items of interrogation, their other skills are low.
As usual, one evening, I was having my evening hour entertainment by surfing the news channels. It was a day when the External Affairs Minister was reported to have opined that Bhagvad Gita should be declared a national scripture. Several anchors thought it was a god-sent opportunity to improve their television rating points, and so, they decided to go to town with it. There is nothing wrong with that, either.
I was not even amazed at the allegations of a ‘saffron push’. Bhagvad Gita, of course, has to be given a colour and that to a simplistic mind can only be saffron. Given the general level of ignorance on matters of each other’s religions, I am willing to overlook even that. But the matter does not end there.
To justify the allegation of a ‘saffron push’, more instances had to be found. I waited patiently but the list grew by only one. Amusingly, the introduction of Sanskrit in high schools under the three-language formula was cited. That too, in one of the major channels which is a part of one of the biggest media chains in the country.
To begin with, the concept of ‘Hindus’ is deliberately misrepresented. Let us forgive that, but the rest of the logic is even more perverse. If Sanskrit is part of ‘Hindu religion’, then Punjabi should be of Sikh religion, Urdu of a Muslim religion and English of a Christian religion. The list becomes more ridiculous.
The anchor found very diligent support from an MP of an important party from eastern India. Notwithstanding the commentaries of some leading journalists, secularism in its convoluted form is far from dead.
No one in the panel seemed to be aware of the views of Mark Twain, Will Durant, Romain Rolland, Albert Einstein, Hu Shih, Grant Duff, and many others on Sanskrit.
Since when has it become necessary for a person holding a media mike to be knowledgeable?
This miracle of the ‘ignorant’ making the ‘aspiring’ even more ignorant, is also a trait of current Indian learning environment. No major university research seems to find this of interest. No consulting organisation believes that this exploration could spin money. Hence, there are few takers of this among the youth.
That Aryabhatta invented zero, decimal system developed in India and that method of graduated calculation was documented in Pancha-Siddhantika in Sanskrit is of no consequence. Sanskrit has to be Saffron, so its claimed.
In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Mark Antony began one of the speeches with, “If you have tears prepare to shed them now”. He would not have dared make that speech in India today. Tears have dried in the dreary sands of ignorance.
