Welcome to the Indian Interest

Welcome to the Indian Interest.

India is currently in the midst of a great social and cultural change. It is experiencing a great reawakening.

It is finally beginning to emerge from the shadow of a thousand years of foreign occupation and colonization. It is beginning its ascent toward reclaiming its historical position as a global power and as a hugely influential civilization.

Social media has taken away the old Nehruvian establishment’s power to hide the truth from the people and to perpetuate lies and misinformation. It has exposed the mainstream media and the education system.

For 70 years, the Nehruvian establishment made the people of India believe that we owe our independence to Gandhi and the Nehru dynasty and the Congress party.

They made us believe that India was born in 1947.

They taught us that ours is an inferior, backward culture, one that we should be ashamed of.

They taught us that India’s foreign invaders were glorious and superior, kind and compassionate, and that they came here to civilize us and free us from our backwardness.

They are desperate to hide what the foreign invaders actually did to our society, to our people, to our culture.

Social media has taken away their ability to hide these facts.

It has empowered the people. It has given them a voice for the first time in a thousand years. The people are beginning to speak out. They are beginning to ask the right questions.

This social and cultural reawakening has brought two opposing forces into conflict:

Those who want to see India regain its global stature — economically, geopolitically and culturally.
Those who want India to remain a 20th century secular, socialist, non-aligned Nehruvian and Gandhian society.

We can see this conflict everywhere — from social media to the mainstream media, from the newspapers to the shouting matches on television news channels.

The two sides argue and disagree over basic, fundamental issues. They disagree over how ancient or how young India is. They disagree over what India’s national interest is. They disagree over the very definition of India. There are several “ideas of India” floating around.

Going forward, I shall explore and examine these concepts, and questions such as:

• What exactly is India?
• Is India a community?
• Is India a society?
• Is India a culture?
• Is India a nation?
• Is India a republic?
• Is India a civilization?
• What is the national interest?

Are these vague, amorphous, arbitrary concepts, or can they be clarified, crystallized and defined to a good degree of precision?

• Does non-violence work?
• Was Gandhi a saint?
• Was Nehru a hero?
• Does India owe its independence to the Congress Party?
• What is democracy?
• Is India a truly democratic country?
• Are the world’s other democracies truly democratic in nature?
• Can democracy be subverted?
• Are there hidden loopholes in democracy that benefit a select few?
• How old is India’s civilization?
• Are North Indians Aryans and South Indians Dravidians?
• Is Hinduism foreign in origin?
• Was there really an Aryan Invasion of India? Or is that a myth, a lie spread by those who seek to divide and break India?
• What is colonization?
• What is decolonization?
• What is colonialism?
• What is neo-colonialism?
• What is mental colonization?

And much more.

Let’s explore these issues and find the answers.

Originally published at http://indianinterest.com on June 20, 2019.