Discovering Indian Heritage Without Negative Bias

In our Heritage section we are putting a lot of effort to rediscover India’s past heritage with a view that the stories from our past will give today’s generation some sort of inspiration and motivate them to achieve excellence.

But some of us may think why we need to look at our past to get inspiration. Well, it is the need of the hour because, today there is nothing great to say about India. Even after 67 years of Independence we are still living with the influence of Colonial rule. Our mindsets that were conditioned by the Colonial masters to make us feel bad about our culture and heritage didn’t change even after so much of scientific & technological development.

67 years of Independence: Still under Colonial influence

Surprisingly many of us are living under the influence without knowing that we are influenced. Let me give some examples of Colonial influence. In the past, before Independence, Indian citizens were against the government (British) due to their unfair rule. But post-Independence, leaders are elected through public vote, still we are against the government and systems. One best example to prove how British made us think that all Foreign is good is the adoption of Western culture while ignoring our traditional practices like Yoga. Primary education was not taken very seriously, instead it was used to turn a tiny elite group into Englishmen and a somewhat bigger group into government clerks.

Deliberate efforts of Colonial masters

There was a deliberate and systematic effort by the Britishers to break up the old, self-sufficient and self-perpetuating systems in India to make it a truly subservient nation. They made us believe that all the existing things were bad and that all the foreign is good and greater than ours.

India – once a great country!

India is an independent nation from since 1947, but we rarely find any kind of excellence or achievement that was there in the past. We don’t see a great mathematician like Aryabatta, economist like Chanakya not a great ruler like Ashoka. The Indians who were often admired by great people like Megasthenes, Albert Einstein, etc., are nowhere seen today.

If we really look at the progress made by India, there is nothing much to talk about. India didn’t see any Nobel Prizes after Independence. While small and underdeveloped countries won decent number of medals, India stood first on the list of countries with lowest number of total Olympic medals per-capita in the world.

Not just these fields, take any field, nowhere we are excelling, no country thinks that India is the toughest competitor. We know things like these are easy to point out and tough to do. Our intention is not to hurt anyone, but we are just trying to make you understand the reality.

Creation of scalable systems : Need of hour

There was a concept in Hinduism called Trilogy which talks about equal importance to Creation, Maintenance and Destruction. When old systems are no more effective, instead of maintaining them we need to destroy them while creating an effective alternative system that is scalable.

Today, we are doing things with the same old momentum. At one point of time, when the power was with the rulers listening to them was acceptable, but today even after independence, we are not showing intellectual honesty. We are simply following the same old systems, few of which are designed to hinder the growth. We neither question the wrong systems nor make an effort to create new ones that are scalable. Till the time we realize this fact and take steps in right direction the nation will continue to be mediocre.

Let’s come out of the dark ages

One way to come out of this state is to get some true inspiration from ancient Indians. We have to revisit our most glorious past to come of this dark ages in which we are surviving right now – without excellence, achievements or anything. This might sound new to you but revisiting the past helps us to where exactly Indians stand and thus enable us to set benchmarks for our development. Europe which survived in dark ages for almost 1000 years got renaissance (rebirth) by revisiting the classical works from its past and by using them as a basis of advancement.

Now, it’s our turn to do it to progress towards growth and excellence. Remember, in order to feel good about ourselves, either we need to do something great or we need to have something great. We have the latter, so why not use it as a powerful tool to do something really good.