The Great Indian Conundrum

1. Introduction

India is a vast country. Filled with rich cultures, traditions, religions, and a smorgasbord of food items. Indians are different, we are people with different religions, people who speak a plethora of languages, and people who wear different dresses. Even though we are different in all possible ways, we are all Indians. This unity indeed is magnificent, thanks to the way our country was governed. But there is a little miscreant of a conundrum lying at the heart and soul of the Indian men or women. India is suffering from something greater than a pandemic something that spreads like a wildfire. Indians are suffering from inferiority complex. Now, the Inferiority complex is a phenomenon where a person feels that he/she is inferior to some other person or race. Indian Millennials today think that their culture and language are not ‘developed’ enough and they are attracted to the luxuries in the western countries.

2. The Colonial Legacy

In my opinion, Inferiority Complex is a natural thing, after all, India is a young nation and it was a nation that was colonized by almost all the great powers with some of them being an exception. The irony of the matter is that these western countries flourished by looting and plundering other nations like India. The British were one of the prominent colonizers of India. I always find it amusing that, this barbaric empire stood strong on Indian soil for about 2 centuries! The Colonial British Empire always treated Indians as being inferior to them. A great example would be a statement by the most racist of all prime ministers Britain has ever seen, Winston Churchill, He once said,

“Indians are a beastly people with a beastly religion”.

There was a time when a board was put outside a club in British India that read,

‘Indians and Dogs are not allowed'

Winston Churchill

Slavery in British India

3. The English (Indian) Shenanigan

After all of this, we got our so called ‘freedom’ but the damage was already done. As every action has an opposite reaction, The Indian changed, The Indian started getting disgusted with his own traditional attire, The Indian started adopting the west as his somewhat guide. Society today places great importance in speaking English, heck, some schools have even started fining those who speak their native language. Many people who influence society, started adding an English twist to their language. My native language is Malayalam. Today the way some people speak the language is just ridiculous. These influential people like actors and politicians always add an English slang to the Malayalam language. Almost 80 percent of the words used will be English and the irony is that most of them were born and brought up in India, Kerala at that. The result is a mindless slave speaking gibberish. I even know some people who converse with others in English even in their homes. Society today has a harmful perception, it recognizes people who speak their native language as a ’lower-class’ but a person who converses in English rises up the social hierarchy and is considered to be sharp and smart. This is wrong and we must change this ‘new’ norm before it eats us up. I am not saying that speaking English should be banned but what I mean is that it should not be more important than our mother tongue, after all, we must remember that, English was the language of the plunderers.

4. The International Situation

When me and my family went to France in 2018, While we were in a French restaurant, we saw a middle-aged couple sitting opposite our restaurant table. To make a conversation, my father decided to talk to them in English but they weren’t able to understand a single word and we communicated using the good old sign language. It was only later that I found out that only 39 percent of the population in France knows English but only 13 percent are proficient in the language. Compared to India, which is the second country that has the highest amount of English-speaking population, France is barely a strand of grass. See, the point is that the French respect their language more. It is not only the French but also the Spanish and the Russians and many others. We Indians, on the other hand, do not respect our languages as we should and the consequences will be faced by the future generation. Just imagine an India, without an identity without languages and cultures, and being the slaves of the west, trying to replicate what the westerners are doing. This is the new colonialism. Where the minds of the young generation are being hacked by the western perpetrators. India today, is slowly transitioning to that future, that future that no one wants.

5. The Probable Solutions

One solution that can be adopted will be to make the future generation understand the underlying matter. That is, by educating them about the severity of Inferiority Complex. I am not saying that we should be anti-west but rather we must educate ourselves about the history of our glorious nation. We must educate them about the cultures and traditions of India. The government should focus more on education and the human resource sector. It should also encourage the speaking of native languages and promote the traditional attire of Indians. In short, we should move to a swadeshi approach just like our ancestors did, about 117 years ago. India should be reformed once again and we must break out from the shackles of colonialism and rid ourselves of it for good. India should remain as India and not as a Western or a European country.

That’s it for now,

Thanks for reading,

Bye

-Rajat