Down with sledgehammer: India's colonial baggage

Soothsayers say politics makes strange bedfellows but so do regimes often reproached for deconstructing narratives. It is a strange quirk of national fate that the demise of Queen Elizabeth and the second Elizabethan age coincided with the reaming of the Rajpath to Kartavya Path. Can history be obliterated so easily with the erasing of colonial legacies? Even if an administration may be determined to wipe out remnants of India's undeniable colonial past, will history permit the same? Apathy for the British domination of India is understandable. Sceptics point to reinforcing nationhood, but when electoral resurgence churns an alternative version of nationalism to the fore, the froth and broth often mix to produce a concoction.

So Rajpath smacks of imperialism and has a colonial mindset to it; after all, it was a king's way, a boulevard visualising the last vestiges of royalty that needed to be undone. For many Indian nationalists, it is ideologically unbecoming to equate a sense of identity with what was India's pre-independent status. The problem lies with postcolonial interpretations of the Indian vox populi. Post-colonialists adhere to the fact that Indians had no control over their destiny and the colonial government in place with its systems was intrinsically exploitative and prejudicial. So Indian troops were fighting as mercenaries in the World Wars against British enemies.

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Many critics have also accused the government of being obsessed with delinking every colonial vestige in modern India. And the paradox is imminent. You can't consign facts to trash bins either by deifying or demonising individuals and organisations. Post-independence, Kingsway and Queensway were rechristened Rajpath and Janpath, and many feel the current dispensation is deliberately misinterpreting to highlight the pessimism of the empire. Historian Irfan Habib asserts, "The point is you want to leave your mark on everything." Thus, a moot question crops up. The present regime may be trying to underline its indelible footprint with its hyper-nationalist agenda only to compensate for its unsavoury presence in India's freedom struggle.

One has to make a dissimilarity between nationalism and patriotism though they may not be as distinct as chalk and cheese. History is not only about lauding the past but also about interpreting why something that vexes us today actually happened at that point in time. The naval ensign has evolved over centuries, and dropping the stripes symbolising the Cross of Saint George, reminiscent of the colonial era, cannot snatch its origins to oblivion. Unveiling a new ensign to drop 'the burden of slavery' may not backtrack the glorious path traversed by the Royal Indian Navy, Her Majesty's Indian Marine, and Bombay Marine - all sanctimoniously displayed in the Legacy Gallery of Naval Dockyard Mumbai. While befitting the rich Indian maritime heritage is a proud moment for all countrymen, one cannot deny the evolution of the blue octagonal emblem for centuries from the East India Company's first trading activities in Surat in 1612.

In our emotional braggadocio, we often tend to look at historical narratives through a glass prism. Shivaji's Maratha Navy may be undoubtedly the precursor to the Indian Coast Guard but to make the emperor don the mantle of the Indian Navy may be stretching things a bit afar. None can deny that strategically the Indian Navy originated from the very British Bombay Marine, which did have umpteen maritime skirmishes with Chhatrapati Shivaji. The Indian Army is proud of myriad regiments whose wherewithal date back to colonial times, and can we really shed off their colonial yoke? And many analysts have opined that the Chola's naval prowess was a notch above Maratha maritime supremacy, for they established Indian hegemony in Java, Sumatra, Thailand, which lasted centuries.

Many maritime historians have categorically stressed that Shivaji's naval might was aimed at protecting the seaward flanks of the Maratha empire and the Marathas were shrewd manoeuvres of the classic hit-and-run tactics at sea. But in sheer military prowess, as historian B K Apte noted, the English warships were 'superior to the Maratha warships in every aspect.' The very fact that the Indian Navy has named two of its major establishments – the training hub at Lonavla as INS Shivaji and a logistics hub as INS Angre after the famous Maratha naval commander – shows how it reveres the Chhatrapati. But to portray Shivaji as the father of the Indian Navy may be a historical distortion or fancying of an alternate past.

Today's modern central vista is definitely more enticing and bewildering to look at, but the Commonwealth of which India is still a part is a colonial legacy. No matter what kind of rechristening we do, we can't change that narrative. Abolition of symbols of colonial legacy to stress self-reliance maybe an unending saga, but undoing the course of history is a tough assignment which has no orientation. Unveiling a hologram of Netaji Subhas Bose at India Gate in the canopy that housed King George V's statue is more iconoclastic than symbolic. It is as if the last vestiges of imperialism are being given a sledgehammer blow, and a nationalist icon millions have always revered is taking his place. Though how much of Bose's ideals the nation has embarked on in the recent past is a matter of conjecture.

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However, the Beating Retreat ceremony's concluding ensemble 'Abide with me' being replaced with lyricist Pradeep's seminal 'Aye mere watan ke logon' crooned by the nightingale of India, Lata Mangeshkar, may not fall in this quest for freedom from India's colonial mindset. Though the earlier hymn did not reek of any Victorian prudery, here was an honest attempt to infuse an Indian flavour to a retreat number commemorating our freedom struggle and using the sitar, santoor, and tabla to the utmost. Apart from a solemn nostalgia, the change reverberated perfectly with our ethos as the Beating Retreat marched on wintry dusk in the national capital on Republic Day.

The moot point that crops up is to what extent can we traverse to shed off colonial baggage at breakneck speed, and do the alternatives assimilate into our national ethos? Like Lady Macbeth's philosophical aphorisms in Shakespeare's play, undoing history can also be a consequence of time. It is like encircling the maze in concentric circles, a whirligig. 'What's done is done…, What's to be done?... What's done cannot be undone….'

(The author is a commentator on politics and society)