The most contested terrain of Indian politics, and the electorally least significant, is culture and its necessary adjuncts – history and education. A change in government in New Delhi is always accompanied by a shifting of interests, people and also of ideas governing cultural institutions funded or managed by the union government.
This is not unexpected, as the idea of India is still deeply contested, with the Bharatiya Janata Party and its mothership the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh holding fast to a Hindutva ideology, and the rest of the national political parties broadly espousing a non-religio-cultural Indian nationalism. Cultural institutions – museums, academies and libraries (apart from universities, research institutions and school history textbooks) – are the sites of this ideological battle.
Governments have traditionally disregarded institutional autonomy and, where it has suited their purpose, interfered in everything from appointments to research agendas. An example of how determinedly pervasive this is, was the renaming of the National Museum’s Harappa gallery as the Saraswati-Indus civilisation gallery during the last BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government.
The BJP, in the run-up to last year’s general election, chose to pitch itself differently to voters. Narendra Modi as campaigner-in-chief avoided all the major cultural shibboleths of his party and the RSS – keeping his focus squarely on jobs and the failings of the Congress party and its mother-son leadership. The party’s election manifesto, issued at the eleventh hour, also did not use the vocabulary and imagery usually associated with the party’s pronouncements on culture, history and education.
Changing mindsets
In the 15 months that it has been in government, while RSS subsidiaries have sought book bans, cultural control and interventions in education policy, the government has remained silent. But this week, the union minister for culture, Mahesh Sharma, a medical doctor, spoke to the press rather expansively, suggesting that the government’s cultural agenda is driven by the BJP-RSS’s old anxieties about the purity of Indian culture, the “polluting” effects of westernisation and the alleged disappearance of Sanskrit, the need to re-educate the citizenry, and the belief that “Indian culture” (in which family values figure prominently) beats all other cultures in the world.
The minister’s clarifications followed statements made in reference to changes sought in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi. In an interview to The Telegraph, Sharma said:
Indian vs. Western culture
Sharma said on a television news show that he wanted to rid the country of “vaicharik pradushan” (thought pollution) and explained at some length what he meant. He said: “Our mythology... our holistic approach of seeing human beings – ekatam manav darshan – you will say it is the theory of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, but it is our theory, our theory of existence... To not consider our education, to not consider our values... seeing it all piecemeal... this has been polluted.... Enough work has not been done to preserve and propagate [this Indian culture].” Asked to give specific examples of good Indian culture and bad western culture, he contrasted the joint family with a shared kitchen with old-age homes. He said what he celebrated was the way of thinking established in the Bhagwad Gita, Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
Sharma, however, in the days following this exchange has been more than willing to explain himself. He has said that the teaching of English, and foreign languages like German, “at the cost of Sanskrit or Hindi” is what he considers “encroachment on my culture by the West". Indian Culture he said was encapsulated in: “Three generations cooking in the same kitchen and eating on the same table; the relationship between parents and children and the respect they have for each other; the emotions Indians have for each other and the relationships they respect...”; in learning Indian “values” and reading Indian books “before you read novels”, gaining “wisdom from our own museums and heritage” before going to gain wisdom abroad. Sharma, defending the government’s right to make changes, somewhat inaccurately asserted, that his party had been given a mandate “by the 125 crore people of the country … They knew what is RSS, what is BJP.”
The refreshing candour with which Sharma has addressed himself to the issues and explained his motivations will allow a somewhat better informed public discussion about the direction of the changes this government may seek to make in cultural institutions of national importance, of the forces driving the cultural agenda of this government, and its interpretation of the electoral mandate it has received to follow its chosen course.
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This is not unexpected, as the idea of India is still deeply contested, with the Bharatiya Janata Party and its mothership the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh holding fast to a Hindutva ideology, and the rest of the national political parties broadly espousing a non-religio-cultural Indian nationalism. Cultural institutions – museums, academies and libraries (apart from universities, research institutions and school history textbooks) – are the sites of this ideological battle.
Governments have traditionally disregarded institutional autonomy and, where it has suited their purpose, interfered in everything from appointments to research agendas. An example of how determinedly pervasive this is, was the renaming of the National Museum’s Harappa gallery as the Saraswati-Indus civilisation gallery during the last BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government.
The BJP, in the run-up to last year’s general election, chose to pitch itself differently to voters. Narendra Modi as campaigner-in-chief avoided all the major cultural shibboleths of his party and the RSS – keeping his focus squarely on jobs and the failings of the Congress party and its mother-son leadership. The party’s election manifesto, issued at the eleventh hour, also did not use the vocabulary and imagery usually associated with the party’s pronouncements on culture, history and education.
Changing mindsets
In the 15 months that it has been in government, while RSS subsidiaries have sought book bans, cultural control and interventions in education policy, the government has remained silent. But this week, the union minister for culture, Mahesh Sharma, a medical doctor, spoke to the press rather expansively, suggesting that the government’s cultural agenda is driven by the BJP-RSS’s old anxieties about the purity of Indian culture, the “polluting” effects of westernisation and the alleged disappearance of Sanskrit, the need to re-educate the citizenry, and the belief that “Indian culture” (in which family values figure prominently) beats all other cultures in the world.
The minister’s clarifications followed statements made in reference to changes sought in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi. In an interview to The Telegraph, Sharma said:
“We will cleanse every area of public discourse that has been westernised and where Indian culture and civilization need to be restored – be it the history we read or our cultural heritage or our institutes that have been polluted over years.”
We have 39 institutions under the culture ministry, including grand museums and the National School of Drama, but we have not been up to the mark in presenting our Indian cultural heritage in a right way, we will totally revamp all these institutions after a detailed roadmap is prepared.
It is a matter of embarrassment when an Indian student goes abroad and is asked to recite a Sanskrit couplet but fails to do so. It is because we do not take pride in our ancient language and it has not been part of our learning. So, is not a change required there? We have to change the mindset of people.”
Indian vs. Western culture
Sharma said on a television news show that he wanted to rid the country of “vaicharik pradushan” (thought pollution) and explained at some length what he meant. He said: “Our mythology... our holistic approach of seeing human beings – ekatam manav darshan – you will say it is the theory of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, but it is our theory, our theory of existence... To not consider our education, to not consider our values... seeing it all piecemeal... this has been polluted.... Enough work has not been done to preserve and propagate [this Indian culture].” Asked to give specific examples of good Indian culture and bad western culture, he contrasted the joint family with a shared kitchen with old-age homes. He said what he celebrated was the way of thinking established in the Bhagwad Gita, Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
Sharma, however, in the days following this exchange has been more than willing to explain himself. He has said that the teaching of English, and foreign languages like German, “at the cost of Sanskrit or Hindi” is what he considers “encroachment on my culture by the West". Indian Culture he said was encapsulated in: “Three generations cooking in the same kitchen and eating on the same table; the relationship between parents and children and the respect they have for each other; the emotions Indians have for each other and the relationships they respect...”; in learning Indian “values” and reading Indian books “before you read novels”, gaining “wisdom from our own museums and heritage” before going to gain wisdom abroad. Sharma, defending the government’s right to make changes, somewhat inaccurately asserted, that his party had been given a mandate “by the 125 crore people of the country … They knew what is RSS, what is BJP.”
The refreshing candour with which Sharma has addressed himself to the issues and explained his motivations will allow a somewhat better informed public discussion about the direction of the changes this government may seek to make in cultural institutions of national importance, of the forces driving the cultural agenda of this government, and its interpretation of the electoral mandate it has received to follow its chosen course.