The clarion call for Indians to jettison their ‘colonial mindset’ is getting louder by the day. The charge against modern day Indians is that though the country got political independence more than 75 years ago, but our minds are still enslaved to the West.

The Ministry of External Affairs’ vociferous criticism against the controversial BBC documentary revolved around the ‘colonial mindset’ with sections of the British press and society accused of harbouring a colonial hangover. Much ink has been split over this issue and the point of this article is not to go into the merits or otherwise of the BBC documentary fracas.

That most conversations on decolonising the Indian mind happen in English, adds another rich layer of irony to this issue. For much of the colonial period Indian thinkers, many of whom fought for India’s freedom, wrestled with the challenge of how much to borrow from the West and how much to retain from Indian tradition. Also what construed Indian tradition itself had to re-imagined and re-invented by India’s thinkers during colonial rule.

But at the heart of today’s debate on the ‘colonial mindset’ seems to lie a gnawing sense of insecurity among not just the political class but also India’s citizenry. We are more than happy to lap up Western praise (some of which is frankly ludicrous) but extremely prickly about any form of criticism (some of which may seem unjustified).

In a world that is growing increasing insular, a move to eradicate the ‘colonial mindset’ can very easily lead to a closing of the Indian mind.

“I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.” These words of Gandhiji are worth bearing in mind today.

comment COMMENT NOW