Glorification of Past?

By: Gaurav Lohan

B.A. Political Science (Hons.)
Satyawati college
University of Delhi

This whole discourse starts in a class of Pol. Sci. in a college of the prestigious university of India
(Delhi university). Professor teaches the students about the notion of inequality that was prevailing
in the ancient India and even in Puranik India, by giving the Mahabharatakalin examples of
prohibition of shudras participation in Kshatriya’s activities. And then the conclusion line is
something like, India does not has any past on which it should be proud. The professor ends his line
by saying we should not glorify our past as it has nothing which should be glorified.
Now a student (who confuse between left wing and right wing ideology) took the
discourse to the pre-independence era by asking the question about the decision taken by leftist of
maintaining the superiority of class struggle upon the anti imperialism struggle. Then again the
professor explains his views on class struggle and inequality and comes to the same earlier
conclusion.
Now let me give you a simple example, you are living in a locality, with the plenty of neighbours,
with your family. Now suppose your brother or your father has some sort of bad habits. So it’s your
duty to find solution for that. But you are not supposed to denigrate your family name for that.
Although you are supposed to share the good qualities of your family, the good nature of your family
with your neighbours and at the same time while struggling to implement the good ideas in your
family. It is all because you want the respect from your neighbours and want others to see your
family as an ideal and strong family . But the reason that your family has some sort of bad habits
doesn’t give you a reason to tell your neighbours that your family has nothing to be proud of.
This is same case with our country and the rest of the world. It is our duty to rectify the mistakes of
the past and to make a bright future but at the same time we should give our present generation
and the rest of the world our legacy of education (vedas), health care (Ayurved), meditation (Yoga).
Because if we don’t do it others would do it in their own way. Like what Europeans do to their
history and with the world history or apparently what is the history of Europe is the history of the
world. We don’t have any place in world history. They have reduced the ‘ oldest civilisation’ of the
world to simply a ‘ nation in making’ and the worst part is that we have accepted this notion happily.
Yes, it is right that our society had some sort of evil in the past and they are still present today in the
form of casteism but that was present all over the world at that time and only this reason does not
give us a reason to not to tell our present generation that what India had in the past.
This is the point where leftist and rightist confronts each other. But we have to
undermine our ideology for the sake of the nation. Let me clear a point that I am not terming here
rightist as nationalist.
This is same case in the pre-independence era in which leftist refuse to undermine their notion of
class struggle against the anti-imperialism struggle. It is also the reason for the conflict between
Nehru and other congress leaders, when he wrote in one of his that ‘go to hell with the congress’
when congress refused to take the class struggle as its primary objective and the anti imperialism
struggle as secondary. But soon, Nehru came to realised that for the sake of the nation he had to
undermine his ideology and at the same time by keeping in mind that after independence he would
have great opportunities to eliminate those evils. Though it is different matter that we haven’t
reached our goal even after 71 years of independence.
Now it’s our time to rewrite the world history from our perspective, from the perspective of the
third world. It’s our duty to explain the present generation that how a country which happened to
be a superpower once in trade and economy reduced to merely a third world country.
(At the same time, by ‘rewriting history’ I don’t mean the stuff of right wing activists.)