Chandrayaan-3’s successful landing on the uncharted south pole of the Moon has cemented India’s position in the exclusive league of global space powerhouses and etched its name in the annals of space exploration history. As the lander module descended to the Moon’s lunar greyness and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) compound reverberated with collective pride and ‘Vande Matram’ chants, Sreedhara Panicker Somanath, the chair of the ISRO, said, “India is on the Moon.” Congratulating the ISRO team and fellow citizens, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “India’s successful Moon mission is not India’s alone. This is the year of India’s G20 presidency. Our idea of ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’ is resonating across the world. This human-centric approach has been welcomed by all. Our Moon mission is also based on this principle. Our success belongs to all of humanity.”
India’s space odyssey has swelled the hearts of Indians with pride and excitement, and India’s growing space ambitions have turned some faces green with envy. India’s burning ambitions and upcoming missions, like the launch of the Aditya-L1 mission in September and the Gaganyaan missions, are sure to dovetail with a roiling, ignominious, and petulant Britain that can’t savour India’s triumphs, once Britain’s largest colony. It would be fair to say that envy is the sincerest form of flattery.
A UK news presenter, Patrick Christys, while congratulating India on its monumental achievement, said, “I would like to congratulate India for landing on the dark side of the moon. I would also like to invite India to return the 2.3 billion pounds of aid money that we sent them between 2016 and 2021. We are also set to donate 57 million pounds next year. But I think the British taxpayer should keep a hold of that. As a rule, we should not be giving money to countries with space programs. India reportedly has 29 million people living in poverty. According to the UN, it is the highest anywhere in the world. India is also the fifth-largest economy in the world, with an annual GDP of 3.75 trillion dollars. Why are we paying poverty-stricken India when their government won’t bother?”
As for the “financial aid” from the British government, perhaps a quick session of general knowledge is in order for the British news anchor. In 2011, India’s then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, on the floor of the Rajya Sabha, categorically expressed that India didn’t require any charity from the United Kingdom and said, “We do not require the aid. It is a peanut in our total development expenditure.” In fact, in the same year, the International Development Committee (IDC) of the UK Parliament published an inquiry that concluded that the UK’s financial assistance could only have a marginal impact on India’s development because it made up only a tiny proportion of its gross domestic product.
Moreover, even the inconsequential aid was stopped in 2015, and most of the UK’s funding comes from business investments. A report published in The Guardian in March 2023 explicitly said, “Since 2015, the UK has given no financial aid to the Government of India. Most of our funding now is focused on business investments, which help create new markets and jobs for the UK as well as India. UK investments are also helping tackle shared challenges such as climate change.” Besides, in line with beating all expectations of economic growth, India leapfrogged the UK to become the world’s fifth-largest economy by March 2022, lifting almost 135 million people out of poverty between 2014 and 2019.
Many were quick to point out that the British still owned India whilst conveniently obfuscating the fact that they syphoned out at least $45 trillion over the 200 years of their colonial rule in India, but in retrospect, India still writhes from the dark realities of colonisation. VS Naipaul rightly called India a “wounded civilization.” From violent colonisation, economic exploitation, orchestrated famines, cultural devaluation, unprecedented levels of bloodshed, legislation based on anachronistic Victorian values, and colonised consciousnesses, the incomprehensible horrors go beyond monetary compensation.
The pusillanimous and deracinated homegrown leaders of independent India embraced the Macaulay idea of ‘persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect’, instead of exorcising the ghosts of the colonial era and developing veritable decolonised and freestanding thoughts for a new India.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s acknowledgement of the beneficial consequences of colonisation is an indictment of the successful subjugation of Lord Macaulay’s worldview that the Hindu way of life is inherently flawed. “India’s experience with Britain had its beneficial consequences too. Our notions of the rule of law, of a constitutional government, of a free press, of professional civil service, and of modern universities and research laboratories have all been fashioned in the crucible where an age-old civilization met the dominant empire of the day,” the former prime minister said.
It was not until 2014 when Narendra Modi was ensconced in the Prime Minister’s chair, that Indian society started to rediscover and celebrate its civilisational glory and heritage. Ever since, the Narendra Modi-led dispensation has worked to envision and help build an India independent of the last traces of its colonial baggage and, by extension, proud of its ancient civilisational identity.
This decolonisation project is reflected in the government’s decisions, such as the renaming of the Rajpath as Kartavya Path, the construction of the Central Vista project, the merging of the flame at the Amar Jawan Jyoti with the flame at the National War Memorial, changing the naval ensign to encompass the royal seal or mudra of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, and ultimately, the rolling out of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which aims for the renaissance of the Indian civilisation.
Therefore, the naysayers who “mocked” India as a nation of snake charmers and cow-worshippers are correct, because this India is confident in its civilisational moorings and antiquity and is finally ready, rising, and impatient to meet its destiny of palpable development and futuristic endeavours.
Yuvraj Pokharna is an independent journalist and columnist. He tweets with @iyuvrajpokharna. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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