Colonisation has implanted ideas (cultural memes) in Indian minds so deeply that we do not notice how often it controls our behaviour. It has become so ingrained in our culture, like chai and samosa, that we think of them as our own.
Now, there is nothing wrong with adopting ideas or cultural elements from other places. Tea was introduced by the British Raj. Samosa was a Central Asian dish that was combined with potato, a vegetable that came from the American continent and was brought to India by the Portuguese. Today, tea with samosa is very much part of Indian culture, and rightly so.
Within a few centuries, chai-samosa has become part of our identity. We have always been good at absorbing cultures, and this has been one of the core strengths of Indians since ancient times. Christian priests like Saint Thomas or Muslim thieves like Kayam Kulam Kochunni have become Hindu deities. A mosque in Golconda is named after a Hindu courtesan. Sufi saints like Khwaja Hasan Nizami sang in the praise of ‘Hindu’ gods. Often, the new cultural elements complement the older ones. That’s how cultures progress. That’s the reason our cultural memes survived for such a long time. A culture stuck in the past is destined for failure.
However, there are times when foreign cultural elements are not compatible with the native ones, and the former can replace the latter. While at times they may be necessary, sometimes it might not be a good thing. There are two such elements of Western cultural implants we need to recognise, that probably have done more harm than good.
The first one is the concept of guilt and shame. Guilt and shame are two powerful emotions that have been central to the Judeo-Christian tradition for centuries. Guilt is often associated with sin, while shame is associated with a sense of being unworthy of God’s love. While guilt is more focused on the action, shame is more focused on the self.
Guilt can be a motivating force for good, as it can lead people to repent for their sins and seek forgiveness. However, it can also be debilitating, leading people to feel trapped in a cycle of self-condemnation.
Shame, on the other hand, can be even more destructive. It can lead people to withdraw from relationships, avoid taking risks, and even believe that they are beyond God’s love.
Guilt and shame are part of Victorian Orthodoxy that have got ingrained in the Indian mind. To understand it you just need to read comments in social media on any LGBTQ post. People often react to these posts as if these are Western concepts that should not be allowed, or it would corrupt our culture. These people are quite unaware that Indian mythology is filled with stories of gender fluidity.
While Manu Smriti does prohibit homosexuality, Kamasutra and Sushruta Samhita are very open about it. Such taboos are generally forced too down in societies by the rulers or the religious authorities. Gender fluidity was recognised in India, and not a taboo as it later became. It was the colonial laws that forced binary gender concepts on Indians, and now we hold onto these biases tightly as if they were our core values.
It was Victorian morality that made the British Empire ban Hizras and Devdasis in India, and made us believe that we should be ashamed of our own culture. A similar concept of shame and guilt is also associated with sex, relationships and unhappy marriages, leading to underreporting of sexual assault and violence. The West themselves have moved on since then, but we hold on to their outdated cultural meme with pride.
The second element of the colonial mindset is the preference for group identity over individuality. Group identity is an evolutionary relict that has helped us survive. An individual who was part of the group had a better chance of survival than a lone individual. Symbolic memes that keep a group together are an essential part of the culture and our identity. Such memes unite us but also divide us.
Islam and Christianity are based on the idea of forming groups that share common rituals and sacred texts. Anyone who disobeyed the scripture was excluded from the group and often considered worthy of punishment. This created a strong sense of social norms and unity but also led to dogmatic beliefs. That made it easy to kill a person over an insult to ideologies. Holy words written on paper became more important than the life of an individual. Same with colours printed on a cloth that makes a flag.
It was only in the 18th century that European Christians challenged some of these dogmas, thanks to the Enlightenment movement.
A similar shift happened in India much earlier, around 500-600 BCE, when people started to value rationality over ritualism. This was influenced by factors such as a stable climate, a prosperous economy and the emergence of writing.
Rituals and superstitions of earlier practices were denounced by the Upanishads. Rationality encouraged individual liberation over group conformity. The ultimate reality was not outside but within YOU. YOU were the source of truth. When YOU overcame your biases and dogmas, YOU became one with the truth. Self-realization was not about egoism, but about humility. YOU were not affected by what others did or said. Your group sentiments could not be hurt, because YOU transcended the group. Philosophies like Buddhism and Jainism were inward-looking philosophies to get individuals out of suffering. They had nothing to do with group sentiments.
This changed over the last few centuries, as Abrahamic religions influenced our thought process. If THEY avoided pork, WE avoided beef. If THEY had the Bible, WE had the Bhagwat Gita. As if there was a hurry to prove our worth measured in Western ethos.
The word Hindu itself is a colonial legacy. The colonial mind could not comprehend the difference between dharma and religion. So, they needed a name to label those who were neither Christians nor Muslims. The word “Hindu” was useful for the British government to apply the divide-and-rule strategy. With that, there was a new way to offend ‘Hindu’ sentiments. There was no better way to create dogmas than to create group ideologies that diminished the importance of individuals. Group over individuals. Rituals over reason.
One might ask where to draw the line between memes that are good and ones that aren’t so. Unfortunately, there are no fixed boundaries. Good and bad, moral codes, are all human construct and varies between societies and over time. The important line however is to be skeptic of memes that creates dogmas; dogmas that makes us value group fictions over individuals.
The essence of Indian philosophy that emerged around 600 BCE, which was based on liberalism and intellectual debates to understand (as much as our limited cognitive abilities allowed) the ultimate reality (Brahman), became alien to us. We now reject gender fluidity (e.g. tritiya-prakriti, svairini etc) as a Western corruption. India was a land of different faiths- from atheists (e.g. Charvaka), to spiritualists, to idol worshipers- for thousands of years. Now we consider liberalism as a Western influence. And that is the paradox.
We now regard our ancient wisdom as foreign and adopt rejected medieval foreign ideas as our own. That is the true colonization of our minds.