Still Shackled to the Empire: India’s Unfinished Business of Decolonization

• India gained political independence in 1947 but failed to pursue cultural and intellectual decolonization.
• Colonial institutions, Western worldviews, and English-language dominance continue to shape Indian governance, education, and identity.
• Nehruvian secularism and later Marxist influence sidelined dharmic traditions and indigenous knowledge systems.
• Soviet ideological alignment and Bollywood narratives further deepened India’s civilizational disconnection.
• True freedom requires reclaiming India’s native frameworks—its languages, histories, and spiritual foundations—as the basis for national renewal.

At first glance, India appears to be a sovereign, thriving democracy. It boasts a homegrown Constitution, elected governments, a booming economy, and growing global influence. But beneath this surface lies an uncomfortable truth: India never truly decolonized. The British may have physically left in 1947, but their institutions, systems, and—most insidiously—their worldview still govern the Indian mind. Political independence was achieved, but intellectual, cultural, and civilizational liberation was never pursued with the same urgency.

Even after nearly eight decades of independence, India remains mentally colonized. The inferiority complex instilled by centuries of foreign rule—first Islamic, then British—continues to shape Indian self-perception. The average Indian still looks at their own heritage through the eyes of their colonizers, subconsciously trained to mock what is native and to worship what is foreign.

Symptoms of Mental Colonization

Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in the continued supremacy of the English language. In India, fluency in English is not just a practical skill—it is a social currency, a marker of intelligence, class, and modernity. Indian languages are dismissed as obstacles to progress, useful only for poetry or political speeches. Parents discourage their children from speaking their mother tongue at home. Schools treat regional languages as academic liabilities. The colonial project of linguistic displacement remains horrifyingly successful.

The education system is equally complicit. It remains shackled to the colonial blueprint laid down by Macaulay in 1835, designed not to empower Indians but to produce obedient clerks. Textbooks glorify British “reforms” while downplaying India’s own civilizational achievements. Ancient sciences, spiritual philosophies, and alternate epistemologies are ignored or caricatured. Vedic mathematics is dismissed as myth, while imported theories are treated as gospel. Freedom fighters who didn’t conform to the Congress-Marxist narrative are erased, and Sanskrit—the foundational language of India’s intellectual tradition—is reduced to a ceremonial oddity.

Colonial rituals persist like ghosts in plain sight in the courtroom and government. The Indian legal system mimics British common law, parrots colonial precedents, and retains outdated laws like sedition, once used to crush our own freedom fighters. Even our degrees bear Latin names as if independence never happened. The very structure of the state operates within a colonial frame, governed by laws designed for imperial control, not civilizational flourishing.

Culturally, the colonized mindset manifests in how Indians view beauty, success, and refinement. Western aesthetics dominate fashion, food, cinema, and even wedding rituals. Bollywood imitates Hollywood while ignoring the profound richness of India’s mythological and literary traditions. Urban elites scoff at traditional dress, knowledge, and ways of living. The result is a population trained to ape the West while remaining disconnected from its own civilizational soul.

But the British are not the only ones who rewrote India’s script. Islamic colonialism, too, left a deep imprint that has never been honestly confronted. Cities still carry names imposed by foreign rulers—Allahabad instead of Prayagraj, Aurangabad instead of Sambhajinagar—preserving the memory of conquest while erasing older Indic identities. Mughal monuments are marketed as national treasures, while ancient temples crumble in neglect. The aesthetic of the Mughal court—its Persianized Hindi, its poetic Urdu, its so-called “refinement”—is treated as the pinnacle of Indian culture, while native traditions are dismissed as crude or unsophisticated. Even rulers like Akbar and Aurangzeb are romanticized despite clear records of temple desecration, cultural suppression, and religious persecution.

This double colonization—first by the sword, then by the pen—has left India intellectually disarmed. Post-independence narratives, driven by a shallow idea of secularism, chose selective amnesia over historical truth. In the name of unity, facts were buried. In the name of harmony, history was rewritten. The result is a nation that neither knows itself nor teaches its children to value what is theirs.

Reclaiming India’s civilizational identity is not to reject pluralism but to recognize reality. It is to shake off inherited distortions and proudly assert the legitimacy of India’s indigenous traditions, knowledge systems, and worldview. It is to stop seeking validation from the very cultures that once sought to erase us. India does not need to be a pale imitation of the West or a nostalgic replica of its conquerors. It needs to be what it truly is—a civilization with the capacity to illuminate, not imitate.

Only by breaking these mental shackles can India complete the journey it began in 1947. Independence was the first step. Decolonization—authentic, ruthless, and unapologetic—is long overdue.

Global Decolonization and the Indian Paradox

Many other nations that have suffered under colonial domination—particularly in Latin America and Africa—have shown remarkable resolve to culturally decolonize after gaining independence. Despite resistance from entrenched elites, both regions have actively worked to dismantle the empire’s psychological and institutional legacies.

In Latin America, cultural decolonization took shape through vibrant Indigenous and Afro-descendant movements that pushed back against the dominance of Eurocentric models inherited from Spanish and Portuguese rule. Countries like Bolivia and Ecuador led the way in integrating native worldviews into national identity. Under President Evo Morales, Bolivia officially recognized 36 Indigenous languages and institutionalized Andean concepts like Sumak Kawsay (“good living”) into governance.[1] Mexico, too, has renewed its focus on its pre-Hispanic civilizations, celebrating their contributions through education, museums, and public discourse. In Brazil, Afro-rooted festivals such as Festa de Iemanjá—inspired by Yoruba spirituality—have reclaimed space and visibility, reversing centuries of cultural erasure.[2]

Cultural revival was integral to the independence movements of the mid-20th century in Africa. Leaders like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah emphasized “mental decolonization,” while writers such as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o rejected colonial languages, favoring Indigenous expression.[3] Tanzania embraced Swahili to foster postcolonial unity, and South Africa reasserted traditional governance practices like the Indaba.[4] The explosion of Afrobeats, Nollywood, and African fashion onto the global stage illustrates a confident cultural resurgence grounded in authenticity.

Given how far many once colonized nations have come in reclaiming their cultural roots, one can’t help but ask: Why has India, of all nations, made so little effort in this direction? Why has a civilization grounded in dharma, pluralism, and spiritual inquiry continued to define itself through Western paradigms? Why do its education system, institutions, and intellectual discourse echo Western frameworks while its civilizational knowledge is often dismissed as outdated, unscientific, or superstitious?

This civilizational amnesia didn’t happen by accident—it was deliberately shaped. The following sections explore the ideological, political, and cultural roots of this widespread indifference.

The Nehruvian Blueprint: A Civilizational Mismatch

Although a central figure in India’s freedom struggle and the architect of its early post-independence polity, Jawaharlal Nehru was ideologically shaped by European Enlightenment rationalism, Fabian socialism, and British liberal education. Educated at Harrow, Eton, and later at Trinity College, Cambridge, Nehru imbibed the values of modernity, secularism, and scientific progress that were dominant in early 20th-century European thought. His political imagination aligned more with the European nation-state model than India’s civilizational ethos. In his seminal work The Discovery of India (1946), while Nehru acknowledges India’s cultural heritage, he largely interprets it through a rationalist and Eurocentric lens, often portraying India’s spiritual traditions as impediments to progress rather than as the foundational source of resilience and unity.[5]

Nehru’s model of nation-building was heavily statist, centralized, secular, and modernist. Institutions established during the British Raj—such as the Indian Civil Services, the legal and education systems, and the structure of parliamentary democracy—were largely retained, often without significant ideological adaptation to reflect Indic worldviews. Indigenous knowledge systems—such as Ayurveda, classical Indian logic (Nyaya), and traditional education networks like pathshalas and gurukuls—were systematically de-emphasized in favor of Western scientific paradigms[6]. Temples, historically functioning as educational, social, and economic centers in Indian society, were brought under state control through various Hindu Religious Endowment Acts (notably absent for other religions) and were often treated with bureaucratic suspicion[7]. Oral traditions, community memory, and local historical narratives were dismissed as anecdotal or mythological rather than being treated as legitimate sources of civilizational history.

Scholars like Dharampal and Rajiv Malhotra have rigorously critiqued the ideological framework inherited from Nehru, highlighting its corrosive impact on Indian civilizational identity. Dharampal’s The Beautiful Tree (1983) unearthed evidence of vibrant Indigenous education systems flourishing before British rule, directly challenging colonial and postcolonial myths of India’s civilizational decline. He argued that post-independence India not only adopted the colonial administrative apparatus but also internalized its epistemic biases, particularly the dismissal of traditional knowledge systems as regressive or unscientific.

Expanding this critique, Malhotra, through seminal works like Being Different[8] and Breaking India (both 2011), asserts that Nehru’s embrace of Western secularism severed India from its dharmic moorings. The state’s dogmatic emphasis on a “scientific temper,” he contends, came at the expense of metaphysical inquiry and ritual tradition—the very essence of India’s spiritual heritage. Far from being neutral, Nehruvian secularism functioned as a Western ideological import that actively marginalized Hindu worldviews in education, public discourse, and governance.

This rupture—wherein the modern Indian state defined itself in contrast to its own civilizational roots—produced a profound identity crisis. Rather than nurturing a modernity grounded in dharma, the Nehruvian project birthed a deracinated elite and a society alienated from its cultural inheritance. Over time, this fostered a state structure suspicious of indigenous spirituality while valorizing imported ideologies—be they Western liberalism or Marxist materialism—as the only legitimate expressions of modern thought.

Indira Gandhi and the Leftward Drift

Indira Gandhi’s prime ministership marked a significant acceleration of ideological centralization[9]. Following her break from the Congress Syndicate in 1969, she steered the Congress (R) toward a populist-socialist narrative, aligning closely with Marxist frameworks. Her “Garibi Hatao” campaign was more than a slogan—it was a strategic pivot toward class-based politics that resonated with the Left[10].

This ideological realignment crystallized in the early 1970s through a tacit but powerful alliance with the Communist Party of India (CPI). Marxist ideologues and sympathizers were appointed to key posts in the Ministries of Education and Information & Broadcasting, granting them unparalleled influence over curricula, media, and cultural policy. The result was the systematic institutionalization of Marxist historiography within Indian academia and bureaucracy[11].

Prominent Marxist historians like Irfan Habib and Romila Thapar came to dominate Indian historical scholarship[12]. Their works reframed Indian history almost exclusively through the lens of economic structures, class conflict, and political patronage, largely sidelining metaphysical, civilizational, and dharmic dimensions.

Habib’s The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1963) typifies this approach, analyzing the Mughal era through economic mechanisms and class relations while eschewing religious or civilizational frameworks. Islamic rulers like Aurangzeb are interpreted as rational state actors rather than ideological zealots, downplaying religious motivations behind temple desecrations or social policies[13].

Similarly, Thapar’s Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (2002) foregrounds political and material conditions over spiritual or civilizational dynamics. Her dismissal of the Gupta period as a “Golden Age” reflects a deliberate departure from any narrative that could inspire cultural pride or continuity. The dharmic ethos that once defined India’s past is consistently treated as peripheral, if not problematic.

The ideological capture of Indian historiography was entrenched through state institutions like NCERT, ICHR, and public universities—especially during the 1970s and 1980s[14]. The 1982 NCERT guidelines became the cornerstone of this transformation. Ostensibly aimed at curbing “communalism,” these directives codified a rigid Marxist-secular narrative with far-reaching consequences:

• Celebration of ancient Indian achievements was curbed, forbidding “over-glorification” and stifling national pride.
• The Gupta Empire was stripped of its “Golden Age” status despite its historic contributions to science, literature, and governance.
• Islamic rulers, particularly Aurangzeb, could not be depicted as religious zealots, even when their own records proved otherwise.
• The Hindu-Muslim conflict was to be framed purely in political terms, erasing theological and civilizational dimensions.
• Figures like Shivaji were denied heroic representation, reducing his resistance to Islamic expansionism to mere “regional chauvinism.”

These measures did more than distort historical facts—they systematically erased India’s dharmic legacy from public memory. Scholars such as Arun Shourie (Eminent Historians, 1998), Meenakshi Jain (Flame of the Forest, 2021), and Rajiv Malhotra have exposed how this monopolistic academic environment marginalized alternative perspectives, silencing voices rooted in dharmic and nationalist paradigms.

Shourie, in particular, underscores how academic and media platforms became ideological battlegrounds, with Leftist historians using their state-backed dominance to exclude dissenters. Thus, the Ministries of Education and I&B ceased functioning as neutral institutions and became active agents in shaping national consciousness through a Marxist lens.

The Emergency (1975–77) further entrenched this culture of centralized thought. Indira Gandhi’s direct censorship and authoritarian control over the media deepened the state’s ideological stranglehold. Conformity to the Marxist-secular consensus was not merely encouraged—it was enforced. Intellectuals, educators, and journalists who deviated were branded as “communal,” “reactionary,” or worse.

Thinkers like Koenraad Elst and Sankrant Sanu argue that this long-standing ideological entrenchment has deeply damaged India’s cultural psyche. Generations of Indians have grown up alienated from their own history, conditioned to view dharmic thought as primitive and to idolize Eurocentric ideologies as progressive. This inversion of civilizational priorities has produced a rootless and intellectually dependent nation.

The Soviet Factor

India’s growing alignment with the Soviet Union during the Cold War was pivotal in entrenching Marxist ideology within Indian institutions. The Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation (1971) marked more than just a strategic partnership; it symbolized a broader ideological and cultural convergence. While the treaty guaranteed Soviet backing in areas like defense, heavy industry, and international diplomacy—especially during the Bangladesh Liberation War—it also laid the groundwork for a deep intellectual and cultural infusion of Soviet-style socialism into Indian society[15].

Through this alliance, Soviet soft power began to permeate Indian intellectual life in subtle yet profound ways. State-sponsored academic exchange programs, heavily funded by Soviet scholarships, sent Indian students, professors, and civil servants to Moscow, Leningrad, and other Soviet academic centers, where they were systematically trained in Marxist-Leninist thought[16]. Upon returning, many scholars took up influential positions in Indian universities, think tanks, and civil services, reinforcing a worldview steeped in dialectical materialism, class struggle, and historical determinism.

Soviet literature and cinema, translated into English, Hindi, and regional languages, flooded Indian public libraries and bookstores. Popular publications like Sputnik, Misha, and Soviet Land circulated widely, especially among the youth. These media vehicles were not merely informative—they were propagandistic tools of cultural engineering. Through stories of heroic workers, collective farms, and revolutionary scientists, the Soviet Union projected an image of a utopian, atheistic society built on the triumph of the proletariat and the inevitability of historical materialism.

Indian children’s literature, too, was not immune. Soviet-inspired storybooks and illustrations often replaced mythological or dharmic themes with tales extolling communal farming, factory work, and the abolition of religion. These narratives subtly reoriented cultural values from spiritual transcendence and dharma to economic productivity and class solidarity.

Journalism and academia followed suit. Marxist interpretations of history, politics, and society became normative in intellectual circles, and alternative paradigms—especially those rooted in Indic metaphysics or spiritual traditions—were dismissed as backward or “communal.” The Soviet Union’s model of state-sponsored intellectual conformity, already admired by India’s socialist establishment, found fertile ground in India’s expanding bureaucracy and educational institutions.

By the 1980s, Soviet soft power had successfully reinforced a cultural shift away from India’s dharmic roots and toward a form of atheistic socialism that redefined modernity in strictly materialist terms. This alignment did not merely reflect geopolitical strategy—it fundamentally shaped how generations of Indians were taught to view their history, culture, and civilizational identity.

Bollywood: Cultural Reengineering Through Entertainment

The film industry, arguably the most influential cultural force in post-independence India, emerged as a powerful instrument for shaping collective consciousness, and it was soon co-opted into promoting a distorted secular narrative aligned with Nehruvian and Leftist ideologies. Under the guise of national integration and secularism, filmmakers such as B.R. Chopra, Yash Chopra, and later Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar crafted emotionally charged narratives that subtly but systematically vilified Hindu symbols while romanticizing Islamic culture and glorifying secular Muslim characters[17].

Early films like Dhool Ka Phool (1959) set the tone by portraying a Muslim character as the moral compass of a fragmented society, famously asserting “Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isaai – hum sab hain bhai bhai,” thus reinforcing the state-sponsored illusion that all religious identities are equal and interchangeable, while implicitly criticizing Hindu orthodoxy as regressive[18]. In Veer Zaara (2004), the romance between an Indian Hindu man and a Pakistani Muslim woman was presented as a symbol of peace, conveniently omitting the historical trauma of Partition, the ideological hostility of Pakistan, or the ongoing persecution of minorities in Islamic states.

More recently, Pathaan (2023), starring Shah Rukh Khan, continued this tradition by recasting the Muslim male as a patriotic savior, while the Hindu identity—if present at all—was reduced to tokenism or antagonism. The use of Islamic names, motifs, and cultural signifiers was treated with reverence and grandeur, while Hindu rituals, attire, and iconography were often relegated to the background, caricatured, or portrayed as symbols of intolerance[19].

This trend reflects what scholar Koenraad Elst has identified as a deliberate “aesthetic Islamization” of popular culture, wherein Muslim characters are shown as noble, poetic, and cosmopolitan. In contrast, Hindu characters—especially those with religious or nationalist inclinations—are typecast as either naïve, superstitious, or fanatical. Over time, this narrative architecture embedded a subconscious civilizational bias within the Indian psyche, encouraging self-alienation, historical amnesia, and a sense of moral confusion regarding one’s own cultural heritage.

The larger consequence of this cinematic ideology has been the internalization of a distorted secularism that equates Hindu assertiveness with extremism while celebrating minority identity politics as symbols of liberalism and pluralism. As generations of Indians grew up watching these films, Bollywood became not just a source of entertainment but a mechanism of cultural reprogramming, furthering the Marxist-secular project of deracinating Indian society from its dharmic and historical roots.

Toward a Civilizational Renaissance

India’s decolonization remains incomplete, not due to logistical constraints but because of an entrenched intellectual, aesthetic, and political elite that has substituted dharmic identity with imported ideologies. The toxic combination of Nehru’s Eurocentric statism, Indira’s alliance with the CPI, the Marxist capture of historical discourse, and Bollywood’s cultural betrayal has ensured that India remains a nation in exile from its own past.

True decolonization will require a systematic and courageous re-engagement with Indic knowledge systems, civilizational narratives, and historical truths. It calls for academic reform, textbook cleansing, cultural revival, and policy realignment. Only through such a civilizational renaissance can India reclaim its rightful place, not merely as a modern state but as an awakened civilization.

Citations

[1] Gudynas, Eduardo. “Buen Vivir: Today’s Tomorrow.” Development, vol. 54, no. 4, 2011, pp. 441–447. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41616852

[2] Miranda, Beatriz. “The Whitewashing of Yoruba Goddess Iemanjá in Brazil.” Refinery29, 2 Feb. 2023, https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2023/02/11275093/whitewashing-black-goddess-iemanja-brazil-sculpture

[3] Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey, 1986

[4] Topan, Farouk. “Tanzania: The Development of Swahili as a National and Official Language.” Language and National Identity in Africa, edited by Andrew Simpson, Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 252–266. https://academic.oup.com/book/48461/chapter/421398994

[5]Jawaharlal Nehru’s “The Discovery of India” – A Critical Review (Stop Hindudvesha; 2021); https://stophindudvesha.org/jawaharlal-nehrus-the-discovery-of-india-a-critical-review/

[6] Bridging Ancient Wisdom and Modern Academia: Indian Knowledge Systems in Higher Learning; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/386371330_Bridging_Ancient_Wisdom_and_Modern_Academia_Indian_Knowledge_Systems_in_Higher_Learning

[7] Government Control over Religious and Charitable Endowments; https://lexpeeps.in/government-control-over-religious-and-charitable-endowments/

[8] Dharampal’s ‘The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century’; https://www.indica.today/reviews/dharampals-the-beautiful-tree-indigenous-traditional-indian-education-in-the-eighteenth-century/

[9] Indira Gandhi: A nation builder with some flaws; https://mainstreamweekly.net/article11820.html

[10] History Headline: 1971 and now, a tale of slogans; https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/history-headline-1971-elections-2019-indira-gandhi-congress-narendra-modi-bjp-lok-sabha-polls-2019-5674388/

[11] The Architects of Intellectual Treason: The Left Narrative of Myths, Manipulations and National Disunity; https://organiser.org/2025/02/14/278055/bharat/the-architects-of-intellectual-treason-the-left-narrative-of-myths-manipulations-and-national-disunity/

[12] Introduction to The Theory and Practice of Marxist History Writing in India: Indira Gandhi’s Forgotten Time Capsule; https://www.dharmadispatch.in/commentary/introduction-to-the-theory-and-practice-of-marxist-history-writing-in-india-indira-gandhis-forgotten-time-capsule/

[13] Marxist Destruction of Indian History – Episode 7: Exposing Irfan Habib; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFHUwLRlCK0

[14] The Story of Injecting Marxist Propaganda in History and Humanities Textbooks; https://www.dharmadispatch.in/commentary/the-story-of-injecting-marxist-propaganda-in-history-and-humanities-textbooks/

[15] The Main Drivers of Soviet Foreign Policy Towards India, 1955-1991; https://tnsr.org/2024/11/the-main-drivers-of-soviet-foreign-policy-towards-india-1955-1991/

[16] Universities in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union thought giving in to government demands would save their independence; https://www.thestandard.com.hk/world-news/article/300198/

[17] From Namaste to Salaam…The Sordid Saga of Bollywood’s Islamization; https://stophindudvesha.org/from-namaste-to-salaamthe-sordid-saga-of-bollywoods-islamization/

[18] ibid.

[19] ibid.