Time Indians to act, decolonise, reclaim their civilisational sense: Rajiv Malhotra

Hyderabad: How India and Indians should decolonise, take control and reclaim their sense of civilisation?

Addressing a range of issues at a joint media conference here on Monday, the founder of Infinity Foundation and prominent authors Rajiv Malhotra and Prof Vijaya Viswanathan answered, covering a range of issues the country has been facing on multiple fronts.

Malhotra said unlike earlier the current generation is being driven by social media where one has to make their point in two seconds. "Our

civilisation is based on elements which require a lot of concentration, and a lot of attention span, there would be discussions and debates for days. However, there is a degradation of the mind, quality of thinking has gone down these days. When you have such people in a democracy you have to cater to such people to get elected. So politicians' thinking turn low-level. They offer an emotional idea here and there which is simple and everybody can understand. This is the problem of downward spiral of democracy for appeasement of people. This requires them to pick a short-term, quick sensational issues. Since people fall in such a trap they continue to demand more of the same.

He said China has educated three generations of people over the past 50 years. They may not know English, but they are more critical and come up dwelling deep into issues and come up with intelligent answers. Whereas, "Our people engage more in the useless talk with randomly give answers," he added.

He found fault with the education system and lack of proper values in the NCERT and UPSC examinations. Though the country claims to be politically free it is depending on foreign consultants for all kinds of advice telling us about data security, human rights, National Education Policy. We have opened up for others to come and take over the space, he added. He called for allowing foreign universities to set up their campuses without any regulations vis a vis their Indian counterparts, will be nothing more than self-destruction 2.0, if not handled properly, he said.

Malhotra stated that emotional slogans like Viswa Guru and VasudaivaKutumbakam are not sustainable when the country is failing to produce thinking people and competitive people needed today..

Prof Viswanathan said the government and parents are failing to do due diligence while inviting foreign consultants as well as sending their children for overseas education. She cited how Singapore has scrapped its tie-up with prominent Yale University, as that country feels liberal arts and social sciences of the university are divisive and not in interest of the country.

She said most undergraduate students after studying four years of liberal arts even in prestigious universities like Harvard remain jobless. Bringing such subject areas, into Indian universities would result in unskilling youth and "We end up paying to bring up our children to become activists by studying such western-oriented liberal arts."

Responding to a question, Malhotra said either the government or the gurus who wield lot of authority and have followers and are not short of funds, should ignite fire among people to think about the nation. He said the BJP and RSS, as well as organising sakhas could not produce intellectual kshatriyas to lead India. On the other hand the Left has deeply entrenched the academic and intellectual areas. Even after eight years, the current government could not change the syllabi of NCERT and UPSC. Now things are moving at a faster pace at global scale. However, Indian investment in the R&D remains lowest in the world which makes it lag behind in technology.

Supplying IT coolies and following others does not mean owning technology. China provides labour and outsmarts its own clients by learning technology from the US, but also going ahead of that country, he pointed out.