Thread by @maxratul

One unfortunate long term effect of colonialism on Hindu psyche is the "this is the true X" syndrome.
Current "RW" is majorly a victim of this. Let me try and explain.

https://twitter.com/Anviksiki/status/1400638339376586752

So when the British came and colonised India, the Indian traditional knowledge system was dissected and then subject to a brutal assault by protestant/enlightenment forces. The latter operated with completely different fundamentals compared to Indian processes.

Since the foundation was different, the universal truths for these ideologies were also different.
Let us for example take the concept of the individualism.

The essence of Western liberal thought is that man is at the centre of creation -> ergo individualism, which is essential for post industrial market driven society dependent upon labourers who are also consumers.

Whereas, in Indian context, our life is guided by Varnashrama + Purusharthas, with different duties and objectives at each stage. Individualism, of we can use the word, is only ever encouraged at the final to ashramas, and that too in a completely different context to the west.

Under the British, these two polar different ideologies came in contact with a matter-slave power equation. A lot of people in those times believed that India needed to learn a lot from the West in terms of technology, physical sciences, geography and so on.

Unfortunately, the distinction soon blurred (inevitably one can argue) and soon there were lots of debates in terms of "spirituality". Slowly, a lot of category biases that the evangelical society had against polytheists became defacto markers of supremacy.

In order to counter those biases, a lot of Indic intellectuals feel into the trap of cherry picking certain things from tradition/history, and presenting them as "oh we too have this concept with us."

The problem with this approach is, predictably, is that if you don't control the goalpost, then someone else will keep shifting it for you to chase. Or deny that such a goalpost even exists when you do catch up.

Very soon the effects of playing catch up were obvious-
For many in elite class, rituals became unnecessary, incense became a marker for degeneracy (a bias that harks back to Christian prosecution of pagan Roman/Greek temples) and Sanskrit became oppressive.

Soon this was followed by acceptance of other liberal principles as universal - democracy, secularism etc etc. The process was accelerated by the deracinated cabal that inherited India after 1947.

This was possible due to two reasons- state support of these ideas and failure of Hindu intelligentsia to effectively present in thought and deed an alternative vision that worked in the modern world of industrialised nation states.

While traditionalists like Karpatri ji couldn't expand beyond a certain segment, the inheritors of Jan Sangh failed in a more profoundly intellectual sense.

Like in the old monotheism debates, they began to claim that they had the "true" definition of these universalist ideas. This insanity became the defacto position of parties like BJP on several subjects.

So they said,
We will show you"true secularism."
We will show you "true federalism." We will show you"true freedom of expression".

All the while without pausing to reflect the validity of these premises itself, or their cultural and geopolitical implications.

The otherside, meanwhile, is laughing. They now have complete control over the narrative. Why? Because they don't have the burden of showing "true" version of these things- they just need to shift goalposts and criticize that their enemies are not meeting it.