About Book
In this important book, Pavan Varma looks at the consequence of Empire on the Indian psyche. Drawing upon modern Indian history, contemporary events and personal experience, he examines how and why the legacies of colonialism persist in our everyday life, affecting our language, politics, creative expression and self-image. Over six decades after Independence, English remains the most powerful language in India, and has become a means of social and economic exclusion. Our classical arts and literature continue to be neglected, and our popular culture is mindlessly imitative of western trends. Our cities are dotted with incongruous buildings that owe nothing to indigenous traditions of architecture. For all our bravado as an emerging superpower, we remain unnaturally sensitive to both criticism and praise from the Anglo-Saxon world and hunger for its approval. And outside North Block, the headquarters of free India's Ministry of Home Affairs, a visitor can still read these lines inscribed by the colonial rulers: 'Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty. It is a blessing which must be earned before it can be enjoyed'.
With passion, insight and impeccable logic, Pavan Varma shows why India, and other formerly subject nations, can never truly be free - and certainly not in any position to assume global leadership - unless they reclaim their cultural identity.
About Author
A member of the Indian Foreign Service, Pavan Varma has served in Moscow, in New York at the Indian Mission to the United Nations, in London, where he was Director of the Nehru Centre, and as India's High Commissioner in Cyprus. He is at present India's Ambassador in Bhutan. Pavan Varma's books include Ghalib: The Man, The Times; Krishna: The Playful Divine; The Great Indian Middle Class; The Book of Krishna and Being Indian: Why the 21st Century Will Be, all published by Penguin. He has also translated Gulzar (Selected Poems), Kaifi Azmi (Selected Poems), and Atal Bihari Vajpayee (21 Poems) into English for Penguin.