India that is Bharat

This is my first review of any book.

I am writing this review because reading this book has made me feel like I have glitched out of the matrix (colonialism), though I have not escaped it, I can see through it easily. The book starts by explaining the advent of the Age of Discovery and the expedition that Columbus did. The author very consciously chooses the literature of foreign authors, barring a handful of scholars such as Ram Swarup, Sitaram Goel, Dharampal, Koenraad Elst, Dr. S.N. Balagangadhara, and Dr. Jakob De Roover. Very few seemed interested in challenging the Western-normative framework that informed these so-called universal standards, as Dr. Roover and his works do, to make his point. Maybe he does it on point to strike the colonial mindset to seek validation from the reader, or there can be some academic reason to it too.

He starts Chapter 1 by explaining what is coloniality and how it affects us, and what are the different schools of anti-colonialism:
The modernist school puts stock in Eurocentric universalism and believes in its continued relevance.
The postmodern school rejects this universalist claim predominantly in the realm of culture.
The postcolonial school, which is in the neighborhood of the postmodern school critiques colonialism and its Eurocentrism primarily in the political realm, albeit without deconstructing its fundamentals.
The decolonial school, which goes beyond the postcolonial school by identifying the existence of European coloniality even after decolonization, dissects its OET foundations and seeks to unshackle indigeneity from the universal fictions of coloniality.

Then, the author continues with the explanation that the colonized civilization has to reside in the framework of the Europeans, even if they break free from their territorial boundaries. Here, he has made a strict distinction for the reader, such as why the consciousness of a civilization matters more than its territorial expansion. He also makes a point about how the native elite views his people after having absorbed this idea, leading to alienation from the rest of the colonized society. The Western-normative framework has delivered all the benefits of colonialism and more, without having to assume the same degree of burden and responsibility as colonialism.
He then continues explaining the Protestant reform and how it created a vision of different countries trying to compete for the colonization of the rest of the world, making Western imperialism more widespread. Regardless of which country came to India, they all had the same perspective towards us – not cultured, not well-mannered, a superstitious society, and they considered Hinduism as a religion of heathens and its practitioners as infidels.

Sai Deepak has pointed out that the relationship of the native societies with nature was exterminated by the colonizer. When the battles were won by the colonizer, he would make sure to destroy the nature that was worshipped by the natives. For example, in “The Destruction of Irminsul by Charlemagne (1882) by Heinrich Leutemann,” a holy wood at Eresburg, sacred to the Saxons, was taken in battle by Charlemagne, and the victorious Christian forces destroyed the holy Irminsul, a tall pillar representing the world tree Yggdrasil. Surviving Saxon boys were carried off to be indoctrinated and trained as missionaries.

Richard Drayton, in “Nature’s Government,” argued that the commodification of nature was the driving force behind imperialism and colonialism, which gave birth to capitalism and universalist developmentalism. This is because, to the Christian European colonizer, the rest of the world represented ‘wildness’, so he took it upon himself to ‘civilize’ populations and subdue nature by introducing them to ‘rationality’ and ‘order’.

This also shows why such societies crumbled so easily, as the absence of a written record made it easy for them to erase the natives’ history and write their versions of it. Even when such societies survived the violence of colonization, the linguistic policies and education policies were made to recast the society in the colonial fold of the colonizer, making the effect of Western societies a continuous influence or something you are living in – that’s why I referred to it as the matrix in the opening paragraphs; this is a direct case of the Indian subcontinent.

Then, Jai Deepak explains that India as a Civilization is not just a territorial integrity but also a consciousness that differentiates it from the rest of the world. Bharat has different languages and cultures, but still, there is an underlying thread that connects us and everyone in this country. This is not due to the Constitution. This consciousness can be traced back to Chanakya’s time.

Here, the constitution must be a document that addresses the civilizational issues and accepts them, rather than seeing itself as a document to enlighten or civilize the nation. Civilization was before the Constitution, and it is a product of it. It can’t be a caveat to the civilization identity of the people

He also touches upon Islamic colonization and how it affects us, but it is expanded on in the second book. The formation of the League of Nations in 1919 and the 1st constitution drafted by the Britishers directly coincide and have a Christian origin. The League of Nations was clear with its intent to colonize the world. The author has done an incredible job of citing literature, letters, and parliamentary discussions directly from the horse’s mouth – the colonizer.

He also tries to explain how Bharat is a dharmic civilization and entity that is connected by pilgrimages and why certain pilgrimages in India are home to specific natural sanctities or places. He has cited literature from Radha Kumar Mukherjee, discussions in the constitutional assembly before the drafting of the constitution, and why the name ‘Bharat’ for India was selected.

In the end, I would like to say this – the book will change our way of looking at everything, whether it is Hollywood, your favorite authors, your favorite freedom fighters, or even the books in the education you are reading, and how everything is a nexus to subdue the civilizations in your brain and choke consciousness that goes along with it. I give you a stern warning that if you are reading such books, be careful and be patient because the level of truth revealed to you may not necessarily be digestible or may seem like something that is made up, which, in the end, proves that the colonizer has successfully colonized you. In the end, “it’s a paradox for eternity.