Postcolonial Destitution

While going through the Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry, edited by Vinay Dharwadker and A.K. Ramanujan (New Delhi: OUP, 2007), I came across this Tamil poem entitled "Situation" by Kaa Naa Subramanyam. It has been translated into English by the poet. I quote the poem in its entirety:

Introduced
to the Upanishads
by T.S. Eliot;

and to Tagore
by the early
Pound;

and to the Indian Tradition
by Max Mueller
(late of the Bhavan);

and to
Indian dance
by Bowers;

and to
Indian art
by what's-his-name;

and to the Tamil classics
by Danielou
(or was it Pope?):

neither flesh
nor fish blood
nor stone totem-pole;

vociferous
in thoughts
not his own;

eloquent in words
not his own
('The age demanded...').

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Doesn't this poem effectively show how rootless we Indians are nowadays? Doesn't it compel us to think how our understanding of our culture, customs and traditions is not through our own modes of experience but through the works of Westerners? Even the language in which you and I think, talk and dream is not our own. It is the English language that we have learned to worship. I am not completely at ease with the argument that English has stayed long enough in the country to be regarded as an Indian language. I believe such arguments are made by those who have a knowledge of the language and who stand to gain if a special status is accorded to English. It is certainly not the view of that overwhelming majority of the Indian population who speak, think and dream in the "vernacular" languages. But the other side of the story is that we cannot really do without English. It is the only cement that can hold together a linguistically-divided India. English also presents itself as the lone weapon to keep in check the ever-rising menace of Hindi chauvinism. But I don't want to go into the question of English in India. Since the topic is too vast and nuanced, I will reserve it for some other time.

Anyhow, we are indeed in a sorry state of affairs. And we have two centuries of British colonisation to thank for it. Professor D. Venkat Rao, my teacher at the English and Foreign Languages University, would perhaps describe the strange condition as "postcolonial destitution", where "destitution in matters of thinking concerns the inability to know what questions to ask, what inquiries to pursue," and "European cultural intellectual past continues implicitly and explicitly to regulate postcolonial attitudes toward the host culture." "Host culture" in our context is India. What we need at the moment is a synthesis of ideas both Eastern and Western. Mind you, I mean the best ideas in both the cultures. Does that sound familiar? Yes, of course. The leaders of the Bengal Renaissance advocated that sort of an arrangement. So, it's more than time that we follow their advice. Let us not ape the West blindly all the time. We have our own systems of thought and knowledge and we would do well to go back to them. Parents who think it is fashionable to make their children babble and wail in the English language may kindly take into account the fact that if one knows the mother tongue well other languages can be learned without much effort.