‘No words to describe the sweetness of his voice’: A gender activist from Kerala writes about Tagore
· Scroll
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In college, I found myself questioning some of the ideas that I had accepted till then as undiluted truth. The British authorities who were totally ignorant of Indian culture and heritage gave us history lessons that made students feel an unending admiration towards the British past and sheer ennui towards India.
The Indian history that we studied told us nothing about how the essential aspects of mathematics, medicine, astrology, logic, economics, grammar, philosophy, and politics reached the West via the ancient Greeks and Arabs. We learned nothing about how the ivory, teak, peacocks, and spices from Kerala graced Solomon’s capital. Nothing was mentioned about how our country was the seat of a glorious civilisation at a time when the inhabitants of northern Europe were passing their days like cavemen. In other words, found no trace of anything that would make us feel proud of our country.
We blindly believed made-up tales like that of the “Black Hole” of Calcutta. Stories like the one about the Battle of Plassey, in which, allegedly, a small troop of British soldiers defeated a vast Indian army tales that were puffed up with colonial conceit and self-importance – predominated in history lessons. These stories, which turned, without any shame,...