India that is Bharat: Coloniality, Civilisation, Constitution
India, That Is Bharat, the first book of a comprehensive trilogy, explores the influence of European 'colonial consciousness' (or 'coloniality'), in particular its religious and racial roots, on Bharat as the successor state to the Indic civilisation and the origins of the Indian Constitution. It lays the foundation for its sequels by covering the period between the Age of Discovery, marked by Christopher Columbus' expedition in 1492, and the reshaping of Bharat through a British-made constitution-the Government of India Act of 1919. This includes international developments leading to the founding of the League of Nations by Western powers that tangibly impacted this journey. Further, this work also traces the origins of seemingly universal constructs such as 'toleration', 'secularism' and 'humanism' to Christian political theology. Their subsequent role in subverting the indigenous Indic consciousness through a secularised and universalised Reformation, that is, constitutionalism, is examined. It also puts forth the concept of Middle Eastern coloniality, which preceded its European variant and allies with it in the context of Bharat to advance their shared antipathy towards the Indic worldview.
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Community Reviews
PFS Book Club --- 13th May, 23
Today we reviewed book called “India that is Bharat” by J. Sai Deepak.
Guru started the session with few words’ secularism, coloniality and colonialism. Colonization is a process by which the people of one nation establish colonies in other societies while retaining their bonds with the parent nation, and exploit the colonized societies to benefit their benefit nation. Discussion started before Renaissance called dark age on how Christianity got divided in to Catholics, protestants & Lutheranism. And then it was decided that anybody can practice these three forms of Christianity and termed it as secularism. As per author of book, colonialization was done not only for economic benefits but for proselytizing. Author feels that under the garb of progress and colonialization indigenous thoughts, ontology, epistemology and theology was eliminated intentionally. He feels that india was colonialized three times by Arabs, British and Nehru Marxism after independence. He also feels that nothing has been done in India on post colonization whereas lots of work has been done in Africa and Mexico so that more indigenous thoughts can be worked upon.
Views in this summary are J Sai Deepak understanding of history and was discussed to diversify the genre of books we read.
Yet another amazing session 😊
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