To­day, In­dia cel­e­brates its 75th Re­pub­lic Day.

In­dia was once por­trayed as a land of pover­ty with over­pop­u­lat­ed cities filled with idol wor­ship­pers. This nar­ra­tive was pushed by the colonis­ers who plun­dered this land.

Prof Phillip Old­en­burg wrote, “The British rule saw a pol­i­cy of de-in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion in In­dia for the ben­e­fit of British ex­porters which left In­di­ans in pover­ty.” Econ­o­mist An­gus Mad­di­son said, “In­dia’s share of the world econ­o­my went from 24.4 per cent in 1700 to 4.2 per cent in 1950.”

Prof Ja­son Hick­el wrote, “100 mil­lion In­di­ans died pre­ma­ture­ly in the four decades of British rule.”

In­di­ans were left to die of star­va­tion when mil­lions of tonnes of wheat were ex­port­ed to Britain and its set­tler colonies.

His­to­ry shows the mas­sacres, in­ten­tion­al famines, and the use of con­cen­tra­tion camps by the British Em­pire. His­to­ri­an Mike Davis ar­gues that Britain’s im­pe­r­i­al poli­cies “were of­ten the ex­act moral equiv­a­lents of bombs dropped from 18,000 feet.”

In 1943, UK PM Win­ston Churchill said, “I hate In­di­ans. They are a beast­ly peo­ple with a beast­ly re­li­gion. The famine was their own fault for breed­ing like rab­bits.”

When Dr Er­ic Williams wrote on cap­i­tal­ism and slav­ery, In­di­an schol­ars had al­ready writ­ten on coloni­sa­tion and cap­i­tal­ism. Far from ben­e­fit­ing the In­di­an peo­ple, colo­nial­ism was a hu­man tragedy that en­riched the colo­nial mas­ters.

Since 1930, In­di­an politi­cians have adopt­ed a de­c­la­ra­tion of in­de­pen­dence—‘The British gov­ern­ment in In­dia has not on­ly de­prived the In­di­an peo­ple of their free­dom but has based it­self on the ex­ploita­tion of the mass­es, and has ru­ined In­dia eco­nom­i­cal­ly, po­lit­i­cal­ly, cul­tur­al­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly ... There­fore ... In­dia must sev­er the British con­nec­tion and at­tain Pur­na Swaraj or com­plete in­de­pen­dence.’

Re­pub­lic Day marks the achieve­ment of ‘Pur­na Swaraj’ for In­dia.

On Jan­u­ary 22, 2024, In­dia ex­pe­ri­enced a wa­ter­shed mo­ment for Hin­dus with the con­se­cra­tion of the Ram tem­ple in Ay­o­d­hya. A Supreme Court’s ver­dict in No­vem­ber 2019 cleared the ground for the tem­ple to be built at the spot where the Babri Masjid had once stood.

Ay­o­d­hya was the orig­i­nal home of Ram. His rule be­gan near the Sarayu Riv­er. Di­wali, the largest cel­e­brat­ed Hin­du fes­ti­val, marks the end of Ram’s 14-year ex­ile from his king­dom.

Hin­dus have now as­sert­ed their col­lec­tive pow­er and re­claimed their his­tor­i­cal agency.

Chris­t­ian pil­grims vis­it Jerusalem, where Je­sus lived and walked. The Church of the Holy Sepul­chre marks the place where Je­sus was cru­ci­fied, en­tombed, and res­ur­rect­ed. Jews have the West­ern Wall, one of the holi­est places they vis­it. Mus­lims go to Mec­ca, the birth­place of Prophet Muham­mad. At last, Hin­dus now have a revered place in their home­land.

In the De­cem­ber 16, 2023, is­sue of the Hin­dus­tan Times, Anirudh Bhat­tacharya re­vealed the ob­jec­tions of Cana­di­ans over a 55-foot-tall Hanu­man stat­ue be­ing built in Bramp­ton. He not­ed, “The trends of grow­ing an­ti-im­mi­gra­tion sen­ti­ment in Cana­da as well as that es­ca­lat­ing Hindu­pho­bia.”

There have been many neg­a­tive nar­ra­tives from the lib­er­al An­glo-Sax­on Glob­al news me­dia about the Ram tem­ple. They al­so adopt­ed an an­ti-Naren­dra Mo­di stance, de­scrib­ing him as au­thor­i­tar­i­an, mega­lo­ma­ni­ac and com­mu­nal. DW, BBC, and Al Ja­reeza have been guilty of push­ing sub­tle but steady an­ti-In­di­an pro­pa­gan­da.

Sev­en­ty-three-year-old Mo­di, now bid­ding for a third term in of­fice as prime min­is­ter, has suc­cess­ful­ly pushed Hin­du na­tion­al­ism to the cen­tre of In­di­an pol­i­tics. The pop­u­la­tion de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed him on his promise to build this tem­ple, end Kash­mir and Jam­mu’s au­ton­o­my, de­vel­op the econ­o­my, have a uni­form civ­il code, and clamp down on cor­rup­tion.

Mo­di has pushed In­dia to be­come a ma­jor man­u­fac­tur­ing hub. In­dia is now the fifth-largest econ­o­my, sur­pass­ing the UK and France.

In its lat­est World Eco­nom­ic League Ta­ble re­port, the Cen­tre for Eco­nom­ics and Busi­ness Re­search pre­dict­ed that In­dia will sus­tain ro­bust growth, av­er­ag­ing 6.5 per cent from 2024 to 2028, to sur­pass Japan and Ger­many as the world’s third-largest econ­o­my by 2032, and will emerge as the largest eco­nom­ic su­per­pow­er by the end of the cen­tu­ry, with the gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) 90 per cent larg­er than Chi­na’s and 30 per cent larg­er than the US.

Some may not like this: the West­ern cap­i­tal­ists who fear change to their eco­nom­ic or­der, those want­i­ng to main­tain their geopo­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests, Chi­na and the US, who may re­sent be­ing sur­passed as eco­nom­ic gi­ants, the re­li­gious zealots who spend mil­lions of dol­lars to con­vert ‘Hin­du pa­gans’.

In­di­ans may have walked on the moon but they need to tread cau­tious­ly dur­ing their eco­nom­ic as­cent. We may see at­tempts to desta­bilise In­dia by fund­ing and sup­port­ing Kash­mir and Sikh mil­i­tants. The West­ern press has al­ready start­ed its se­lec­tive pro­pa­gan­da, es­pous­ing its lib­er­al ide­ol­o­gy while ig­nor­ing the will of In­dia’s elec­torate.

In­dia may have got­ten its free­dom 75 years ago but on Jan­u­ary 22, 2024, In­dia got its soul.