80 years free, India’s biggest independence challenge is its bureaucracy with colonial mindset

Tomorrow, we celebrate the 80th Independence Day, with the nation defying the doomsday sayers and moving forward towards the 2047 goal of a developed nation.

Remembering the horrors of 1947 Partition, where no less than two million Indians were slaughtered, PM Modi today took to X to remind the citizens that only cowards leave their future to fate, while asking the countrymen to contribute to the nation’s growth through courage, enterprise, persistence and hard work.

While the Centre and the BJP ruled state governments have made efforts to remove traces of colonial servitude since the five pledges, symbols of most ruthless conquerors of India’s dark past are still celebrated in the name of diversity and inclusivity. Some of them still occupy free rent space as the foundation of public policy even today, particularly in education and the social sector.

One of the biggest symbols of the colonial past is the Indian bureaucracy, which has been the slowest to reform itself and continues to increase the cost of doing business in India through lethargy and, more often than not, corrupt practices. If India wants to achieve the 2047 dream of a developed country, a total overhaul of Indian bureaucracy is required, as the corrupt must be thrown out and merit must be rewarded. Only PM Modi has the will and determination to do so, as his political base still rocks.

While there has been an effort to view India’s past with pink glasses, the chaos and mayhem of the past three centuries have been glossed over, with marauders from Iran and Afghanistan putting India to the sword and looting it to the bare bones. Ahmed Shah Abdali, after the sack of Delhi and Mathura during the 1757 campaign, took loot back to Kandahar in 28000 camels with not one lifting his finger from Attock to Agra. The British occupation was even more horrible as the country was economically, politically and culturally raped for nearly 200 years.

Today, a rising China, which also suffered a lot in foreign invasions and occupation, makes it a point to remind its adversaries of the past century, like imperial Japan and Korea, to apologise for the excesses committed and remind them that the horrors of the colonial past have not been forgotten. Forget the reparation of nearly USD 43 trillion which the British looted from India, have we even made the English apologise for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, 1943 Bengal famine and the Partition of India based on the two-nation theory? Millions of innocent lives were snuffed out in these catastrophic events, but India and its rulers continued to suffer from humongous historical amnesia. China only suffered a century of humiliation, but India suffered a millennium of dishonour, degradation and subjugation.

The Indian colonial mindset has been strengthened by the political and bureaucratic leadership who have been sending their children to study and settle abroad since Independence for better economic prospects. China today has put a bar on the career growth of any official whose children have studied in the West.

With rising India facing challenges and hurdles from both the democratic US and Communist China, the country needs decisive reforms, not endless debates and never-ending protests, for a better future. Hard decisions are required to make India an industrial-military power, as its main adversary is its northern neighbour with an ever-festering boundary dispute, triggered by the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950. After making Pakistan into a supplicant state, China has made very serious inroads into Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka in order to throttle India and curtail its global ambitions. The West is no different, as the Anglo-Saxon policy of supporting Pakistan and generating discontent within India has not changed. India’s dark and horrid past alone should ensure that impotent politics and colonial mindset are thrown out into the Bay of Bengal.