The loss of intellectual autonomy (The flawed European notion of identity in terms of religion)

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 The loss of intellectual autonomy (The flawed European notion of identity in terms of religion)

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• The past and the present : Today, young people do not like being told "what to do" or "what to think". Intellectual autonomy - the freedom to form one's beliefs - is widely considered a virtue. But that was not so in the past, when most people were illiterate, and a few controlled the flow of knowledge.
• Democratisation of knowledge : By the end of the 18th century, knowledge became increasingly available to large sections of human society. That led to a reaction from state power that tried to intimidate it. Other factors also worked, like colonialism.
• How the British controlled us : They avoided brute coercion, and adopted crafting an education system to mould our minds. Only the best of our thinkers could escape this system's control - Gandhi and Aurobindo being two good examples.
• What Aurobindo thought : Sri Aurobindo saw that greater European contact was robbing Indians of their original intelligence, as only the European version of culture and knowledge was being accepted and assimilated.
• Loss of intellectual autonomy : That led to a great malady - Indians started losing their power to think independently, and started accepting whatever the "authority" wanted them to - either the European authority, or the fossilized traditional pundits of India. So it was either hyper-weternised modernism or ultra-traditionalism. The power to accept or reject nothing without proper questioning was lost.
• Two cultures meet : So the European culture met the Indian, and a lot of exchange and assimilation happened. Sadly, we have allowed two dangerously alien ideas to control our minds - first is the idea of religion, and second is a particular notion of nation.
• The European religion : If religion is defined as a rigid system of practices, beliefs and doctrines, then it came into existence via Europe, in the 16th and 17th centuries. The colonial powers influenced Indians so much, that we too began thinking in terms of exclusive religious communities, opposed to each other (not just different from each other).
• What was our past like : Indian society did have all the Gods and Goddesses, but the competitive religious feeling was absent. There was a lot of mobility across communities and multiple allegiances existed. That is all over.
• The nation in terms of religion : It first came to be in Spain, in 1492. An ethnic nation was defined in terms of a single religious and linguistic identity. The European religious wars made the idea seep deeper, and with colonialism, the same idea reached India.
• Defining ourselves : Seen from this angle, Indians have started following the European examples, when Europe itself has paid a steep price for those notions. To define oneself narrowly in purely religious terms, and then to conflate it with nation, is a pure European idea. We have lost our intellectual autonomy to even question it.
• Summary : The modern notions of both religion and nation were evolved in the European setting, and colonialism brought it to India, leading to a loss of our own intellectual autonomy.

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