Priyamvada Gopal's vision for India.

Priyamvada Gopal is a Senior Lecturer at Cambridge by way of J.N.U. She says-
‘my wish for the next 50 years of Indian independence is…’ a full and real decolonization of India, one which has yet to take place.'

This seems odd. There was never a full or real colonisation of India. How could there be a decolonisation of it? 

Gopal appears to be channeling Ngugi, circa 1968, who wanted Nairobi University to rename its Dept. of English and include more African writers on its curriculum. Ngugi had lost family members to the anti Mau Mau campaign and was living in a country where there were still plenty of big White landlords who had acquired Kikuyu tribal land within living memory. He was also on a Marxist trajectory and so his petition wasn't entirely silly.

Ngugi deserves praise because he switched from writing in English to writing in his mother tongue- that too in a complex and difficult way which contributed to improved orthography- but had to continue this practice in exile abroad- which inevitably meant that he lost contact with Kenyan youth. Still, he is a great patriot who has retained his Kenyan passport and who praises the tremendous progress his country has made.
He did pay a visit to Kenya some years after the death of President Daniel Arap Moi, but, tragically, was the victim of a supposed 'robbery' during the course of which he was beaten and his wife was raped.  This failed to embitter or terrorise the couple.

Sadly, Gikuyu or even Swahili literature has scarcely flourished. Kenya has a very young population whose infectious 'creole', called Sheng, has spread across borders. This generation has no memory of the Mau Mau- which was pretty brutal in any case- and they don't read Ngugi or his son, who is also a writer, albeit only in English.

Ngugi, did have some currency in the Eighties amongst American or British people of African descent who had never actually set foot on the mother continent. I recall attending a Swahili Class in Notting Hill but it didn't last long. Our generation settled into a middle class rut and only got back in touch with our ancestral tongues after mid life spiritual crises.

Within Africa, an early English language novel of Ngugi's was translated into Shona by an author who made a direct equation between Zimbabwe's successful Chimurenga and Kenya's failed Mau Mau. Young people in Zimbabwe, thirty years ago, were enthused by Ngugi. They, and those of their children who remain in Mugabe's Marxist paradise, have paid a very high price for that enthusiasm.  'Decolonising the mind' is mischievous nonsense worthy only of Mobutu type kleptocrats.

Kenyans, like Indians, want good governance, an independent Judiciary, and sensible economic policies. They don't want Ngugi's stupid shite.

Gopal, who studied at JNU, does. She says-

I would like to see a country that truly breaks from the legacies and toxic afterlife of empire, and not still deploying economic systems, political institutions and repressive tactics inherited from the British empire. 

One can refuse to accept a legacy. Indeed, it would be irrational not to reject one that is toxic. Empire's don't have an afterlife- nothing does- at least, that is the Scientific consensus. Perhaps Gopal, whose degrees are in worthless subjects, believes in ghosts or zombies or some other 'toxic' type of afterlife. Still, even in comic books, there is always some way to exorcise those ghosts or decapitate those zombies. 

Gopal takes a different view. She believes that India has an economic system inherited from the British. It does not. Even Britain does not have an economic system inherited from the Imperial era. No country does. The world has changed greatly since those bitter post war years.

Gopal wants India to get rid of political institutions inherited from the British Empire. Whatever can she mean? No political institution that existed in 1947 has survived intact to this day. Yes, there were Legislative assemblies- but they weren't elected on a Universal franchise. Perhaps Gopal means the Congress Party. But it has changed out of all recognition.

What about Gopal's notion that some 'repressive tactics' survive as an  inheritance from the Raj? Surely that is well founded? The answer, I'm afraid, is no. After the fall of Indira Gandhi the Judiciary clarified matters such that Raj era repressive measures were judged to be unconstitutional. Thus they were replaced by the wholly un-British jugaard expedient of 'encounter killing', not to mention politically instrumentalized terrorism and rioting and ethnic cleansing. 

Since that time, an activist Judiciary has increasingly circumscribed the power of the Executive in a manner which the Raj, almost from its inception, prohibited. Unlike Pakistan, there has never been a 'doctrine of necessity' or 'state of exception' in Indian Jurisprudence- though, no doubt, certain Leftist Chief Justices in the Seventies thought otherwise.

India does certainly have tremendous capacity and willingness to repress sociopathic nutters but rather than relying on any legacy it is careful to keep up to date with the latest technological and tactical developments in other countries which face similar threats. Indeed, in this field, it is ahead of the curve relative to the British in some respects.

Gopal says-  I would like to see what many who fought for independence did aspire to but were not able to see fulfilled: a community where malnourishment and food deprivation are a distant memory; 
Urm...does Gopal think there was anybody at all who actually wanted to see people starve? Why? What would be their motivation? 
As a species we are all better off if every one of us is well fed and healthy. If some are badly fed their immunity will decline and they will fall ill. Those illnesses may be contagious and may affect us or our families. 
where corporations are not allowed to plunder the environment and natural resources at the expense of adivasi and other communities;
Plundering means stealing. Why would anybody want to live in a world where some plunderers are allowed to get away with stealing? After all, we all have some possessions or entitlements or residuary control rights which we don't want stolen from us.
What does it matter whether it is a corporation or a government department or a religious sect or a criminal gang which plunders us? What's important is that we don't want to be robbed by anybody. That's why we have laws against theft and unjust enrichment and so forth. It is in our collective interest to see those laws enforced no matter where we live.
 where the democratic aspirations of the people of Kashmir are honoured as was once promised, 
If the 'democratic aspirations' of the people of Kashmir involve secession from the Indian Union then, under the Constitution, they won't be honoured at all. Gopal may want to see them honoured- perhaps she doesn't like Kashmiris and would like to get shot of them- but in that case she should want to see a fundamental change in the Indian constitution such that a right of secession is granted to every constituent part of India. But, this would mean that if a particular province wants to go in for ethnic cleansing then it can do so. Is this what Gopal wants to see? Well, she can see it already in Pakistan. 

Gopal wants an India
where profit is not the driving force of the economy with a wide gap between rich and poor, 
so she must really hate England and must consider America to be Hell on Earth. No doubt she is packing her bags to leave. But where will she go? North Korea?


Gopal has left India- good for her, she is obeying Adam Smith's invisible hand in a Globalised market- but she still wants something for India. What? It is a linguistic reform such that
 democracy does not mean the sway of the majority religious community
What would she prefer democracy to mean? My own suggestion is that democracy should mean everyone having their own butler who is like a highly trained ninja and has magical powers. Once this happens, no individual would need to belong to a family or caste network so as to hedge against uncertainty.
So caste will not continue to form the basis for inequities and violence-coz our Butlers would just sort everything out between them. In short, I would like to see an India that truly breaks from the hierarchies of power, wealth and violence that the imperial era consolidated
One such hierarchy 'consolidated' by the Imperial era was of Race and Language. Gopal, it seems, would like to see the back of Sonia- who is European- and Rahul- who studied at Cambridge and whose first language is English. It seems Gopal is a Modi bakht who wants 'Congress Mukth Bharat'. 

Gopal, 
 fantastical though it may sound, (wants) a community that is truly diverse in equality, committed to economic justice, and deeply democratic in ways that empower ordinary people not corporations and majority communities.
At a minimum, this involves everyone having their own Butler with ninja skills and magical powers.

Why is Gopal wasting her time teaching English? She should write fairy stories.  I hope Theresa May gives her a magical Butler so that she can fulfil her potential.