Fragmented. This is the word that keeps coming back to me, when I think about where India is right now. We are not failing, nor are we doomed just yet. But we are scattered and rather disjointed. We are drifting backwards, while pretending we are marching forward.
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Royal Peacock Barge, 19th Century, Murshidabad, West Bengal, India, from the Bengal Renaissance era. |
We talk about development, about becoming global super power, about reclaiming the lost greatness of our past, but when you actually sit with the reality of it, nothing about it feels pragmatic. The country looks alive on the surface, but underneath that, doesn’t it feel as if there is some sort of hollowness? People are constantly outraged, constantly reacting, constantly searching for something to attach themselves to, but very rarely stopping to think. There is no stillness, no thoughts, no depth. Just the momentum. And a pretty destructive one.
It used to be about politics or media or education or the arts, but not anymore. Now, it’s all of it. Everything. The fragmentation cuts across everything, be it ideas, language, memory, community, or even imagination. You cannot have a functioning society if they no longer even agree on the meaning of basic things. But here, instead of disagreeing, we distrust. We dismiss. We ridicule. We retreat to out silos. And we have normalised this as a sign of strength.
And that is the reason I keep on circling back to this thought: India needs a renaissance. Not in the nostalgic, romantic or vague way we often use that term. I am talking about bringing something back, about waking something up. A cultural and intellectual awakening. Something that is serious and honest, and allows people to think, question, and create again, without being told to fall in line or pick a side.
We did have moments like this before. The Bengal Renaissance, for instance. It was not perfect in every sense, but it was quite necessary. It was a time when people were reading, writing, arguing, translating, and building. There was a real intellectual energy, and it came from the people who refused to be satisfied with how the things were, instead of coming from some systematically laid-out government plans. People believe that ideas and words mattered, that thinking was a responsibility, not a luxury. And these determined people ushered in a new era.
Compare that to now. Most of our institutions are either compromised or tired. Universities are under constant state pressure. Public culture is dominated by posturing. Artists are made to feel like they need to justify their work politically before anyone even looks at it. Writers are cautious. Educators are exhausted. And the people who are still trying to do something meaningful are often doing it quietly, alone, and with very little support.
The worst thing is, there is an entire generation growing up thinking this is normal. That this noise, this outrage cycle, this intellectual emptiness is just how the things are. That being informed means consuming content, that being political means picking a side, and parroting it. That to think too much is to risk being irrelevant.
So yes, I think a renaissance is necessary. But I am under no illusion that it will come quickly, easily, or from above. It will not be triggered by a speech or some sudden or radical shift it government or public policy. It will happen the way these things always do, slowly, unevenly, and from the margins. From the people refusing to give up on the idea that country can be more than this.
And it is already happening, albeit in fragments. You see it in the small independent journals publishing things that don’t fit anywhere else. In translators bringing obscure regional writers into the present. In the artists who do not go viral, but refuse to give up, and still keep making. In students, who are slowly beginning to read between the lines of what they are taught. It is not loud right now, but it truly is real.
What worries me though, is whether these scattered efforts will have the space to grow. Or whether they will be allowed to. Because a renaissance, by its nature, is disruptive, and ironically, even revolutionary. It does not flatter those in power, and it does not comfort the majority either. What it does instead is that it demands new languages, new frameworks, news ways of thinking. And those things are always resisted, especially by the people who benefit from things staying confused and shallow.
But if it happens, if even a small part of the country begins to take this work seriously, it could shift the atmosphere. Not dramatically, but enough to slow the drift. To make thoughts visible again, to make seriousness possible again. And that is all a renaissance really is, a return to seriousness.
But what sort of seriousness. It is not the dull, heavy-handed one. It is the seriousness of the people who care enough to ask better questions, people who are not satisfied with mere slogans. People who want to understand what we are going through, and whether it is worth getting there. That kind of seriousness has to be chosen quietly, and deliberately, by the people. It cannot be manufactured.
So no, I do not think we are anywhere close to a renaissance right now; not for a few decades, at the very least. But I do think that it is possible. And that possibility is something worth holding onto. Because if we don’t believe in that, even as a distant chance, then we have already given up more than we realise.
That is the hope, if there is one.
Worth the time!
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