We do not have pride in our glorious past

For a country that boasts of a 5000 year old civilization, we have a shocking sense of history. We allow our heritage to rot through sheer negligence, we do not educate the citizens what our ancestors stood for and we are the worst when it comes to preserving historical items and monuments.

Politicians are shameless when it comes to cornering credit is something we all know. But even by the very low standards of political morality, the false claim by Culture Minister Ambika Soni that Government asked Vijay Mallya to bid for Gandhijis items in US shocking. It is bad enough that the Government hardly did anything to pre empt the auction or to use the diplomatic channel to get back Gandhijis personal articles in the hands of a private collector. Having failed to do so, and after having allowed the incident to become a national embarassment (the seller went to the extend of asking the Indian Government to reduce defense spending and increase healthcare spending in lieu of the exchanging the items) the Indian Government shamelessly tried to take the credit for Vijay Mallya buying the items at the auction for Rs 9 crores. “The Indian government procured the five personal articles of Mahatma Gandhi at a New York auction through the services of industrialist Vijay Mallya as it could not bid directly because of a stay order of the Delhi High Court,” culture minister Ambika Soni said on Friday. She added, “We were working on several options to get the items back. This is a victory for the UPA government.”


The Government would have got away with this with anyone else. But Mallya is a fighter if not anything else. He refuted Ambika Soni immediately, "I bid independently... I wanted to get back the items to the country... I am not sure if anyone was aware that I was bidding,” chairman of the United Breweries Group said. “Nobody from the government advised me on the bid... Our national treasure was up for grabs, for me it was emotional,“ he said.

In any other country, the concerned minister would have been hauled up and asked to resign for stating a falsehood of this proportion publicaly.

But Indian politicians are made of sterner stuff. For them, nothing other than clinging to the power matters. Ethics, morality and righteousness be damned. What else can we expect from Ambika Soni whose boss Sonia Gandhi shamelessly declared that she was Oxford educated when all she did was an English language course in a private institue in Oxford, the same Sonia Gandhi who had again falsely stated that she was an Indian citizen since 1970s when records show that she got the citizenship only post 1984 and who has still not given up her Italian citizenship, or the honourable President, whose husband is a suspected murderer and she herself is a swindler, the nominated Chief Election Commissioner, Navin Chawla, who has been indicted by a judicial commission way back for Emergency excesses and whose Trust has received millions from Congress party, the spokesman Abhishek Singhvi who wanted to confer Bharat Ratna on George Bush, and various Chief Ministers who do everything under the sun to prop up their position.

And typically, many Indians have, instead of applauding Vijay Mallya for beating other bidders fair and square to get the Father of Nations possessions back, have started a slander campaign on the propriety of a liquor baron buying the Gandhi legacy.

We, Indian's, have a Dog in the Manger attitude. Neither will we do anything, nor will we appreciate someone else doing it. We are quick to criticize Richard Attenboroughs Gandhi, but 25 years on, no Indian had come forward to make an Indian Version of Gandhi for our younger generation. The current generation of youngsters know only the Ben Kingsley Gandhi. (By the way, it was a superbly made movie. I still remember many scenes vividly after all these years).

No wonder, in my 8 years of teaching no Indian student has been able to recall the names of All the Presidents and All the Prime Ministers of India.

We just do not have any pride in our glorious past. It is why we will end up being a Great nation but not the Greatest Nation in this world, which we are capable of