Decolonising Bharat’s cultural narrative: systemic erasure and the politics of heritage diplomacy
Original framing: “Beyond cultural exchange: Reclaiming Bharat’s voice” — bing news
The colonial state actively curated 'Indian culture' to serve administrative and civilisational narratives, as seen in the 1861 establishment of the Archaeological Survey of India and the 1903 Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai. Post-independence, Nehruvian secularism attempted to reconcile pluralism with nation-building, but the 1950 Constitution’s emphasis on 'composite culture' was later co-opted by Hindu nationalist projects. The 1980s 'cultural nationalism' under the BJP’s precursor parties laid the groundwork for today’s state-led heritage diplomacy, where 'voice' is defined by majoritarian frames.
The headline’s framing of 'reclaiming Bharat’s voice' is a symptom of a deeper crisis: a cultural nationalism that equates voice with state-sanctioned narratives while erasing the plural, living traditions that have sustained the subcontinent for millennia.
This project is not new—it is a continuation of colonial taxonomies and Nehruvian secularism’s uneasy compromise with majoritarianism, now repackaged as 'soft power.' The solution lies not in reclaiming a singular voice but in decentralising power: from UNESCO’s gatekeeping to India’s caste-ridden institutions, from elite festivals to community-led archives. Indigenous knowledge, Dalit and Adivasi epistemologies, and spiritual traditions like Bhakti and Sufism offer living alternatives to the frozen 'heritage' the state seeks to preserve. The trickster’s lesson is clear: the absurdity of a monolithic 'Bharatiya' culture is exposed when we centre the margins, where Anansi’s cunning and Hermes’ subversion reveal that 'voice' is always a contested, never a given, terrain.