New Delhi, Sept. 2 -- Former Union Minister of State for External Affairs, journalist and author MJ Akbar speaking at the Bharat Ki Soch dialogue titled, "Shedding our Colonial Vestiges for a Viksit Bharat" in New Delhi argued that "decolonisation should restore India's civilisational confidence while subjecting both inherited and indigenous ideas to the test of evidence, relevance and justice."
Akbar argued that true modernity rests on democracy, freedom of faith and speech, the elimination of poverty, and gender equality, and that India's progress on these fronts forms the real foundation of its development story. This dialogue was a part of Bharat Ki Soch's Mantraṇā series which is Bharat Ki Soch's policy dialogue initiative connecting Indian civilisational thought with contemporary public policy questions
Highlighting the achievements of India's freedom struggle, Akbar pointed out that India evicted British rule while deliberately retaining and reinventing the English language as its own, even as it rejected the colonial framing of "transfer of power."
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.