India surging forward under PM’s visionary leadership : Ravi

Chennai, Apr 4 : India under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is surging forward, Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi said today. Inaugurating the 29th session of the Annual Indian Art History Congress (IAHC) on “Indian Iconography with Special Emphasis on Regional Developments” jointly organised by the Indian Arty History Congress, Guwahati and the C.P.Ramaswami Aiyar Institute of Indological Research (CPRIIR) here, he said in recent years under the visionary leadership of the Prime Minister, India is surging forward. He urged the art historians to interpret our glorious past in ways that helps India’s resurgence. He also emphasised that India’s culture has been rooted in spirituality and it is necessary to interpret our cultural heritage not merely in terms of its architectural and sculptural beauty but also its spirituality which runs across the century and manifests with regional variations. He said India’s resurgence needed resurgence in culture and spirituality as well. “In the resurgence of India our glorious timeless civilization background has a great role to play. This country went through a traumatic phase of foreign invasion and colonisation, conscious deliberate attempts to distort and mischievously destroy its age-old institutions”, he added. Recalling how under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian National Congress had on on January 26, 1930, passed the landmark resolution that the British must leave the soil of India because their rule had ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually. He lamented that while there had been some emphasis on economic growth, little was done for the restorations of cultural and spiritual glory of India. The Governor recalled how the British Government, as advised by Prof. Adam Ferguson of Edinburg versity and an adviser to the Government on Colonial Affairs had adopted this colonial policy of transfer of as much wealth as speedily as possible from India to U.K and destroyed the cultural and spiritual institutions of India, besides its economy. They had fabricated India’s past in such a way as to make Indians ashamed of their past. The British had marshalled their intellectual resources in this regard and justified the colonisation of India. Karl Marx, through a series of essays, in the New York daily Tribune in August 1852 had justified British colonisation of India as a necessary evil. He had outlined two tasks for the British in India, one, a total annihilation of the Indian social order and second, laying the material foundation for a Western material civilization, Ravi said. GV 1837

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