The practice of changing the names of places, cities, roads in the country is not new. It has been going on since independence. An independent country has the right to claim its cultural and historical heritage. But the recent renaming of Mughal Gardens to Amrit Udyan was undesirable in my view. Because Babur may have come to India from Uzbekistan in 1526, but unlike the British, the Mughals had, over a process of several centuries, been assimilated into the fabric of religiously diverse India. At the same time, the horticulturist named William Musto, who created the Mughal Gardens, did so on the pattern of the traditional gardens of the Mughals.

But the important question here is, apart from changing the names of places, what other efforts have we made to embrace our cultural heritage? Our education system still operates in the colonial mold, there has been little change in it since the British era. Our history-books have been written in an inappropriate manner.

For example, the great emperor Krishnadevaraya or Rajaraja Chola I of the Vijayanagara Empire is not given enough importance. There have been very few attempts to study the political insights described in Kautilya's Arthashastra or the Shantiparva of the Mahabharata. The Bhakti period lasted for six centuries and during this time the best poetry of Bhakti school was composed, but it is given a very minor place in our educational curriculum.

The great contributions of Indian civilization are confined to the periphery in the departments of philosophy, where western thinkers still dominate. Many people are not aware of the genius of philosophers like Jaimini, Kapil, Gautam, Kanad, Patanjali, Shankar. The remarkable achievements of Nalanda University find almost no mention in our educational curriculum.

The contribution of Indian mathematicians and astronomers is neglected in science education. Many texts of grammar, word-etymology, philology including Panini's Ashtadhyayi are neglected. Everyone has heard the name of Shakespeare in our elite schools, but hardly anyone has read Kalidas. Even in our airlines, only English language newspapers are given place.

Epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata do not find place in our educational imagination. The insights of Tulsidas and Tiruvallur are sidelined. Academic seriousness is not discussed on the four Ashrams, Gita's selfless work, religion-meaning-work-salvation. Vastushastra is not given place in the study of architecture.

Bharatamuni's Natyashastra—probably the world's first such comprehensive treatise on the arts—written before 200 AD is also almost poorly known. The students of aesthetics do not have knowledge of rasa-paripak. Our cultural infrastructure is also not well planned. The country lacks world class auditoriums and conference halls.

Even the Siri Fort Auditorium in Delhi does not meet international standards. Our historical monuments are in a deplorable condition. No one to inquire about museums. There is lack of proper display, cataloguing. Only a few thousand people visit the National Gallery of Modern Art and the National Museum. In comparison, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Louvre in Paris draw 2.5 million visitors a year, while the Tate in London draws 4 million.

But all this requires resources. The expenditure incurred by the Ministry of Culture in 2019-20 was only 0.012 percent of our GDP. In 2021, Rs 451 crore was given to the Ministry of Culture, which was 15 percent less than the allocation of the previous year.

This is when the cultural budget of 2020 was revised in the middle of the year and reduced by 30 percent and only marginally increased in the latest budget. In short, culture is not our priority. Even the National Cultural Fund is almost defunct now.

In 2019-20, the expenditure of the Ministry of Culture was only 0.012 percent of our GDP. The 2020 cultural budget was revised in the middle of the year and reduced by 30 percent. Culture is not our priority.

स्त्रोत : बीबीसी