The author emphasizes how every stratum of our society bears a colonial stamp and why it is essential to judge all of our social structures, religion, polity, economics, and law using a decolonial approach and rejecting European-centric ideas. This, in addition to a forced displacement of the indigenous education systems, also resulted in a top down imposition of Christianity, and in some cases, even a subtle and covert ‘Christianising’ of the native faith.

The author is somewhat vague on this front, claiming that such ideas would become clarified only after decoloniality is applied to the accumulated wisdom. But let us also remember that we forgot the existence of the democratic and republican institutions of ancient India, of the Arthashastra, Ashoka and Aryabhatta, and had to be retaught our history by the colonial power.Sai Deepak, which is exemplary to say the least, I want to say that this book is not meant for ordinary readers at all. They challenged the notion of Bharat not being a united entity before their arrival, and the author cites various examples for this. The polarization associated with such a controversial postulation may be gauged by contrasting opinions espoused by other Western authorities and Indologists.

He makes no attempt to understand that the humanities are inherently subjective and all the evidence that is provided by scholars of humanities is purely interpretations of observations and should be judged based on their utility in real life rather than their ideological underpinnings. He again very clearly demonstrates with original transcriptions of Parliamentary debates, letters between various church officials and British officials and how Christian values were subtly but surely introduced in Bharat and what the intent and ultimate aim was of the Coloniser and how they wanted to achieve that. He also suggests that the coloniality of the middle-eastern conquerors who preceded the British shared the aversion to Indic religions, which were regarded as pagan. The sarcasm in this statement does bring out a widely prevalent malaise – the lack of self-belief in Indian originality and a deeply entrenched colonial mindset.You can verify this from the tens of viral videos at large in which he takes on all questions, however tricky and answers them with ease and precision. A carefully orchestrated substitution of the coloniser’s own values and belief system ensures more or less a total obliteration of the identity of the colonized.

We now have the vast majority of people who have sketchy knowledge of their own culture and read about it in English. The fact that Sai Deepak is an autodidact in so far as this sphere of knowledge goes, makes it all the more fascinating.The lady is mostly a fifth or sixth-generation Catholic whose ancestors were among the ones who were raped, tortured, and murdered. So, despite having a perfectly legitimate POV on issues like CAA (not NRC), Article 370, Triple Talaq abolition etc, the Union BJP govt was unable to put forward coherent and well-constructed arguments.

This substitution ensures that even after unshackling itself from colonialism, a colonized nation charts its future economic, social and cultural trajectory based on the very values and beliefs which it has spent an agonizingly long time, getting rid of. This includes international developments leading to the founding of the League of Nations by Western powers that tangibly impacted this journey. Those commenting that the author is presenting only one side facts, probably havent read much in the book, or have indulged their bias while rating the book.There cannot be a more searing example of the sacred land ontology being elided out of the human consciousness.