A nation’s progress is not measured by the number of its skyscrapers, but by the stature of its mind. India has changed its skylines, not its premises. Beneath the glass and steel of its cities lies the same ancient submission — to power, to tribe, to myth. The nation that once produced thinkers capable of abstraction has learned to worship obedience as a virtue and dependence as destiny.
Most of the Indians mindset remains feudal — not because kings still rule, but because men still kneel. Authority is not earned through reason or merit but inherited through position, caste, or wealth. The peasant’s loyalty to his landlord has merely changed form; it now appears as the voter’s devotion to his leader, the employee’s worship of his boss, the citizen’s reverence for the bureaucrat. Individual dignity has been replaced by the need for validation from the powerful.
It is also mythological — not in the poetic sense of imagination, but in the moral sense of evasion. Myths that once served as metaphors for human struggle have become instruments of submission. Instead of learning from the epics, people seek permission from them. Truth is not discovered; it is decreed by tradition. A culture that once asked questions of the cosmos now fears questioning its own customs.
And it is patriarchal, because the idea of freedom still ends at the threshold of the family. The man is ruler by birthright; the woman, subject by decree. Honor replaces morality; control replaces respect. The tribe — whether of blood, caste, or religion — demands loyalty not to values but to its survival. Individual conscience is smothered by the collective’s code.
This, then, is India’s tragedy: it has built a republic on a feudal soul. Its constitution promises liberty; its citizens still crave masters. Its economy speaks of growth; its morality whispers obedience.
Yet somewhere within this vast inertia, a different spirit stirs — men and women who refuse to kneel before birth, title, or god; who seek truth not in scripture but in logic; who measure worth not by faith, but by thought and action.
When such minds rise, India will finally enter modernity — not by importing machines or slogans, but by reclaiming the one idea that made civilization possible: the sanctity of the individual mind. Until then, progress will remain decoration — a palace built on medieval foundations.
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