A subtle disinformation capaign had been started by the Britishers immediately after Macaulay's system of education had taken roots in India, to build up the myth that Indian nationalism is a gift of the Britishers. After Independence, this line of thinking was ably taken up by the Leftist and their fellow travellers who consider themselves to be intellectual successors of the Britishers. Leftist concoctions brewed cunningly in the British Universities have been subtly administered to the English educated classes in India, to question the very basis of Indian nationalism. These self appointed intellectual guardians forget that the Indian nation is a much older entity than any of the States who proclaim themselves to be the super-powers. The Indian epics which date back to ancient ages, clearly indicate that the concept and reality of the Indian nation dates back long before the recorded history of the Western world. This concept is an ancient one and is not the gift of any foreign invader. Rig Veda, which is the oldest available literature in the world, states:

Whom should we propitiate
Without oblations
Other than the One
Whose majesty is manifested
By the snow-clad mountains,
By the mighty ocean, the reservoir or rivers,
Whose arms are the directions;
Whose splendour is reflected
By the skies, the earth, the clouds?

(Durga Das Basu's Shorter Constitution of India, Twelfth Edition, published by Prentice-Hall of India Private Ltd.) Basu, a constitutional expert, had very aptly put this stanza from the Rig Veda, which is an ode to the mother-land, before the preface to his monumental treatise on the Indian Constitution. The Constitution is not that of a new-born nation, but of a nation which dates back to the hoary past.

The myth that the Indian nation is a gift of the Britishers, indicates the perverted pattern of thinking created by the English educational system introduced by the British. This myth had been drilled into the people by foreign rulers to give an impression that they were the saviours of the Indians, who had a sub-human existence before the advent of the foreigners. This type of doctoring of young minds by subtle propaganda through school and college text books was one of the weapons of imperialism in its quest for world domination. Even after Independence, we blindly accepted in our educational system the myths and half-truths handed down by the foreigners. An independent country cannot blindly accept the educational system, conceived and implanted by foreigners to continue their dominance of a nation. The system we inherited from the British aimed at creating a climate of mental subjugation and submission. Britishers, with their concept of "White Man's Burden", had a low opinion of their 'subjects' and thought they were doing a great favour to the Indians by imparting English education. The foreign rulers had a low opinion of India and the Indian society and wanted to civilise our society by wiping the slate clean of all our ancient wisdom and knowledge.

Certainly, as in any institution, there were some ills in the Indian society, but there were more merits that were the pillars of our ancient civilization. When educated Indians were set on the path of anglicization they were expected to mould themselves in the image of their rulers. But that not happen. With their intellectual resilience, our forefathers tried to benefit from to get a world view and understanding that a great nation like Indian should not continue under foreign rule. Thus came a sense of nationalism which proved a powerful force to uproot foreign rulers.

People also learnt that the foreign rulers had two sets of value system— one for themselves and another for their 'subjects'. English education gave an opportunity to them to learn language of the rulers and understand that foreigners were ruling over India not by virtue of any intrinsic merit or superiority, but by virtue of their cunningness and art of deception. Early beneficiaries of English education clearly realised that while imbibing that system they should not lose their Indian identity. After the first war of Independence in 1857 the nationalist movement was pioneered by the English educated Indians, who could see through the game of foreigners to keep Indians perpetually in subjugation.

Pioneers like Dadabhai Naoroji and Romesh Dutt, who rose to the most eminent positions available to Indians during the Biritish rule could boldly criticise wrongs of the British administration. Romesh Dutt, one of the earliest members of the Indian Civil Service, rose to the rank of a Divisional Commissioner and could write open letters to the Governor General, Lord Curzon and Secretary of State for India, Lord George Hamilton, pointing out that faulty land-revenue policy and high land taxes have impoverished the Indian peasants, creating famines or famine- like conditions in a number of places. His open letters forced the Governor General in Council to issue Resolution of Land Revenue Administration on January 16, 1902, to check the situation to a certain extent.

The English educated Indians opened eyes of the world to the ancient Indian civilisation. According to the Western concept, the cradle of civilisation was ancient Greece and Rome. Romesh Dutt, in his paper read before the Royal Society of Literature, London on June 14, 1899, said "there are not a few of us, present here tonight, who were taught in our early school days to look for the origin of human civilisation, of philosophy, arts and religion, in the annals of Greece and Rome, some six or seven hundred years before the birth of Christ'... We cannot fix the earliest date of Indian civilisation but we know from records that have been unearthed regarding Babylon and Egypt, that some two or three thousand years before Christ, a Sanskrit-speaking nation, i.e., the ancient Hindus, lived on the banks of the Indus and exported cotton and other products of their land to Babylonia and Egypt". The myth of "white Man's Burden" to civilise the natives, was busted once for all.

Evils in the society were not a special feature in India at the point of time in world history. In the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, highway brigands and groups of marauders roaming about the countryside and terrorising the local populace, was a common feature throughout Europe. It was not that the Indians were a particularly lawless or uncivilised people, it was basically the disturbed conditions. This is part of the recorded history and the contemporary literature of that period bears enough testimony of this. While this was the situation throughout Europe Indian villages enjoyed a peaceful existence and had a system of self-governance. There is no evidence of any large scale disturbance in the countryside and villages were to a great extent free from crime.

The myth of Englishmen civilising the Indians was blown up by English educated Indian nationalists. The ruler devised method of keeping the Indian nation divided and English education was used to highlight evils of the Indian society. The educated Indians were made to feel that they had reasons to be ashamed of their past. The nationalist movement was sought to be projected as a movement of the urban English-educated middle-class who were completely alienated from the masses. While our evils in society were largely highlighted the good and virtuous points were completely submerged in this barrage of criticism and condemnation of everything Indian. This self-flagellation was a new trend set amongst the educated Indians to run down everything Indian. As a country, which had achieved Independence only about fifty years back, but has a long tradition of self-governance of its own, there is a necessity to counter such disinformation campaign. We should realise that although foreign rule had ended, the foreign Universities and media have let loose a campaign to control the thingking process of the Indians. English education, which at one time offered us an opportunity to stand as an equal in the comity of nations, has now been reduced to ridiculing everything Indian and glorify all that comes from the West. It is high time we check such tendencies that are ruining our social fabric and attacking our values and our hoary culture.