Most important cultural resource India needs to protect is its pluralism: Gopalkrishna Gandhi
The Hindu
The tools of protection and preservation have not advanced and are exactly what they were 50-100 years ago, but the tools of distortion have expanded exponentially: Mr. Gandhi
The most important cultural resource that India has to protect, foster and offer to the world is its legacy of pluralism, belief in all its multiple faith and traditions, Gopalkrishna Gandhi has said, cautioning that he fears this may be squandered by “sheer default and neglect.”
Mr. Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, was in conversation with economist Swaminathan Aiyar and venture capitalist Asha Jadeja Motwani at a panel discussion at the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) New York.
The panel discussion at the Asia Society in New York on Wednesday was moderated by Ramu Damodaran, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Social and Economic Progress in New Delhi and Honorary Adviser to the Permanent Observer Mission of the University for Peace to the United Nations.
“The most important cultural resource of India which it has to protect and which it has to foster and to offer to the world is the legacy of India's pluralism, India's belief in all its multiple faith, traditions…. and that I feel and fear is something which we may squander by sheer default and neglect," Mr. Gandhi, a former governor of West Bengal, cautioned.
“And I am very conscious now of the multiple uses of the very word ‘culture’ in today's political narrative. Culture can become today something that is very different from what it meant to my generation or the generation before mine. It can mean something which is very narrow and very intolerant,” Mr. Gandhi said.
Mr. Aiyar said that historically, conquerors destroyed heritage.
“It was a sign of showing your power, your might that you went to the palaces, the temples, the places of worship, destroyed them to show how great and powerful you were,” he said.