Hindu India Or Digital India? Choice Is Yours

They're joined at the hip: the superficial modernity of Digital India and a deep, unspoken 'Hindutva'

- Nissim Mannathukkaren

“I know, to achieve the vision of Digital India, the government must also start thinking a bit like you (Silicon Valley).”

—Narendra Modi

“We will cleanse every area of public discourse that has been westernised and where Indian culture and civilisation need to be restored—be it the history we read, our cultural heritage or our institutes that have been polluted over years.”

—Mahesh Sharma, MoS for culture, Government of India

If there is one characteristic that can define India since 1991, it is the fundamental disjunction between the scientific-technical and the economic on the one side, and the ethical/moral and the social/public good on the other. The latter are sacrificial lambs at the altar of a neo-liberal, market-led model of development that can be essentially termed as technicism. In this conception, development is merely reduced to economic growth and progress in science and technology rather than a broader understanding of human or planetary well-being. Of course, science itself is not pursued for its revolutionary implications, while technology is merely a panacea for practical needs. Both are seen in a vacuum, quarantined from social contexts.

While this tendency is not unique to India, under the present Narendra Modi-led regime, it acquires a radically new feature. Technicism is married to a virulent and aggressive cultural agenda. A Digital India is sought to be ushered in, but premised on the revival of the great Hindu civilisation. The attempt to reach the pinnacle of economic and scientific development is accompanied by the project of cultural “cleansing”. But development and culture mirror each other—in yoking culture to technicism, culture itself becomes mechanical, losing its vitality.