Maha Bharat: Episode 39

Why does India have a Ministry of Culture?

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What comes to your mind when you think of Indian culture? Do you think of our heritage, art, music? But any point, do you ever think of the Government and a Ministry of Culture?

The interesting fact is that in our country, our government has an important role to play when it comes to our culture. If you dig a little deeper into it, you realise that even culture needs a certain amount of policy and regulation.

In this episode, we’ll find out how exactly the government involves itself with the arts and culture in our country, and answer the question — Why does India have a Ministry of Culture?

Show Notes

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Full Transcript of Episode 39 –

How would you define Indian culture?

What comes to your mind when I ask you to think of our culture, heritage, art, music — Maybe you’re thinking of some of our ancient heritage sites, our festivals, art exhibitions … after all, there is no dearth of cultural experiences in India, right? 

But if you think about it, it is difficult to define the word “culture”. One way to think of it is “the way we live our life”: our language, traditions, food … the music we listen to, the art we create. A lot of this is borrowed from our ancestors. Think about the language you speak at home or your favourite family recipe …  

Culture goes through changes and evolves with time. 

Yeh toh humein maloom hai. But, when I asked you to think about our  arts and culture, did it remind you of our government?

No? Me neither! 

But the interesting fact is that in our country, the government has an important role to play when it comes to our culture. It even has a whole ministry devoted to this: The Ministry of Culture. 

Railway, finance, energy, health — in sab ki ministry ke barein mein toh humne suna hai. To some extent, we all know what these ministries do. But the Ministry of Culture? We don’t hear about it as often. 

But, doston, even culture needs a certain amount of policy and regulation. 

In this episode, we’ll find out how exactly the government involves itself with the arts and culture in our country.

By the end, we’ll answer a simple question: Why does India have a Ministry of Culture?

Tangible and intangible culture — yaani, aise parts of culture jise dekh sakte hai, chhu sakte hai aur aise jise nahi chhu sakte hai. 

That’s how the Ministry of Culture divides culture and heritage in our country!

Ancient ruins of palaces, heritage sites, old manuscripts are some of the tangible parts of our culture. And then there’s music, language, rituals, traditions — which are intangible, but just as important to a culture. 

And where does the government come in?

The Ministry of Culture is a department of the government whose mission towards our culture can be described in two words: preservation and promotion —— Hamari sanskriti ki raksha aur prachaar.

It is important to preserve our culture – yaani, hamari sanskriti ko bachake/raksha karke rakhna, because we have a very rich history! 

The history of the Indian subcontinent has been recorded in manuscripts, books, photographs, artefacts and even monuments. We call this our heritage. It is this heritage that influences our culture, our way of life, even today. 

With its resources and knowledge, the government aims to preserve years and years of our heritage by keeping parts of our culture intact and protected. Over the years, this has been done by building or supporting museums and archives.

It also aims to promote our culture — by organizing events, celebrations and spreading awareness. 

The Ministry of Culture is a part of our government administration. So while it cannot make laws, it is given the responsibility of ensuring that laws related to our culture and heritage are followed. 

Doston, culture and law is an interesting, unlikely combination! Maybe it doesn’t occur to us right away, but the government has a lot of responsibility as well as control over how our country’s history has been preserved, and how we celebrate it today. 

Apart from the Ministry of Culture, India’s culture also finds itself in other parts of our government and how the government works. For example, the government uses certain parts of our culture such as tourism, food, festivals to strengthen our relationship with other countries.  

We call this cultural diplomacy! When Prime Minister Modi spoke about the International Day of Yoga in the United Nations — or when Barack Obama was served a traditional Indian meal at the Red Fort … these are all examples of cultural diplomacy. Commonly, culture as a tool of diplomacy is called “soft power”. 

There is a government body that specially looks after using culture for international relations — this is called the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, which comes under the Ministry of External Affairs.

Culture cannot be separated from administration. In fact, in many cases, it makes governments and government relations stronger. While the Ministry of External Affairs promotes Indian culture globally, the Ministry of Culture works to do the same within the country. 

The Ministry of Culture supervises a number of bodies which work in different fields. We’ll look at what these bodies do and why we need them, but to begin with, there’s one you might have heard about.

And it’s the oldest one – older than even the ministry of culture. 

[We hear an audio clip about the archeological survey of India]

The Archeological Survey of India. 

It’s fascinating to think that so much of our history — the answers to so many of our questions — lie underground! 

[We hear a news clip about the ASI’s discoveries]

We’re still making archeological discoveries and understanding our past by digging for ancient remains of our ancestors — but the curiosity about our history started many, many years ago.

In the 1700s, the British rulers in India were curious about the history of the country. Indian festivals, customs, traditions and even food must have seemed so strange to them. The East India Company knew they were going to be here for a long time, and wanted to really know about the country they were going to rule. And what better way to study a country and its people, than to study its culture? 

In 1784, William Jones, a British Judge, set up the Asiatic Society in Bengal. This society encouraged the members to study Indian languages, monuments, manuscripts. It is during this time William Jones identified that Chandragupta Maurya of India was the same as the person the Greeks called Sandrokottos. This helped put together a rough timeline of Indian history for the first time! In the next few decades, members of this society focused on excavating monuments, and studying manuscripts. They were trying to solve the puzzle of Indian history, piece by piece. 

But so far, the government was not involved. It was only in the 1850s that the British government spent a small amount of money to repair old monuments and fund research by individuals. In 1861, the government finally approved a proposal for a formal organization that would look into the archeological history of India. Yaani, an organization that would be devoted to excavating and analyzing monuments and artefacts of the country. 

It was called the Archeological Survey of India, or ASI. The ASI would go on to become one of the most important offices of the Ministry of Culture. Alexander Cunningham was appointed as the first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India. Even today, the ASI is headed by a Director General. Over the years, the work done by ASI has helped us understand our histories and ancient culture so much better.  

The study of monuments and manuscripts has revealed not only the timeline of Indian history, but also how our ancestors lived, what kind of a society they built and how it was carried down from generation to generation. In 1921, the ASI discovered the remains of the Indus Valley Civilization at Harappa and Mohenjodaro, one of the oldest civilizations in the world. Over the years, ASI discovered many other ancient Indian societies. 

But…why all this talk of the Archaeological Survey of India? Because it is independent bodies like the ASI, which have had an important impact on our history and culture, that came together under the Ministry of Culture after independence.

Another such organization, just as old as the ASI is the National Archives of India. You might remember when this happened in 2015.

[We hear a news report about the Netaji’s classified files]

In 2015, the government decided to declassify all files related to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, and make it available to the public. The files were handed over to the National Archives of India, which digitized the files.

The National Archives of India is also an important attached body of the Ministry of Culture. The Archive, matlab ek collection of our oldest records and manuscripts, has also been extremely important in deciphering how India worked before any of us were alive! 

But before our oldest records, was the practice of oral history. Yaani — passing down the knowledge of culture from generation to generation through stories, songs, myths. 

It is the British who started writing down and recording all of these practices and policies. The story of the archives also starts during this era. 

The government administrators found it difficult to keep track of all the records. Papers were collected and stored in different offices, and you can imagine that this caused confusion and congestion. After British Administrators insisted that official records should be stored in a common, grand archive, the Imperial Records Department was built in Kolkata, in 1891. Every law, every record, every entry of the British era has been preserved in these archives. 

Doston, bodies like these developed independently over time in our country. They became the guardians of our culture in different ways. The Archeological Survey, Archives, different museums, libraries and institutes cropped up across the country. These organizations needed to be maintained, too. This is why, after independence, such organizations came under the Government.

If you haven’t heard of the Ministry of Culture as often as other ministries of our government, it might be because it hasn’t always been called that. 

Ministry of Culture ki timeline thodi confusing hai!

I thought all these organizations must have come under a new Ministry, the Ministry of Culture during independence. 

But aisa nahi hua tha. For many years, these organizations were under different ministries. In fact, the Ministry of Culture was also named and renamed several times, sometimes clubbed with other ministries. For instance, in 1961, it was the Ministry of Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs. In 1979, it was clubbed with the Ministry of Education. In 2006, the Ministry of Culture also included Tourism. 

Naam toh khair alag alag rahe hai, but the need to protect and promote cultures in our country has never been doubted. Article 29 of our constitution gives every citizen the right to conserve a distinct language, culture or script. 

Coming back to the Ministry — as of now, we have a defined Ministry of Culture. In the year of 2020-2021, this Ministry was allotted a budget of more than ₹3000 crore. This is distributed across the various organizations that function under the Ministry of Culture.

Ghoom phirke, we’ve finally come to the main question: What is it that the Ministry of Culture does?

Let me answer this question by telling you some of the things that the Ministry has done, recently. 

In 2018, the Archeological Survey Of India was carrying out the conservation of the Khirki Mosque in Delhi, when they found 245 copper coins from the era of Sher Shah Suri! Khair, this might have been an accident — but excavation and research is one of the objectives of this ministry. 

Only a couple of months ago, the Ministry of Culture announced a new project. Prahlad Singh Patel, the Minister of Culture announced in the Lok Sabha that the Ministry has formed a committee of 16 members. This Committee will research and study the evolution of Indian Culture, from 12,000 years ago to today. The committee consists of members who have been a part of the Archaeological Society and Survey of India. 

While there is no disagreeing that such a research project is a great step by the Ministry, there have been valid objections too:

H.D. Kumaraswamy (कुमारस्वामी), the leader of the Janata Dal has pointed out that this committee did not have any women or South Indian members who will have a better understand of Dravidian history. DMK Leader Kanimozhi (कणीमोई) ne bhi representation ka savaal uthaya: why are there no members from religious minorities or the Dalit Community?

What we can understand from this objection (apatti) is that culture is an important and sensitive topic for every citizen. What the Ministry of Culture does — and how it goes about doing these things — affects us all. How? If you look at the debate that this committee has sparked, you will find that many citizens from South India have raised objections. This is because they feel that without representation in the committee, traces of the Dravidian cultures will be erased from history. 

Aur isse kya hoga? Policy decisions that the government takes based on historical information may exclude the history of a very important community of our country! 

The work that the ministry doesn need not always have to be something as big as the discovery of a civilization. 

In the past few years, the Ministry has ensured that all ticketed monuments in the country have an e-ticket system. It carried out satellite mapping of all ASI monuments using ISRO’s help and held dozens of celebrations.

One of the most important objectives of the ministry is that it aims to increase accessibility to various cultural and historical records. Matlab?

In other words, the Ministry of Culture is responsible for Article 29, if you remember. We as citizens must have access to cultural opportunities. By digitizing manuscripts or records — like Netaji’s papers — by including more and more monuments under the ASI circles, the government makes it easier for us, the citizens to learn more about our own culture. By taking libraries, museums and even academies under the wing of this ministry, the entry fee for these places becomes cheaper for us, the citizens. A lot of the projects undertaken by the ministry is to increase this sort of accessibility. Being able to have access to parts of history helps us understand where we come from — it gives us the correct facts of our own origins! 

What the Ministry of Culture does, yeh toh hum samajh gaye. But to answer the question of why we have a ministry of culture, let’s take a step back. 

What is the Indian culture? How do we see it — and how does the world see it?

I found an interview, and this is what the citizens of the UK had to say about India:

[We hear a person interviewing several people]

Interesting, right? In many cases, the world thinks of our culture differently than we do. The India that is portrayed to them is different, and culture is a part of this.

Remember when we talked about cultural diplomacy? This is where the government comes in. Through organizations such as the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, the government tries to send Indian artists and performers around the world. Think of them as representatives of our culture! Together, the ICCR and the Ministry of Culture as parts of the government that help preserve our culture in the country, as well as use culture as soft power to change how the world thinks about us. 

But has the government been able to achieve this?

Shashi Tharoor, a Congress MP who has been an international diplomat for many years now, often talks about the vast advantages of Soft Power that India can and should use. And we are actively doing this.

Did you know that we have 36 Indian Cultural Centres across the world? These are like branches of the ICCR, which promote Indian festivals, arts, celebrations in the countries they’re situated in. 

Over the years, certain elements of our culture have given India a positive image. The world thinks of Bollywood when it thinks of India. From our global hit movies to our actors who travel the whole world to shoot and perform. All this adds to our “soft power”. In fact, we  produce the most number of films in the world! 

Recently, Prime Minister Modiji did a lot to promote yoga across the world, and that is great, but is that enough? And a more important question, is it comprehensive? 

We need a ministry of culture not only to preserve our culture, but also to celebrate it out in the world. Celebrate not only Yoga, or spirituality, or bollywood, but traditions and arts that are the basis of our culture. 

What would happen if India did not have a ministry of Culture?

There is no simple or direct answer to this. But I think the more important question is if we didn’t have a central body to overlook and take care of the many many collections of our manuscripts, records, artifacts; the hundreds of ancient monuments and structures — what would happen to them? 

Culture isn’t always the first thing we talk about when it comes to public policy. But from the examples we talked about today, it’s difficult to imagine a government without a ministry of culture. To discover, preserve and give us access to parts of our culture and history is an important responsibility of the government.

That’s all I have for you this week! I hope we learnt something new about the lesser-known parts of our government. I’ll be back next week with a new episode of Maha Bharat. 

Credits

Narrated by – Dhruv Rathee
Producer – Gaurav Vaz
Written by – Anushka Mukherjee and Gaurav Vaz
Title Track Design – Abhijith Nath
Audio Production – Madhav Ayachit