PANAJI: Observing that the British colonial administration created a disparity between Indian cities and countryside, which in turn, resulted in a cultural chasm between the two, the celebrated actor and playwright, Girish Karnad on Monday said that the present-day electronic media has definitely succeeded in killing this distance.

“Though it is hard to predict as to where the electronic revolution would lead the country to, equality of communication is bound to emerge from it in the modern day India,” he added.
Delivering a lecture on ‘Colonialism and Culture’ at the third DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas 2010 at Kala Academy, Karnad also stated that we must accept the fact about Indians being partly willing to imitate their colonial masters just as the British rulers tried to induce a slave mentality in natives.
Earlier, the Festival of Ideas organised by the department of art and culture and dedicated to the memory of the iconic Goan scholar, economist, historian and archaeologist, late D D Kosambi, was inaugurated by the Chief Minister, Mr Digambar Kamat, in the presence of the Chief Secretary, Mr Sanjay Srivastava.
Sticking to British colonialism out of all the other European colonialisms - French, Portuguese and Dutch - experienced by various parts of the country, Karnad said that the British created three major colonial cities in India, namely Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, and generated distances between the cities and countryside, which did not exist till then. “Soon after, the continuity of values, which was present between the then existing Indian cities and the hinterlands, as well as set of values shared by the urban and rural population of this country, all gradually disappeared,” he lamented. 
Citing the influence of British colonial rulers on Indian theatre, music and dance, Karnad observed that meritocracy made its mark in British India and there was change in public attitude towards the prevailing forms of entertainment, all of which till then was socially downscaled. He also maintained that every art form, which had emerged in rural India, became urban phenomenon and furthermore was ‘snatched’ from those lower class people who had preserved these over centuries, to be subsequently dominated by upper class.
“Take for example, the theatre, which in British India was dominated by Brahmins or CKPs - Kirloskar, Khadilkar, Gadkari - in Maharashtra or Bhadralok, the elite class in Bengal,” Karnad stated, further maintaining that the traditional painters/ artisans faced oblivion once art schools were opened by British rulers and anglicised urban middle class pushed their way into these schools.
The speaker also pointed out that dance, which was kept alive by Devdasis, the Sumanglis or temple dancers, first in temples and then in courts of the princely states, degenerated into prostitution while the music institutes like Madras Music Academy began re-interpretation of the prevailing dance forms, and after sanitising them, taught only the non-Devdasi students.
Also touching upon the Indian architecture, Karnad said that once it was decided to shift the British India capital from Calcutta to Delhi, a team of British architects led by Edwin Lutyens designed a new political and administrative area, known as New Delhi, to house the government buildings, all of which were created through non-Indian architectural styles. “However, the last nail on the coffin of the Indian architecture was hit by the French architect, Le Corbusier, who designed the city of Chandigarh upon Pt Nehru’s insistence that the design of the city should be unfretted by Indian traditions,” he mentioned.
In the final leg of his lecture, Karnad observed that a number of new technologies also arrived in British India such as printing which revolutionised the field of text including religious scriptures, photography which co-existed with painting, gramophone recording which brought out music from royal courts to market and finally, talkies which in the initial stage had more songs than dialogues.
“These innovations pushed all frontiers of Indian culture into areas that did not exist,” he noted, further maintaining that in the early 1990s, when the sky opened and countless satellite channels poured their contents into the Indian drawing rooms, contrary to the fear that ‘Murdochisation’ of Indian culture was on the cards, more and more programmes came out in vernacular languages. “This occurrence proved one thing - though we needed English as the language of education, jobs and administration, it was found that when it came to crying, weeping and laughing, mother tongue had no alternative,” he concluded. 
Replying to a question from audience as regards the ‘Mumbai for Mumbaikars’ campaign of Shiv Sena, Karnad said that all major cities including Bangalore are experiencing the influx. “If I was an old Mumbaikar, I would have definitely been concerned with such an invasion,” he added.
The Chief Minister, in his speech said that the Festival of Ideas was getting popular, and the government was now thinking of organising the festival lectures in various other languages like Marathi and Hindi. He also said that a thought is being given to organising the Festival of Ideas in other places around Goa. The noted educationist and NCERT director, Prof Krishna Kumar will deliver a lecture on ‘The Child and the State’, at the Festival of Ideas on February 9.