Time to drop 'Lord' title for British rulers: BJP MP pushes for ‘decolonizing’ Indian textbooks
BJP MP Sujeeth Kumar urged the Indian government to eliminate the colonial honorific 'Lord' from historical references to British officials in textbooks.
BJP parliamentarian Sujeeth Kumar on Friday called on the Union government to drop the honorific “Lord” when mentioning former British Viceroys and Governor Generals in textbooks, NCERT material, official papers and government websites. He argued that continuing to use the term keeps alive a “colonial hangover” even decades after India gained freedom.
Raising the matter during Zero Hour in the Rajya Sabha, Kumar said he discovered the widespread use of the title after checking a range of government and educational sources, said a report by news agency PTI.
A quick survey of these documents and websites was enough to show how common this usage still is, he noted.
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He pointed out that NCERT history books for Classes 8 and 12 routinely refer to British administrators as Lord Curzon, Lord Mountbatten, Lord Dalhousie, Lord Leighton and others.
According to him, the terminology persists even on official platforms, including those of the Ministry of Culture, the Press Information Bureau, the Archaeological Survey of India and the website of Bihar’s Raj Bhavan, now renamed Lok Bhavan, said the report.
During colonial rule, titles like ‘Lord’ were instruments of imperial propaganda, meant to impose notions of British superiority, and these labels were invented by the British, for the British, to serve British interests, Kumar said, as per the report.
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He questioned the need to continue giving British officials an elevated status, especially when many were responsible for atrocities in India, while homegrown freedom fighters have never been accorded such titles.
Kumar argued that a mature and inclusive democracy like India should refrain from maintaining such colonial-era practices, which, he said, undermine the spirit of equality and conflict with constitutional values.
He cited the renaming of Rajpath to Kartavya Path by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as an example of consciously moving away from colonial nomenclature and toward names that reflect national ideals and civic duty.
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Kumar also referred to the Prime Minister’s Independence Day address, where Modi outlined the Panch Pran for the Amrit Kal period leading up to 2047. One of these national pledges stresses the removal of all remnants of a “slave mentality.”
(With inputs from PTI)
