Guruji: A drashta –XXXIV
S. Gurumurthy
THE popular impression is that there was irreconcilable ideological difference between Pandit Nehru and Guruji on minorities. This is incorrect, at least partly. In truth, despite divergence at times and on details, there was broad ideological convergence between Guruji and Pandit Nehru on the need to assimilate the minorities. The reason for the perceived differences between Guruji and Nehru could be traced to the contextual compulsions of political Nehru which apolitical Guruji could transcend. While Nehru was dealing with party politics and seeking Muslims votes, Guruji had to do neither. Guruji’s mission was to make the Hindu collective to understand their responsibility to make the Muslims understand their duty to the country.
His appeal was to the Hindu conscience, make them own the country more, and organise themselves to make the nation strong. But, even after suffering the Partition, Nehru did not work to prepare the Hindu mind or Muslims’ on their responsibility to the nation.
On the other hand, continuing the pre-Partition style of politics, Nehru took the Hindu support for granted and was increasingly becoming obsessed with Muslims which led him to appease them more, legitimising minority vote-banks in Indian electoral politics. Pre-Partition, the competition was between the Congress and the League for winning the Muslim mind. Post-Partition this became the competition between political parties for winning the Muslim votes. This distorted and confused Nehru and change his position on Muslims.
Nehru-Guruji Phase I: Convergence
Now guess who speaks? “I am proud of India…because of her ancient magnificent heritage…..her innate culture which flowered through ages, and capacity to draw from other sources and thus add to her own. She was far too strong to be submerged by outside streams, and she was too wise to isolate herself from them, and so there is a continuous synthesis in India’s real history, and the many political changes which have taken place have had little effect on the growth of variegated and yet essentially unified culture. …..I am proud of our inheritance and our ancestors who gave an intellectual and cultural pre-eminence to India.” Note the words. “I am proud” of “India’s ancient magnificent heritage”; its “innate culture that has flowered through the ages”; its “continuous synthesis”; its “essentially unified culture”; “our inheritance and our ancestors”. The core of the RSS ideology of unifying culture, common heritage, and common ancestry are manifest in each one of these words. Is the speaker then Guruji? No. Or Sardar Vallabhai Patel or Dr Rajendra Prasad, whose views were considered closer to Guruji’s. No. The speaker was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.
(1) The occasion was the Convocation of the Aligarh University in 1948. The audience consisted of largely Muslims – the students and faculty of the university. The Aligarh University was regarded as the fountainhead of the movement to create Pakistan.
(2) Keeping this mind, Nehru asked the Muslim students and faculty direct and straight: “How do you feel about this past? Do you feel you are also sharers in it and inheritors of it and, therefore, proud of something that belongs to you as much as to me? Or do you feel alien to it and pass it without understanding it or feeling that strange thrill from the realisation that we are the trustees and inheritors of this vast treasure? …You are Muslims and I am a Hindu. We may adhere to different religious faiths or even to none; but that does not take away from that cultural inheritance that is yours as well as mine. The past holds us together; why should the present or future divide us in spirit?…………India will be a land, as in the past, of many faiths equally honoured and respected, but of one national outlook” Nehru spoke at Aligarh on 24, 1948.
(3) No secular leader or party would ask any of these questions or express any of these thoughts. Only the RSS school of thought continues to perform the task began by Nehru at Aligarh!
Before his address at Aligarh both met sometime in October 1947. According to Guruji, the dialogue between them started with Pandit Nehru asking Guruji ‘why are you always harping upon “Hindu” “Hindu”?’ and saying that “by this you are only shutting yourself within your walls, not allowing the fresh breeze from outside to come in; there should be no walls separating us from the wide world outside. We should pull down all such outdated barriers.” Guruji says: Pandit Nehru was a big man and he spoke with great emotion. I calmly replied, “I totally agree with you that we should allow fresh breeze to come in from all quarters. We should…understand the various ideologies …assimilate what is beneficial to us.
But to do that, is it necessary that we should demolish the walls of our house and bring down the roof on our heads? On the contrary, would it not be wise to keep our house intact and just open the windows and doors to let in the outside breeze? I feel that broadmindedness, if stretched beyond the practical limit, would only end up finishing our national entity. And I must say that it is our so-called narrow national outlook, which will ultimately help raising our nation even while absorbing what is desirable from the outside world.” To this Pandit Nehru replied, “Well I concede that such conviction is needed to put in determined efforts for any cause. I thanked him for conceding at least that much”.
(4) It is evident that Guruji, even as he was uncompromising in espousing the RSS view to Nehru, was seeking common ground with him. Nehru’s later exposition at Aligarh almost endorsed Guruji’s thoughts. Immediately post Partition, there was, thus, considerable identity of views between Guruji and Nehru on minorities.
Guruji-Nehru Phase II: Divergence
Things changed dramatically after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Losing the balance that the high office had imposed on him and without iota of evidence, Nehru openly held the RSS guilty of the crime and banned it. But he was proved wrong not too late. First, investigation by the government, next, the special court judgement and later a judicial commission appointed by the government headed by Nehru himself exonerated the RSS.
(5) Nehru, who had staked his reputation to hold the RSS guilty, was forced unconditionally to remove the ban.
(6) When he banned the RSS, he had sworn not to allow an inch of land for the RSS flag to fly. The judicial vindication of RSS made him even more hostile to RSS. Yet, Guruji bore no hostility to Nehru. On the contrary when there was black flag demonstration against Ndehru in London, he condemned it as a disrespectful act against the nation. The second phase was full of hostile divergence between Guruji and Nehru. In this phase the politician in Nehru subsumed the nationalist and statesman in him. He completely forgot what he spoke at Aligarh, and he began defining secularism as promotion of minorities rather than equal respect for all religions. This hostile phase lasted for over a decade.
Guruji-Nehru Phase III: Convergence
The third phase tending towards convergence between the two again started in the first ever meeting of the National Integration Conference in 1961 when Nehru spoke explicitly about assimilating Muslims and Christians into the Hindu community. This was precisely what Guruji had been urging for decades as part of the mission of the RSS. In his Note to the National Integration Council [NIC] meeting in 1962, and referring to Nehru’s speech on assimilation of minorities in the national integration conference of 1961, Guruji’s said: “Hindu Philosophy, being all comprehensive, has the potency to assimilate non-Hindu communities. Pt Nehru had this in his mind when he said that it is necessary to assimilate the Muslims and Christians into Hindu community in the same manner as invaders like Shakas and Hunas were assimilated in the past. In that speech Pt Nehru has given the right direction for achieving national unity and unifying the various creeds of worship and instilling in them a common point of devotion”.
(7) At the end of his Note, Guruji referred to Nehru government’s minority appeasement policy: “This perverted policy is not only equivalent to discarding the correct direction given by Pt Nehru but negating it.” (8) Here Guruji actually saw convergence between him and Nehru and divergence between Nehru and his government! Afterwards, Nehru wrote a foreword to the second edition [1962] of Rashtrakavi Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s book Sanskriti Ki Char Adhyay. In that foreword which was published in English in Bhavan’s Journal, Nehru again recalled assimilation and said that the dynamic state of synthesis that is assimilation in our history should be revived. Later, in January 1963, Nehru invited the RSS to participate in the Republic Day Parade at New Delhi – an explicit act ending his hostility to the RSS. Afterwards Nehru passed away in May 1964. He did not live long enough to carry the process of reconciliation forward.
The three phases of Nehru-Guruji dialogue pieced together bring out that Nehru was convergent with Guruji in 1948, divergent for over a decade thereafter and became convergent again in 1960s. But Guruji had been consistent always. He never wavered. Nehru finally changed and spoke like Guruji had always been speaking on the need to assimilate minorities into Hindu community, thus vindicating Guruji.
References:
[1] Speech at the Annual Convocation of the Muslim University at Aligarh (U.P) January 24, 1948 Independence and after: A collection of speeches, 1946-1949 Volume 6 of Independence and After; A Collection of Speeches, 1946-1949Publisher: Ayer Publishing, [1971] ISBN: 0836920031, 9780836920031
[2] India’s Partition: The story of imperialism in retreat [p164]Volumes 1467-5013 of Cass series—British foreign and colonial policy India’s Partition: The Story of Imperialism in Retreat, D. N. Panigrahi; Publisher: Routledge, [2004]. ISBN0714656011, 9780714656014]
[3] Ibid [1]
[4] Bunch of Thoughts 1980Ed p130-131
[5] http://www.mycountrymylife.com/excerpts/phase-2.html
[6] Post-Independence India, Volumes 33-50 [p3]Encyclopaedia of political parties: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh; national, regional, local / ed.-in-chief: O.P.Ralhan; Author: Om Prakash Ralhan; Publisher: Anmol Publications PVT. LTD. 1998ISBN8174888659, 9788174888655
[7] Ibid p226
[8] Ibid
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