Since the Ayodhya movement erupted in the late 1980s, a kind of crystal battleline has been drawn underscoring two divergent ideological worldviews in the domain of Indian politics and intelligentsia. The processing reached its zenith after 2014 as if the two adversaries had been fielded in the battle of Kurukhetra.
Misusing Bapu’s Name
The Left-Liberal eco-system’s assumption is “this is the land of Gandhi, not of Godse”. Their satirical comment is aimed at irritating the saffron shade, and hence they take refuge in Gandhiji to marginalise their opponent. While Gandhiji is everybody’s ideal, let us take the discourse to decipher the underlying significance of their pejorative logic. While by Gandhi they connote the Hindu-Muslim unity as the citadel assuming to manufacture a new India emerging out of the debris of colonialism, the expression of the latter is supposed to represent the cause of Hindutva aiming at vivisecting the Indian nation; they argue. But the root of Indian nationalism unfolds the reverse. Hindutva integrates the nation envisioning the entire panorama of Indian history sprouting since seven millennia of its civilisational history. So it is to be testified which perception represents the veritable Indianness in the driving force of history.
The very foundation day of Indian National Congress was abuzz with the euphoria “Long live Queen Victoria”. On the contrary, Dr Keshav Hedgewar was apprehensive of accepting sweets in the school on the eve of the platinum jubilee of the Queen’s coronation. This contradiction spells volumes pointing out the elusive mindset of the two streams. The Congress passing through the Moderates internalised the colonial super-structure as the “inscrutable wisdom of Providence”, while surfacing of the Nationalist elements in the Congress exhorted the pristine past of India as hoary. On the contrary, the advent of Gandhian era endeavoured to syncretise the two schools esoterically as the third version on Indian nationalism. But added with Nehruvian dilution the mainstream of Indian nationalism pushed forward a hybrid kind of secularism jettisoning the entire wavelength of the glorious past of India.
Hindus Are Soul of Bharat
The thought structure of the nationalists may be summed up as Dayananda, Bankim, Vivekananda course followed by the ideals of Tilak, Aurobindo, Annie Besant posturing the cause of Hindutva as the bedrock of Indian nationalism. It was hardly majority-minority syndrome, but involved the question of the very essence of Indian nationalism so much so that Ramsay Macdonald had articulated India as the body and Hindu as the soul in his Foreword to The Fundamental Unity of India by RK Mukherjee. While this school tried to infuse self-confidence to buttress patriotism, the secular camp was pouring sermons to be tolerant to already tolerant society, ie., the Hindus while leaving field day to the ‘bullies’, a word coined by Gandhiji himself in Young India in 1924. The Human Rights Commission of the League of Nations was pragmatic when it expected that the national minorities emerging from the faultlines of the First World War ought to merge themselves with the national mainstream of the given nation. The same could be extended in case of India as a matter of solution. Jawaharlal Nehru, while at Cambridge in 1907, wondered as to how the religious minorities living in India since generation be dealt as secondary on the face of the new nationalism articulated by Aurobindo and his ilk during the Swadeshi movement. Reference may be made as Aurobindo sketched Indian nationalism as Sanatan Dharma. In every nation of the world the mainstream continues as a flowing river, whereas the tributaries or the incoming races get merged as natural corollary; and India is no exception. How could the seven thousand years of civilisational milieu be diluted to accommodate the incoming race lacking indigenous roots? Jawaharlal Nehru was reluctant to the “absorbing, assimilating” tendency of the Indian culture lest the religious minorities be evaporated. So could a nation sacrifice itself to honour the sentiment of the incoming races? Well, the minorities also influence and contribute to the way of life and civilisational dimension of the given nation to a certain extent. Indian thinking is invariably catholic as an outcome of its lofty ethos.
The thought structure of the nationalists may be summed up as Dayananda, Bankim, Vivekananda course followed by the ideals of Tilak, Aurobindo, Annie Besant posturing the cause of Hindutva as the bedrock of Indian nationalism
In this process, the liberal secular approach internalised the colonial conspiracy theory of Aryan invasion without searching scrutiny. It also blindly emulated the seven ethnic divide of the Risley-Gait Census Commission (1901-11) giving credence to composite culture theory. The arrival of the Communist ideas in the 1920s got merged with the secular camp while outlining and mapping Indian nationalism. Both the camps got solace with the Nehruvian spree in post-colonial India. This axis ruled the roost in the so-called national reconstruction activities and their obvious area of operation was academics. So the entire realm of present day intelligentsia in politics, media and academics emerge from this diabolical school which is poignant to the very idea of Indian Rashtra.
The Ayodhya movement in the late 1980s reinforced that this is an ancient nation with a sublime cultural substratum. It was potent with exposition of the inner potentiality of the suppressed nation for millennia. The demolition of the Babri structure on December 6, 1992, could hardly be dismissed as mere failure of law and order orchestrated by the chaotic mob; but it was the natural outburst of fierce waves of history accumulated since the destruction of the Somnath in general and the Khilafat attempt in particular which tried to suppress the soul of India to pave the way for the denationalised forces.
Pride in Bharatiyata
The advent of the Modi factor in 2014 further sharpened the ideological polarisation so much so that Modi empowerment not only meant to work in traditional governance, but spearheaded religio-cultural euphoria through Ayodhya, Kashi, Prayag and Ujjaini. The Left-Liberal stock while claiming to receive succour from Gandhism hardly follow it behaviourally. They passionately love English and ‘hand shake’ style, while Modi addresses the international platforms in Hindi and infuses the greeting posture with Namaskar to the world leaders. The former have been swayed with the Western paradigm of ideals and institutions including the nation-state phenomenon at the cost of in-built Indian national life cropped up since the Vedic epoch. The pseudo seculars branded the latter as communal syndrome, but virtually it demonstrated the value laden social engineering with deep rooted Swadeshi belief and customs. It is myopic on the part of the pseudo seculars to equate abrogation of Article 368 as harming the minorities – so also the Citizenship Act. National interest knows no boundary. If dogmatic minority sentiment is to be honoured, how can the mainstream (sophisticated form of majority) be expected to be a silent spectator? Behaviourally organised minority is increasingly potent than the chaotic majority. In fact, the majority minority dichotomy does not find place for national cause. The present scenario is akin to the display of the Moderates and the Extremists (Nationalists) of early Indian National Congress. The mass shared and identified the acts of the Nationalists, whereas the Moderates relied on imported textbook maxims to rationalise their postulation. The Indian mass followed Gandhiji in whom they found their identity in the areas of language, style of functioning and mode of living. The Left-Liberals employed his name but not his way of life.
Jawaharlal Nehru himself was critical to the colonial argument that the plea of the Indian nationalists was narrow and primordial since it compromised the concept of global family. At the moment the same is the reasoning of the pseudo secular before Rashtravad.
The crux of the question is the position of the pseudo secular concept camouflaged under the cloak Gandhism versus the stream of Rashtravad. The former is obviously a manufactured construct to encompass the denationalised, disgruntled elements ushering its scope to play the temporary political card on the face of those who cast the entire wavelength of wholesome Indian history along with its enlightened cultural heritage. Why Hindu upsurge is being perceived as a design of communal divide while posing as spokesperson of the fundamentalist religious fringe elements including the terror outfits from the angle of so-called secular, humanistic prism?
At the commencement of the ongoing discourse it was scribed as how to determine the essence of India, what is termed by the pseudo-secular camp as the “very idea of India”. Does it mean to throw the major part of Indian history into the dustbin? – leave aside its glories, achievements and contributions to mankind, its intellectual burden to protect and preserve its wisdom and metaphysics, the ethos; which were abundantly hailed by the Western savants such as Schopenhauer, Leo Tolstoy, Romain Rolland and so many. Ironically, Indian wisdom and values are more likened and swayed by the global elite class than the unfortunate sons of the soil. Our assessment on Indianness must be accompanied with indigenous scrutiny. When two global level meets of the relevant scholars (Atlanta in 1999, Los Angeles in 2007) have dismissed the Aryan invasion theory while portraying the Saraswati River civilisation as the first base of Indian civilisation, the Indian pseudo seculars are bent on upholding the pro-colonial intrigued theory.
Leave a Comment