1992 will doubtless go down in Indian history as the year of Ayodhya. This is so not so much because recent events there have pushed into background all other issues such as economic reforms and reservations for the “other backward castes” as they have released forces which will have a decisive influence in shaping the future of India.
These forces are not new; they have been at work for two centuries.
Indeed, they were not even wholly bottled up. But they had not been unleashed earlier as they have been now. It is truly extraordinary that the demolition of a nondescript structure by faceless men no organisation owns up should have shaken so vast a country as India.
But no one can possibly deny that it has.
These forces in themselves are not destructive even if they have led to some violence and bloodletting.
They are essentially beneficent. They shall seek to heal the splits in Indian personality so that it is restored to health and vigour.
Implicit in the above is the proposition that while India did not cease to be India either under Muslim or British Rule despite all the trials and tribulations, she was not fully Mother India.
And she was not fully Mother India not because she was called upon to digest external inputs which is her nature to assimilate, but because she was not free to throw out what she could not possibly digest in the normal and natural course. This lack of freedom to reject what cannot be assimilated is the essence of foreign conquest and rule.
The meaning or Ayodhya is that India has regained, to a larger extent than hitherto, the capacity to behave and act as a normal living organism. She has taken another big step towards self-affirmation.
All truth, as Lenin said, is partisan.
So is mine. I do not pretend to be above the battle, or, to rephrase Pandit Nehru, I am not neutral against myself. But partisan truth is not demagogy and patently false propaganda which is what advocates of ‘composite culture’ have engaged in.
Two points need to be noted in this regard. First, no living culture is ever wholly autonomous; for no culture is an airtight sealed box/ Indian culture in particular has been known for its catholicity and willingness to give as well as take; it withdrew into a shell when it felt gravely threatened and became rigid; but that is understandable; indeed, the surprise, if any, is that Indian culture survived the Islamic and Western onslaughts at all; in our era, only Muslim fundamentalists claim that there is a pristine way of life waiting to be restored; we Indians make no such claims.
Secondly, a culture if it is not swallowed up by an incoming one whether by way of proselytisation or conquest or both as the Egyptians and Iranians were by Islam, or if it is not destroyed as the Aztec was by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, a culture must seek to recover; even Indians In Latin America have not given up the effort.
Surely, since no one can possibly suggest that Indian culture was either swallowed up or destroyed, it is only natural that it should seek to recover its genuine self. Surely, it is neither an anti-Islamic or anti-Western activity. Pandit Nehru almost never used the phrase “composite culture”. His was a more organic view of culture and civilization. He believed in, and spoke of, cultural synthesis which, if it all, could take place only within the old civilisational framework since Islam did not finally triumph. Pandit Nehru also wrote and spoke of the spirit of India asserting itself again and again. Surely, that spirit could not be a composite affair. In the Maulana Azad memorial lecture, he also spoke of different cultures being products of different environments and he specifically contrasted tropical India with the deserts of Arabia. He even said that a Hindu-Muslim cultural synthesis had not been completed when other factors intervened. Apparently he was referring to the British Raj.
This should help dispel the impression that the Nehru era was a continuation of alien rule intended to frustrate the process of Indianisation of India. This charge is not limited to his detractors.
It is made by his admirers as well, though, of course, indirectly and unknowingly. They pit secularism against Hinduism which is plainly absurd.
Pandit Nehru’s emphasis was doubtless on removal of disabilities which weaken India and not on restoration of old India. But the emphasis was and is justified by our needs.
In order to renew herself, India desperately requires science and technology and she cannot do without what he called the scientific temper. That is by no means alien to our tradition and genius. What can be more scientific than different types of yoga? You can measure the results with the help of modern instruments.
Pandit Nehru’s emphasis on secularism has to be viewed not only in relation to the Muslim problem which survived partition; it has also to be seen in the context of his plea for science and of India’s need to get rid of the heavy and deadening burden of rituals and superstitions, products of periods of grave weakness and hostile environment when nothing nobler than survival was possible. Sheikh Abdullah exaggerated when he charged Pandit Nehru with Machiavellianism but he was not too wide off the mark when he wrote in Atish-e-Chinar, “Nehru was a great admirer of the past heritage and the Hindu spirit of India. He considered himself an instrument for rebuilding India with its ancient spirit” (quoted in Mr Jagmohan’s My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir).
The trouble is that self-styled Nehruites and other secularists are not able to recognise that India is no longer the convalescent she was not only when Gandhiji lunched his first mass movement but also when she achieved Independence with Pandit Nehru as the first Prime Minister.
The two leaders have helped nurse her back to health as have their critics in different ways. That is the implication of my observation that the energies now unleashed have been at work for two centuries.
In all cultures and societies under great stress flows an invisible under-current. It does not always break surface. But when it does, it transforms the scene. This is how events in Ayodhya should be seen. The Patala Ganga of which all Indians must have heard has broken surface there. Human beings have doubtless played a part in this surfacing. But witness the remarkable fact that we do not know and in fact do not care who installed the Ramlalla idol in the Babri structure and who demolished the structure on December 6. This brings me to the last point I wish to deal with in this piece. This point relates to the question of an appropriate instrument or instruments for the fulfillment of our destiny in the critical period ahead.
Anyone used thinking in terms of well defined institutions cannot but be concerned over the apparent absence of an adequate instrument. On the face of it, certainly no organisation or institution measures up.
Indeed, it is difficult to think of a leading Indian who has demonstrated the capacity even to comprehend the nature and the power of the energies that had been waiting to be released and have now been released. This is as true of the BJP-RSS leaders as of their detractors. And I am not referring only to Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee who wears his conscience of his sleeves. A very Christian non Hindu phenomenon.
But Indians not uprooted from their moorings need not worry unduly. The spirit of India, if it has indeed been released, as I for one believe to be the case, will shape appropriate instrument or instruments.
While almost everyone else is looking for scapegoats, to me it seems that every known actor is playing his or her allotted role in the vast drama that is being enacted. We are, as it were, witnessing the enactment of a modern version of Valmiki’s Ramayana.
The Observer of Business and Politics, 5 January 1993