What do we talk about when we talk about INDIA?

In the past four months or so, while being stuck at home (thanks to Mr. Covid), I have developed this weirdly voyeuristic habit of watching random Indians fight over politics on twitter. Now for those of you who don’t use twitter, to give you an idea about the toxicity of it – just imagine yourself being in a relationship with ten Kabir Singhs at the same time(sorry to all the fans!). 

Every person who has fingers to type and a half-informed, fully-prejudiced vituperative opinion to put out, contributes to this pandemonium of social media. Everything ranging from national defense issues to nepotism debates are solved on twitter, who’s a patriot and who’s an ISIS agent is decided in the comment section of every tweet, which artist to boycott and what film to ban – you name it, twitter got you covered.  

Although more often than not I silently play the role of a mere spectator to these (in)glorious Homeric battles of twitter but at times I decide to delve deeper into their shallow arguments. And what I find is that, ‘this commotion might seem like an unfunny circus on the surface but at the core; it is a major cause as well as a reflection of the ever-increasing atmosphere of intolerance, bigotry and sheer stupidity around us.’ Knowingly or unknowingly, all the trolls and self-appointed protectors of the land represent a bigger and increasingly popular ‘idea of India’. They represent a vision of what this country should be or what this country will soon be (as we are already in the middle of that shift).                                                                                          

This observation (if I may call it) further led me to question my own ‘idea of India’ -What do we talk about when we talk about India? What is India? Is it just a piece of land? Or Is it a myth? Is it a whole or a sum of parts? What ideas does it embody? What unites it? What divides it?

As I struggled with these questions, I came across a few paragraphs from Jawahar Lal Nehru’s ‘The Discovery of India’ (first published in 1946) in which he tried to articulate a vision of India while weaving its ancient past with its coming of age present –

“India was like some ancient palimpsest¹ on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie² had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously. All of these existed in our conscious or subconscious selves, though we may not have been aware of them, and they had gone to build up the complex and mysterious personality of India … Though outwardly there was diversity and infinite variety among our people, everywhere there was that tremendous impress of oneness, which had held all of us together for ages … India was a world in itself, a culture and a civilization which gave shape to all things … Foreign influences poured in … and were absorbed. Disruptive tendencies gave rise immediately to an attempt to find a synthesis. Some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization. That unity was not conceived as something imposed from outside, a standardization of externals or even of beliefs. It was something deeper and, within its fold, the widest tolerance of belief and custom was practiced and every variety acknowledged and even encouraged.” 

1.  palimpsest(noun) - a piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing
2.  reverie(noun) - a fanciful idea   

One can’t help getting impressed by the finesse with which Nehru describes his vision of India; an India of eclecticism, tolerance and acceptance. This was a vision that encompassed all faiths, regions, religions, castes and creeds by giving a broader national identity to all the sectarian ones. It was on this vision that our modern independent INDIA was formed, a state comprising believers of many faiths but identifying itself with none. Secularism (yes, that hated word!) became the invisible thread connecting people of different faiths together under an umbrella of national identity, giving birth to a patriotism which was inclusive of all rather than exclusive to the majority.

 But one can’t also miss the reality check that how much at odds is this vision of India with the India of our present. Today, the word secular (funnily called sick-ular) is used as an abuse in political debates, liberalism is considered a mental disorder and the line between government & the nation has completely vanished. (un)Democratic institutions are losing their credibility while the media has already proved itself to be nothing more than a bootlicker of the regime. It would not be fair to put the entire blame on the ruling B.J.P, as the eminent author and political activist Arundhati Roy often says – ‘’Congress has done by night what the B.J.P does by day”. After all, it was congress which turned the Nehruvian secularism into a mere tool to appease the conservative elements of the minority for votes (as in Shah Bano case, 1986), it was the congress (then headed by the grandson of Nehru, Rajiv Gandhi) which opened avenues for the demolition of Babri Masjid and with it to the rise of majoritarianism in India.

In today’s India, the relevance of its founding fathers and their legacy has unfortunately become nothing but symbolic. Mahatma Gandhi, who fasted for peace in riot-stricken Kolkata while the nation made a tryst with destiny on 15^th August 1947, was assassinated again when religious riots torn his home-state apart in 2002 and now has become a mere poster boy for government campaigns. Dr. B.R Ambedkar, Dalit leader and the father of our constitution, has his statues intact while the constitution he made is being torn apart piece by piece. Last and certainly not the least, Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first prime minister of India and a towering leader of the third world countries, is largely misunderstood and often blamed for every wrong that happens in the country. (tomorrow, someone might blame him for the pandemic too!) The party run by his own descendants has largely done away with the ideals and principles that he represented. All three of them, who played a major part in founding and shaping the modern Indian independent state, perfectly fits the definition of the contemporary ‘anti-national’ and in today’s India might have found themselves detained under charges of sedition.

Nehru had written, in The Discovery of India, that India offered 

‘the terrifying glimpses of dark corridors which seem to lead back to primaeval light’. 

Now after 73 years of independence and 56 years of Nehru’s death, India and its people seem to move  towards those dark corridors at an unprecedented pace. We must not forget that every step we take away from the pluralistic vision of India (for which our forefathers gave their blood) in favor of a majoritarian India, we move ten steps closer to a destructively hazy illusion of unity. Eventually the haze will die out and all of our crevices of caste, class and creed will lie exposed. A vision of India in which our Indianness becomes directly proportional to the hatred we feel for the ‘other’ will eventually discover new ‘others’ among ourselves, further dividing rather than uniting us.

- Rajdeep Chauhan

Happy Independence Day!

Any constructive argument, comment & opinion is welcome.                                                           

Email - rajdeepchauhan684@gmail.com