At the core of the opposition to India among many quarters in the world is the notion that Indian nationhood is a nebulous entity. Foremost in this cacophony is of course Pakistan which makes no secret of the fact that it considers the Indian nation an anomaly and would dearly love to see it broken up, even if in the process it endangers its own survival as a nation.
If that were the only opposition to Indian nationhood, life would be relatively simple for those in India who are entrusted with the responsibility for framing Indian foreign policy. Alas, such is not the case. There is a whole gaggle of disparate entities keen to see India dismantled. Not least amongst these is the powerful anti Indian lobby in the US state department which makes no secret of its distaste for a strong india. More pernicious is the left secular lobby in India which barely hides its extraterritorial leanings towards Chinese and other ideological moorings and would not mind sacrificing the notion of india in order to achieve power in the remnants of the subcontinent.
This thread will catalogue the pronouncements and writings of such parties in order to analyze whether there is a common thread among these groups.
It is not coincidental that jaswant singh drew attention to the centrality of Kashmir to Indian nationhood during the Agra talks.
http://newsarchives.indiainfo.com/spotligh.../12jaswant.html
Kashmir core of Indian nationhood: Jaswant
Thursday, July 12 2001 20:26 Hrs (IST)
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh on July 12 described Kashmir as the ''core of Indian nationhood'' and rejected outright Pakistan's demand for a referendum in Jammu and Kashmir.
[an error occurred while processing this directive] ''The question of referendum (in J and K) simply does not arise,'' he said at a crowded press conference ahead of the Vajpayee-Musharraf Summit.
Ridiculing Pakistan's demand for self determination he said the UN resolution could not be enforced.
He also said India would not propose a ''moratorium'' on Kashmir to Pakistan as it was not shy of discussing the issue and expressed willingness to discuss the 'No War Pact' provided it covered proxy war and cross-border terrorism.
Commenting on Gen Pervez Musharraf's repeated assertion that Kashmir was the ''core issue'' the Minister said ''it is not.'' ''It is at the core of Indian nationhood. Jammu and Kashmir is a part of Article one and Schedule one of the Indian Constitution. How can I negotiate the Constitution.''
He said no one had ever questioned the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India. This was not even raised by the UN. In fact, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan also admitted this fact during his recent visit to India.
The Minister said the government was not having any set proposals on Jammu and Kashmir for discussions with Pakistan. The issue would be discussed under a composite dialogue on all issues including Jammu and Kashmir, confidence-building measures, Siachen Glacier.
Referring to the government's unilateral confidence-building measures, the Minister said it had also proposed to discuss with Pakistan security-related issues--both conventional and nuclear.
''We are desirous in engaging Pakistan in developing CBMs in nuclear and conventional fields.''
While the Directors General of Military Operations could discuss conventional arms issues, experts would examine in totality nuclear issues.
Asked if Pakistan expressed helplessness in controlling cross-border terrorism, the Minister said the issue would be taken up at the Summit so that Pakistan recognised and addressed the issue. There was no reason for India to give up efforts to combat terrorism.
''We will continue to combat terrorism as we have been doing. India cannot compromise on cross-border terrorism.''
On the issue of prisoners of war, Jaswant Singh said the matter could not be referred to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as the Geneva Convention stipulated that the countries should accept the presence of POWs in its jails. Unfortunately, the Pakistan had not confirmed such presence, he added.
The issue had been discussed during the Lahore Summit and the two sides had agreed to depute a Minister to visit the jails. ''It is a humanitarian issue about which we are concerned. We will take up the matter,'' he added.
UNI
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It is my view that that the BJP has not been completely successful in countering these arguments against Indian nationhood. some thoughts on this by Koenraad Elst in his book on the BJP
http://www.bharatvani.org/books/bjp/section13.html
13. Hindutva and other peoples' nationalism
The BJP's subordination of any and every ideological or religious conflict to questions of "national unity and integrity", this most mindless form of territorial nationalism, is also a worrying retreat from the historical Hindu conception of Indian nationhood and its implications for the evaluation of foreign problems of national unity. Along with Mahatma Gandhi and other Freedom Fighters, the BJS used to be convinced that India was a self-conscious civilizational unit since several thousands of years, strengtheÂned in its realization of unity by the Sanskrit language, the Brahmin caste, the pilgrimage cycles which brought pilgrims from every part of India all around the country ("country" rather than the "Subcontinent" or "South Asia", terms which intrinÂsically question this unity), and other socio-cultural factors of national integration. The notions that India was an artificial creation of the British and a "nation in the making", were floated by the British themselÂves and by Jawaharlal Nehru, respectively, and both are obvious cases of unfounded self-flattery. Gandhi's and the BJS's viewpoint that India is an ancient nation conscious of its own unity is historically more accurate.
In foreign policy, one can expect two opposite attitudes to follow from these two conceptions of India, the Gandhian one which derives India's political unity from a pre-existent cultural unity, and the Nehruvian one which denies this cultural unity and sees political unity as a baseless coincidence, an artificial creation of external historical forces. In its own self-interest, an arÂtificiaÂlly created state devoid of underlying legitimacy tends to support any and every other state, regardlÂess of whether that state is the political embodiment of a popular will or a cultural coherence. The reason is that any successful separatism at the expense of a fellow artificial state is a threat to the state's own legitimacy. That is, for instance, why the founding member states of the OrÂganizatÂion of African Unity decided from the outset that the ethnically absurd colonial borders were not to be altered. It is also why countries like Great Britain and France, whose own legitimacy within their present borders is questioned by their Irish, Corsican and other minorities, were reluctant to give diplomatic recognition to Lithuania when it broke away from the Soviet Union.
By contrast, those who believe that states are merely politiÂcal instrumÂents in the service of existing ethnic or cultural units, accept that state structures and borders are not sacrosaÂnct in themselves, and that they may consequently be altered. That is why Aleksandr SolzhenitÂsyn proposed to allow the non-Slavic republics to leave the Soviet Union, and why as a sterling Russian patriot he pleaded in favour of Chechen independence from the Russian Federation: it is no use trying to keep Turks and Slavs, or Chechens and Russians, under one roof against their will. If Russia is meant to be the political expression of the collective will of the Russian people, it is only harmful to include other nations by force, as the Chechens and Turkic peoples once were.
To be sure, even partisans of this concept of "meaniÂngfÂul" (as opposed to arbitrary) states will concede that there may be limitations to this project of adjusÂting state structures and state borders to existing ethnic and cultural realitiÂes, especially where coherent comÂmunities have been ripped apart and relocated, as has happened in Russia. Also, cultural and ethnic identities are not static givens (e.g. the "Muslim" character of India's principal minority), so we should not oversimplify the question to an idyllic picture of a permanent division of the world in states allotted to God-given national enÂtities. But at least the general prinÂciple can be acÂcepted: states should as much as possible be the emÂbodiment of coherent cultural units. That, at any rate, is the Hindu-nationalist understanding of the Indian state: as the political embodiment of Hindu civilization.
Now, what is the position of the BJS/BJP regarding the right of a state to self-preservation as against the aspirations of ethnic-cultural communities or nations? The BJS originally had no problem supporting separatism in certain specific cases, esp. the liberation of East Turkestan (Sinkiang/ÂXinjiang), Inner Mongolia and Tibet from Chinese rule. At the time, the BJS still adhered to the Gandhian position: India should be one independent state because it is one culturally, and so should Tibet for the same reason. Meanwhile, however, this plank in its platform has been quietly withdrawn. ..
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Therefore, Indian nationalists are harming their own case by equating Kashmiri separatism with independentism in Tibet, which did not accede to China of its own free will and following due procedure, and which was not historically a part of China. To equate Kashmir with Tibet or Chechnya is to deny the profound historical and cultural Indianness of Kashmir, and to undermine India's case against Kashmiri separatism. Here again, we see the harmful effect of the BJP's intelÂlectual sloppiness. </span>
The ghost of Kartar Singh Sarabha will be wondering why there are those who question the notion of Indian nationhood.
http://www.rediff.com/freedom/0412raj.htm
Across a chasm of seventy five years,
the eyes of these dead men
speak to today's Indian American
Rajeev Srinivasan
We celebrated the birth centenary of Kartar Singh Sarabha on November 16 in San Francisco. Born in 1896 in the Punjab, died in Lahore in 1915. A mere boy, nineteen years of age. So why do we remember him?
Because he was a remarkable young man, and his story deserves wider renown. He also represents one of the paradoxes of nationalism -- that distance lends enchantment. Sarabha and his fellow Gadar Party members were loyalist Indians who struggled for their motherland in far-off America; in the end, many of them paid the ultimate price: they were executed by the British Raj for 'sedition'.
Today's Indian Americans -- at least some of them -- reflect the patriotic fervour exhibited by these early nationalists. I once read somewhere that expatriates harbour 'dangerously romantic' notions about their home countries. There is considerable truth to this. For example, it is Irish-Americans who have never even been to Ireland who have sustained the Irish Republican Army for years. The Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora has supported the ambitions of Tamil nationalists, including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Similarly, Americans of Sikh descent, especially in the California farm community of Yuba City, have been in the forefront of the agitation for an independent Khalistan. It is all the more bitter irony, then, that it was predominantly the Sikhs of California who sacrificed everything for the Gadar movement for Indian independence.
The Gadar Party (I believe the word means 'revolution') was formed in San Francisco in the early part of this century by expatriate Indians. Indians in the US and in the British colony of Canada were generally ill-treated: There were, for example, the Asian Exclusion Act and its extension, the Hindoo [sic] Exclusion Act, which prevented Asians of all sorts from owning property in the Americas, marrying white women, or bringing their own womenfolk to the continent. Ah, for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness!
Despite all this, a few Indians, mostly Sikhs, had carved out an existence for themselves in the rich farmland of California, marrying Mexican Californians, who were also generally oppressed. The catalyst in their political awakening was the ill-fated voyage of the ss Komagata Maru, a Japanese vessel that was bringing would-be Indian migrants to the Americas.
As I understand it, the Komagata Maru was turned back repeatedly: by the Canadians first, then by the Americans; the ship returned to Calcutta. Some people died on the way; on docking at Calcutta, the passengers were shot at by British troops (perhaps those who had expended their life savings on the passage rioted because of the mistreatment they had suffered) and more were killed.
It was in this atmosphere that the Gadar Party was formed in 1913, to campaign for an independent 'United States of India', a secular, tolerant nation that would at last have gotten rid of colonial rule. On November 1, 1913, the first issue of Gadar saw the light of day. It advocated armed revolutionary struggle for India's freedom.
In 1913, Kartar Singh Sarabha was sent to study at the University of California, Berkeley, then as now one of the top three universities in the US. He arrived in the Bay Area, and soon joined the Gadar Party. In 1915, Sarabha and a number of others returned to India to continue the insurrection. Their intent was to organise soldiers to mutiny against the British during the First World War. Unfortunately, betrayals by others in their ranks led to their capture by the British. A show trial was the result -- the infamous Lahore Conspiracy case -- in which 80 men were tried. Twenty six were convicted and seven were sentenced to be hanged.
Kartar Singh Sarabha and Vishnu Ganesh Pingle, another Berkeley student, were among the seven hanged at the Lahore Central Jail on November 16, 1915. But their sacrifice was not in vain. The Lahore case captured the public imagination; in particular it inspired Bhagat Singh, who became the most famous symbol of fiery Indian resistance to colonialism.
What of the Gadar Party? Many of their members were hounded, jailed, or extradited to India by the US: after all, they were 'inciting sedition against a US ally'". But the Gadar continued to be published; and today, on a suburban street not far from the Indian consulate in San Francisco stands the Gadar Memorial Hall, a small structure which houses a library and a meeting room.
On the walls of the Gadar Memorial Hall are photographs of glowering young men. Across a chasm of seventy five years, the eyes of these dead men speak to today's Indian American. It is no wonder that some of us respond. At occasional meetings at the Gadar Hall, you see a cross-section of India -- young and old, female and male, Northern and Southern, of all faiths; united in affection for our land.
My perspicacious friend Bapa Rao suggests that it is only when your self-image is under attack that you tend to become consciously nationalistic. Most of us in the US have had experiences of racism, of a 'dot-head' epithet tossed at us, of glass ceilings and discrimination in the work place, of the casual demeaning of our nation and our beliefs that we face frequently. Some have also been beaten up.
As a result, many Indian Americans, especially those who are long-term residents of the US, tend to perhaps view the mother country with rose-coloured glasses. This is even truer of the second generation of US-born Indian-Americans. After a childhood where they mostly deny and abhor their Indian-ness, the grown-up second generation often becomes passionately nationalistic.
Both the consciously constructed identity and the defense mechanism lead to strident assertions of nationalism. This is perhaps the reason why some Indian Americans support the BJP (whatever its other sins). It appears to be the only party in India that unabashedly embraces a pan-Indian nationalism; the other parties tend to temporise and vacillate to the extent they lose credibility.
The Tamil film Roja by Mani Rathnam is worth noting in this contextâ the protagonist realises his patriotism only when he is challenged by secessionists. Interestingly it is those from South India, those whose Indian identity is sometimes questioned, who are constructing this unambiguous nationalistic response.
Cynics might suggest that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel; but it also the last refuge of the exile, the vaastuhara, the dispossessed.
As Vikram Seth, who knows about these things, said in his poem Diwali, ... I know the whole world Means exile of our breed Who are not home at home And are abroad abroad.... ..... This may as well be my home. Because no other nation Moves me thus? What of that? Cause for congratulation?....
In their glorification of the path of violence, perhaps the Gadar Party erred; perhaps so did Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and his 'forgotten army', the Indian National Army. The path taken -- of conciliation and non-violence -- led to the terrible holocaust of Partition. Historians will decide on the path not taken -- whether Gadar and the INA too served the cause of nationhood.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Even more than those who live in India, and who are thus subject to the daily corruption and degradation of our nation, those of us who live abroad might dream of India. Perhaps not the sordid reality of it, but the 'city on a hill', the nation that the Gadar Party envisioned. An ideal for which one could say: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. It is sweet and proper to die for one's country.</span>
This is very interesting. First of all the US arrogates to itself the right to judge another sovereign nation , a nation with which it has never been at war, a nation which has no territorial designs on america, and a nation which does not export drugs and narcotics to the US. Second, there is the question of whether it uses a uniform measuring stick when it sits in judgement over the KSA or TSP or Jordan which would surely fail the test which it so rigorously applies to India. Methinks this more an exercise in undermining the nationhood of India than it is (driven by) any altruistic concerns for the minorities of India.
Reports such as this , raise the fundamental question of WTF is the US to sit in judgement over India in the first place.
For the US, Indian democracy is 'flawed'
T V Parasuram in Washington | February 26, 2004 15:20 IST
The United States has surely touched a raw nerve.
'Long-standing, but flawed' is how it has described India's democracy, which it said has been dogged by allegations of corruption influencing court decisions, violence in some elections and restrictions on religious and academic freedom.
The state department, in its annual report released on Wednesday, said tension between Hindus on the one hand and Muslims and Christians on the other remained a challenge to India's secular formation.
The leading party in the government coalition, the report noted, is the BJP, 'a Hindu nationalist political party with links to Hindu extremist groups that were implicated in violent acts against Christians and Muslims'.
"However," it added, "the BJP is an independent political party and the degree of RSS influence over its policy-making was not clear."
Among India's shortcomings, the report listed police atrocities; atrocities by both government forces and militants, including foreign militants, in Kashmir and elsewhere and restrictions on religious and academic freedom.
In 71 closely typed pages, the report alleged that it was reported that members of the BJP, the RSS and other affiliated organisations 'harassed and at times threatened the use of violence against Christians and Muslims'.
"The BJP and RSS officially expressed respect and tolerance for other religions. However, the RSS in particular opposes conversions from Hinduism and believes that all citizens should adhere to Hindu cultural values. The BJP officially agrees that the caste system should be eliminated, but many of its members are ambivalent about this," the report said.
"Tension between Muslims and Hindus, and between Hindus and Christians continued to pose a challenge to the secular foundation of the State," it added.
It said Hindus had also been victims of violence and referred to the August 25 twin blasts in Mumbai in which 44 people were killed.
Some government officials, the report claimed, continued to advocate 'saffronising', or raising the profile of Hindu cultural norms and views in public education, which has prompted criticism from minority leaders, opposition politicians, academics and advocates of secular values.
The report particularly mentioned the Human Resources Development Ministry 'passing strict guidelines to regulate academic partnerships between Indian and Western universities in line with Hindutva philosophy'.
In Jammu and Kashmir, the Lashkar-e-Jabbar militant group required all Muslim women to wear a 'burqa' when in public or risk retribution and ordered Hindus and Sikhs in the Kashmir valley to wear identifying marks, the report said.
Intimidation by militant groups in Kashmir also caused significant self-censorship by journalists, it added.
In spite of Hinduism's nominal magnitude, the chance that Hinduism gets wiped out by its enemies can no longer be discounted. More than ever, fortunes are spent on the war to destroy Hinduism in favour of Islam or some suitably adapted variety of Christianity or Marxism. The hostile activities of Islamic and Christian agitators and the attempts at Hindu demoralization and loss of Hindu self-respect by the secularists are now compounded by a fast-spreading loss of Hindu memory at the mass level by consumerism and Western pulp media. I have seen with my own eyes how local cultures within European civilization are being as good as wiped out in a few decades by the onslaught of mindless "Americanism", and this loss of cultural roots is a major factor in the current defencelessness of the affected populations vis-Ã -vis the rising threat of Islam. Hindus would be mistaken to think that this cannot happen to their old civilization; most civilizations at the time of their demise were old and venerable. For Hinduism too, time is running out.
The seriousness of the situation should first of all concern the Hindus themselves. Come to think of it, I have very little personal stake in the political success of Hindu revivalism and the continued existence of Hinduism. Of course, there is an invaluable heritage contained in the Upanishads and other Hindu books; but they are available in Western libraries, we can take from them what we like without needing the help of a living Hindu. It was a comforting idea to know that at least one ancient society had managed to preserve its traditions down to the present, but if that society fails to defend itself and disappears, I am confident that we can find our way without it. If Sanskrit scholarship or yogic expertise dies in India, I am sure some aficianados in the West will keep it alive as a matter of antiquarian hobbyism, somewhat like the thriving clubs for amateurs long-dead Pharaonic lore. It is always deplorable when a dinosaur dies, but we can survive the demise of really-existing Hinduism without serious losses. Whether Hinduism will survive as a living civilization in control of its own territory, or merely as a museum piece, is a vital concern only for the Hindus themselves.
The issue is the survival of the besieged Hindu civilization. The stakes are high, and the question is whether Hindus intend to go for the big one or settle for less. A general rule for this type of situation is that if you aim high and put in an effort commensurate with the calibre of your goal, you may achieve it. Even if you don't achieve it, you may still achieve a number of lesser objectives as a spin-off of your effort. But if you aim low, your enthusiasm and hence your effort will be proportionately limited, so the chance is a priori small that you will achieve anything more than your limited goal. Further, your enemies will try to thwart your little efforts with as much zeal as they would your big efforts, so you may still fail to achieve what you intended to. If the Hindu movement continues to aim for petty gains and peripheral achievements, it will continue to fail in its real task, and even the hoped-for petty successes may continue to elude it.
If the Hindutva politicians and activists want to spare themselves the prospect of going down in history as a bunch of buffoons, who stood by and worked on inconsequential things while their country was taken over by their mortal enemies, they will have to get their act together quickly. Instead of wasting energy on petty politicking and limited goals such as the reconversion of sacred sites, all eyes should be set on the major goal, which is the liberation of fellow Indians from the predatory religions which have alienated them from their ancestral culture. The goal could in fact be set even higher, so as to include among other things the emancipation of the West-Asians and the liberation of the Kaaba (a temple to Hubal, the Arab Shiva) from Islam; but it will already be good if the self-styled vanguard of Hindu society can save its own people and country.
There is nothing "fundamentalist" or "fascist" about this. The emancipation of fellow Indian from closed creeds is a very humane and responsible project. It could best be summed up in the motto with which the Muslim-born humanist Ibn Warraq opens his book Why I Am Not a Muslim: "The best thing we can do for Muslims is to free them from Islam." More concretely, it is the only way to avoid the extremely bloody conflagrations which are sure to break out if the Muslim and Christian agitators smell victory in ever-larger sections of the country. As they smell blood, they will become more openly and more fiercely aggressive and Hindus will not go down without a fight; the subsequent loss of life should not be minimized as just one more of those inevitables in history. The ideologies which pit believer against unbeliever should be neutralized before they can add some more achievements to their ugly record.
As part of this great project, smaller projects such as a Common Civil Code or the restoration of some Hindu sacred sites may be legitimate steps on the way, depending on the circumstances, and even temporary compromises with the hostile forces may be justified in certain cases; but the final goal should be kept uppermost in everyone's mind. In the case of the organized Hindutva movement, there is reason to fear that amid all its campaigns for limited demands it has lost the awareness of the larger challenge. Today, when you question Hindutva leaders and ideologues about their puzzling policy of kowtowing before Mohammed and Nehru, the typical answer is that this is all part of a very very clever strategy which you unfortunately haven't understood yet. Admittedly, victorious strategists have often started out with seemingly self-defeating moves which their underlings didn't understand but which produced the desired results in the long run. Let the Hindutva spokesmen ask themselves if their own clever tricks have this calibre, and whether they are really outwitting their enemies rather than themselves.
http://www.hindu.com/lr/2004/02/01/stories...20100310500.htm
The next part is "Founding of a Nation, 1948-1956". Nehru recognised
that "India as a nation in 1947-48 had a deeply ambiguous inheritance". We get a detailed account of Nehru's "forging" of an Indian nation and establishing for it an international identity. The author correctly points out that, "Looking from the perspective of the end of Nehru's century and the ending of a world order demarcated by blocs ranged against each other in fear and hostility, it is perhaps difficult to recognise quite what an innovative and visionary stand India took under Nehru".
The fifth and last part, "The Frustration of a Vision, 1957-1964" deals with the realities of democratic leadership. Nehru was a workaholic who did not believe in delegation. Over the years the lack of sleep and rest took its toll and in April 1958 Nehru asked the party to give him a temporary release from office. The response was a total refusal and both Eisenhower and Khrushchev urged him not to leave. In 1957 the Communist Party came into power in the state of Kerala. Much against his sense of fair play and democratic norms he was forced to agree to the dismissal of a democratically elected state government by the Centre. The failure of Nehru's China policy led to considerable erosion of his authority. Krishna Menon, who was close to Nehru, later wrote, "It had a very bad effect on him. It demoralized him very much. Every thing that he had built was threatened; India was to adopt a militaristic outlook which he did not like. And he also knew about the big economic burdens we were carrying."
In August 1963 Nehru faced the first ever no-confidence motion in the parliament. Though the motion was defeated 346 to 61, it was an indication of the declining authority of the Prime Minister. On crucial policy matters Finance Minister Morarji Desai and Food and Agriculture Minister S.K. Patil defied Nehru. It was against this background that the Kamaraj Plan was adopted and Nehru got rid of both Desai and Patil from the cabinet. But Nehru was not left with much time to reassert his authority in any meaningful fashion. He had a mild stroke while he was about to address the party delegates in Bhubaneshwar in January 1964. Once again , he
refused to appoint a Deputy Prime Minister. Even Mountbatten, on a visit to Delhi,
failed to persuade Nehru to take more rest. He died in the early hours of May 27, 1964.
Instead of visualizing the post independence events as an evolution of political maturity, western writers have accentuated the negative and there is a constant hankering for the failure of the Indian state. But like the energizer bunny India keeps going on and on confounding her critics and 'thinkful wishers' by progressing to ever greater economic prosperity and maturation of her political processes.
Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy
by Stuart Corbridge and John Harriss; Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2001; pages xx + 303, Rs.595.
INDIA'S passage through its fifth decade of Independence was scarred by several manifestations of a deep-seated political pathology. It was a decade of violence and social turmoil, centred particularly on an effort to define a sense of nationhood in terms of primordial religious loyalties. At the same time, a shift in economic course was signalled by the social and political elite, who in an exuberance of self-rediscovery turned decisively against the philosophy that had guided policy since Independence.
These multiple facets of India's troubled transition through its fifth decade called forth a fair bit of scholarly activity, among which this volume must count among the more important. Corbridge and Harriss have individually been engaged in the study of Indian society and politics over the years - the latter in particular has a track record of scholarly interest in India stretching back over two decades. This is perhaps their first collaborative effort and it is a work of expansive scope, which develops its core concepts through a complicated narrative stretching back centuries. The long-standing research commitments of the two authors are reflected in the admirably efficient job they do of digesting and presenting a diversity of views on India's political evolution from the available literature.
Since the time it began its independent journey as a self-governing entity, India has gone through several processes of transformation - a continual process of invention which constitutes a central theme of this book. As a conceptual approach this is intimately connected with another one - perhaps academically more fashionable - of studying nations and states as "imagined" entities. Politics transforms the nation of the imagination into an invented model.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>The Indian state as constituted at Independence was the central focus of nationhood, deriving its legitimacy in turn from the promise of development. For Jawaharlal Nehru and others who pioneered the programme of modernity, the state was an agency of progress and enlightenment, which would shine the light of reason on areas steeped in superstition and ignorance, pulling the masses into a new realm of prosperity and promise. This was akin to the invocation of a superior power, reason exalted as "Reason", to legitimise the quest for progress - not very different in the substantive sense from the transcendental investiture by which medieval monarchies claimed their legitimacy. </span>
In the narration of Corbridge and Harriss, the invention of India suffered from the inherent contradictions of the manner it was imagined. The idea of democracy came to India with Independence, but in the absence of a bourgeois revolution. Colonialism had modernised certain narrow enclaves, but left deeply entrenched a traditional "cellular" structure in Indian society. The caste system and village organisation had engendered, as the political scientist Barrington Moore puts it, "a huge mass of locally coordinated social cells". The bourgeoisie, for all its ambitious visions, had not managed to cement its solidarity on a national scale and remained hamstrung in its modernising project by the competing visions of the agrarian elite. In having to deal with a multiplicity of interests, the bourgeoisie was unable to institute a "developmental state" in the manner of the East Asian nations. It opted instead for a "passive revolution" through the process of planning, which in turn depended upon extending the bureaucratic apparatus of control in a manner that eroded the quasi-autonomy of the traditional "cells" of Indian society.
The situation bristled with the potential for conflict, which was only partially obscured by the invocation of four grand themes in the modernising project - democracy, federalism, socialism and secularism. All these ideals were severely compromised by actual circumstances at the time of Independence.<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'> The Constituent Assembly, which laid out the doctrinal framework for the invention of India, was a body constituted on the basis of a narrow and restricted franchise, which took on the mandate of working out the basic law for a nation made up overwhelmingly by the poor, the deprived and the under-privileged. The Constituent Assembly debates reflected all the ambivalent attitudes of an elite that was anxious to share the benefits of modernisation, without surrendering the social advantages they enjoyed. </span><i> if this is intended to be a critique of the manner inwhich the Indian constitution was drawn up, it should apply to other countries where such a constitution was drawn up such as the US, which was also drawn up by an elite. Of course there remain countries to this day which call themselves democracies but which do not have a written constitution</i>
The story of India's effort at modernisation through bureaucratic planning, then, is one of a succession of "elite revolts" against the implied egalitarian principles of development. It was a process that brought to the foreground all the contradictions in India's democratic experimentation. Democratic institutions, say Corbridge and Harriss, have been conspicuously absent in the Indian political landscape. In other words, there have been no political parties organised democratically or functioning institutions of democracy at the local level. This has meant that elections have become the substance of democracy and that electoral success has not been more than a formal mandate to govern.
Unable to surmount its inherent deficiencies, the Nehruvian planning project ran aground in the economic crisis of the mid-1960s. Indira Gandhi managed to break the resultant political impasse in 1971 with the revival of the socialist project that her father had only very tentatively embraced. But this was a "jealous populism", since for Indira Gandhi the cause of poverty eradication was not as important as safeguarding her own exclusive claim to its espousal. In a milieu of institutional infirmity, this assertion of personal authority accelerated the drift towards politics divorced from an institutional basis. The logical outcome was the suspension of even the pretence of democracy during the Emergency regime of the mid-1970s. This was not, say the authors, an effort to put in place a "developmental state" on the lines of the East Asian model, but rather, the panic response of an "ideologically and politically bankrupt ruling elite which was entangled in its own populist rhetoric".
The authors have evidently interpreted the Emergency as a part of the sequence of "elite revolts" that played havoc with the practice of democracy and the promise of development in India. They lean towards viewing the Janata Party interlude that followed the Emergency as a period when the four traditional verities of Indian politics - democracy, federalism, socialism and secularism - were reaffirmed against their threatened erosion. But then they see little contradiction in arguing that Indira Gandhi's return to power was achieved by recruiting the loyalty of the minorities and the lower castes - precisely those sections that bore the brunt of the elite revolts in terms of opportunities lost.
The 1980s constituted a period when the founding myths began seriously to be questioned, in both theory and practice. This was a decade when the Indian state sought in vain to square the circle of an unchanged distribution of productive assets, a fiscal apparatus that spared the wealthy any undue strain, and the unrelenting demands of the poor for reasonable economic opportunities. In seeking to address these contradictory requirements, by the end of the decade the Central government lurched into a fiscal crisis.
Corbridge and Harriss do not tie up the theme of the growing fiscal crisis with the erosion of the state's claim to being the sole focus of nationhood. It may be a productive line of inquiry to seek to correlate Indira Gandhi's first flirtations - and her son Rajiv Gandhi's more ardent embrace - of Hindu nationalism with the elite's quest for an alternative conception of nationhood to fill the vacuum caused by the retreat of the state.
By way of conclusion, the authors offer the prognosis that the "defining struggle" in Indian politics today is that between the "centralising instincts" of Hindu nationalism and the countervailing mobilisation of lower castes and subaltern groupings. The Indian state, they contend, may well be forced under the pressure of the new forms of political mobilisation to "do the bidding of India's lower orders". This would be the final act in the invention of the India that the Constituent Assembly had imagined.<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'> But in the bargain it is unlikely that either the political structure or the geography of India will remain unchanged. This is an extrapolation that lurks at the fringes of the authors' analysis, but perhaps is unavoidable given the terms of their discourse.
</span>
02-27-2004, 10:20 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-27-2004, 10:25 AM by Hauma Hamiddha.)
Relevant to the topic from a certain angle: Cross-posting:
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The West (in particular US of America) has endlessly spun tales of the glory of democracy. One day they are calling for democracy amongst Soviets, the next they want democracy in Latin American and on yet another day they want to bring this golden democracy to the Moslems. They bring the light of democracy and disperse the darkness of autocracy via invasions (typically termed liberations) or subversions (catalyzed by the omnipresent, omniscient CIA). Normally it comes tastefully gift-wrapped under various covers, termed "human rights", "equality of humans", "social justice" bla bla bla... To many individuals in the lands the that are slated to receive this glorious form of governance the whole thing hardly makes as they have never seen anything so utter discordant throughout their long histories. Several observers (chief amongst them, Amy Chua) have also noted that the West tends to make this gift of democracy along with another gift, usually termed "globalization" and "free markets". This gift is supposed to provide wealth, whereas the former one the "Equality and Rights". The end result of this combination is a peculiar enactment of the words of Mr. Marx (which both the West, China, and the in the past Soviets exported in order to complete the subversion). As several theorists agree, the free market/globalization usually allows a small minority with historical experience as business middlemen to take control of much of a country's wealth and there by acquire power. The introduction of democracy however shifts the political power away from them to the economically backward masses. This anisotropy immediately results in the latter interpreting the situation through the lens of the maxims of Marx. As a result a bloody revolution that targets the "burgoise", and sometimes destroys them, plays out. The result is a disruption of the economy as its engines are broken by the revolution occuring under Marxist paradigms. Islam is an ideology that in many ways closely resembles Marxism; it may even be termed proto-Marxism of the 600s. So in many cases the revolution occurs not under aegis of Marxism but its older sister Mohammedanism.
I would submit that India is a peculiar case that has not entirely gone the way other nations targetted by the west. In pockets of India one may notice the same trends as elsewhere, such as the anti-Brahminical wave in Tamil Nadu. Here the preceived dominance of the resident North Indians, namely the Tamil Nad Brahmins, led to a fierce attack on them under the metaphors of "Dravidian upliftment" and atheism (given the association of Brahmins with religious performance). Marxism provided an underpining for the Dravidian movement on the whole. The same may be said about the Marxist metaphors in Kerala being used against the Nambuthiri Brahmin who held his sway in those regions. There were other less major anti-upper caste movements throughout India. However, on the whole the Western subversion in India did not proceed the usual way. Why was this so? The issue was that India, unlike most of the other targets of the West, had a continuous long civilization. Even though she had been battered by Islam, she was on the verge of beating back the Mohammedans when she fell to the British. Importantly, this long civilization produced unity without actually destroying local diversity. For example, the resident North Indians of South India noticeably mated with the local populations and adopted local languages. Many tribal populations were not destroyed (unlike the portrayal by certain Marxist ideologues) but allowed to exist in their native state. Finally, the varNa system (and its realizations like jAti) divided the shares of the economy amongst a vast section of the population and allowed whole populations to Aryanize gradually, as presented in the manu smR^iti. This attenuated the Western attempts at breaking the local system through their conventional means and actually democracy had a positive effect on India unlike elsewhere. The importance of the strong varNa system in allowing the transition to democracy can be seen when one takes up the case of Shri Lanka, where it was never too strong. Here the typical explosive mix of the free market-democracy combine in creating a war between the economically dominant Tamils and the majority Lankans can be seen.
Seeing the democracy was actually strengthening the Indians, the West resorted to selecting for Marxism amongst the India elite. Thus in the guise of the democrat Nehru the Chacha, we got a Marxist. So this Marxist clique became the dominant "middleman" controlling the power and denying it to the Indian masses, that were held to gether by the Hindu Dharma. I would present that what we are now observing is the coming of better approximations of democracy, wherein the masses are finally getting more of a say. This is exactly what many observers (chief amongst them Naipaul) see as the true basis of Hindutva. So the masses are discarding the dominant Marxism and the Hindu dharma that characterizes India is struggling to come to the fore. That it will be successful cannot be taken for granted. It must also be ensured that in does not get subverted by vested interests. Some trends like the vandalism of Shiv Sena, cow extremism and misapprehension of the role of sexuality in life are examples of how the Hindu resurgence is far from perfect in its foundations (especially in terms of theoretical frameworks). Yet the suppressed masses are having their say. As viShNusharman stated in the pa~nchatantra what worked for the merchant maNibhadra does not work for the nApita (barber). So it is mistaken to believe that facimiles of Western democracy along with its constructs like "Equality" and "Human rights" will work everywhere.
Very interesting quote which tells us how the western institutions are interpreting the changes and predicting the future.
Oxford press is the leading press which comes up with these topics for more than 100 years.
By way of conclusion, the authors offer the prognosis that the "defining struggle" in Indian politics today is that between the "centralising instincts" of Hindu nationalism and the countervailing mobilisation of lower castes and subaltern groupings. The Indian state, they contend, may well be forced under the pressure of the new forms of political mobilisation to "do the bidding of India's lower orders". This would be the final act in the invention of the India that the Constituent Assembly had imagined. But in the bargain it is unlikely that either the political structure or the geography of India will remain unchanged.
This is an after thought for interpretation
It may be a productive line of inquiry to seek to correlate Indira Gandhi's first flirtations - and her son Rajiv Gandhi's more ardent embrace - of Hindu nationalism with the elite's quest for an alternative conception of nationhood to fill the vacuum caused by the retreat of the state.
The book seems to be an excerise of objective analysis but it is more of an propoganda for a goal persued by the authors.
HH,
Is this your analysis ?
Few questions ..
(1) What is your position on globalization ?
(2) What do you call cow extremism ?
(3) If role of sexuality is to be changed - how is the varna vyavastha to be maintained ?
Regards..
<!--QuoteBegin-rajesh_g+Feb 27 2004, 12:50 PM-->QUOTE(rajesh_g @ Feb 27 2004, 12:50 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--> HH,
Few questions ..
Regards.. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
>Is this your analysis ?
I do not know if it could be dignified as an analysis, just some thoughts.
>(1) What is your position on globalization ?
I believe globalization is a natural phenomenon- inevitable and India has always been a global hub in this process. In the past India was a nexus of the known globe interacting with Rome, Iran, China and the various far eastern principalities. So Indians are historically geared to sorting various foreign influences and dealing in cosmopolitan terms.
However, I feel in modern globalization there is an anisotropy of power. The west is forcing it down the gullets of the rest so that things work to their advantage. And this process as outlined above can create explosive situations in multi-ethnic third world settings when combined with another Western concept democracy. This is at the heart of most world conflicts. The West trying to press the piston hard to contain local steam vents and subvert age old local systems. The Bulwark of the West, US being relative isolated from Islam is able to keep a a major power differential to fuel this process.
>(2) What do you call cow extremism ?
In its most classic form was the demand by the VHP to bring mad-cows to India to house them locally. More generally it is the whole fascination with the role of beef-eating in archaic Hindu society and the denial of history.
>(3) If role of sexuality is to be changed - how is the varna vyavastha to be >maintained ?
I am not bringing up sexuality in the context of varNa vyavastha. What I mean is that there is an overt emphasis on Christian prudery as the solution against Western sexual indulturation that is taking place.
Uncle Sam's diatribe about Hindu intolerance while two national reports (including the John Jay report) published in US this week indicate at least 4 percent of the country's priests were involved in sexual abuse of minors since 1950.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The studies state that at least 10,667 children were allegedly abused by 4,392 priests between 1950 and 2002 <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
links
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> â<b>Delete âSindhâ from National Anthemâ</b>
Monday January 3 2005 19:49 IST PTI
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court issued notice to the Union Ministries of Home, External Affairs and HRD on a PIL seeking deletion of the word "Sindh" from the National Anthem, it being a part of Pakistan and substituting the same with "Kashmir" or some other word.
A bench comprising Chief Justice R.C. Lahoti and Justice G.P. Mathur issued the notice despite the Centre in its informal response stating that the word "Sindh" in the National Anthem represented the culture and not the province.
Contesting this statement from the Centre, petitioner Sanjeev Bhatnagar argued that the author of the National Anthem, Rabindranath Tagore, had himself translated his work into Hindi stating therein that the word "Sindh" referred to the province and not the culture.
"Who would be more accurate in translation and interpretation of a particular part of the Anthem than the author himself," the petitioner asked while stating that the National Anthem suffered the fallacy of text.
The Centre, in its response had said that the National Anthem, as it is sung today, was adopted by the Constituent Assembly in the August presence of top national leaders on January 24, 1950 despite all of them being aware of the fact that "Sindh" was part of Pakistan at that time.
Stressing that exclusion of "Sindh" from the National Anthem would hurt the people of Sindhi community whose contribution to the national cause could not be overlooked, the Centre said granting relief to the petitioner would result in demand from other quarters for inclusion and exclusion of words in the National Anthem
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I did not know where to post this. I think this thread may be appropraite since it deals with a weakness in our character.
I got this email. No link
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Verse 11 in Chapter 2 is verily the turning point where Bhagavadgita really
started.
Like pointed out before, teachings of Gita are jewels to guide us in the path of duty. When India was taken over from the Mughal rulers by the British, one British administrator, who read Gita for the first time, exclaimed, "With a book like Gita on hand, how did India lose her independence to begin with?" This question can also be applied to India's moral decadence that was inflicted by foreign rule. The problem is clear: we failed to learn from Gita. We keep on deviating from the reforms that Lord Krishna tried to introduce. In this feedback to your article, I will try to follow the time-line to show why teachings of Gita are not helping Indian society today
Prior to the verse quoted (Verse 11 in Chapter 2), Arjuna lamented for a long time quoting the word "family" (Swajana, kula) ten times in 18 verses in Chapter 1 (Verses 28 to 45). Right at the beginning of Chapter 2, Lord Krishna replied by pointing out that it was an hour of crisis (visame). He gave a short businesslike instruction and asked Arjuna to get out of unmanliness (klaibyam) and faintheartedness (hrdayadaurbalyam) and arise to fight the battle (Verses 2 & 3, Chapter 2).
Had Arjuna listened to Him, Gita would have ended right at that point. But, Arjuna had to continue his whining for five more verses, citing noble ideas that the life of a beggar was preferable to winning a battle where he would have to kill these "mahanubhavan" (people with great feelings) elders and gurus like Bhishma and Drona, or cousins like Duryodhana and his brothers. Arjuna completely forgot that Duryodhana and his brothers disrobed Draupadi in open court while the mahanubhava Bhishma and Drona, who were watching, did not stop them. Bhishma and Drona accompanied Duryodhana and his brothers when they went to steal cows from King Birata. Bhishma and Drona were with Duryodhana and his brothers in all their unjust, unlawful and remorseless activities. Now, Bhishma and Drona were all well prepared with deadly weapons to kill Pandavas, and Arjuna was going for personal aggrandizement by making noble statements to show the greatness of his heart.
Personal glory and aggrandizement by a leader at the cost of his duty to people whom he was supposed to protect were repeated in the history of India many times, proving the point that many leaders of India deviated from the great teachings of Gita. The Battle of Kurukshetra took place only for 18 days. Wisdom of Gita was imparted to Arjuna on the first day of the Battle. Just within three weeks of the great teaching of Gita, when the Battle of Kurukshetra was going on in full force, Arjun was about to refrain from fighting again when he saw that Karna's chariot was stuck in mud. Arjun did this AFTER he had a full course of the wisdom of Gita only a few days before directly from Lord Krishna, without the vast multitudes of commentaries that drown us today. Maybe this was the first instance of deviation from Gita, but luckily Lord Krishna was present there and He did not allow that to happen. He reiterated his teaching of Gita and clarified that the law of a battlefield was different from the law of domestic life. Charity and magnanimity did not have a place when one was in the midst of a blood battle. Arjun listened to Lord Krishna and continued his battle with Karna, who was killed fighting from ground.
Another glaring deviation from Gita was made by Prithwiraj Chauhan that plunged India into the abyss of degeneration that we must examine to understand why teachings of Gita are not helping Indian society today.
In the battlefield of the First Battle of Tarain (1191), Prithwiraj Chauhan refrained from fighting because Mahammad Ghouri fell down from his horse. Could it be possible that Prithwiraj Chauhan never read Mahabharata? Ghouri escaped and returned with redoubled forces after two years. This was the Second Battle of Tarain (1193). Prithwiraj was defeated, blinded and taken away to Ghajni in shackles. Entire Indo-Gangetic plains were overrun by the Islamic cavalry, which spread like wild fire. In 1200 AD (7 years after 1193), they arrived at Nalanda University, about 1000 miles from Delhi (territorial expansion @ average 150 miles per year), which was ravaged, all the books were burnt down and all the scholars were hacked to pieces. Bengal was taken in 1205. The Islamic cavalries were stopped at Assam, a land of hillocks and interconnecting earth ramparts that slowed down the cavalry.
The atrocities committed by the early Islamic invaders in the Indo-Gangetic plains were unprecedented in history. Women were raped and their bodies were ravaged. In 1193, there was no newspaper, no radio, no TV. The atrocities continued unabated for many years. Hindu women found out that it was better to commit suicide than to fall at the hands of Islamic invaders. If they heard that Islamic invaders were coming, groups of Hindu women, married and unmarried, would light a bonfire and jump into it, which they called "Jawahar Vrata" "Vow of Purity." The situation continued for many decades, and burning of a woman became an
acceptable scenario.
Hindus survived in the Indo-Gangetic plains by accepting a status of second-class people. Hindu scriptures, including Gita, were publicly decried. In a family had seven brothers, two would take conversion to Islam to protect the remaining five. That was the beginning of Indian Muslims. The remaining five were advised to maintain a low profile by agreeing to everything that the Islamic rulers would say. But they followed a different life within the four walls of their house. This was how public life became very divorced from individual life, a trend that continues even today. The interiors of the houses were clean, but the streets outside were extremely dirty, because nobody cared about public life. Same practice continues in India even today.
Hindus under early Islamic overlordship developed an adroit skill of twisting their words. If they said something that did not please the Islamic masters, they must acquire the skill of changing the meaning of the word immediately, otherwise their necks might be severed. Double talk and double meaning of the words became tools of survival. To tell a lie became a virtue. Status of women deteriorated beyond all imaginable limits. An Islamic soldier could enter any home and snatch away a grown-up daughter for the harem of the Sultan. Child marriage, unknown in Gupta period or in the 2500+ stories of Mahabharata, started
at this time to get rid of daughters. Daughters became a liability. Money would be paid to those who would take charge of a daughter. Dowry system, unknown in areas which were not dominated by Islamic rulers, became a second nature in Islamic India. Hereditary caste system proliferated as a result of child marriage and arranged marriage. Hindu society degraded to the lowest level. The battlefield teachings of Gita were ignored because Islamic rulers would not tolerate that. Bhakti marg, approved by Islamic rulers, flourished in this period.
It was only natural that some Hindus played the role of an intermediary between the Islamic ruler and his Hindu subjects. The rulers entrusted these turncoats with the task of collecting taxes and depositing it in Sultan's treasury. These tax collectors squeezed as much they could from the common people, but deposited only a part in the Sultan's treasury.
In hundreds of years, Hindu tax collectors became very rich. They started to call themselves aristocrats. They led the country to the path of greed, corruption, treachery, betrayal and debauchery. In the later Mughal era, tax collectors of a "nehar" (nehar means a canal) were called "Nehru." In our time, when independent India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said "Thora kuch de do" during the debacle of utter corruption of Jayantilal Teja in 1956, we should have not been surprised. Habits developed through history do not go away so soon.
Another glaring example of deviation from Gita took place when Nehru stopped Indian Army at the middle of Battle of Kashmir. He created a Line Of Control (LoC) at the middle of Kashmir and took the Kashmir case to the United Nations in 1948. Today, 400,000 Kashmiri Hindus, uprooted from their home, are raising their children on the streets of India for the last ten years, thanks to Nehru's magnanimity and greatness of his heart.
Just before the "Turning Point" that you have quoted (Verse 11, Chapter2), Sanjay, the narrator of Gita, described that Lord Krishna was smiling (prahasan iba) in Verse 10. This tells us why Lord Krishna was using the phrase "prajna-vadam ca bhasase" in Verse 11, meaning "talking like a wise man," which actually meant that Arjuna lacked real wisdom. Verse 11 was translated by Dr. Radhakrishnan as "Thou grievest for those whom thou shouldst not grieve for, and yet thou speakest words about wisdom. Wise men do not grieve for the dead or for the living." Dr. Radhakrishnan also referred to Kashmir version of Gita which had "thou dost not speak as an intelligent man": "prajnavan na abhibhasase."
I believe this is a direct rebuke from Lord Krishna, and we all deserve it. You are absolutely right to point out that: "What Arjuna did then is done by all of us most of the time. We take our stand and then rationalize it by quoting it from one shastra or the other."
We can absolve ourselves only by performing our duty to the society, in addition to our duty to our family, to uphold righteousness.
Empty sense of nation
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Empty sense of nation
Sumaiya Salahuddin
With reference to the ongoing debate in your editorial page columns on nation and nationalism, and specifically with reference to what Mr N Jamal Ansari wrote recently, that India needs Indian nationalism and not Hindu nationalism, I am at a loss to understand why some people are opposing this down-to-earth comment. I suspect those who object have not studied nationalism properly.
Nationalism may be defined as an "emotional and intellectual attitude" that induces one to place, plead and work for the collective interests of the people belonging to one's own nation. India presents a broad and complex spectrum of religious, cultural and linguistic situation. These religious, cultural and linguistic diversities that have gone into the weaving of the rich but complex mosaic of Indian culture have to be understood in their proper context, if we are to have a better appreciation of Indian nationalism.
No doubt, intellectuals from later Vedic period onwards have been trying to evolve the idea of nationalism and a centrally governed state. But the idea never fully concretised. For the first time in history, Mughals succeeded in rearing up a centralised empire. It was during these periods that the concept of a unitary India was born and realised. Later, the British further cemented it. Against this background, it is difficult to understand why some people did not show more heightened consciousness of the real nationalism.
Hindu nationalism is relatively a new phenomenon. During the freedom movement, religion was a major factor in the political thinking of some of our leaders. They presented India as Mother who should be worshipped. Leaders like Lajpat Rai and Bipin Chandra Pal made extensive use of religion for political purpose. Savarkar gave birth to the concept of Hindutva, which was essentially born out of dreams of governing India politically. Some leaders are still dreaming about a Hindu-controlled state. But in the process they forget some of the vital documented points. Savarkar apologised to the British empire six times and promised to obey and help them. Thus, he cannot be called a nationalist, and his theories became redundant.
We should take into account dangers of a Hindu rashtra as conceived by Savarkar and others. In this connection, the thoughts of Savarkar, Golwalkar and, contemporaneously, Mr LK Advani are well known. Aurobindo Ghose was also the exponent of this separatist idea. He said in 1908, "Nationalism is not a mere political programme. It is a religion that has come from God." He further observed in 1909, "I say no longer that nationalism is a creed, a religion. I say that it is the Sanatan Dharma, which for us is nationalism. This Hindu nation was born with the Sanatan Dharma." Aurobindo, however, was not alone. Bal Gangadhar Tilak gave birth to Shivaji and Ganesh festivals. This increased the schism between Hindus and Muslims.
Those who support Hindu nationalism should understand that nationalism is not a function of numbers. Moreover, nationality is not determined by religion. Had it been so, Europe would have seen only one Christian state, and Arabs would have unified into a single nation. But this is not the case.
Mr Ansari is a true spokesperson of Indianness. Instead of logically countering his arguments, some people are trying to locate fault with him. This is not intellectual justice, but intellectual violence. For the country's sake, let's give a decent burial to Hindu rashtravad.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Swami Vivekananda's on India and its purpose
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I have said elsewhere that every nation has a national purpose of its own. Either in obedience to the Law of nature, or by virtue of the superior genius of the great ones, the social manners and customs of every nation are being moulded into shape, so as to bring that purpose to fruition. In the life of every nation, besides that purpose and those manners and customs that are essentially necessary to effect that purpose, all others are superfluous. It does not matter much whether those superfluous customs and manners grow or disappear; but a nation is sure to die when the main purpose of its life is hurt.
When we were children. we heard the story of a certain ogress who had her soul living in a small bird, and unless the bird was killed, the ogress would never die. The life of a nation is also like that. Again another thing you will observe, that a nation will never greatly grudge if it be deprived of these rights which have not much to do with its national purpose, nay, even if all of such are wrested from it; but when the slightest blow is given to that purpose on which rests its national life, that moment it reacts with tremendous power.
Take for instance the case of the three living nations, of whose history you know more or less, viz. the French, the English, and the Hindu. Political independence is the backbone of the French character. French subjects bear calmly all oppressions. Burden them with heavy taxes, they will not raise the least voice against them; compel the whole nation to join the army, they never complain; but the instant anyone meddles with that political independence, the whole nation will rise as one man and madly react. No one man shall be allowed to usurp authority over us; whether learned or ignorant, rich or poor, of noble birth or of the lower classes, we have equal share in the Government of our country, and in the independent control of our society â this is the root-principle of the French character. He must suffer Who will try to interfere with this freedom.
In the English character, the "give and take" policy, the business principle of the trader, is principally inherent. To the English, just and equitable distribution of wealth is of essential interest. The Englishman humbly submits to the king and to the privileges of the nobility; only if he has to pay a farthing from his pocket, he must demand an account of it. There is the king; that is all right; he is ready to obey and honour him; but if the king wants money, the Englishman says: All right, but first let me understand why it is needed, what good it will bring; next, I must have my say in the matter of how it is to be spent, and then I shall part with it. The king, once trying to exact money from the English people by force, brought about a great revolution. They killed the king.
<b>The Hindu says that political and social independence are well and good, but the real thing is spiritual independence â Mukti. This is our national purpose; whether you take the Vaidika, the Jaina, or the Bauddha, the Advaita, the Vishishtâdvaita, or the Dvaita â there, they are all of one mind. Leave that point untouched and do whatever you like, the Hindu is quite unconcerned and keeps silence; but if you run foul of him there, beware, you court your ruin. Rob him of everything he has, kick him, call him a "nigger" or any such name, he does not care much; only keep that one gate of religion free and unmolested. Look here, how in the modern period the Pathan dynasties were coming and going, but could nor get a firm hold of their Indian Empire, because they were all along attacking the Hindu's religion. And see, how firmly based, how tremendously strong was the Mogul Empire. Why? Because the Moguls left that point untouched. In fact, Hindus were the real prop of the Mogul Empire; do you not know that Jahangir, Shahjahan, and Dara Shikoh were all born of Hindu mothers? Now then observe â as soon as the ill-fated Aurangzeb again touched that point, the vast Mogul Empire vanished in an instant like a dream. Why is it that the English throne is so firmly established in India? Because it never touches the religion of the land in any way. The sapient Christian missionaries tried to tamper a little with this point, and the result was the Mutiny of 1857. So long as the English understand this thoroughly and act accordingly, their throne in India will remain unsullied and unshaken. The wise and far-seeing among the English also comprehend this and admit it â read Lord Roberts's Forty-one Years in India. (Vide 30th and 31st Chapters.) </b>
Now you understand clearly <b>where the soul of this ogress is â it is in religion. Because no one was able to destroy that, therefore the Hindu nation is still living, having survived so many troubles and tribulations .</b>Well, One Indian scholar asks, "what is the use of keeping the soul of the nation in religion? Why not keep it in social or political independence, as is the case with other nations?" It is very easy to talk like that. If it be granted, for the sake of argument, that religion and spiritual independence, and soul, God, and Mukti are all false, even then see how the matter stands. As the same fire is manifesting itself in different forms, so the same one great Force is manifesting itself as political independence with the French, as mercantile genius and expansion of the sphere of equity with the English, and as the desire for Mukti or spiritual independence with the Hindu. Be it noted that by the impelling of this great Force, has been moulded the French and the English character, through several centuries of vicissitudes of fortune; and also by the inspiration of that great Force, with the rolling of thousands of centuries, has been the present evolution of the Hindu national character. I ask in all seriousness â which is easier, to give up our national character evolved out of thousands of centuries, or your grafted foreign character of a few hundred years? Why do not the English forget their warlike habits and give up fighting and bloodshed, and sit calm and quiet concentrating their whole energy on making religion the sole aim of their life?
<b>The fact is, that the river has come down a thousand miles from its source in the mountains; does it, or can it go back to its source? If it ever tries to trace back its course, it will simply dry up by being dissipated in all directions. Anyhow the river is sure to fall into the ocean, sooner or later, either by passing through open and beautiful plaints or struggling through grimy soil. If our national life of these ten thousand years has been a mistake, then there is no help for it; and if we try now to form a new character, the inevitable result will be that we shall die. </b>
But, excuse me if I say that it is sheer ignorance and want of proper understanding to think like that, namely, that our national ideal has been a mistake.<b> First go to other countries and study carefully their manners and conditions with your own eyes â not with others' â and reflect on them with a thoughtful brain, if you have it: then read your own scriptures, your ancient literature travel throughout India, and mark the people of her different parts and their ways and habits with the wide-awake eye of an intelligent and keen observer â not with a fool's eye â and you will see as clear as noonday that the nation is still living intact and its life is surely pulsating. You will find there also that, hidden under the ashes of apparent death, the fire of our national life is yet smouldering and that the life of this nation is religion, its language religion, and its idea religion; and your politics, society, municipality, plague-prevention work, and famine-relief work â all these things will be done as they have been done all along here, viz. only through religion; otherwise all your frantic yelling and bewailing will end in nothing,</b> my friend!Â
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I will use this thread for tracking South Asian Studies
Welcome to the South Asia Institute...
The region of South Asia â which includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan, Bhutan, and the Maldives â is becoming increasingly influential in the global marketplace in terms of culture, economics and politics. The University of Texas at Austin, having assembled one of the most distinguished South Asia programs in the country, has made a university-wide commitment to making this region a center of excellence in international studies. It created the South Asia Institute to foster understanding and exchange with this part of the world.
The College of Liberal Arts currently awards seven degrees in South Asian studies: B.A. and M.A. in Asian Studies; B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in Asian Cultures and Languages; and two dual M.A. degrees with the McCombs School of Business and the LBJ School of Public Affairs.
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Another glaring deviation from Gita was made by Prithwiraj Chauhan that plunged India into the abyss of degeneration that we must examine to understand why teachings of Gita are not helping Indian society today.
In the battlefield of the First Battle of Tarain (1191), Prithwiraj Chauhan refrained from fighting because Mahammad Ghouri fell down from his horse. Could it be possible that Prithwiraj Chauhan never read Mahabharata? Ghouri escaped and returned with redoubled forces after two years. This was the Second Battle of Tarain (1193). Prithwiraj was defeated, blinded and taken away to Ghajni in shackles. <b>Entire Indo-Gangetic plains were overrun by the Islamic cavalry, which spread like wild fire. In 1200 AD (7 years after 1193), they arrived at Nalanda University, about 1000 miles from Delhi (territorial expansion @ average 150 miles per year), which was ravaged, all the books were burnt down and all the scholars were hacked to pieces. Bengal was taken in 1205.</b> The Islamic cavalries were stopped at Assam, a land of hillocks and interconnecting earth ramparts that slowed down the cavalry.
<b>The atrocities committed by the early Islamic invaders in the Indo-Gangetic plains were unprecedented in history.</b> Women were raped and their bodies were ravaged. In 1193, there was no newspaper, no radio, no TV. The atrocities continued unabated for many years. Hindu women found out that it was better to commit suicide than to fall at the hands of Islamic invaders. If they heard that Islamic invaders were coming, groups of Hindu women, married and unmarried, would light a bonfire and jump into it, which they called "Jawahar Vrata" "Vow of Purity." The situation continued for many decades, and burning of a woman became an
acceptable scenario.
<b>
Hindus survived in the Indo-Gangetic plains by accepting a status of second-class people.</b> Hindu scriptures, including Gita, were publicly decried. In a family had seven brothers, two would take conversion to Islam to protect the remaining five. That was the beginning of Indian Muslims. The remaining five were advised to maintain a low profile by agreeing to everything that the Islamic rulers would say. But they followed a different life within the four walls of their house. <b>This was how public life became very divorced from individual life, a trend that continues even today. The interiors of the houses were clean, but the streets outside were extremely dirty, because nobody cared about public life. Same practice continues in India even today. </b>
Hindus under early Islamic overlordship developed an adroit skill of twisting their words. If they said something that did not please the Islamic masters, they must acquire the skill of changing the meaning of the word immediately, otherwise their necks might be severed. Double talk and double meaning of the words became tools of survival. To tell a lie became a virtue. Status of women deteriorated beyond all imaginable limits. An Islamic soldier could enter any home and snatch away a grown-up daughter for the harem of the Sultan. <b>Child marriage, unknown in Gupta period or in the 2500+ stories of Mahabharata, started
at this time to get rid of daughters.</b> Daughters became a liability. Money would be paid to those who would take charge of a daughter. Dowry system, unknown in areas which were not dominated by Islamic rulers, became a second nature in Islamic India. Hereditary caste system proliferated as a result of child marriage and arranged marriage. Hindu society degraded to the lowest level. The battlefield teachings of Gita were ignored because Islamic rulers would not tolerate that. Bhakti marg, approved by Islamic rulers, flourished in this period.
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thanks very much for posting that. This should be compulsory reading for everybody. I hope one day all indians will indeed be able to learn the true story of india, esp indo gangetic india under the afghan hounds (almost the muslim rulers were from afghanistan. even the mughals, who are actually from samarkand, came to india from kabul) of islam.
btw, reading your post, i was instantly reminded of an article by Nirad C Choudhury titled "about the hindu muslim problem in india" (or similar) - this article was the last chapter of his book, "the east is east and the west is west". There he wrote pretty much about all the attrocities you mentioned and the breaking down of the fabric of hindu society under muslims. the detail in his article was astounding (that guy was an encyclopedia many times over), and was supported with historical facts, songs of lament that have entered indian folk music, supported from allusions to the cronicles made by westerners like Tiffenthaler during their stay in islamic india etc etc.
its a miracle india survived the islamic hammering.
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