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Building the Idea of India

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Young Friends,

As in the preliminary remarks it was said that the concept of India is a growing one, I propose to discuss how the concept of India arose, how it developed and how India became a nation; and what are the dangers today that face the nation. We are at a very sad moment in our history. Rationalists—people who believe in science—like Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi […Kalburgi very recently] have been murdered in our country. In the name of GauRaksha(cow protection), Mohammad Akhlaq has been murdered! So, our country’s name is being dragged into dirt and it is, therefore, time for all of us to reflect and consider what our country is about and how best it can be served.

We must remember that far from its becoming a nation in the relatively recent past our BJP friends and their RSS mentors are fond of saying that India was a nation since Rig-Vedic times. But, in fact, neither in the Rigveda nor in the other three Vedas, nor even in the Brahmana which followed them, or, even for that matter, in the still later Upanishads, is India mentioned at all. In the Rig Veda, there is not even a mention of any geographical region; but only rivers and tribes. Even Sapta Saindhava (seven rivers) did not mean the region of Punjab, as it meant later on, but just the main seven rivers that form the Indus. The area in which the Vedic hymns were written was limited to the Punjab and parts of Afghanistan, and it was a inhabited by migratory tribes; so there was not even the concept of a region, least of all, the concept of “country”.

As culture developed, political entities arose. The first name of our country was in Prakrit Sola Maha-Janapada (Sixteen Great States), which occurs in texts going back to 500 BC Remember, Solah is a Prakrit word and many of our languages, including Hindi and Urdu, go back to Prakrit. These maha-janapadas ranged from Kamboja or Kabul to Anga in eastern Bihar but they were confined only to northern India; and there was not yet any concept of India as we now conceive it. In some Dharma Søtras, the term Aryavarta, ‘the land of the noble,’ begins to occur and Manusmriti defined Aryavarta as the country from Himalayas to the Vindhyas; but then again it is only a large part of India and not the whole country that the term encompasses.

The first perception of the whole of India as a country comes with the Mauryan Empire. Those of you, who have studied Indian history would know that the inscriptions of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka range from Kandahar and north of Kabul to Karnataka and Andhra and they are in Prakrit, Greek and Aramaic. So it was with such political unity that the concept of India came, and its first name was Jambudvipa a name which Ashoka uses in his Minor Rock Edict-1, meaning 'the land of the Jamun fruit.' The term Bharata was also used in Prakrit in an inscription in Orissa, at Hathigumpha, of the Kalinga ruler, Kharavela in 1st century BC; that is the first instance of the use of Bharat, and Kharavela uses it for the whole of India. So, gradually the concept of India as a country began to arise and a cultural unity was also seen within it as religions like Buddhism, Brahmanism and Jainism spread to all parts of the country. Prakrit was spoken, at least literary Prakrit, all over the country, becoming its lingua franca. So, there were things which, as people could see, united us.

There were also foreigners who could see that this was a culturally distinct country and it often happens [and this is an interesting part] that foreigners regard a country much more easily than its natives because they realize that there is difference between, say, Indians and Persians; whether you went to the Punjab or the South, Prakrit was the literary language and Sanskrit the priestly language. So, it is the Iranians who first time gave us the name ‘Hindu’, and Hindu is the Persian form of Sindhu river, that is, the Indus River. So, every region east of the Sindhu river, which was called Hindu in ancient Persian, was ‘Hindu’ and from this the name, ‘India’ comes. For Greeks, Hindu became Indu as Greeks did not pronounce the initial ‘H’, and the Chinese name for India, ‘Intu,’ also came from the same source. And then came the later Persian name ‘Hindustan.’ Remember, there is no such word in Sanskrit as Hindusthan. Sthan always means in Sanskrit a ‘particular spot’.But ‘stan’ in Persian is a territorial suffix, so, we have Seistan, Gurjistan, Hindustan and so on. This name is used in Sasanid inscriptions in the fourth century AD. So these words and the word Hindu itself are of non-Indian origin. Those talk about Hindutva and rejection of everything foreign, forget that their own name Hindu is Iranian in origin, and is not found in Sanskrit before the fourteenth century. Its first use in Sanskrit inscriptions comes from the Vijaynagar Empire where the Vijaynagar emperors call themselves Hindu raya suratrana, ‘Sultans over Hindu Rays.’ They regarded themselves as Sultans and their subordinates as ‘Hindu Rays’. So, our country as its name indicates is of a composite nature, illustrated by the very name Hindu, derived from ancient Iranian, then used by Iranian and Arab Muslims, and entering Sanskrit usage only in the 14th century.

I say all this because it means that the concept of India as a country was ancient, the assertion made by Perry Anderson in his book The Indian Ideology that the India is a name given by foreigners particularly Europeans in modern times, is a totally misleading statement. It is particularly misleading because there is another very interesting matter: True, there was a conception of India in ancient times, even before Christ, but when was there a conception of love for India i.e. patriotism? It is surprising that throughout ancient India you have no patriotic verse in Sanskrit expressing love for India.

The first patriotic poem in which India is praised, India is loved, Indians are acclaimed is Amir Khusrau’s long poem in his Nuh Sipihir written in 1318. I am very sorry that now we are losing this heritage. How many people here would be able to read Amir Khusrau, and so appreciate that here is the praise for India for the first time in its history. What does Amir Khusrau praise India for? For its climate first of all which I think is very unconvincing statement, its natural beauty, its animals and along with its animals its women, their beauty as well as faithfulness. Then he comes to Brahmans. He praises their learning. He praises their language Sanskrit. He identifies India not only with Brahmans, but also with Muslims. Those who speak Persian, as well as those who speak Turkish, he says, are to be found throughout India. He praises all the languages of India from Kashmiri to Mabari i.e. Tamil. All these languages that were spoken in India, not only north India but also in the south India, are listed there. He called them Hindavi. He adds that besides these languages there is the Sanskrit language, which is the language of science, and of learning. And had Arabic not been the language of the Quran, he would have preferred Sanskrit to Arabic. He then says India has given many things to the world: India has given Panchtantra tales, as well as chess, and most surprisingly, he says India has given the world the decimal numerals what are known as Arab numerals or International numerals. He is correct in all the three points. And, as for decimal notation Aryabhatta theoretically recommended its use in 4th century AD.

In the Mughal period patriotism turned into a more insistent assertion particularly with Akbar and Abul Fazl. They argued that India is a special country, India has a large number of religious communities, and so there must be tolerance, under the umbrella of Sulh-i Kul i.e. absolute peace.

Other historians, other writers, other poets also praised India but not in such detail, not with such fervor and not, of course, with such mastery of language as Amir Khusrau. In 1350 the poet, Isami said in a poem dedicated to the praise of India.

“Praise be to the splendour of the country of Hindustan for paradise is jealous of the beauty of this flower garden.”

So, you begin to find patriotic verses. I will not go in to details because they are all in Persian and Persian for Indians is almost a dead language now.

In the Mughal period patriotism turned into a more insistent assertion particularly with Akbar and Abul Fazl. They argued that India is a special country, India has a large number of religious communities, and so there must be tolerance, under the umbrella of Sulh-i Kul i.e. absolute peace.’ It was argued that the King, like God, must favour all without discrimination. It was not only Akbar and Abul Fazl who made this assertion but even Aurangzeb (when a prince), in 1658, using it to win Rajput support. Does God, it was asked, discriminate between Muslims and non-Muslims when He makes rain to fall or make sun shine on people? Does the sun not shine on Hindus, and only on Muslims? Does rain fall only on Muslims and not on non-Muslims? Where God is fair, where God is just, how can the emperor as a representative of God be different? There was thus a concept not of a secular state but of a “tolerant state” suited to the conditions of India. It was again and again said that in India every religion must be tolerated. Jahangir says that in Turan it is, only Sunnis and in Iran it only the Shias who are tolerated, but in India every religion has to be tolerated. And there was thus something new in the Mughal experience, and political development.

Dr. Tara Chand asserted in his well-known book The Influence of Islam on Indian Culture, published in 1928, which has been republished by National Book Trust (NBT), that these two successively large states, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, by bringing all parts of India together created the sense of a larger “national allegiance”, an assertion he continues to make, even in the official history of Indian National Movement which he partly wrote and partly edited. This concept of political India, is also very strongly present in the revolt of 1857. Those of you who know or who have studied Modern India probably know that the rebellion of 1857 occurred with the revolt of the Bengal Army. A hundred thousand men out of 130 thousand, one of the largest armies in the world at the time, revolted and they were in majority Brahmans sepoys. But what did they say? ‘Let us go to Delhi and crown Bahadur Shah Zafar, emperor of India’. Those of you who know Urdu, I invite them to read the Delhi Urdu Akhbar, the major organ of rebels in Delhi. For five months, it was the major organ through which the rebels spoke and it is of ‘Hindustan’ that they speak. They quote Sa‘di who said that all human beings must be one—Ayza-e-Yak-Digar and—“they are organs of each other”; if one is hurt the other is hurt. So Hindus and Muslims, the rebels proclaimed, must come together. The Delhi Urdu Akhbar actually issued a public declaration against the Wahabis who said Hindus and Muslims could not join in a rebellion against People of the Book (English). And in fact, the Wahabis did not support the 1857 revolt! They occupied the Jama Masjid at Eid-uz-Zuha, and demanded cow slaughter. Bakht Khan, the mutineers’ commander drove them out and threatened to suppress them if they persisted in this demand.

Syed Ahmad Khan in his Sarkashi-e-Zila Bijnor says in fact that the whole people of India were guilty in 1857 and rightly punished. So whether they are rightly punished or wrongly punished, we must remember that those who revolted considered themselves to be standing up for India. In my old age, I have now often taken to quoting Urdu poets. I quote now a simple couplet of Bahadur Shah Zafar which he wrote after he became a prisoner and he wrote in commendation/ memory of fallen martyrs of the mutiny:
 
Ay Zafar Qayam rahegi Jab Talak Iqleem-e-Hind,
Akhtar-e-Iqbal Is Gul Ka Chamakta Jayega
 
[O Zafar, so long as the country of India endures, The star of the glory of this [fallen] flower would go on shining]
So, a concept of India, politically independent, is already present in 1857. But was it sufficient? If the rebellion of 1857 failed, the reason was partly that it was not supported in large regions of the country. While the Bengal Army revolted, Madras and Bombay Armies didn’t. The rebels in their reply to Victoria’s Proclamation of 1858 themselves spoke up for the whole of India reminding people of how the English had treated rulers from Tipu Sultan of Mysore to Dilip Singh of the Punjab. Yet though the rebel leaders thought of the country as a whole, the rebellion did not actually extend outside the Hindustani-speaking region.

Indeed, something more was needed to turn India from a ‘country’ into a ‘nation’. Two stages seem to me to be very important for such conversion. First of all, there had to be a realization that an independent country, a free India would be different. It would be better than India governed by the British. The whole point of very sincere people like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Syed Ahmad Khan in supporting British rule was the belief that the British rule was the best India could get. It was for people to understand that we could have an India which could be much better off than that governed by the British. And here the role of people like Dada Bhai Naoroji, Ramesh Chandra Dutt, Justice Ranade and a number of others was extremely important. They showed that Britain was exploiting India. From 1874 to 1901, Dada Bhai Naoroji, the Grand Old Man of the Indian National Movement, wrote essays and papers showing how India was being exploited, as the very title of his book of 1901, Poverty and the UnBritish Rule in India; shows so clearly. India was being impoverished by the tribute British were extorting and the de-industrialization of India, caused through free trade. Dada Bhai Naoroji was least interested in his own community, Parsi community and you see him pleading the case of all kinds of Indians, Hindus, Muslims, Bengalis, Punjabis, etc. And that’s a particular thing for us to remember when we think of these early writers like Ramesh Chandra Dutt or others. They have no element of communalism in their approach. They were talking about all Indians. Yet they were speaking to English speaking people, and so to a very small minority. They were taking about peasants, poor people, unemployed, the weavers and spinners, but they were writing in English and so addressing only small circles of people. How could this audience be enlarged? Well.. one way was by supporting movements for social reforms. The initial voice was that of Ram Mohan Roy, who by the way knew Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, English, French, and Hebrew, being really a polymath. He wrote his first book (Tuhfatu’l Muwahhidin)’ in Persian. He said in 1828 that Indians can’t be patriotic because they are divided up among castes. If caste affinities continue, how can there be any patriotism for the country? And therefore the social reform movement, particularly as initiated by Keshav Chandra Sen (1838-84) was so important. He has practically been forgotten today; but look at the man who at the age of 18 or 20 was writing that untouchability must be abolished, intercaste marriages should be allowed, women should have equality with men in inheritance and every other right, modern education should be spread among women. And he created a new Brahmo Samaj some of whose members by the way ate beef which show that there were Indians who could defy religious orthodoxy. But that was a small thing; the real thing was that they made social reform movement possible. Everywhere these demands arose—abolition of untouchability, equal rights for women, and modern education. And Keshav Chandra Sen said in 1870 that as social reform progresses, India will become a nation, since India could only become a nation if its division into castes and religious communities was overcome.

I will not go into the early nationalist movement here, or to people who sacrificed their lives for the nation. I will only refer to the Ghadar movement that gave us the largest number of martyrs (before the INA), after acts of armed violence occurred in Maharashtrians, and under revolutionary nationalists of Bengal. The Ghadar movement arose in the Punjab and among Punjabi settlers in Canada and the United States in 1913-15. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, particularly Sikhs, were greatly involved.  But the biggest uprising was the mutiny in Singapore by the Muslim sepoys of 5th Light Infantry, inspired by the Ghadar propaganda and Ghadar agents. 45 of them were shot in a public display in Singapore after the Mutiny had been suppressed. By their bold demeanor in facing death, they deprived the British of the propaganda value of public executions. This was the biggest mutiny in the Indian army after 1857 with the largest number of martyrs. In the Punjab, itself and other places over 50 people were executed in 1914-15 including Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims. But some of the records left by the Ghadaritis in India are painful to read. Few among the public were supporting them. The people whom they sought refuge with went and reported the police. They died seemingly unsung. Because the national movement was still limited to a very small number, India was a nation in the eyes of very small number of people. Here, I think, one must with almost unconditional, unqualified assertion, say that Mahatma Gandhi was one person responsible for bringing the masses in to the National Movement, and so hastening the true creation of India as a nation. In the whole of Indian history before 1913 was there a case of 200 women—Hindus and Muslim—offering to go to prison because Indians were being ill-treated in South Africa? There had been no such protest against the British in India. Against acts of gross injustice, had anyone mobilized 200 in India before? Speaking of 1913, 2000 miners marched into the Transvaal—the Great March of Indian Miners in South Africa. Indian history had never seen such a thing! Who was that man behind it? M.K. Gandhi had done it and he came to India in 1915 because after this agitation, the South African Prime Minister Smuts surrendered: he abolished Native Poll Tax, he legalized Indian marriages, and he gave some other rights. So Gandhi Ji came to India. In 1917, there was the Peasant Satyagraha in Bihar the Champaran Satyagraha, which he led. For the first time in India peasants were brought into a political agitation. And Gandhi said: “when I met peasants I saw God”. He realized that the national movement could only succeed if the Indian peasants and masses of the poor joined the national movement. So we had the April Satyagraha of 1919 and then the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920. Can I quote an Urdu verse here. Akbar Allahabadi had once said that people regarded the British with such awe that he was led to say in his famous misra: Main To Allah Ko Collector Samjha—I thought God was a Collector—since there could not be anything more powerful, more absolute, than the English Collector. But when Gandhiji began his Non-Cooperation everything changed. Then Akbar Allahbadi wrote ‘Buddhu Miyan Bhi Hazrate Gandhi Ke Sath Hain, Ek Musht-e-Khak Hain Magar Andhi Ke Sath Hain’. What was earlier the role of Buddhu Miyan or the Ordinary Man in Indian history? Nothing! He was nowhere. He is now brought into history. And as more and more ordinary peasants, ordinary women, joined the national movement, India became more and more of a ‘nation’. Because there is no nation unless the larger number or mass of the people feel that they should be independent and they should rule themselves. With the poor coming to the movement, what do you offer them? What is to be their future? And here I submit JawaharLal Nehru is very, very important, for from late 1920s he urged that the National Movement should have precise goals for peasants, workers, women, etc. fully worked out. There are also others who were important; I am not saying that Gandhi and Nehru together make the Indian national movement, but they were in fact the two crucial persons.

Dr. Tara Chand asserted in his well-known book The Influence of Islam on Indian Culture, published in 1928, which has been republished by National Book Trust (NBT), that these two successively large states, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, by bringing all parts of India together created the sense of a larger “national allegiance”, an assertion he continues to make, even in the official history of Indian National Movement which he partly wrote and partly edited.

What did Gandhi Ji have to offer the common man? When you ask this difficult question, you will go back to his book Hind Swaraj (1909).  Muslims may find it very gratifying that unlike other Congress leaders Gandhi supported the Indian Councils Act 1909 and its concessions to Muslims. He says, in Hind Swaraj, that those Hindu leaders who opposed the concessions to Muslims were wrong. If our Muslim brothers get extra benefits, what is the harm? Should your brother get something, ought you to be pleased or displeased?—This is what he says in Hind Swaraj. To him, India’s past is not Hindu or Muslim but both. India was very good under the rule of Maharajas and Badshahs who were guided by Pandits and Maulvis. I myself consider it a horrible state but in Hind Swaraj he considers the government of Badshahs and Maulvis as very good government as compared to that of the British and equates that with those of Rajas and Pandits. But he even doesn’t condemn the caste system although he opposed untouchability in South Africa and in India too right from the time of his arrival in India in 1915. But this is not criticized in Hind Swaraj. All these things he believed would be left to private efforts—his own constructive programme, not government. Government should keep aloof. It is only through private efforts that people should be served. Peasants should be served by the Zamindars or landlords who should be their custodians. In factories, workers should be helped by the owners who should see themselves as their custodians. But in real life this was not sufficient, this was not going to draw the masses to national movement. Here then was the importance of Left and particularly of Jawaharlal Nehru. Right from 1928, he demanded not only independence, he also demanded that in independent India, peasant should get land, workers should get protection, women should get equal rights with men, and there should be total democracy with mass suffrage.

These demands were pushed in the Congress by Jawaharlal Nehru with the help of the Left and actually the Karachi resolution of 1931—which I strongly recommend all to read—it was emphasized that the state should pursue “neutrality” towards religions, women should have equal rights with men, peasants should get land and rent-relief, and the State should control the basic industries, indebtedness to moneylenders should be scaled down, etc., etc.

Now, without the Karachi resolution, without these promises, I don’t think there could have been that support for national movement which it obtained in 1930s and 1940s. In Civil-Disobedience Movement unprecedented number of peasants went to prison and lost their properties. Remember, going to prison in British rule was not the same as going to prison now; you lost your property, you lost everything, you couldn’t get employment, yet over hundred thousand people went to jail in the Civil-Disobedience movement of 1930. Many lost their lands, properties, everything. They were mostly poor.  Unlike the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1921, Civil-Disobedience movement was the movement largely of the poor and that was the new thing. Once the movement took this form it became increasingly difficult for British rule to continue.

I want here to bring to your attention something which appeared in the Dawn, the Muslim League organ from pre-1947 days which comes out daily from Karachi. There was an article abstracted from it, which I read. In that article, the writer said that we have a problem in Pakistan our movement for Pakistan as a nation has no martyr, no hero. Because it never opposed the British rulers, it only opposed our fellow subjects (the Hindus). What shall we look to? Indeed those went to prison against British rule in what became Pakistan, they were Khudai Khidmatgars, Congressmen of the Punjab, nationalists of Sindh, and not the Pakistan leaders. Pakistan is, however, not alone in this problem. It shares it with those who are now in power in India.

The Hindu Mahasabha, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have the same psychological problem. The RSS was founded in 1925 and if you ask them what did you do for twenty two years [till 1947]? Why didn’t you join the National Movement and go to the prison? Why don’t you do something against the British if you are such great patriots? You ask the Hindu Mahasabha the same question. Savarkar in the Andamans gave an apology thus washing away his whole patriotic past saying he will not oppose British government. He never did so, he only opposed Muslims, propounding a two-nation theory even before Mohammad Ali Jinnah.  

What is RSS doing now; It is looking for other figures like Bhagat Singh to count among its heroes! What Bhagat Singh has to do with the RSS, the man who in the night before execution wrote Why I am An Atheist, the man who said that if there can be any leader from the Congress he supports, it is JawaharLal Nehru. The man who wrote that Hindu communalism is worse than any other opponent of the National Movement, how can he be your hero! As for Vallabh Bhai Patel, do not you know that he always said that he was a close follower of Mahatma Gandhi?

Another hero—they claim—is Subhash Chandra Bose. Did Subash Chandra Bose ever say that there should be Hindu Rashtra? He even made Iqbal’s poem “Sare Jahan Se Achchha Hindostan Hamara” the National Anthem of the Indian National Army. He made Urdu and Hindi official languages of Azad Hind Fauj. Look at the name –Azad Hind Fauj! He said—Jai Hind; he never said Hindu Rashtra! RSS men never say ‘Jai Hind’, nor ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ the slogan Bhagat Singh used to employ. Before 1947 I was present at many Congress meetings and I remember that the meetings always started with the audience shouting—Inquilab Zindabad in homage to Bhagat Singh. So, it is wrong when our newspapers say that Bhagat Singh had been forgotten by the Congress or that Subhash Bose once praised the RSS. Serious biographies of Subhash Chandra Bose show that he never had any dealings with the RSS.

RSS heroes like Shyama Prasad Mukherjee or Deen Dayal Upadhyay did nothing against British rule. Why are you exhibiting the latter’s photographs in the JawaharLal Nehru Museum? What did he do in the national Movement? Where was he? Nowhere! Shayama Prasad Mukherjee was a minister in Bengal along with the Muslim League at the time of the Quit India movement (1942). He remained a minister. He never lifted his finger against British rule but only against Muslims. So the Hindutva forces can claim no hero in the National Movement. Their entire theory and entire beliefs are totally opposed to those of the National Movement. Who in the National Movement ever said “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan”? None, It was only Hindu Mahasabha! Who in the National Movement said “Hindu Raj Amar Rahe”? None It was only RSS! So, you had those slogans, then you say that you actually opposed the British government! Or is it that you really supported the British government because you tried to divide the National Movement; you tried to separate the Hindus and Muslims and so weaken the National Movement. You always raised the issue of communalism! The RSS men have not changed, they are the same! People say why does not the Prime Minister Modi issue a statement [on Akhlaq’s lynching]? I say what is the use that would be always hypocritical, so let him remain silent about Dadri!

I now turn to two things: Fight for Secular India and Fight for Prosperous India. These are the two objects for people of the nation. Since you are students of Aligarh Muslim University, I want you to remember August 1947. Aligarh had been described as the fortress of the Muslim League. We had insulted Abul Kalam Azad when he passed through the Aligarh railway station. What was to be our fate now? The first thing was that Nehru sent the Kumaon Regiment to protect the Aligarh Muslim University. But could it protect the whole district, when the whole of what is now Haryana was in flames? In Tappal, there was a massacre of Muslims. Muslim corpses were coming, to the morgue in our neighborhood from somewhere. All the time the Kumaon Regiment was trying to protect the city and the university with huge flares by which they could see a crowd at a distance at night. Any time the crowd could come. Only one man seemed to stood forth to prevent the destruction of this University and massacres of Muslims in western Uttar Pradesh, and that was Mahatma Gandhi. He was insulted when he went to Muslim refugee camps at Jama Masjid and he was insulted when he went to Hindu refugee camps! Day in and day out, he suffered insults. He went to Panipat trying to protect Muslims. On 13th January 1948, he went on fast. And what were the demands of the fast? One was that Muslims must be protected and those people who had been leading mobs against Muslims must sign that they would not do such thing again. And there were names of RSS and Hindu Mahasabha leaders in his list. And Muslims should be allowed as have not gone to Pakistan to return to their homes so that refugees from Pakistan were being asked to vacate for Muslims. This was the first demand and you can see what a huge demand it was in the circumstances. The second demand was that Rs. fifty five crores, an immense amount at that time, should be paid to Pakistan because Pakistan officials had not received salaries for a month and India had withheld that pledged amount. Can you imagine a man going against his own government in favour of a foreign government? And when he was asked, he said I am as much an Indian as I am Pakistani. I belong to both countries!

When the fast began on 13 January 2015 all through Delhi the slogan was ‘Gandhi Murdabad’. There was a procession marching with such slogans towards Gandhi Ji’s prayer meetings. But on the third day of the fast JawaharLal Nehru addressed a meeting of ten thousand people in front of the Red Fort. I always ask who called that meeting? Did Patel call that meeting? Did Rajendra Prasad call it? Who had the courage to call it and face the crowd? And yet by the time Nehru had spoken the crowd was with him. And then within two further days there was a procession of a hundred thousand people in Delhi. Peasants of Aligarh, peasants of Meerut, peasants also from Muzaffar Nagar—perhaps fathers and grandfathers of some of those who participated the riots recently—were in that procession along with. Sweeper unions, tongawalas and factory workders. Thereafter crowds surrounded the houses of Hindu Mahasabha and RSS leaders forcing them to agree to sign pledges and bringing them practically by force to Gandhi Ji’s site of fast until all of them had so submitted. And when Gandhi Ji ended his fast, and the government paid fifty five crores of rupees to Pakistan, violence was over, almost simultaneously in both countries. So, you are not speaking of an ordinary man when you speak of Gandhi. We are speaking of a man of immense courage who didn’t care for his personal status or dignity for the larger cause. He was always walking barefoot in total dirt among the homeless victims but he never minded it. He would go again and again to both Hindu and Muslim refugee camps for giving his message that Hindu and Muslims should be brothers and sisters.

So, it has been such people who have made us a nation. Things didn’t fall of themselves from the heavens. What happened after independence, I would not go into in great details but shortly one must remember –To a Muslim audience it may not sound very great, but for India, it was an immense thing that the Hindu Code was legislated in 1955-56. Hindu women had no right to inheritance, they have now. They had now equal rights except in very few matters. It represented a total overthrow of Dharma Shastra and not through a coup but through a general election. The Congress (and the Communist Party) went into that election saying that women should have equal rights with men. Jan Sangh and Ram Rajya Parishad stood up for the Dharmashastra, and surely need to be asked today, why did you oppose the Hindu Code in 1950s? Don’t you think men and women should have equal rights? But they were totally rejected by the electorate—Jan Sangh, the pre-cursor of the BJP as well as Hindu Mahasabha and Ram Rajya Parishad. So, India became a democracy, it changed civil laws where men and women, at least 80 percent of population, were made equal though unfortunately unfavorable social customs continue, like dowry. And simultaneously came the agrarian reforms. Millions of peasants throughout India got land. UP once had of the most radical Zamindari Abolition Acts besides Kashmir but every state had such Acts. Finally came the ceilings legislations of 1960s and the construction of the Indian public sector. The basis of new India, with all its weaknesses that still remain, was thus laid in the 1950s and 1960s.

Coming to this university, when I was a student (1947-53), only 900 students were left in this university in 1949. This was a private university run by donations under the British government the total amount, of whose grant was a few lakhs. In 1951 the Indian government took over the finances of the university. They didn’t touch the organization of the university. The government would fund everything. Otherwise AMU would have been in the dustbin! I was a student in 1947, what a small university it was at the maximum, about 2500 students. Now, I don’t know what the current number is? 28,000… or more, with huge buildings and so on! It’s all the nation’s gift!

Well, the real thing is how the poor have fared? They haven’t fared very well. If you read an essay by Utsa Patnaik, The Republic of Hunger, you will see that until 1989 the per capita calorie intake continuously increased. Even in years of drought this was maintained by Food Corporation’s, operations subsidies and so on. Do you know what has happened after 1991? Calorie intake per capita declined! By 2003, it reached the level that it was under British rule. When Mr. Modi and Co. speak of capital inflow, or go to various countries where, they can give away billion dollars, as in Mongolia, they are only supporting the corporations. The RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, very much like Muslim League, never had an economic programme. The poor mean nothing to them; only the rich fund-givers are important. I read today in the newspaper that the upper castes, ‘of course’, support the BJP in Bihar [VidhanSabha election 2015]. The word “of course” I liked. Not only upper castes but upper classes support the BJP. Therefore, in order to rule they must continue to raise the communal issues, which is the only way in which they can continue to get votes. They are not the first to do so, the Nazis did it by raising the racial question in Germany. Golwalkar, the RSS guru, actually praised Hitler for his policy towards the Jews saying that same policy should be resorted to in India against Muslims. So, to keep up the anti-Muslim fervor is now the RSS watchword. No opposition to religious fanaticism i.e. Hindutva can be tolerated. Even an ordinary history text book which says that the Rigveda was compiled in 1500 BC—and by implication not in 8000 BC—is unacceptable. Therefore, what is happening today—the murders of Dabholkar, Pansare, and Kalburgi—is part of a pre-determined pattern: by threats they want to silence people. The Congress didn’t much care who served in the ICHR, ICSSR, JawaharLal Nehru Museum but RSS cares! Everywhere they are filling places with fanatics. Everywhere they are giving a totally wrong picture of Indian history and of Indian Constitution. Therefore, on the shoulders of the educated people in India or those who can answer them in print, on paper, in speech, a great responsibility rests today. A massacre of Muslims is not just an attack on Muslim community, it is an attack on India and large number of people are realizing it. Read Indian Express, or The Times of India, and other dailies, the realization is amply there on their pages every day. And I am very glad to see that in Hindi press too, they are realizing it. This is the time for us to forget our small grouses and grievances and stand up against the conspiracy of the BJP and RSS against the very “Idea of India”.
 
(This is a complete transcription of the lecture delivered by Professor Irfan Habib in the “Idea of India” Series at the Kennedy Hall, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh on October 7, 2015)
 
 
 

Affirmative action for Muslims is key, says Vice President Hamid Ansari

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Courtesy: Press Information Bureau

State must correct the state of deprivation, exclusion and discrimination faced by India's largest minority community, Ansari says.

It is a privilege to be invited to address the 50th anniversary session of the All India Majlis-e-Mushawarat. Needless to say, and like many other compatriots, I have over the years followed in some measure the work of this consultative body.

The Mushawarat was formed in response to a perceived need to defend and protect the identity and dignity of the Muslim community in India in terms of the rights bestowed by the Constitution of India on the citizens of this land. This objective remains relevant though some of its ingredients may stand amplified or modified today.

The Muslims of India constitute a community of 180 million, amounting to a little over 14% of the population of the country. They are, after Indonesia, the second-largest national grouping of followers of Islam in the world. Their contribution to the civilisation and culture of Islam is in no need of commentary. They were an integral part of the freedom struggle against the British rule. They are dispersed all over the country, are not homogenous in linguistic and socio-economic terms and reflect in good measure the diversities that characterise the people of India as a whole.

The Independence of India in August 1947, and the events preceding and following it, cast a shadow of physical and psychological insecurity on Indian Muslims. They were made to carry, unfairly, the burden of political events and compromises that resulted in the Partition. The process of recovery from that trauma has been gradual and uneven, and at times painful. They have hesitatingly sought to tend to their wounds, face the challenges and seek to develop response patterns. Success has been achieved in some measure; much more, however, needs to be done.

In the past decade, work has also been done to delineate the contours of the problem.
The Sachar Committee Report of 2006 did this officially. It laid to rest the political untruth in some quarters about the Muslim condition and demonstrated that on most socio-economic indicators, they were on the margins of structures of political, economic and social relevance and their average condition was comparable to or even worse than the country's acknowledged historically most backward communities, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. It specified the development deficits of the majority of Muslims in regard to education, livelihood and access to public services and the employment market across the states.

In the same vein, Expert Group reports were prepared in 2008 on the need to develop a Diversity Index and establish an Equal Opportunity Commission.

Taken together, these and other studies bring forth sufficient evidence to substantiate the view that "inequality traps prevent the marginalised and work in favour of the dominant groups in society".

More recently the Kundu Report of September 2014, commissioned to evaluate the implementation of decisions taken pursuant to Sachar recommendations, has concluded that though "a start has been made, yet serious bottlenecks remain." It makes specific recommendations to remedy these. It asserts that "development for the Muslim minority must be built on a bed-rock of a sense of security."

It is evident from this compendium of official reports that the principal problems confronting India's Muslims relate to:

identity and security;

education and empowerment;

equitable share in the largesse of the state; and

fair share in decision making.

Each of these is a right of the citizen. The shortcomings in regard to each have been analysed threadbare. The challenge before us today is to develop strategies and methodologies to address them.

The default by the State or its agents in terms of deprivation, exclusion and discrimination (including failure to provide security) is to be corrected by the State; this needs to be done at the earliest and appropriate instruments developed for it. Political sagacity, the imperative of social peace, and public opinion play an important role in it. Experience shows that the corrective has to be both at the policy and the implementation levels; the latter, in particular, necessitates mechanisms to ensure active cooperation of the State governments.

They (Muslims) were an integral part of the freedom struggle against the British rule. They are dispersed all over the country, are not homogenous in linguistic and socio-economic terms and reflect in good measure the diversities that characterise the people of India as a whole.

The official objective of sab ka sath sab ke vikas is commendable; a pre-requisite for this is affirmative action (where necessary) to ensure a common starting point and an ability in all to walk at the required pace. This ability has to be developed through individual, social and governmental initiatives that fructify on the ground. Programmes have been made in abundance; the need of the hour is their implementation.

II

The foregoing pertains principally to governmental action or lack thereof. Equally relevant is the autonomous effort by the community itself in regard to its identified short comings. What has it done to redress the backwardness and poverty arising out of socio-economic and educational under-development? How adequate is the response in relation to the challenge?

A century back the lament was emotive:

Firqa-bandi hai kahein aur kahein zaatain hain
Kya zamaane main panaph-ne ki yahi baatain hain?

Today, we have to admit that both "firqa bandi" and "zaat" identity is a ground reality. The imagery of Mahmood and Ayaz standing shoulder to shoulder in the same line is confined to the mosque; so are the injunctions on punctuality, cleanliness and discipline. Each of these is violated beyond the confines of the congregational prayer. Corrective strategies therefore have to be sought on category-differentiation admissible in Indian state practice and hitherto denied to Muslims (scheduled caste status) or inadequately admitted (segments of OBC status). Available data makes it clear that a high percentage of Muslims falls into these two broad categories.

It is evident that significant sections of the community remain trapped in a vicious circle and in a culturally defensive posture that hinders self advancement. Tradition is made sacrosanct but the rationale of tradition is all but forgotten. Jadeediyat or modernity has become a tainted expression. Such a mindset constrains critical thinking necessary both for the affirmation of faith and for the wellbeing of the community. The instrumentality of adaptation to change – Ijtihad – is frowned upon or glossed over. Forgotten is its purpose, defined by the late Sheikh Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi as 'the ability to cope with the ever-changing pattern of life's requirements'. Equally relevant is Imam Al-Ghazali's delineation of the ambit of Maslaha – protection of religion, life, intellect, lineage and property. Both provide ample theoretical space for focused thinking on social change without impinging on the fundamentals of faith.

It is here that the role of Mushawarat becomes critical. As a grouping of leading and most respected minds of the community, it should go beyond looking at questions of identity and dignity in a defensive mode and explore how both can be furthered in a changing India and a changing world. It should widen its ambit to hitherto unexplored or inadequately explored requirements of all segments of the community particularly women, youth, and non-elite sections who together constitute the overwhelming majority.

The default by the State or its agents in terms of deprivation, exclusion and discrimination (including failure to provide security) is to be corrected by the State; this needs to be done at the earliest and appropriate instruments developed for it.

This effort has to be made in the context of Indian conditions and the uniqueness of its three dimensions: plural, secular and democratic. Some years back a close observer had posed the problem:
"To deny discrimination and pretend all is well is to fly in the face of facts. But agitation against discrimination can arouse the very emotions that foster discrimination. The solution of the Muslim problem lies in a resolution of this dilemma by devising a form and content of agitation which heals old wounds and inflicts no new ones. This resolution can be achieved by regarding discrimination as what it is; a problem of Indian democracy to be resolved within the framework of national integration."

This would necessitate sustained and candid interaction with fellow citizens without a syndrome of superiority or inferiority and can be fruitful only in the actual implementation of the principles of justice, equality and fraternity inscribed in the Preamble of the Constitution and the totality of Fundamental Rights. The failure to communicate with the wider community in sufficient measure has tended to freeze the boundaries of diversities that characterise Indian society. Efforts may be made to isolate the community; such an approach should be resisted.

The Indian experience of a large Muslim minority living in secular polity, however imperfect, could even be a model for others to emulate.

One last word. The world of Islam extends beyond the borders of India and Muslims here, as in other lands, can benefit from the best that may be available in the realm of thought and practice. Some years back I had occasion to read the Algerian-French philosopher Mohammed Arkoun and was impressed by his view that our times compel us to rethink modernity so that, as he put it, "critical thought, anchored in modernity but criticising modernity itself and contributing to its enrichment through recourse to the Islamic example" could open up a new era in social movements.

Would future generations forgive us for failing to explore these options?

"Verily never will God change the condition of a people until they change it themselves with their own souls."

And so the task before Mushawarat in the foreseeable future should remain a threefold one: to sustain the struggle for the actualisation in full measure of legal and constitutional rights, to do so without being isolated from the wider community, and to endeavour at the same time to adapt thinking and practices to a fast changing world.

I thank Dr. Zafarul Islam Khan sahib for inviting me today. Khuda hafiz.

Jai Hind.
(Key Note Address of Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari delivered at the 50th anniversary Celebrations of the All India Majlis-e-Mushawarat at the Indian Islamic Centre, New Delhi on August 31, 2015)    

Talibanisation of Kashmir

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Post-Kargil, imported mujahideen are pedalling a Talibanised Islam in the Valley. And succeeding in good measure, thanks to the unholy nexus between the BJP-led government at the Centre and an unscrupulous National Conference in the state

 

There has been a significant change not only in character of the movement but in the mood of  the Kashmiri people post argil. The reason for this is the even deeper and greater sense of alienation and outright bitterness among the local people – in the Valley, in Jammu and in Ladakh. As far as militancy is concerned, there has been a sharp decline in the Kashmiri-speaking people component among the militants. 
 

The actions of the militants, too, signal this sharp shift. Earlier, the victims of militants used to be civilians — soft targets. There used to be harassment and extortion of the local population. This has stopped. Today, post-Kargil, the attacks are directly on the army and BSF headquarters. 
 

The militant activities are more dare devilish, more direct, more desperate in a way. A group has emerged that calls itself Fidayeen (Lovers of God). Unlike the activities of earlier militant groups, their targets are not civilians but the army and security forces. There is now no extortion from the local
population, distinct attempts are being made to ingratiate them and win their sympathy.
 

The Kashmiri movement has, as a result, and very unfortunately, been virtually taken over by outsiders. The Jamaat-e-Islami has never had any faith in the Kashmiri brand of a more liberal Islam. A more standardised version of Islam is being offered to the local population that is completely out of sync with the region, with Kashmiriyat, a characteristic that typified the movement before.
 

This weakness of the Kashmiri movement that is fast-losing its Kashmiri identity — and, for this a variety of factors are responsible — is more than compensated on the other side. RSS and even more extreme brands of Hindu nationalism are gaining currency among Hindus in Jammu, as elsewhere in the country. 
 

What are the factors responsible for this hardening of position on both sides? The sham of the recent elections is one of the most significant contributory factors. It is a sorry tale for any country that is proud to call itself a democracy. Elections were far from free. Official figures themselves reveal a fast-declining rate of voter participation, not only among Kashmiri Muslims, but also Pandit migrants and Jammu Hindus. What does this signify but increasing alienation?
 

In its report published on October 6, 1999, The Times of India revealed that the opinion expressed by me on the recently conducted elections in the state were shared by a team of four IAS officers sent as independent observers to the state. I quote from their report: “Elections were neither free nor fair but full of violence. The electorate was coerced by the security forces to vote. The presiding officer at several polling booths corroborated the charges of coercion made by the voters. The observers found even minors in the queue and several mobile voters”. 
 

The observers saw matadors carrying women voters. They intercepted these matadors. The four senior IAS officers made a demand to the EC to countermand the elections. These demands were not even considered by the EC, while in states like Bihar and elsewhere, more prompt action was taken. 


There has been a significant change in the character of the movement in Kashmir with the presence of a militant outfit like Fidayeen (Lovers of God). The actions of the militants are more sympathetic to the locals and are targeting the Indian security forces

The conduct of the election commissioner (GV Krishnamurthy) on a visit to the state was blatantly partisan, when he commented that the “conducting of the elections was the answer to militancy.” The EC would have performed a far more signal and patriotic service to Kashmiris, residents of Jammu and
the whole country if he had simply concentrated on ensuring that the conduct of the elections was ‘genuinely free and fair’.
 

The boycott call by militants and a heavy presence of the military has been a constant factor in the state since the 1996 elections. How come then, that given these constants in the last three elections, there has been such a sharp decline in voting percentages this time? 
 

Look at the official figures. During the 1996 parliamentary elections, in the Srinagar city segment, 35 per cent of the electorate voted; this was down to 30 per cent in 1998 and touched an all-time low of 12 per cent in 1999. The story is similar for Anantnag. In  1996, 50 per cent of the voters came out; in 1998, this was down to 28 per cent; but in 1999 the voting percentage dropped to 14 per cent. In Baramulla, while 41 per cent of the voters came out to cast their vote in 1996; the turnout was the same in 1998, but this time it plummeted to 27 per cent.     If one goes into further detail and scrutinises figures for the Srinagar segment that has recorded 12 per cent of voters, we see that the Charar-e-Sharif and Badgaon segments recorded 45.50 and 45 per cent of voting respectively while Srinagar city registered barely 3–5 per cent votes. The extent of voter disillusionment or alienation can well be gauged from these statistics. 
 

Jammu and Kashmir also recorded the highest rates of invalid votes anywhere in the country; EC statistics tell us there were 9-12 per cent invalid votes in the state. It is worth analysing the factors responsible for such a low voting percentage and high rate of invalid votes in the state. 
 

As stated before, the boycott call by militants, the heavy and obtrusive army presence, the acute disillusionment of the Kashmiri people over the Kargil episode were the main factors. 
 

But an additional factor was the acute disillusionment of the Hindu migrant voters in the Valley and Hindu Pandits in the Jammu region with the BJP. This is evident from the number of Pandits who voted for the BJP. The BJP vote in the Jammu-Poonch region fell from 7,90,000 in 1998 to 2,90,000 this time. This means that only one-third of Pandit voters who supported the BJP last time extended their support to the same party this time. In Udhampur, too, the Pandit vote for the BJP declined from 5,23,000 votes in 1998 down to 1,94,000 this year. 

If there is such a sharp decline of votes within one year, from a particular segment with a particular party, what does it show? Obviously that, completely disillusioned with the BJP, which is also the ruling party at the Centre, Pandits have turned away from it. The BJP has led them up the garden path with false promises.
 

In the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, the percentage of Muslim voters is high. Within the Jammu region, too, 30 per cent of the electorate is Muslim.
 

With an open alliance between the BJP and NC, is it really believable that seats with a high domination of Muslim voters would so willingly back the NC’s collaboration with the BJP? There is hardly a constituency anywhere in India where Muslim votes are sizeable in number and where they have wholeheartedly supported the BJP. So, it is hardly believable that they would do so in Jammu and Kashmir.

The disillusioned local population, both Muslim and Hindu, were looking for an alternative, a secular outlet to channelise their protest against the unholy nexus between the BJP and the National Conference
 

In short, both the Hindus and Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir are completely disillusioned with the ruling parties — the National Conference and the BJP.
 

There was blatant coercion of voters at the voting stage and subsequent manipulation of the results. My opinion is corroborated by EC observer’s report. 
 

In the midst of all this, secular parties, particularly the main opposition party, the Congress, that had converted secularism into a mantra all over the country, was conspicuous in that it put up only a nominal fight in the state. Since nothing can be expected from the opportunistic politics and regime of Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference and the communal worldview of the BJP, secular forces within the country must take their share of blame for the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.
 

Why did they betray the interests of Kashmiri Muslims, Jammu Hindus and the migrant Pandits living in the Valley? This is not what secularism is about. They had a wonderful opportunity during the last elections to intervene. They not only squandered an opportunity for themselves but have also compromised the national interest. The disillusioned local population, both Muslim and Hindu, were looking for an alternative, a secular outlet to channelise their protest against the unholy nexus between the BJP and the National Conference. 

The National Conference was a regional party which should have necessarily pitted itself against the insensitive and centrist politics of the Indian state. But, today, it has willingly been reduced to a mere tool of the BJP. It has completely lost the raison d’être of its existence. The Jammu Hindus, who were against Kashmiri Muslim domination, had under certain circumstances arising out of this, supported the BJP in the past. With the BJP shamefully allying with the NC, the raison d’être of this support, too, has also been completely eroded.

Given this state of a huge political vacuum and accumulated discontent what happens? Like I said before, it was the ideal situation for a secular formation with civil liberties, human rights perspective to intervene. 
 

In its absence, the local population has been pushed to the wall and a fresh lease of life has been given to militant activities. Without local support, no sophisticated weapons, no armed training can help militants succeed in any region.
 

This choice has, in my opinion at least, been forced on both the Kashmiri people and the people of Jammu. In 1996, when Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference came before the people, despite his past record, the people were willing to give him another chance. But over the past three years, his rule has been the worst ever, extremely corrupt, allowing no avenues or channels of protest.
 

All this must be seen in the context of heightened ‘national’ and ‘patriotic’ interest on the territory of the state during the Kargil conflict. The earlier ‘conviction’ and ‘assertion’ of the Indian authorities that, after Kargil, militancy would collapse has been disproved comprehensively.
 

Indian arrogance and insensitivity was manifest throughout the Kargil conflict?  The Indian media, most of it, swooped down on Kargil. But none mentioned the people of the state, the people of Jammu and Kashmir, where the war was being fought. Little mention was made then of the displaced persons either. This failure of the Indian media to even cursorily look at the plight of the Kashmiri people, with an ongoing struggle for democratic rights for decades, in my mind, constitutes a significant omission on the part of the Indian media. 
 

Conversely, there was a studied detachment among the local people at the war being waged. Unlike earlier occasions, there was no enthusiasm for the Indian army, throughout the operation, no donations for the jawans were collected, no blood banks held here. No state government ministers, with a few exceptions, even visited the front at the time.
 

I had made a special visit to Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee on this question. This visit was an attempt to apprise the Indian political leadership with the issues crucial to the people of the Valley, the Jammu region and Ladakh. The Shia Muslims who live in Kargil have a continuing disenchantment and discontent with Pakistan across the LOC, so even tactically it would have been wise of India to address their grievances. Though I was given assurances during my meeting with the Prime Minister, nothing has resulted.
 

The Indian government and the Indian people have consistently refused to address the grievances of the state. There is the struggle for Kashmiriyat. There has also been the expression of Jammu Hindus against Kashmiri Muslim domination. There has also been a movement for autonomy within the Ladakh region in which Kargil falls. 
 

For a month or so, things were silent after Kargil. The Pakistan-sponsored militancy movement remained silent. Local disillusionment with Pakistan, US and UN was also simmering. Pakistan had to do something to keep the movement alive. But what helped Pakistan significantly was the chief minister of the state, Farooq Abdullah’s coming out in open support of the BJP. At an RSS-sponsored function, he sang praises for the organisation and went to the extent of declaring that “the RSS is the most patriotic organisation”.
 

The political vacuum, the issue of acute discontent and disenchantment, during Kargil and post-Kargil especially at election-time, was unfortunately not addressed by any Indian political party, not even the so-called ‘secular’ Congress. 
 

The biggest betrayal of the state was in fact by the ‘secular’ Congress, as we can expect nothing from the BJP outside its self-declared divisive agenda. How interested the Congress party is in reflecting the genuine aspirations of the people of the state can be seen from the fact that the party had one member in Parliament and another in the Assembly. It got rid of both leaders, including Mufti Mohammed Sayeed just before the elections simply for suggesting dialogue with the militants. 


 

Has the party forgotten that during the last Congress government, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s cabinet colleague, Bhuvanesh Chaturvedi (then minister of state in the PM’s office), had, around 1995, offered unconditional talks with militants in Kashmir? How do political parties accept a resolution of the Kashmir issue without having such a dialogue?
 

If the government can talk to Naga leaders in Paris, and other people ‘without conditions’ why not in Kashmir? This was the issue on which Mufti Mohammed Sayeed felt let down and resigned, and the Congress put up a token fight during the recent elections in the state.
 

The failure of secular forces to give an adequate response to the ground-level reality in Jammu and Kashmir was most visible in the failure of established political parties and NGOs and civil liberties groups to campaign for Saifuddin Soz who stood as an independent. It was Soz’s single vote on which the BJP’s central government had fallen.
 

None of the national secular parties have raised a single voice against Farooq Abdullah’s support to the BJP. There has been not a word of disapproval for this open and unprincipled collaboration. The Congress goes to town criticising Sharad Pawar and Mulayam Singh for their individual “hobnobbing with the BJP”. But here is a leader who is openly allying with a communal force and there are no comments, no condemnations, no interventions from the top Congress leadership.
 

Former information and broadcasting minister, Pramod Mahajan was blatant about this cosy relationship before elections were held. On a visit to the state, when asked to comment on the prospects of the BJP-led NDA coming to power, he said that the “six seats from Jammu and Kashmir (all these are seats over which the National Conference had claim) are already in the NDA basket.”
 

How can we complain against the BJP and their agenda? Their agenda is clear and open, as is the Jamaat-e-Islami’s. But Farooq Abdullah’s open support to both these ideologies has been ignored and allowed to pass by secular parties. This is a great act of omission on their part.
 

There is every evidence of a serious comeback of militancy in the state. If militants can get at the very nerve centre of the Indian security system, the army, it means they are back. But what needs to be emphasised is that it is out of sheer desperation that local sentiments are being exploited like this. This is the only way they can express their resentment and that is why there is this silent but growing support for militant activities.
 

The political vacuum, if unaddressed, will be filled by extremists on both sides. The process has been assisted by lack of secular commitment on the part of Indians to the state. In Jammu, the BJP’s failure to meet the aspiration of the Hindu section of the population, will, soon give birth to outfits that are more extremist than the BJP even. 

The local Kashmiri leadership, too, is isolated and cannot be heard. Shabbir Shah is a leader who had projected a more tolerant ideology but whose voice was hardly heard in between. Soon after the recent elections, he and others were jailed by the National Conference without any charge. Why? 
 

Personally, I am not inspired by All-Party Hurriyat Conference, especially after they accepted the leadership of the Jamaat-e-Islami’s Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who is openly pro-Pakistan. Yasin Mallik, who once showed so much potential as the young and daring leader of the secular JKLF, has also fallen in with the official Hurriyat line. None of these Kashmiri leaders, by the way, condemned Pakistan’s conduct during Kargil and that I think was a major failure on all their part. 
 

India is obsessed with blocking the Kashmir issue internationally, outwitting Pakistan etc. Why are we not concerned with trying to solve problems within our control? If we regard the people of the state as our own, why do we not espouse or display any desire to hear their legitimate grievances and thereafter attempt solutions?

I now fear the political eclipse and redundancy of saner voices such as mine in such a situation. Physically, too, I am vulnerable. So far, I have been able to communicate with both sides in the dispute. But with the complete shrinking of space for sane and secular dialogue, I fear that with hardening, extremist stances on both sides, I will lose my space completely. 
 

A far stronger figure, like Gandhiji, found himself redundant in 1947 and eliminated in 1948; what chances has a far smaller man like me under the circumstances?
 

Just like the RSS and the BJP have assumed the sole monopoly on the Indian point of view, the Kashmiri protest movement has increasingly been epitomised by a Pakistani Muslim fundamentalist flavour. On both sides, extremists have taken over. The military coup has not helped matters but generated further confusion.

A very stable and dangerous triangle has emerged after the last elections. 
 

The three points in the triangle are Farooq Abdullah, the BJP (driven by the extremist RSS) and the Hurriyat (now openly supported by a pro-Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami).  While the three points of this triangle appear to oppose each other, they are in fact supporting each other. Hindu communalism supports Muslim communalism and an opportunistic National Conference makes political gain for itself, crucially dependant as it is on both the extremes. No points ever threaten each other; they depend on the other for their own survival. 

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 1999, Year 7  No. 53, Cover Story 1

Tyeb Mehta – A tribute

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Tyeb Mehta, one of India’s most tal-ented and celebrated artists, passed away in Mumbai on July 2. He had been battling ill health for some years.

Born in Kapadwanj, Gujarat, the 83-year-old artist lived in Mumbai for most of his life apart from brief but crucial spells in London, New York and Santiniketan.

Tyeb Mehta was an artist of quiet humility but was vocal and public in his stand against communal violence and in his support of human rights and the freedom of expression. His work was notable for its commitment to the ideals of equality and freedom.

When he was 22, India was partitioned and his street was also divided, reflecting the reality of a ravaged subcontinent. He was unable to travel the relatively short distance to his workplace. In the bloodbath that followed, he was witness to a horrifying incident in which a young man was lynched. This was an image that would stay with him for the rest of his life. "The crowd beat him to death and smashed his head with stones," he said in an interview with art critic Nancy Adajania. "I was sick with fever for days afterwards and the image still haunts me today. I am paralysed by the sight of blood, violence of any kind, even shouting…"

Sixteen years ago he drew by hand the huge backdrop for SAHMAT’s Artists Against Communalism cultural sit-in at the Shivaji Park in Mumbai in 1992. Against this backdrop, Sitara Devi and Astad Deboo danced and Hariprasad Chaurasia played the flute. Despite his increasing physical frailty in recent years, he came out to join the protest at Mumbai’s Jehangir Art Gallery in May 2007 after the BJP attacked the student review in the art department of the MS University in Vadodara.

For us at Sabrang, Tyeb Mehta and his family have been staunch supporters of our work and he was generous in donating his work to support our efforts against communal forces.

We join the wider art fraternity in paying tribute to a fine artist who spoke out during dark times.

– Editors

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2009 Year 15    No.142/ Tribute 3

Demonising Muslims

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American Christians have deep-rooted views of Islam as a violent, demonic religion

by Thomas Kidd

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 spawned a spate of conservative Christian reflections on the essential characteristics of Islam. Figures from Christian Broadcasting Network’s Pat Robertson to Colorado Springs pastor Ted Haggard pointed to the inherently violent nature of Islam. Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell said on 60 Minutes that "Muhammad was a terrorist", a glib comment that set off riots among Asian Muslims and earned him a fatwa from an Iranian cleric calling for Falwell’s assassination. As recently as 2006, even Pope Benedict XVI generated a major controversy by making disparaging comments about Islam’s violent history. One might think that these Christians’ views simply represent angry reactions to the horrific violence of 9/11 and ongoing jihadist terror. But a closer look reveals that American Christians have deep-rooted views of Islam as a violent, demonic religion.

Pastor Aaron Burr Sr (the president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton and the father of the politician Aaron Burr who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel) expressed widespread Anglo-American Protestant sentiment in a 1756 sermon in which he discussed "the false prophet and grand impostor Mahomet". According to Burr, the early medieval period represented a dark night for the Christian church for two primary reasons: the rise of the Catholic papacy and the spread of Islam. Muhammad brought Arabia under his control by violence, as he taught his followers that Islam should be "propagated by the sword and that it is meritorious to die for it". Misery, woe and ignorance followed in Muhammad’s wake and compounded the sufferings of god’s true church in the world.
 

Burr, like most prominent Anglo-American theologians of that time, believed that the advent of Islam had been predicted in the Bible, particularly in the Book of Revelations. Most conservative American Christians now think that the prophecies of Revelation point to future events but early Americans saw many of the prophecies as already fulfilled in history. Burr shared the common opinion that Revelation 9:2-3, which speaks of locusts coming out of a smoky abyss, was fulfilled with the coming of Muhammad. Like most colonial observers, Burr saw Muhammad as the worst kind of religious "impostor", who pretended to have received revelations from god in order to gain power.
 
With the Holy Book Koran
Obeisance with the Holy Koran
 

Since the colonial era, conservative American Christians have maintained a conflicted attitude towards Muslims. They have portrayed Islam as having malevolent origins but they have also kept faith that Muslims would eventually convert to Christianity. Despite the overwhelming difficulties of Muslim evangelisation, anecdotal accounts of Muslims becoming Christians were steady-sellers in colonial and antebellum America. Probably the most famous Muslim conversion narrative in the 19th century was the account of Abdallah and Sabat, told in a sermon by British pastor Claudius Buchanan. This compelling, tragic tale of the Arabian friends’ journey to faith in Christ was printed in various forms throughout Britain and America from the early 19th to the early 20th century.

Conservative Christians have hardly lost their taste for Muslim conversion stories, as demonstrated by books like Bilquis Sheikh’s I Dared to Call Him Father (1978). In this autobiography, Sheikh, a Pakistani noblewoman, recounted her conversion to Christianity following a series of dreams and visions about Jesus. The book defined the ideal Muslim conversion for a generation of Christians. It has been translated into many different languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Finnish and Amharic (a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia), and it remains in print today.

Despite their hopes for Muslim conversions, American Christians have also anticipated that Islam would meet its demise in the end times when Jesus would return to earth and establish his kingdom. In early America, many Protestants believed that Islam and Roman Catholicism would be destroyed simultaneously. Some even saw the two as the eastern and western Antichrists. The expectation of Roman Catholicism and Islam’s downfall and the imminent return of Christ led to bold date setting in the early 19th century, capped by the forecasts of William Miller and his followers who expected the end to come in 1843.

Jesus’s failure to appear at the appointed hour helped to transform standard Anglo-American interpretations of Bible prophecy and by the early 20th century "dispensational" theology had become dominant in conservative circles. Dispensationalists began to anticipate the re-establishment of the state of Israel where the final battle between good and evil would transpire. The founding of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent struggle between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states has become the frame for many conservative Christians’ interpretation of prophetic scenarios.

There remains a common expectation among American Christians of Islam’s coming downfall. Many now interpret the mysterious description of the attack by "Gog and Magog" against Israel in Ezekiel 38 and 39 as forecasting a time when Arab Muslims would unite with Russians to destroy Israel. Their attack would be miraculously foiled in a hail of fire and brimstone and this event would set the stage for the rise of an atheistic Antichrist who would launch a genocidal campaign against the Jews. This would lead to the final battle of Armageddon and the return of Christ to earth.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 inaugurated a sharply heightened interest in Islam among American Christians and in time we may also see that it generated lasting departures in prophetic interpretation, as some conservatives have begun to put Islam squarely at the centre of end times theolog

The attacks of September 11, 2001 inaugurated a sharply heightened interest in Islam among American Christians and in time we may also see that it generated lasting departures in prophetic interpretation, as some conservatives have begun to put Islam squarely at the centre of end times theology. Some have even begun to argue that the messianic Mahdi expected in some Muslims’ beliefs actually represents the Antichrist.

Despite some post-9/11 novelties, the history of conservative American Christian thought regarding Islam is largely a story of continuity, not change. Although they have often seen Islam as an inherently violent, malevolent religion, traditional Christians have also maintained persistent hopes of mass Muslim conversions to Christianity. Those who did not convert would ultimately fall before a returning Christ in the last days. Although the details may have changed over time, their convictions about the end of days have helped assure many American Christians that their god, the father of Jesus, would triumph in the end.

(Thomas Kidd is associate professor of history at Baylor University and senior fellow at Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion. His latest book is Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots, Basic Books, 2011. This article was published on History News Network on March 15, 2009.)

Courtesy: History News Network; http://hnn.us

Killing for Peace

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The violent fanaticism on display in Pakistan is too close for comfort

Javed Anand

There’s nothing a practising Muslim ever does without the invocation: “Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim (In the name of Allah, the most compassionate, the most merciful)”. About Prophet Muhammad he will tell you that Allah sent him to earth as “rahmat al il alamin (mercy unto mankind)”. The very word Islam means peace, you will be told. Allah, Prophet Muhammad, Islam, is all about peace, compassion, mercy. Get it?

No doubt Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, believes himself to be a pious Muslim. No doubt bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim preceded the bullets he pumped into a person he was trained, paid and sworn to protect, risking his life if need be. No doubt he committed cold-blooded murder in the name of “Allah, the most compassionate, the most merciful” in defence of a religion that means peace and in honour of the prophet (hurmat-e-rasool) who is meant to be mercy unto all mankind. Killing for peace? I just don’t get it.

Killing for peace? I just don’t get it.

Could it be that despite his self-perception, Qadri was actually under Satan’s evil influence? Banish the thought. For the “respected ulema” of Pakistan the man is a ghazi (holy warrior) now. (In Islam, a ghazi enjoys as high a status as a shaheed, or martyr.) If we happen to think otherwise, we too are blasphemers, kafirs, ‘wajib-ul-qatl (fit to be killed)’.

Killing may not be your or my idea of promoting peace but according to the “respected ulema” of Pakistan, you better believe it, that’s Islam. Read the joint statement issued by 500 “maulanas” from the Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat Pakistan (JASP) which also issued a death threat to anyone who dared lead or even participate in the namaaz-e-janaza (funeral prayer) for Taseer: “The punishment for blasphemy against the prophet is only death as per the holy book [Koran], Sunnah [sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad], consensus of Muslim opinion and explanations by the ulema… this brave person [Qadri] has maintained the 1,400 years of Muslim tradition and has held the heads of 1.5 billion Muslims of the world high with pride.” No, you messiahs of murder, count me out.

Ironically, this very Barelvi sect from among the subcontinent’s Muslims had thus far been seen as Pakistan’s great big hope for peace, a counterforce waiting to be deployed against the Deobandis, the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Ahl-e-Hadith, all of whom are guilty of injecting intolerance, extremism and terrorism into Islam. But a single murderous deed done by a “ghazi” has brought together Pakistan’s mutually warring “ulema” on a common platform. Whatever their other disagreements, they stand together in their worship of violence and contempt of the dissenting voice.

The credit for this unprecedented unholy alliance goes to the Jamaat-ud Dawah (JuD), another name for the terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) which among numerous other heinous acts is responsible for the 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai and India. As evident from its very well attended rally in Lahore (on January 16 and 17) under the banner of the Tehreek-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool (Movement for the Honour of the Prophet), the JuD, the Deobandis and the Barelvis jointly pronounced a death sentence on anyone calling for change in Pakistan’s infamous blasphemy laws.

Such madness in our immediate neighbourhood is in itself sufficient cause for concern. More worrisome is the fact that the roots and trunks of Pakistan’s major religious outfits lie in India. Deobandis and Barelvis owe their name to Deoband and Bareilly, both of which are towns in Uttar Pradesh. The Ahl-e-Hadith was birthed on Indian soil; so did Maududi found his Jamaat-e-Islami in undivided India. And each one of them today has far greater reach within the country than they had at the time of partition.

Why is it that since the unpardonable murder of Taseer, not one Indian leader of consequence from any of these outfits has spoken a word against the outrage? My Urdu-speaking Muslim friends from Mumbai tell me this is equally true of Urdu newspapers with the honourable exception of The Sahafat Daily. This conspiracy of silence, though shocking, is not surprising. Each one of them preaches that the punishment for blasphemy, apostasy, heresy, is death in an Islamic state and complete social ostracism from the entire community where Islam is not wedded to power.

Fed such poisonous brew, the ummah may be forgiven for missing out on finer details. In secular India some years ago, the Raza Academy (a supposedly more tolerant Barelvi group) threatened to burn Taslima Nasreen alive if she dared come to Mumbai. In 2008 the Urdu press in Hyderabad poured scorn on the leaders and activists of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) for their failure to kill her when they had the chance to do so.

“Educated Muslims have no choice but to get out of the clutches of the ulema,” opined a Muslim woman on a Google group last week. “If this is Islam, count me out,” wrote a Muslim male.

How do Muslims respond to the growing Islamophobia across the globe when the entire galaxy of “ulema” proclaims murder from the housetops? “Educated Muslims have no choice but to get out of the clutches of the ulema,” opined a Muslim woman on a Google group last week. “If this is Islam, count me out,” wrote a Muslim male.

So here’s the choice before educated Muslims. Opting out of Islam altogether or discovering that an Islam other than that of the “ulema” is possible. But to discover this other Islam, you need the sensibilities of a Farid Esack, a South African Islamic theologian whose moral and ethical integrity is evident from his statement: “If a choice has to be made between violence towards the text [holy scripture] and textual legitimisation of violence against real people then I would be comfortable to plead guilty to charges of violence against the text… Isn’t theology essentially about god? Yes, it is about god but my theology is about a god that is essentially just and compassionate.”

The time has come for a fatwa against the fanatics.

Here is the Link to the original sabrang website where the story can also be read
 

Hitler, the Indian Emergency, A Strong Government must respect Rule of Law: Raghuram Rajan

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'Hitler provided Germany with extremely effective administration – the trains ran on time, as did the trains during our own Emergency in 1975-77'

Full text of the speech by Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, at the D.D. Kosambi Ideas Festival held on February 20, 2015 in Goa
 

Thank you for inviting me to this Festival of Ideas. Since this festival is about ideas, I am not going to tax you with the Reserve Bank’s views on monetary policy, which are, by now, well known. Instead, I want to talk about something I have been studying for many years, the development of a liberal market democracy. In doing this, I will wear my hat as a professor in the field known as political economy, and discard my RBI hat for the time being. If you came here expecting more insights on the path of interest rates, as I expect many of you did, let me apologize for disappointing you.

My starting point is the truism that people want to live in a safe prosperous country where they enjoy freedom of thought and action, and where they can exercise their democratic rights to choose their government. But how do countries ensure political freedom and economic prosperity? Why do the two seem to go together? And what more, if anything, does India have to do to ensure it has these necessary underpinnings for prosperity and continued political freedom? These are enormously important questions, but given their nature, they will not be settled in one speech. Think of my talk today, therefore, as a contribution to the debate.

Fukuyama’s three pillars of a liberal democratic state

In his magisterial two-volume analysis of the emergence of political systems around the world, political scientist Francis Fukuyama builds on the work of his mentor, Samuel Huntington, to argue that liberal democracies, which seem to be best at fostering political freedoms and economic success, tend to have three important pillars: a strong government, rule of law, and democratic accountability.

I propose in this talk to start by summarizing my (necessarily imprecise) reading of Fukuyama’s ideas to you. I would urge you to read the books to get their full richness. I will then go on to argue that he leaves out a fourth pillar, free markets, which are essential to make the liberal democracy prosperous. I will warn that these pillars are weakening in industrial countries because of rising inequality of opportunity, and end with lessons for India.

Consider Fukuyama’s three pillars in greater detail. Strong government does not mean one that is only militarily powerful or uses its intelligence apparatus to sniff out enemies of the state. Instead, a strong government is also one that provides an effective and fair administration through clean, motivated, and competent administrators who can deliver good governance.

Rule of law means that government’s actions are constrained by what we Indians would term dharma – by a historical and widely understood code of moral and righteous behaviour, enforced by religious, cultural, or judicial authority.

And democratic accountability means that government has to be popularly accepted, with the people having the right to throw unpopular, corrupt, or incompetent rulers out.

Fukuyama makes a more insightful point than simply that all three traditional aspects of the state – executive, judiciary, and legislature – are needed to balance one another. In sharp contrast to the radical libertarian view that the best government is the minimal “night watchman”, which primarily protects life and property rights while enforcing contracts, or the radical Marxist view that the need for the government disappears as class conflict ends, Fukuyama, as did Huntington, emphasizes the importance of a strong government in even a developed country.

No matter how thuggish or arbitrary the government in a tin-pot dictatorship, these are weak governments, not strong ones. Their military or police can terrorize the unarmed citizenry but cannot provide decent law and order or stand up to a determined armed opposition. Their administration cannot provide sensible economic policy, good schools or clean drinking water. Strong governments need to be peopled by those who can provide needed public goods – it requires expertise, motivation, and integrity. Realizing the importance of strong government, developing countries constantly request multilateral institutions for help in enhancing their governance capacity.

Strong governments may not, however, move in the right direction. Hitler provided Germany with extremely effective administration – the trains ran on time, as did the trains during our own Emergency in 1975-77. His was a strong government, but Hitler took Germany efficiently and determinedly on a path to ruin, overriding the rule of law and dispensing with elections. It is not sufficient that the trains run on time, they have to go in the right direction at the desired time. The physical rail network guiding the trains could be thought of as analogous to rule of law, while the process by which consensus is built around the train schedule could be thought of as democratic accountability.

But why do we need both rule of law and democratic accountability to keep strong government on the right path? Would democratic accountability not be enough to constrain a dictatorial government? Perhaps not! Hitler was elected to power, and until Germany started suffering shortages and reversals in World War II, enjoyed the support of the majority of the people. The rule of law is needed to prevent the tyranny of the majority that can arise in a democracy, as well as to ensure that basic “rules of the game” are preserved over time so that the environment is predictable, no matter which government comes to power. By ensuring that all citizens have inalienable rights and protections, the rule of law constrains the majority’s behaviour towards the minorities. And by maintaining a predictable economic environment against populist democratic instincts, the rule of law ensures that businesses can invest securely today for the future.

What about asking the question the other way? Would rule of law not be enough? Probably not, especially in a vibrant developing society! Rule of law provides a basic slow-changing code of conduct that cannot be violated by either government or the citizenry. But that, by itself, may not be sufficient to accommodate the aspirations of new emerging groups or the consequences of new technologies or ideas. Democratic accountability ensures the government responds to the wishes of the mass of the citizenry, allowing emerging groups to gain influence through political negotiation and competition with others. Even if groups cannot see their programs translated into policy, democracy allows them to blow off steam non-violently. So both rule of law and democratic accountability check and balance strong government in complementary ways.

Where do these three pillars come from?

Much of Fukuyama’s work is focused on tracing the development of each pillar in different societies. He suggests that what the nature of states we see today is largely explained by history. For instance, China had long periods of chaos, most recently before the Communists came to power; groups engaged in total war against one another. Such unbridled military competition meant groups had to organize themselves as hierarchical military units, with rulers having unlimited powers. When eventually a group was victorious over the others, it was natural for it to impose centralized autocratic rule to ensure that chaos did not remerge. To rule over the large geographic area of the country, China needed a well-developed elite bureaucracy – hence the mandarins, chosen by exam based on their learning. So China had strong unconstrained effective government whenever it was united, and Fukuyama argues, unlike Western Europe or India, did not have strong alternative sources of power founded in religion or culture to impose rule of law.

In Western Europe, by contrast, the Christian church imposed constraints on what the ruler could do. So military competition, coupled with constraints on the ruler imposed by canon law, led to the emergence of both strong government and rule of law.

In India, he argues, the caste system led to division of labour, which ensured that entire populations could never be devoted totally to the war effort. So through much of history, war was never as harsh, or military competition between states as fierce, as in China. As a result, the historical pressure for Indian states to develop strong governments that intruded into every facet of society was muted. At the same time, however, the codes of just behaviour for rulers emanating from ancient Indian scriptures served to constrain any arbitrary exercise of power by Indian rulers. India, therefore, had weaker government, constrained further by rule of law. And, according to Fukuyama, these differing histories explain why government in China today is seen as effective but unrestrained, while government capacity in India is seen as weak, but Indian governments are rarely autocratic.

Any of these grand generalizations can, and should, be debated. Fukuyama does not claim history is destiny, but does suggest a very strong influence. Of course, the long influence of history and culture is less perceptible when it comes to democracy where some countries like India have taken to it like a duck to water. A vibrant accountable democracy does not only imply that people cast their vote freely every five years. It requires the full mix of a raucous investigative press, public debate uninhibited by political correctness, many political parties representing varied constituencies, and a variety of non-governmental organizations organizing and representing interests. It will continue to be a source of academic debate why a country like India has taken to democracy, while some of its neighbours with similar historical and cultural pasts have not.

I will not dwell on this. Instead, I turn to a different question that Fukuyama does not address. Clearly, strong governments are needed for countries to have the governance to prosper. Equally, free markets underpin prosperity. But why is it that every rich country is also a liberal democracy subject to rule of law?

I will make two points in what follows: First, free enterprise and the political freedom emanating from democratic accountability and rule of law can be mutually reinforcing so a free enterprise system should be thought of as the fourth pillar underpinning liberal market democracies. Second, the bedrock on which all four pillars stand is a broadly equitable distribution of economic capabilities among the citizenry. That bedrock is fissuring in industrial countries, while it has to be strengthened in emerging markets like India.

Free Enterprise and Political Freedom

Why are political freedoms in a country, of which representative democracy is a central component, and free enterprise mutually supportive?

There is, of course, one key similarity: Both a vibrant democracy and a vibrant free enterprise system seek to create a level playing field which enhances competition. In the democratic arena, the political entrepreneur competes with other politicians for the citizen’s vote, based on his past record and future policy agenda. In the economic sphere, the promoter competes with other entrepreneurs for the consumer’s rupee, based on the quality of the product he sells.

But there is also at least one key difference. Democracy treats individuals equally, with every adult getting one vote. The free enterprise system, by contrast, empowers consumers based on how much income they get and property they own. What then prevents the median voter in a democracy from voting to dispossess the rich and successful? And why do the latter not erode the political rights of the ordinary voter. This fundamental tension between democracy and free enterprise appeared to be accentuated in the recent U.S. Presidential elections as President Barack Obama appealed to middle-class anger about its stagnant economic prospects, while former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney appealed to business people, disgruntled about higher taxes and expanding healthcare subsidies.

One reason that the median voter rationally agrees to protect the property of the rich and to tax them moderately may be that she sees the rich as more efficient managers of that property, and therefore as creators of jobs and prosperity that everyone will benefit from. So, to the extent that the rich are self-made, and have come out winners in a competitive, fair, and transparent market, society may be better off allowing them to own and manage their wealth, settling in return for a reasonable share of their produce as taxes. The more, however, that the rich are seen as idle or crooked – as having simply inherited or, worse, gained their wealth nefariously – the more the median voter should be willing to vote for tough regulations and punitive taxes on them.
In some emerging markets today, for example, property rights of the rich do not enjoy widespread popular support because so many of a country’s fabulously wealthy oligarchs are seen as having acquired their wealth through dubious means. They grew rich because they managed the system, not because they managed their businesses well. When the government goes after rich tycoons, few voices are raised in protest. And, as the rich kowtow to the authorities to protect their wealth, a strong check on official arbitrariness disappears. Government is free to become more autocratic.

Consider, in contrast, a competitive free-enterprise system with a level playing field for all. Such a system generally tends to permit the most efficient to acquire wealth. The fairness of the competition improves perceptions of legitimacy. Moreover, under conditions of fair competition, the process of creative destruction tends to pull down badly managed inherited wealth, replacing it with new and dynamic wealth. Great inequality, built up over generations, does not become a source of great popular resentment.
On the contrary, everyone can dream that they, too, will become a Bill Gates or a Nandan Nilekani. When such universal aspirations seem plausible, the system gains added democratic support. The rich, confidant of popular legitimacy, can then use the independence that accompanies wealth to limit arbitrary government, support rule of law, and protect democratic rights. Free enterprise and democracy sustain each other.

There are, therefore, deeper reasons for why democratic systems support property rights and free enterprise than the cynical argument that votes and legislators can be bought, and the capitalists have the money. The cynics can only be right for a while. Without popular support, wealth is protected only by increasingly coercive measures. Ultimately, such a system loses any vestige of either democracy or free enterprise.

The Bedrock: Equitable Distribution of Economic Capabilities

There is, however, a growing concern across the industrial world. The free enterprise system works well when participants enter the competitive arena with fundamentally equal chances of success. Given the subsequent level playing field, the winner’s road to riches depends on greater effort, innovation, and occasionally luck. But success is not pre-determined because no class of participants has had a fundamentally different and superior preparation for the competition. If, however, some group’s economic capabilities are sufficiently differentiated by preparation, the level playing field is no longer sufficient to equalize a priori chances of success. Instead, the free enterprise system will be seen as disproportionately favouring the better prepared. Democracy is unlikely to support it, nor are the rich and successful as likely to support democracy.

Such a scenario is no longer unthinkable in a number of Western democracies. Prosperity seems increasingly unreachable for many, because a good education, which seems to be today’s passport to riches, is unaffordable for many in the middle class. Quality higher educational institutions are dominated by the children of the rich, not because they have unfairly bought their way in, but because they simply have been taught and supported better by expensive schools and private tutors. Because middle class parents do not have the ability to give their children similar capabilities, they do not see the system as fair. Support for the free enterprise system is eroding, as witnessed by the popularity of books like Thomas Pikkety’s Capital in the 21st Century while the influence of illiberal parties on both the Left and Right who promise to suppress competition, finance, and trade is increasing. The mutual support between free enterprise and democracy is giving way to antagonism.

Moreover, as class differences create differentiated capabilities among the public, governments can either continue choosing the most capable applicants for positions but risk becoming unrepresentative of the classes, or they can choose representativeness over ability, and risk eroding effectiveness. Neither biased nor ineffective government can administer well. So government capacity may also be threatened.

Thus, as the bedrock of equitable distribution of capabilities has started developing cracks in industrial countries, all four pillars supporting the liberal free market democracy have also started swaying. This is, to my mind, an enormously important concern that will occupy states across the world in the years to come.

Lessons for India

Let me conclude with lessons for India. India inherited a kind of democracy during British rule and has made it thoroughly and vibrantly her own. Of the three pillars that Fukuyama emphasizes, the strongest in India is therefore democratic accountability. India also adheres broadly to the rule of law. Where arguably we may have a long way to go, as Fukuyama has emphasized, is in the capacity of the government (and by this I mean regulators like the RBI also) to deliver governance and public services.
This is not to say that we do not have areas of excellence strewn throughout central and state governments – whether it is the building of the New Delhi Metro, the reach of the public distribution system in Tamil Nadu, or the speed of the roll-out of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana – but that such capabilities have to permeate every tehsil in every state. Moreover, in many areas of government and regulation, as the economy develops, we need more specialists, with the domain knowledge and experience. For instance, well-trained economists are at a premium throughout the government, and there are far too few Indian Economic Service officers to go around.

An important difference from the historical experience of other countries is that elsewhere typically strong government has emerged there first, and it is then restrained by rule of law and democratic accountability. In India, we have the opposite situation today, with strong institutions like the judiciary, opposition parties, the free press, and NGOs, whose aim is to check government excess. However, necessary government function is sometimes hard to distinguish from excess. We will have to strengthen government (and regulatory) capability resisting the temptation to implant layers and layers of checks and balances even before capacity has taken root. We must choose a happy medium between giving the administration unchecked power and creating complete paralysis, recognizing that our task is different from the one that confronted the West when it developed, or even the task faced by other Asian economies.

For instance, a business approval process that mandates numerous government surveys in remote areas should also consider our administrative capacity to do those surveys well and on time. If it does not provide for that capacity, it ensures there will be no movement forward. Similarly, if we create a multiple appellate process against government or regulatory action that is slow and undiscriminating, we contain government excess but also risk halting necessary government actions. If the government or regulator is less effective in preparing its case than private parties, we ensure that the appellate process largely biases justice towards those who have the resources to use it, rather than rectifying a miscarriage of justice. So in thinking through reforms, we may want to move from the theoretical ideal of how a system might work in a country with enormous administrative capacity, to how it would work in the actual Indian situation. Let me emphasize, we need “checks and balance”, but we should ensure a balance of checks. We cannot have escaped from the License Permit Raj only to end up in the Appellate Raj!

Finally, a heartening recent development is that more people across the country are becoming well-educated and equipped to compete. One of the most enjoyable experiences at the RBI is meeting the children of our Class IV employees, many of whom hold jobs as business executives in private sector firms. As, across the country, education makes our youth economically mobile, public support for free enterprise has expanded. Increasingly, therefore, the political dialogue has also moved, from giving hand outs to creating jobs. So long as we modulate the pace of liberalization to the pace at which we broaden economic capabilities, it is likely that the public will be supportive of reform. This also means that if we are to embed the four pillars supporting prosperity and political freedom firmly in our society, we have to continue to nurture the broadly equitable distribution of economic capabilities among our people. Economic inclusion, by which I mean easing access to quality education, nutrition, healthcare, finance, and markets to all our citizens, is therefore a necessity for sustainable growth. It is also, obviously, a moral imperative.

Notes:

The Origins of Political Order: From Pre-Human Times to the French Revolution by Francis Fukuyama, 2011, Farrar Straus and Giroux, New York.
Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama, 2014, Farrar Straus and Giroux, and
Political Order in Changing Societies by Samuel Huntington, 1968, Yale University Press, New Haven.

Criticality of the Indian National Movement in Nation Building

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Courtesy: Arun Kumar / governancenow.com
 
Professor Mushirul Hasan, members of Sahmat, organisers and management of India International Centre, ladies and gentlemen, it is a very great privilege to have been asked to initiate the series commemorating one of the greatest sons of India. at the same time I am more than a little nervous that Professor Mushirul Hasan is presiding over the function because this is debatable whether I am great or not but I mix up my dates awfully, so I will try to be very careful about them hopefully.

I should begin by making an assertion which is seldom made that the Indian National movement is the greatest creation so far of the Indian people. This may or may not be debated by the Indian national movement is a phenomenon in our history, unique, can hardly be questioned. These days it is becoming very common to run down the concept of nation. The Cambridge school had told us that in India, family and caste are the basic units and not anything else, all other things are illusionary.

Benedict Anderson in his Imagined Communities thought that nation was just an imagined community created by print media. And Perry Anderson in his recent book, his elder brother, Indian ideology 2012, which in a review I thought should have been called Indian Illusions, says that the Indian National Movement was not necessary at all, a statement that even Cambridge scholars had not made, that the act of 1935 and Japanese military successes were sufficient. It is therefore important first to see what the national movement was about and then to see in the present occasion why Jawaharlal Nehru’s intervention and leadership was so crucially important.

Now what the Cambridge School and the Andersons forget is that one of the major factors behind the creations of nations all over the world, in most cases conversions of countries into nations has been the phenomenon of colonial and imperialist exploitation. India was long regarded as a country, there is no dispute about that, but that it was a nation before the 19th century will be doubted. As Ram Mohan Roy had said, Indians are not patriotic; their basic affiliations are to their caste, 1828.

So what happened and why and how did this turnaround come? One of the major reasons for this was the work, as Pandit Nehru realised and indeed celebrated, the work of early nationalist, economist Dadabhai Naoroji, the grand old man of India, Ramesh Chandra Dutt, Subramaniam Iyer, Deoskar, Justice Ranade and others. They told us, they explored what the Indian poor could never have done for themselves, how Britain was living tribute on India and how hatred was causing de-industrialisation. Whatever the subalterns may say, these discoveries could not have come out of subaltern efforts. By 1905, as Professor Bipin Chandra in his classic work, the Rise and growth of Indian Economic Nationalism, points out the total picture of England’s exploitation of India in the writings of these moderates was complete.

Even today one might mention that if you take Sivasubramaniam’s National Income of India statistics, the major effort so far, then the per capita income of India between 1900 and 1947 rose by dramatic percentage 0.2% or less, 0.2% per annum. If between 1946-47 and 1990-91 under free India, the growth was not very spectacular, yet it was sensational compared to what happened under British rule in 47 years. It now amounted to 1.1%, five times the per capita growth attained under British Raj and complete conditions of free trade which now all the good newspapers in India want us to go over to.

What happened in the next stage that one would call roughly, after 1905 particularly after the partition of Bengal and notably after the arrival of Mahatma Gandhi in 1915, he left south Africa in 1914, was that the message increasingly got across to the Indian poor and one of the channels through which it got across was Gandhi and his followers. In Hind Swaraj in 1909, Gandhi argued that religion has nothing to do with a nation, that Indian and India, therefore people of all religions should live in amity and he summarized the picture that the nationalists had drawn of British exploitation of India, an adequate and capable summary.

The second thing which Gandhi did on which his experience of south Africa counted so much and above all his own personality was to link the national movement to the agitations for the rectifications of the grievances of the poor. Not mere pamphlets, not mere articles in journals and books but actual agitation. To that extent, in that sense, the Champaran Satyagraha of 1917, the subsequent Kheda Satyagraha of Gujarat peasants and the textile workers strike of 1918 were outstanding events. Now one need not recount the spread of the national movement immediately after these agitations, notably the April Satyagraha against Rowlatt Act of 1919. And then the Khilafat and non-cooperation movement of 1920-22. These were unprecedented in the number of masses brought into the movement.

Here however a point of crisis was reached and I think this is a point of crisis which must be understood, why it was reached. Gandhiji had brought about a revolution. There is an Urdu verse which I have often quoted, so I ask the forgiveness of people who have heard me quote it before. Akbar Allahabadi’s verse, Buddhu miyan bhi hazrat e Gandhi ke saath hain, e musht e khakh hain magar aandhi ke saath hain. Buddhu Miyan didn’t come before, he countered but what for? If we now turn to Hind Swaraj, we see a problem there. Gandhi is against British rule. He knows how India is being exploited by England. Dadabhai Naoroji and Ramesh Dutt have told him, Gokhale his mentor had told him. But when you come to the solution, what is the solution there. not even social reform. Not even a denunciation of the caste system, of untouchability, not even a declaration of women’s rights in Hind Swaraj, a minimal state, all left to self-help.

Characteristically I forget the date but when he came to AMU for the first time, the lecture he gave was on such an uninviting topic as self-help. Indians were to overthrow British rule and after their liberation live by self-help, minimal state. He thought that was the kind of state which the rajas and baadshahs has ruled with the support of pundits and maulvis. To many of us this would look like an awful idea but he thought that this was the ideal that India should look to. In other words Gandhiji was all the time appealing to people for self-correction, to landlords to be good custodians, establish schools and hospitals for their peasants. Similarly capitalists were to be good custodians, the state will have nothing to do with all these things, perhaps a minimum of law and order. And since he believed in non-violence, a minimum of the army. Could this make an appeal to… he had moved the middle classes like never before on Rowlatt Acts, he had moved a larger mass on the issue of Khilafat and Punjab wrongs but all the time you see hesitation in Gandhiji in demanding independence. Curiously he was very much a constitutionalist like the moderates.

In 1919 December even after Amritsar, he was counselling that we should rework the reforms without carping criticism, the 1919 government of India Act reforms.

By 1905, as Professor Bipin Chandra in his classic work, the Rise and growth of Indian Economic Nationalism, points out the total picture of England’s exploitation of India in the writings of these moderates was complete

The breakdown of the Khilafat movement, its withdrawal in early 1922 brought the crisis up. Atleast CR Das said he wanted an Indian state for the 98%. But Gandhi did not want a state at all in effect. He wanted a minimal state. And so behind the issue of individual non-cooperation or limited cooperation in which the Swarajists and Gandhians fought was this issue lurking behind what kind of India.

The second difficulty with Gandhiji was what Nehru called his metaphysics, his lack of rational approach, his declarations in the nature of arbitrary diktat rather than reasoned arguments. Throughout Hind Swaraj there is no celebration of reason and rationalism, there is only celebration of religion.
This to my mind is the reason why Jawaharlal Nehru had that particular mental crisis of which is major biographer, Sarvapalli Gopal, speaks. Although he does not relate them to these two issues but rather to his personal relations with Motilal Nehru, the Swarajist leader, his own father and Gandhiji on the other hand. They were at opposing sides and Jawaharlal Nehru supported Gandhiji against his own father. Motilal Nehru said bitterly to Jawaharlal that you want to live without working as a non-co-operator all the time expecting me to demand higher and higher fees so that I should support you.

So obviously these issues were there but behind these individual problems were this particular problem which perhaps one can only see by way of hindsight. At that time they were probably not clear. And so Nehru went to Europe. And again, I am not saying anything radical, that is what Gopal has said, this brought about a total change in his outlook. He came into association with people resisting colonialism throughout the world. The Brussels congress was particularly important. He went to soviet Russia and had his first glimpse of socialism which he undoubtedly studied critically but which still made a great appeal to him because he heard things in Russia about the equality and resistance to class exploitation which he had not heard elsewhere. In both Glimpses of World History and his autobiography he makes statements that to him, Lenin and Gandhi were the greatest leaders of the poor in his century.

When he comes back there is a sudden shift in the national movement, not at all realized by Nehru himself. Everyone thought that the Madras Congress Resolution for total independence in 1927 was an aberration. But why did it get passed at Nehru’s and Subhas Bose’s insistence. It got passed because there was a sickness in the national movement about the lack of radicalism in congress demands. Behind that, behind the moderation of the leadership was the anxiety that the congress should say something which should make or appeal to the mass of the population.

And I think here Nehru’s greatest contributions come. He wrote, as you know, two major works in this period, the period of civil disobedience and its aftermath, civil disobedience lasted from 1930 in the first phase to 1931 and he was in prison and then he again went back to prison. And Jawaharlal Nehru wrote Glimpses of World History for his daughter which was published in, if I am not mistaken, 1934 and then subsequently the autobiography published three years later. In both these works which were written in prison, Nehru makes certain points which are extremely important and which demarcate him from Mahatma Gandhi’s positions very sharply.

The first point is his celebration of reason. In Glimpses of World History what is remarkable is that although religions are described, they take a very secondary place. he is not prepared to accept at that time that religion contributed anything positive to humanity because that ends reason. And incidentally another colleague of his whom you would not think of asking such an embarrassing question, Abul Kalam Azad in 1907 asked the same question, Has religion done anything good to humanity? His major complaint against religion was it deadens reason and it makes the human being servile to the illusion of an afterlife. Both in his glimpses of world history and autobiography, he proclaimed his indifference even to Hinduism and Hindu practices and also to the concept of God and regarded this as an unnecessary concept.

In Glimpses of World History he picked a very important statement of the Jesuit fathers about Akbar. The statement was, Thus we see in this prince Akbar the common fault of an atheist who refuses to make reason subservient to faith. Now that Nehru should pick this out in order to commend Akbar and that he should add, if this is a definition of an atheist, the more we have of them, the better. Similar statements occur in autobiography.
 
I have often wondered at the curious shiftiness of the Indian people. Then when Nehru said all that, they celebrated him, they idolized him. What has changed in these two generations that the reverse is the case today. In any case here he was in total conflict with Gandhiji whom he regarded as his master. He said in autobiography that Gandhiji’s dangerous affiliation to metaphysics and to his declarations of policies and statements without reason makes it very difficult for the national movement. He describes Gandhiji’s immediate followers as people who had been reduced to mental pulp, thoughtless fellows.

That brings me to another wonderful thing, that Nehru should say all this and Gandhi should still declare him his heir. One feels that one is talking of some other country. The second important thing that Nehru brought in was what he thought was socialism but indeed he did distinguish also between a welfare state and a socialist state.

The second important thing was the difference on the role of the state. Pandit Nehru was I think in communist language sectarian when he declared that the communists were wrong in thinking that the national movement can be directed towards a proletarian and pro-peasant movement. The very idea of nation he said is bourgeois, a statement that even Stalin didn’t make. He said, the national question is a peasant question. not necessarily a correct judgment but still a better judgement perhaps that Nehru’s bourgeois nation. And since Indian National Congress is a national organization, it is a movement to build a nation, it must be a bourgeois party. the concept that the congress or national movement can be a multiclass movement had not even developed within the communist movement at that time. that was largely left to the Dutt-Bradley thesis of 1936 but that is another question. I say that because Nehru was very familiar with communist opinions and he in fact says that on many matters what the communists have said have proved correct and they have been very insightful. This does not mean however that he agreed with them on other matters. However the main issue was that the congress should present in Nehru’s mind a picture of what India would be when it is independent. A picture that would be totally different from Hind Swaraj which would not appeal to the Indian people. They didn’t want a minimal state, they wanted a supportive, they wanted a democratic, they wanted a welfare state at the least. And here there was a major issue between the two. This lasted till the last days of Gandhiji.

The second thing which Gandhi did on which his experience of South Africa counted so much and above all his own personality was to link the national movement to the agitations for the rectifications of the grievances of the poor.

In 1945 Gandhiji wrote to Nehru, I have said that I will stand by the system of government envisaged in Hind Swaraj, the village of my dreams is still in my mind. Nehru replies in astonishment that he should think of a state in India in such a way and believe in what he said almost 36 years ago in Hind Swaraj. Gandhiji, in fact, in practice set up Mashruwala to write against rationing and promoted this article in Harijan and also in his statements that there should be no rationing which would have meant in practice the death of a large number of poor people just because he hated state intervention in these matters. So there was a total difference of opinion.

And here therefore comes the second intervention, the first intervention is a celebration of reason in the national movement, a celebration of rationalism, and the second important element and that was the welfare state. Unfortunately because of Nehru’s innate modesty he does not celebrate the Karachi resolution of 1931 in his autobiography. He says these things could be done by any capitalist state, they had not been done by any capitalist state till that time, later also post-second world war years, but not in 1935. This fundamental rights resolution after the discontinuance of the civil disobedience movement in 1931 as modified and in fact strengthened by the all-India congress committee in august 1931 lays down many fundamental things about India including the secular state about which I shall have soon something to say. It for the first time proclaimed the equality of men and women which Gandhiji had not until then and certainly not in Hind Swaraj ever recognized. Later on, yes, but even then he would not recognize equality, he would say women are superior to men, they should be generals because they are compassionate whereas men are cruel and idiots. He could say that and get away with it but the concept of equality, the modern concepts of equality had passed Gandhiji by.

This resolution says, no disability. You know this is what the picture would be of India when it is free, no disability attaches to any citizen by reasons of his or her religion, caste, creed or sex in regard to public employment, office of power or honour and in the exercise of any trade or calling, totally against Hind Swaraj. And labour protection, women protection, all that is there but then also land to the tiller which Gandhiji had until then opposed and was to oppose even later.

The system of land tenure and revenue and rent shall be reformed and an equitable adjustment made of the burden on agricultural land immediately giving relief to the smaller peasantry by substantial reduction of agricultural rent and revenue now paid by them etcetera etcetera.
Then come to Clause 15, the state shall own or control key industries and services, mineral resources, railways, waterways, shipping and other means of public transport. Public sector, control of industry anathema to Gandhiji.

Now the Karachi Resolution was made the basis of the election manifesto of the Congress in 1937 and it had astonishing success. It was again made the basis of the election manifesto in 1940 for 1946 elections. No one can say that these were hidden. Gandhiji had actually moved the resolution and he had added one particular para to strengthen it, Relief of agricultural indebtedness and control of usury, direct and indirect, are in his hand writing.

The state shall provide for military training of citizens, totally against Gandhiji’s philosophy. This is a picture that Nehru’s draft presented to the Indian people and even Gandhiji realized, I think, in his heart of hearts that the Swaraj type of state would make no appeal to the Indian peasant and labour.

The third matter that flows from it and that actually flows from both, the concept of supremacy of reason and the concept of a welfare state is the secular state. Nehru had the international notion of secularism and it is important to know what the worldwide view of secularism is and not the view of this Indian Supreme Court. The worldwide view of secularism is that the state is bound to take all efforts of welfare, human welfare, which are only in terms of the material and spiritual comforts of those people in this world. anything done because that would bring reward in afterlife is anathema to secularism. In fact, Holyoake who first used secularism was looking for a definition of a philosophy of morality in which afterlife won’t count, religion won’t count. It is no business of the state to ensure that Muslims should pray five times a day although that may lead them to heaven but this is no business of the state. Or that Hindus should perform pilgrimages is their personal matter, for their being born better in afterlife that is no business of the state.

This is Nehru’s position throughout. He is one of the few Indian leaders who used the word secular in 1930s and 40s. In fact, the word secular therefore did not appear in the Constitution at all, it was added in 1976 through an amendment to the preamble.

The ground has been infinitely muddied by that doubtful philosopher Sir Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan. In his book, Recovery of Faith, he says, when India is said to be a secular state, not France or England but India, it does not mean that we reject the reality of an unseen spirit. If the spirit is unseen, how do you know it is real. So the very formula is ridiculous. Or the relevance of religion to life which is totally against the philosophy of Holyoake, the French revolution and human secular values throughout the world.

We hold that not one religion should be given preferential status. And on the basis of this kind of nonsense, the Supreme Court went further and made a statement of absolute fantasy that all the great values in this world have come from sants and saints which gave us democracy, equality of women and men, socialist values and so forth. But this is the law of the land today. And when the constitution prohibits religious instruction, the Supreme Court allows instruction in religion in government institutions.

Now clearly it was Nehru’s position and not the position of others who believed in a kind of religiously tolerant state that strengthened the national movement and gave it an argument against the Muslim league and other splinter parties. Nehru, in fact, argued in his autobiography that whereas Muslim separatism can be identified as such because they are in a minority, Hindu communalism masquerades as Indian nationalism. I doubt if they even masqueraded. I doubt very much that they even masqueraded. RSS has no record of any agitation against the British government.

Here if you permit me I shall bring to your notice a joke from Pakistan. In Dawn recently or about six months ago and that article was published in the journal of Pakistani Historical Society, so I came to know of it and published without any challenging note and that was that there is a psychological problem in Pakistan. The problem in Pakistan is that the whole national movement of Pakistan was not dead against a ruling power but against fellow subjects. We had nothing, no quarrel with the British who governed the areas that are Pakistan, our only quarrel was with Hindus. The same applies also to RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, they had no quarrel with the British, they had only quarrel with their Muslim fellow subjects. So before we laugh at the joke in Pakistan, we should consider that we have just elected a government whose entire national credentials are anti-Muslim credentials.

Well, coming back to the importance of secularism, this a very great misfortune that a debate in 1940s did not occur and it did not occur because of the Quit India Movement when for three years all congress publications were closed, students had been put in jail and therefore Muslim League propaganda had an open field. So Nehru’s secularism never had the chance.

This brings me now to 40s and here I am afraid I must take issue with what Pandit Nehru did in the 40s. when the war broke out between two bits of colonial or aspiring colonial power groups, the congress took the position that the Nazis are the worst side and they should therefore be opposed but an agitation against the government should continue. The agitation was to be individual satyagraha so that the government is not embarrassed. When in 1941 and 1942 the pendulum swung on the other side, there was the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union and there was a very powerful Japanese offensive not only against Kuomintang China but then in Southeast Asia, occupation of Burma and so forth, Gandhiji’s position changes. For a man of moral authority this is an astonishing change. He believed, as many said, as Pandit Nehru himself said, and as Sarvapalli Gopal considers to be the case in his biography of Nehru, he believed that Russia and China would be defeated. He did not play much attention to the German defeat before Moscow. He believed in the Nazi propaganda that the Germans were about to cross the Volga near Stalingrad. Similarly he thought and he wrote in fact that Japan had no intentions against India. How did he know? That if therefore, now was the time to agitate when the allies were at their weakest, then the British could be made to yield but they had not yielded through Kripps Mission. And therefore Gandhiji began through his supporters even before anything was decided by the Congress to develop a movement towards civil disobedience. Nehru speaks in his Discovery of India 1945, of the continuous increase in excitement which Gandhiji’s statement made.

In 1947 both Gandhiji’s and Nehru’s dreams united as never before. Both wanted that communal slaughter should stop, both wanted that even if division came Muslims should live in India and Hindus and Sikhs should live in Pakistan. They both felt that their primary duty was to do their duty in India

Here what is not very relevant is still a joke from 1942. After his rejection of Kripps Mission, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru began touring, as was his wont, he was a man of action and he didn’t tour only for elections, he toured to build a party. he came to Aligarh. Characteristically his hosts forgot that being a human being he needs lunch. They took him from place to place and every time said lunch, but we were never told about your lunch. And so he got very annoyed and he said that I know a person called Professor Habib, you take me there. And so around 3.30 when we were playing, my elder brother and I, in the garden, we found Nehru arriving by Tonga, getting down, breaking into house, practically shouting Habib, Habib, make me an omelette and as we hid behind doors and as he consumed the omelette, my father told him, Panditji, why did you reject the Kripps Mission, we had atleast hope of being a dominion. And we watched Nehru looking scornfully at my father, saying, Habib, just remain professor, within five years this country will be free. And it took five and a half years, he was wrong by six months. I remember the incident and this tells you something of the man. I don’t know whether he did in fact want to reject the Kripps Mission proposals but he certainly was very loyal to that decision.

But was he loyal to his views subsequently. How could anyone then attack the British government and agitate against the British government, launch a civil disobedience which only would benefit the axis powers. And then not only that but making statements, running down the world, he says in a quotation from Pandit Nehru himself in his Discovery of India and he gives this quotation and I have again a grouse against Pandit Nehru that he should have selected this quotation, in which he says, we must learn, Gandhiji said on 8th August, we must learn to look calmly at a world which has blood thirsty eyes at this time.

What was this world? Russians and Chinese defending their homeland or Nazis and Japanese generals strutting over the subject countries. the world has done us no harm, so why should we look calmly and scorn at the world. and why should Jawaharlal Nehru have quoted it, quoted it sympathetically. In his Discovery of India, he concedes that nationalism triumphed over internationalism in the Quit India Resolution. But why then Sir did you support it? Why then did Abul kalam Azad support it? It was a kind of blackmail that you would be then condemned as people who were not brave enough to face British rule but was this enough reason. Were you not being metaphysical like your critics. I think that that was a very great error. To my mind it was not only immoral to do that at that time, to do it for opportunistic reasons but it was also an ideologically very wrong step. And one of the results was that, in fact, congress was wiped out in Muslim localities. It had no Urdu paper, it had no support left. Its all newspapers or publications were banned, its offices closed, its ordinary workers put in prison.

This brings me to the apologia that is Discovery of India for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s conduct. I feel with Gopal that Discovery of India in quality is very inferior to his two worldly books. That is Gopal’s judgement. But then more than fall in quality, the statements he makes, we are proud of the achievements of our race, the past achievements of our race. Race? Are you a Nazi? You had said that nation is a bourgeois idea. So India comes into focus, let other countries suffer, India is my particular, I have discovered India. the history is also despite its great insights, very dangerously tilted. I have already mentioned Sir Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, that a knight obtaining knighthood from the British government, the most obviously foreign rulers should tell us that Indian philosophical thought languished because of foreign rulers from Greeks, Shakas, Kushanas, Muslims, not of course British but all these foreign rulers and that Nehru should accept it. He only changes it, yes, we were great thinkers in the past as if he had never heard of Shankaracharya in the 9th century, he had never heard of other thinkers, he had never heard of Abul Fazl. We had great thinkers in the past but it was not foreign rulers by acts of which we fell. We became imitative and so lost our creativity.

If you look at history, a country which does imitate never creates. Europe became, as in Glimpses of World History, he himself pointed out, because it imitated Chinese inventions and Arab science.

Now all that is past. There is an Indian nationalism which is totally rational. I have said again that there are great merits in the book and those merits of course remain. They still are a very good treatment of Muslim political movements. There is a very good treatment and an honest treatment even of the events that led to the Quit India Movement. Nevertheless, now we hear Nehru saying, “Religions have contributed a lot to the good of humanity.” The ideas of Glimpses of world History, the ideas of Autobiography are forgotten. Even religion is exalted.

So I did think that if Nehru solved the crisis of nationalism without knowing that he was solving it in late 1920s and early 1930s he became a victim of that crisis, Gandhiji’s irrationalism in 1940s and Discovery of India is an attempt to justify, partly to justify it.

I will end Mr. Chairman however with a final tribute.

In 1947 both Gandhiji’s and Nehru’s dreams united as never before. Both wanted that communal slaughter should stop, both wanted that even if division came Muslims should live in India and Hindus and Sikhs should live in Pakistan. They both felt that their primary duty was to do their duty in India. Frankly, very few top leaders of the Congress felt that. That could be seen in the Meerut session of the ICC where Patel made his speech, Sword to be replied with Sword. When Gandhiji went on his fast on 13th of January, 1948, that was the testing hour. What he was demanding was that refugees in Delhi who had occupied Muslims houses should vacate them. Not an easy thing. They had been thrown out in Punjab, massacred there, come here, taken houses. They were to vacate them and let back Muslim owners.

Second demand, that India should pay 55 crores to Pakistan whose government was by that non-payment, bankrupt. Most unpopular demand.

I believe that Sardar Patel and Rajendra Prasad went to Gandhiji to protest against his fast. That demarcated the leadership.

Now if you read any account of that time and we were of course, I was a school boy…no, I think I was a first year student in the AMU at that time, I read the Hindustan Times. I read that on the first day of the hunger strike, stones were thrown at Gandhi and ‘Gandhi murdabad’ were slogans shouted in lanes and bye lanes of Delhi. On the 15th, Nehru addresses a crowd of 10,000 in front of the Red Fort and to my mind that is the kind of leadership that he signified, it liberates.

So whenever one disagrees with Nehru or even with Gandhiji, one has to do it with the greatest respect and ask the question, Would I have done it, Would anyone else have done it? Well, thank you very much for your patience. 

(Lecture Delivered by Professor Irfan Habib at the India International Centre on November 22, 2014 as part of the 125th Birth Anniversary Celebrations of Jawaharlal Nehru organised by SAHMAT, New Delhi)

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