[This article is a major extract from my article "Sita
Ram Goel, memories and ideas", written for the Sita Ram Goel
Commemoration Volume, entitled "India's Only Communalist",
edited by Koenraad Elst, published by Voice Of India, New Delhi,
in 2005. It is dedicated to Sita Ram Goel, the great visionary without whom my
books (and so many other important ones) would never have seen the light of
day.
I am excluding from this particular blog the first
section, dealing with my association with Sita Ram Goel, and the last section
"Pseudo-Hindutva", dealing with the BJP, because the first would be
too sublime, and the second too sordid, a subject for this particular blog,
which is only intended to define Hindutva or Hindu Nationalist ideology, in
detail and in my view.
Needless to say, today, in 2016, the article, written and
published in 2005, may be a bit dated, and to some people some of the discussion may sound rambling or irrelevant. And my opinions, on some minor points, may
have mellowed or become more refined. Nevertheless, as a preliminary and more
or less comprehensive outline of my ideology, I want it on the internet.
I will only mention here, for reasons which will become
obvious further on, the first paragraph of the article:
"I first became acquainted with Sita Ram Goel, or
rather with his writings, in the late nineteen-eighties. I had gone to Savarkar
Sadan, near Shivaji
Park in Mumbai, to buy a
copy of Nathuram Godse’s 'May It Please Your Honour' - ironical since Sita Ram
Goel was a staunch admirer of Mahatma Gandhi. [The truth is, over the years, without
blinding myself to his many faults, some of which cost the nation dear, and
without losing my respect for Godse either, I have also acquired great
respect for Mahatma Gandhi, and his life and philosophy, and their great
relevance in an increasingly ruthless world. This may be difficult to
understand if we think only in terms of black and white.]"
HINDUTVA OR
HINDU NATIONALISM
Hindu Nationalist ideology is
generally referred to as Hindutva - a word coined by Veer Savarkar, and later taken up by
the Hindu Mahasabha (of which Savarkar himself was twice President) and the
RSS. In the last two decades, the word has become a common word in Indian
politics, bandied about by the likes of the BJP and the Shiv Sena and by their
political opponents. Anybody and everybody interprets the word to his own
convenience, but there can be no doubt about its basic meaning: it means an
ideology for the defence of Hindu society, culture and civilisation.
The following is an attempt to
elaborate on the ideology of Hindutva as a complete nationalist ideology from
the point of view of three aspects:
I. Conventional
Hindutva.
II. Cultural
Nationalism.
III. Socio-Economic
Nationalism.
I. CONVENTIONAL HINDUTVA
Conventional Hindutva is what is
generally understood by the term Hindutva: an ideology for the defence of Hindu
society and civilisation. As the word defence indicates, the first premise is
that Hindu society and civilisation are under attack.
Societies and civilisations have
been under attack from other societies and civilisations since the beginnings
of time. It is a natural corollary of the baser side of human nature, and the
vicissitudes of Time and Nature have seen the demise of many a society and
civilisation.
But the Old Testament of the
Bible for the first time introduced a new element: the destruction of societies
and civilisations as a matter of religious ideology. The birth of Christianity,
2000 years ago, gave a final revolutionary touch by converting this local
ideology (restricted only to Palestine,
the land “promised” by Jehovah to the Jews) into an international imperialist
ideology. A few centuries later, Islam followed suit. The two, between them,
laid waste most of the earlier societies and civilisations of Europe,
Western and Central Asia, and North Africa.
In the mediaeval period,
Christian Imperialism took on a new form as European Imperialism, and destroyed
the societies and civilisations of North and South America,
and Australia,
and did much damage (particularly political and psychological) in the rest of Africa and Asia. It was
only when a similar ideology (Nazism) arose in a part of Europe
itself, which sought to do to the rest of Europe
what some parts of Europe had done to most of
the rest of the world, that European Imperialism lost its steam. The centre of
Christian Imperialism shifted to America. Today
American Imperialism dominates the world with
(apart from its military and economic clout) its three powerful
ideological weapons: Proselytisation, Capitalism and Consumerism. In the process,
Christian Imperialism also laid low another rival imperialism, which had raised
its head for one century, Marxist Imperialism; and it is now in the process of
trying to do the same to its more long-standing rival, Islamic Imperialism.
Hindu civilisation is the one
civilisation whose inner greatness and resilience enabled it to withstand
centuries of Christian and Islamic imperialist attack. It is in fact the last
major bastion of the pre-Christian civilisations of the world.
For that very reason, Hindu
society is today the single major target of all these
Imperialisms, which are backed by powerful international forces. As Sita Ram
Goel puts it at the very beginning of his “Hindu Society Under Siege”:
“the death of Hindu society is no longer an eventuality which cannot be
envisaged. This great society is now besieged by the same dark and deadly
forces which have overwhelmed and obliterated many earlier societies. Suffering
from a loss of élan, it has become a house divided within itself. And
its beneficiaries no more seem to be interested in its survival because they
have fallen victims to hostile propaganda. They have developed towards it an
attitude of utter indifference, if not
downright contempt. Let no Hindu worth his salt remain complacent. Hindu society
is in mortal danger as never before.” (p.2)
This fact is clear to anyone who
looks around with open eyes at what is going on all around, and who is
clear-sighted and level headed enough to see, and honest enough to admit, the
situation.
To illustrate this, let me quote
from an article in the Indian Express (Sunday 13/6/2004) by Tavleen Singh,
a journalist who cannot by any means be called a Hindu communalist (she points
out, in the article, that she is “not a Hindu”), and who was always considered
by Sita Ram Goel to be a typical secularist scribe, entitled “This Inner
Voice Too Needs Hearing”: “…the word Hindutva is being used as a term of
abuse…it is used mostly in pejorative terms…the debate appears no longer
confined to the cloistered world of priests, or even the self-serving one of
politics, it has expanded into a challenge to Hindu civilisation…the
wider attack on Indian civilisation that this pejorative use of the word Hindu
represents. It bothers me that I went to school and college in this country
without any idea of the enormous contribution of Hindu civilisation to the
history of the world. It bothers me that even today our children, whether they
go to state schools or expensive private ones, come out without any knowledge
of their own culture or civilisation…You cannot be proud of a heritage
you know nothing about, and in the name of secularism, we have spent 50 years
in total denial of the Hindu roots of this civilisation. We have done nothing
to change a colonial system of mass education founded on the principle that
Indian civilisation had nothing to offer…our contempt for our culture
and civilisation…evidence of a country that continues to be colonised to
the core? Our contempt for who we are gets picked up these days by the Western
press…racism [is] equated with Hindu Nationalism. For countries
that gave us slavery and apartheid that really is rich, but who can blame them
when we think so badly of ourselves. As for me I would like to state clearly
that I believe that the Indic religions have made much less trouble for the
world than the Semitic ones and that Hindu civilisation is something I am very
proud of. If that is evidence of my being ‘communal’, then, so my inner voice
tells me, so be it.”
If Hindu society and
civilisation are to be saved from annihilation, there is only one solution:
Hindu consciousness must be aroused, a Hindu perspective and world-view must be
cultivated, and Hindus must be educated, on the one hand, about Hindu
civilisation and its rich heritage and its major contributions to the world in
every field, and about the great sages, seers, saints, scholars, scientists,
soldiers, artistes and statesmen, the individuals in every field who represent
our past glory and heritage; and, on the other, about the forces out to destroy
this civilisation, about the textual sources, ideologies, histories, strategies
and present activities of these forces, and about the Hindu struggles against
these forces and the Hindu heroes involved in these struggles.
It is also necessary to alert
Hindus to the inner weaknesses which make Hindu society susceptible to these
forces, the dangers of Secularism, the self-alienation among the Hindu elites
and ruling classes and their indifference to, and contempt for, their own
culture and civilisation, the breakdown of the defence mechanism of Hindu
society, the perversion of certain Hindu values like tolerance, universalism
and humanism, and the abandonment of certain other Hindu values like
self-respect, rationalism and capacity for objective analysis.
Voice of India books
have sought to do just this. Before Voice of India came on the scene, Hindutva
discussion hovered around topics and issues which could be broadly subsumed
under the headings “appeasement of minorities” and “discrimination against
Hindus and Hinduism” in the Indian polity. The discussions were concerned only
with the symptoms of the disease rather than with the root causes and the cure.
Voice of India
changed everything: it identified both the external forces as well as the
internal weaknesses, and it offered the only cure: Knowledge of the Truth.
The only solution, according to
Sita Ram Goel, was for Hindus to know the truth about the forces out to
destroy Hindu society. Once Hindus knew the truth, the whole truth and nothing
but the truth, these forces would lose their self-righteousness, their
self-assurance, and their vigour and potential for damage. Hindu society, on
the other hand, would recognise its own potential and would regain the
self-confidence to rise up again to take its rightful place among the comity of
nations.
The only solution is, therefore,
to propagate Sita Ram Goel’s writings and Voice of India publications, and the
message and facts contained in these writings and publications, on a
war-footing. An awakened Hindu society will do the rest.
II. CULTURAL NATIONALISM
Sita Ram Goel, at the very
outset of his “Hindu Society Under Siege”, tells us: “there are many
Hindus who are legitimately proud of Hindu art, architecture, sculpture, music,
painting, dance, drama, literature, linguistics, lexicography and so on. But
they seldom take into account the fact that this great wealth of artistic,
literary and scientific heritage will die if Hindu society which created it is
no more there to preserve, protect and perpetuate it” (pp.1-2).
In my 1993 book “The
Aryan Invasion Theory And Indian Nationalism”, I have pointed out in detail
how conversion to Islam and Christianity creates a process of cultural
de-Indianisation. De-Hinduisation of Indian society, therefore, will inevitably
lead to the demise of Indian culture: Hindu society must survive if Indian
culture is to survive.
But the reverse is also true:
Indian culture must survive if Hindu society is to survive. Hindu society
would no more be Hindu society if it lost all vestiges of Indian culture or if
it allowed Indian culture to die out. And Hindutva without Indian culture as
its very basis is a meaningless exercise.
Before going further, let me
clarify what exactly the words “culture” and “Indian culture” mean in our
discussion in this section on Cultural Nationalism:
Culture does not refer only to
“values”, “ethos” and “way of life”, which are really vague words, which can be
made to mean anything. It refers to actual concrete culture. As I put it in the
1997 VOI volume, “Time for Stock Taking”, it refers to “every single
aspect of India’s matchlessly priceless heritage: climate and topography; flora
and fauna; races and languages; music, dance and drama; arts and handicrafts;
culinary arts; games and physical systems; architecture; costumes and apparels;
literature and sciences…” (p.227).
And Indian culture refers not
just to the “cultural practices springing from Vedic or Sanskritic sources,
but from all other Indian sources independently of these: the practices
of the Andaman islanders and the (pre-Christian) Nagas are as Hindu in the
territorial sense, and Sanatana in the spiritual sense, as classical Sanskritic
Hinduism” (ibid).
Indian culture is the greatest
and richest in the world. India (ie. the Indian subcontinent) is the only
place in the world which is rich in all the fields of culture: natural
(topography, climate, flora and fauna), ethnic (races and languages), and
civilisational (music, dance and drama; lore and literature; art, sculpture and
handicrafts; architecture; costumes, ornaments and beauty culture; cuisine;
games and physical systems; religion; philosophy; social and material sciences,
etc.). Its greatness lies in both factors: the richness of its range and
variety, as well as its contributions to the world, in every single
field of culture.
To give just a glimpse: in
climate, we have the hottest place in the world, Jacobabad (in present-day Pakistan), but
also, as per the Encyclopaedia Britannica, we have, outside the Polar regions, “the largest area under permanent ice and
snow”. We have dry arid regions in the west, which receive no rainfall at all,
and at the same time, the area, around Cherapunji in the east, with the highest
rainfall in the world. And we have, in different parts of the land, a wide
range of shades of climatic conditions between these extremes. The topography
of India, from the most intriguing and diverse mountain system in the world,
the Himalayas, in the north, through the plains, plateaus, mountains and
valleys of the peninsula down to the Andaman-Nicobar and Lakshadweep island
clusters in the south, also seems to leave no topographical feature
unrepresented.
India’s forests and vegetation also
cover every range and variety from the coniferous and deciduous types to the
monsoon and tropical types to the desert and scrubland types. And India has
been one of the primary contributors to the world in every kind of plant and
forest products; to name only some of the most prominent ones: rice, a
variety of beans, a wide range of vegetables including eggplants and a number
of different types of gourds, fruits like bananas, mangoes and a range of
citrous fruits, oilseeds like sesamum, important woods including teak, ebony
and sandalwood, spices like black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and
turmeric, dyes like madder and indigo, important materials like cotton, jute,
shellac and India-rubber, a wide range
of medicinal herbs, etc., etc. Moreover, being strategically situated between,
and sharing in, three different ecological areas, India shares countless other
important plants and products with northern and western Asia
on the one hand and Southeast Asia on the
other. And, as a detailed study will show, it has indigenous equivalents, or
potential equivalents, for a wide range of other non-Indian plants and
products.
India’s fauna is the richest in the
world: Robert Wolff, in the introduction to his book, “Animals of
Asia”, tells us that “India has more animal species than any other
region of equal area in the world.” But the richness is not only in
comparison with regions of equal area. For example, India is the only area in
the world which has all seven families of carnivora native to it, while
the whole of Africa has five (no bears or procyonids), the whole of North and South
America together have five (no hyaenas or viverrids), the whole of Europe has
five (no hyaenas or procyonids), and, in Asia, the areas to the east and north
have six (no hyaenas) and the areas to the west have six (no procyonids).
Within the carnivora family of cats, India is the only area to have all six
genera, while the whole of Africa has four (no uncia or neofelis), North and
South America together, and Europe, have three (no acinonyx, uncia or
neofelis), and, in Asia, the areas to the east and north have five (no
acinonyx) and the areas to the west have four (no uncia or neofelis). In
respect of snakes, India is the only area in the world to have all twelve
of the recognised families, while the whole of Africa has eight, and both North
and South America together have nine, and what is significant is that one of
the twelve families (Uropeltidae or shield-tailed snakes) is found only in
South India and Sri Lanka, so that India alone has twelve families,
while the whole rest of the world put together has eleven. Of the three
families of crocodilians, two (crocodiles and gavials) are found in India, one of
them (gavials) exclusively in India.
India
is the richest area in the world in the variety of bovine species, second only
to Africa in variety of antelope species, and
second only to China
in variety of deer species. The list is a long one. And India is not only a
primary wildlife destination, it is also one of the important centres of
domestication of animals, the most important of these being the domestic
buffalo, the domesticated elephant, one of the two races of domestic cattle and
the commercially most important bird in the world, the domestic fowl. The most
ornamental bird in the world, the peacock, is also Indian.
There are three recognised races
in the world (Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid), and India is the only area in the world
which has all three native to it: the Andaman islanders are the only true
Negroids outside Africa. Sometimes, a fourth
race, Australoid, is postulated (otherwise included among Caucasoids), and we
have it among the Veddas of Sri Lanka. Language wise, six of the nineteen
families of languages in the world are found in India, three of them (Dravidian,
Andamanese and Burushaski) only in India. And the numerically and politically
most important family of languages in the world, Indo-European, originated (as
I have shown in my books) in India.
As a civilisation, Indian
civilisation is the oldest continuous civilisation still in existence. As A.L.Basham
puts it, in his “The Wonder That Was India”: “The ancient
civilisation of India differs from those of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, in
that its traditions have been preserved without a break down to the present
day. Until the advent of the archaeologist, the peasant of Egypt or Iraq had no
knowledge of the culture of his forefathers, and it is doubtful whether his
Greek counterpart had any but the vaguest ideas about the glory of Periclean
Athens. In each case there had been an almost complete break with the past. On
the other hand…to this day legends known to the humblest Indian recall the
names of shadowy chieftains who lived nearly a thousand years before Christ,
and the orthodox Brahman in his daily worship repeats hymns composed even
earlier. India and China have, in fact, the oldest continuous cultural
traditions in the world.”
India has been one of the most
important centres of civilisation in the world in practically every age. We
need not refer here to Indian traditions of fabled kingdoms going back into the
extremely remote past. Even in the perception of the world in general, and
scholarly perception at present, India was always a fabled wonderland: in (at
least) the third and second millenniums B.C., the Indus-Sarasvati sites
represented a relatively egalitarian and peaceful, highly organised,
standardised and developed civilisation, with many features unparalleled
elsewhere, and covered a far larger area and remained constant and relatively
unchanging for a far longer period (nearly a millennium) than any other
civilisation. In the first millennium B.C., the Arthashastra depicts an
extremely organised civilisation which appears almost modern in many respects,
and India
was idealised and mythicised by writers from China to Greece. In the first millennium
A.D., we had the golden period of Indian civilisation during the reign of the Guptas,
at which point of time, according to A.L.Basham, “India was perhaps the happiest and
most civilised region of the world”. And in the second millennium A.D., India was the
desired land of dreams, in the quest for which half the world had the misfortune
to be “discovered” by Europe.
And this civilisation has made
primary contributions to the world in every single field of civilisational
culture. To begin with, religion: India is one of the two centres of origin of
the major world religions (the other being West Asia): Buddhism was at one time
the dominant religion not only in East and Southeast Asia, but also in Central
Asia and parts of West Asia, and it is increasingly being accepted as having
been one of the major influencing
factors in the initial formative stages of Christianity. Hinduism was the
source of many religious trends (asceticism, monasticism, etc., etc.) in the
past, and, even today, Hindu-Buddhist philosophies are acquiring an ever
increasing following among thinkers and intellectuals all over the world, and
Hindu religio-philosophical concepts and terms (guru, nirvana, karma, etc.,
etc.) are basic components in the international spiritual lexicon.
Science and scientific
temperament are one of the defining points of a civilised society, and India’s
contributions to the development of science in the world have been more
fundamental than that of any other civilisation then or since. India, to begin
with, invented the zero-based decimal system, without which no significant
scientific development and advancement beyond certain rudimentary levels would
ever have been possible in human society. This contribution is so very
important, and so well illustrates the level of scientific thought-processes in
India, that it needs to be elaborated in some detail here: to begin with, the
first logical stage in the development of a numeral system in any primitive
society would be the very concept of numbers (one, two, three, etc.). The
second logical stage would be the representation of these numbers in pictorial
form, eg. three pictures or symbolic figures of cows and two of sheep would
represent three cows and two sheep. The third logical stage would be the
shifting of the concept of numbers from concrete objects to abstract ideas: eg.
the use of a simple symbol, usually a vertical line, to represent the number
one. Seven vertical lines followed by the picture or symbol of a cow would
represent seven cows. As the need for using bigger and bigger numbers arose,
attempts would be made to create groups, as in the common method of keeping the
score by drawing upto four vertical lines to represent numbers upto four, and
then a fifth line vertically across the four to represent a full hand. The
fourth logical stage would be the development of a base number; usually ten, on
the basis of the number of fingers on the two hands used for counting. Egyptian
civilisation was at this stage of development in its numeral system, which
invented specific symbols for one, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, etc.
So, instead of representing the number 542 with 542 vertical lines, the
Egyptians represented it with five repetitions of the symbol for hundred, four
of the symbol for ten, and two of the symbol for one. [Incidentally, this still
had the drawback of requiring symbols to be repeated as many as nine times; and
the Greeks, who borrowed the Egyptian system, went off at a tangent, off the
logical track, in their attempt to remedy this. They invented halfway symbols:
additional symbols for five, fifty, five hundred, etc. The Romans, who borrowed
the Greek system, went even further off the logical track: they tried to avoid
even four repetitions by employing a minus principle. Thus, four, nine, forty
and ninety were not IIII, VIIII, XXXX and LXXXX, but IV, IX, XL and XC. Going
off at another tangent, the Ionian Greeks, the Arabs, the Hebrews, and others,
assigned numerical values to the letters of their alphabet, the numbers one to
nine represented by the first nine alphabets, the numbers ten to ninety
represented by the next nine, and so on, creating a more concise but extremely
illogical numeral system of limited utility.]
The fifth logical stage
would be the avoidance of repetition of the base symbols by means of specific
symbols to represent each number of repetitions. Chinese civilisation was at
this stage of development in its numeral system, which had base symbols for
one, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, etc., as well as symbols for the
numbers from two to nine. Thus, the Chinese represented 542 with the symbols
for five, hundred, four, ten and two, in that order. The sixth and last logical
stage would be a numeral system with a rigid place system and a symbol for
zero. Indian civilisation was at this last, and highest, logical stage in its
numeral system, with symbols for the numbers from one to nine and a symbol for
zero, and a rigid place system, which made it possible to represent any and
every number with only ten symbols. [Incidentally, the Mesopotamians and the
Mayas of Central America had also hit upon their own versions of zero. But, as
they had gone off the logical track in the earlier stages, their systems
remained grossly unwieldy and illogical: the Mesopotamian system had an
unwieldy base of sixty, but symbols only for one, ten and zero; and even a symbol
to incorporate a minus principle, as in the Roman system. And the Maya system
had a base of twenty, but symbols only for one, five and zero; and, to
accommodate the calendar, the second base was 360 instead of 400].
India’s contribution of the zero
based decimal system (and, incidentally, also of most of the basic principles
in the different branches of Mathematics) represents a fundamental
revolutionary landmark in the history of world science on par with the
invention of fire, or the invention of the wheel. But this invention was no
accident. The scientific temperament in India was so developed that it was
inevitable that such a fundamental development should have taken place only in India. As Alain
Danielou puts it (in his “Introduction to the Study of Musical Scales”),
“The Hindu theory is not like other systems, limited to experimental data:
it does not consider arbitrarily as natural certain modes or certain
chords, but it takes as its starting point the general laws common to all the
aspects of the world’s creation…” (p.99). Curt Sachs, on the same
subject (in his monumental “The Rise of Music in the Ancient World - East
and West”), refers to the “naïve belief of historically untrained minds
that patterns usual in the person’s own time and country are ‘natural’…”,
and contrasts it with classification in India which “starts from actual
facts, but is thorough in its accomplishment regardless of practice”
(p.171).
It was this scientific
temperament which led the ancient Indians to go deep into the study of any and
every subject, and to produce detailed texts on everything, whether on
religious laws, rituals and customs (the vast Vedic literature: Samhitas,
Brahmanas, Kalpasutras, Dharmasutras, etc.), philosophy (the Upanishads, and
the sutras, commentaries, and other texts of the six Darshanas and the
Buddhist, Jain and heterodox philosophies, etc.), linguistics (Panini, Yaska,
and numerous Vedic and post-Vedic texts on Grammar, Phonetics, Etymology,
etc.), medicine (the Samhitas of Charaka, Sushruta, Vagbhata, etc.),
administration and statecraft (Kautilya’s Arthashastra, etc.), the performing
arts (Bharata’s Natyashastra, etc.), and every other possible art, craft,
technology and science, right down to the art of making love (Vatsyayana’s
Kamasutra). No subject was beyond the detailed investigations of the ancient
Indians. And basic texts, on any subject, themselves the culminations of long
and rich traditions, were followed by detailed commentaries, and by
commentaries on the commentaries. And there were well-established and regulated
systems and forums all over the country for objective debates on controversial
points or subjects. With all this, it is not surprising that Indian
civilisation should have been the source of origin of so many things.
As an illustration of India’s role on
the world stage, take the performing arts (music, dance and drama). A.C.Scott
(in his “The Theatre in Asia”, p.1), writes: “It will be seen that
stage practice in Asia owes a great deal to India as an ancestral source. Indian
influence on dance and theatre which are one and the same in Asia was like some
great subterranean river following a spreading course and forming new streams
on the way”. Curt Sachs (in his magnum opus “the Rise of Music in
the Ancient World - East and West”), tells us that Indian music “had
a decisive part in forming the musical style of the East, of China, Korea and
Japan, and…what today is called IndoChina and the Malay Archipelago.
There was a westward exportation, too…Indian influence on Islamic music…the
system of melodic and rhythmic patterns, characteristic of the Persian,
Turkish, and Arabian world, had existed in India as the ragas and talas more
than a thousand years before it appeared in the sources of the Mohammedan
Orient.”(p.192). Elsewhere, he goes into more specific details about this
fundamental Indian influence on the music and dance of China and Japan (pp.139,
145), Bali (p.139), Siam (p.152), Burma (p.153),
and Indonesia
(pp. 130-132). Alain Danielou (in his “Introduction to the Study of
Musical scales”), tells us that the Indian “theory of musical modes…seems
to have been the source from which all systems of modal music originated”
(p.99), and goes so far as to suggest that “Greek music, like Egyptian
music, most probably had its roots in Hindu music” (pp.159-160). India was
the land of origin of a wide range of musical concepts and musical instruments,
not only in respect of the musical systems of Asia, but even beyond : as per
the “Guinness Book of Facts and Feats”, bagpipes (so characteristic of
Scottish music), and hourglass drums (the talking drums or message drums of
Africa), originated in India. India
first recognised the division of the octave into seven notes, twelve
semi-tones, and twenty-two microtones (the world has still to progress towards,
and Indian music as it is practiced today has even regressed from, the
microtones). The present classification of musical instruments into four
classes (idiophonic, membranophonic, aerophonic and chordophonic) originated in
India.
It was not only in respect of
music, or of religion and sciences, that Indian influence on Asia,
and thereby on the rest of the world, was “like some great subterranean river
following a spreading course and forming new streams on the way”. This was the
case in practically every field of culture. Indian sculpture and architecture
spread eastwards and influenced the development of classical sculpture and
architecture in the East and Southeast: the biggest temple complex in the
world, the Hindu temple complex of Angkor Vat in Cambodia, is the most eloquent
example. Indian lore and literature spread eastwards and westwards, leading to
the development of new genres of literature: the traditional lore and
literature of Southeast Asia are suffused with the spirit, themes and
vocabulary of Sanskrit epic literature, while (apart from the scientific and
technical literature on every subject),
Indian literary techniques and themes, like animal fables and the
tale-within-a-tale technique, among others, spread out westwards, and inspired
the writing of classics like the Arabian Nights and the Greek Aesop’s fables.
Indian board games, like chess and ludo (pachisi), among others, likewise,
spread out east and west, the former becoming the national game of Asia (with
local varieties, all of them with local names derived from the Sanskrit
chaturang, in every country from Arabia to Korea and Vietnam), before acquiring
its present international status. Physical culture of every kind, from systems
of physical exercises and martial arts, to comprehensive systems of health like
Ayurveda (including, apart from its varieties of oral medicines, also the
panchakarma techniques, theories of dietetics, etc.), and Hathayoga (including,
besides asanas, a range of breathing techniques, concentration and meditation
techniques, a wide range of internal and external cleansing techniques, etc.),
also spread east and west, giving rise to similar techniques elsewhere: Greek
medicine is acknowledged by many scholars to owe much to Indian medicine, and
the renowned martial arts of the East acknowledge their Indian origin. Indian
cuisine is generally acknowledged to be one of the great cuisines of the world,
and the greatest when it comes to vegetarian cuisine, and is gaining
popularity worldwide, but what is significant is that food culture all over the
world would have been poor indeed without India’s material contributions to the
four tastes: sweet (sugar), sour (lemons, tamarinds, kokam and amchur), pungent
(black pepper and ginger), and bitter (bitter gourds), as well as a wide
variety of other spices and flavourings. In respect of clothes and ornaments,
again, India’s
contributions are of primary importance: cotton, the most important fabric in
the world, originated in India,
along with numerous important techniques, of weaving, dyeing and printing,
basic to the textile industry. The use of diamonds originated in India: till the
eighteenth century, India
was the only source of diamonds, and the ornament and jewellery industry in India was a
world pioneer in many ways. Beauty culture, the art of shringara, as described
in great detail in the ancient texts, had developed very highly in ancient India, and India was the
source of a great many kinds of clothing, ornaments, herbal cosmetics and
applications, aromatic oils and beauty techniques.
But it is not only on the basis
of past glories (although, as a civilisation with the only continuous
tradition, the past is not a dead past but is an intrinsic part of our present
identity), or contributions to the world (considerable, and even unmatchable,
as they are), that Indian culture can be considered the greatest and richest
culture in the world. Indian culture is the greatest and richest culture in the
world on the strength of its glorious present as well: India is a
complete cultural world in itself, both in respect of the fact that it
represents every stage of development in culture (from the most sophisticated,
right from ancient times, to the most primitive, even in modern times or as
late as the twentieth century), as well as in respect of the fact that the
richness and variety of its cultural wealth, in every respect, is so great that
it need never look beyond its own cultural frontiers for inspiration, innovation and development in
any field of culture.
To illustrate the first point: in
mathematical science, ancient India conceived and analysed the mathematical
concepts of zero and infinity, achieved a fundamental revolution by devising a
numeral system which can represent any and every conceivable number with only
ten symbols, and coined names for numbers of incredibly high denominations (a
Buddhist work, Lalitavistara, gives the names for base-numbers up to 10
raised to 421, ie., one followed by 421 zeroes). And, at the same time, we have
the Andamanese languages, which have not developed the concept of numbers
beyond two: they have names only for “one” and “two”, which is in effect “one”
and “more than one”, which is no numeral system at all, and represents the
absolutely most primitive stage in any language in the world. Likewise, in
music, our Indian classical music has, since thousands of years, developed a
detailed theory of music, and used the richest range of notes (twenty-two
microtones as compared to the twelve notes of western classical music), scales
(every possible combination of the basic notes), modes and rhythms
(the most unimaginably wide range of melodies and rhythms, from the
simplest to the most complicated and intricate, with, for example, rhythms having even 11, 13, 17,
19, etc. beats per cycle, unimaginable outside India), and musical instruments
(with the most intricate playing techniques in the world). And, at the same
time, the absolutely most primitive form of music in the world is found among
the Veddas of Sri Lanka: they possess the most primitive form of singing in the
world, and, along with certain remote Patagonian tribes, are the only people in
the world who “not only do not possess any musical instrument, but do not
even clap their hands or stamp the ground”(Curt Sachs, “The
History of Musical Instruments”, p.26). This is the case in almost every
field of culture: on the one hand, India has the richest traditional cuisine in
the world, one of the most highly developed traditions of architecture in all
its aspects, and an incredibly wide range of costumes and ornaments, all of
hoary antiquity, and, on the other hand, we have tribes who are
hunter-gatherers and subsist only on wild berries, who live in caves, or who
live almost in the nude.
And a glance at two representative
fields of civilisational culture, religion and music, will suffice to make the
second point clear:
The range of Indian religion,
both in respect of philosophy and doctrines, as well as customs and rituals, is
quite a complete one: every shade of thought and idea (theistic, atheistic and
agnostic), from the most materialistic to the most spiritual, from the most
rationalistic to the most irrational, from the most humane to the most
barbaric, and from the most puritanical or orthodox to the most profane or
heterodox, has been explored by the different schools of philosophy, different
sects and different individual writers; and every kind and level of ritual and
custom from the most primitive to the most sophisticated, from the simplest to
the most elaborate, and from the most
humane to the most ruthless, is found in one or the other part of India. The
only common thread is the complete absence of intolerant imperialistic
tendencies: if such ever arose in the history of Hinduism, they died out just
as quickly. Therefore, also, Hindu India, before the rise of modern liberalism
in the west, was the only safe haven in the civilised world for the followers
of religions and sects persecuted elsewhere: Jews, Zoroastrians, Syrian
Christians…in modern times, Bahais and Ahmadiyas. (That this proved costly in
the long run, because of the failure to distinguish between religions and
imperialist ideologies, is a different matter).
Curt Sachs (“The Rise
Of Music in the Ancient World - East and West”,
p.157) writes: “The roots of music are more exposed in India than anywhere
else. The Vedda in Ceylon possess the earliest stage of singing that we know,
and the subsequent strata of primitive music are represented by the numberless
tribes that in valleys and jungles took shelter from the raids of northern
invaders. So far as this primitive music is concerned, the records are complete
or at least could easily be completed if special attention were paid to the
music of the ‘tribes’…hundreds of tribal styles…”.
Then there is the folk music, the
range and variety of which is mind-boggling: every single part of India is rich
in its own individual range of styles of folk music, and the folk music of even
any one state of India (say Maharashtra, Rajasthan or Karnataka, for example, or
even Sind, Baluchistan, Sri Lanka or Bhutan for that matter) would merit a
lifetime of study.
And, right on top, we have the
great tradition of Indian classical music, which we have already referred to.
Although the oldest living form of classical music in the world, and although
it has evolved and developed over the centuries, losing and gaining in the
process, Curt Sachs points out that “there is no reason to believe
that India’s ancient music differed essentially from her modern music” (p.157
above). Many western musicologists (Alain
Danielou, M.E.
Cousins, Donald Lentz, etc.) have spoken about the superiority of Indian
classical music over western classical music, but it is at least certain that
Indian Classical music is one of the two most classical forms in the world.
Apart from the classical music,
we have the other great tradition, of Vedic chanting and singing in its many
varieties, best preserved in South India, and
different varieties of Sanskrit songs, preserved in temples and maths all over India.
And in all the varieties of music
(classical, folk, popular and tribal), we have the most unparalleled range of
musical instruments in the world, unique in their range from the most primitive
and simple to the most sophisticated and complicated in respect of techniques
of making, artistic appearance, techniques of playing, and qualities of sound,
in every type: idiophonic, membranophonic, aerophonic and chordophonic;
monophonic, pressurephonic, polyphonic and multiphonic.
All this music and all these
musical instruments were preserved down the ages by temple traditions, courts,
courtesans, great masters and professional castes, musical institutions, and
tribal, caste and community traditions. The twentieth century saw a
consolidation of all this rich musical wealth due, on the one hand, to the
invention of recording devices, and, on the other, to the enthusiasm natural in
a modern India
in the atmosphere of an independence movement. New generations of musicians and
scholars, and government bodies like Films Division, Akashwani and Doordarshan,
did a herculean job in studying, recording and popularising all forms of Indian
music. New trends in classical music (eg. the gharana system, new
semi-classical forms, including Marathi natya sangeet, etc.), new innovations
(eg. the “Vadyavrind” orchestration of Indian melodic music, etc.), and new
genres of popular music (eg. new forms of devotional music, of popular music
like the bhavgeet genre in Marathi music, and Film music) added to India’s
incomparable musical wealth.
This was about music. The same is
the case in respect of India’s
cultural wealth in every other field. The same sources: ancient texts, temple
traditions, courts, courtesans, great masters and professional castes,
institutions, and tribal, caste and community traditions, have combined to
preserve lore and literature, dance forms, arts and crafts, architectural
forms, cuisine, games and physical systems, etc. etc., and a detailed study
will show that Indian culture is among the greatest and richest in the world in
any and every individual field of culture, and the greatest and richest
in the world in the sum total of culture.
But today, this greatest and
richest culture in the world, which survived all kinds of challenges in the
past, is being slowly and systematically wiped out or turned into a caricature
of itself. And, if systematic steps are not taken soon on a war footing, it
will soon be a faint and fading memory of the past. And not only will that be
the end of Hindu society as we know it, but it will be a great tragedy for
world culture as well.
It is necessary first to identify
the forces and factors responsible for this. Tavleen Singh, for example, in her
article already referred to, writes: “when I go to the Vishwanath Mandir in
Benares and listen to the most powerful, magical aarti I hear from the priests
that the knowledge of it will probably die because the temple is now controlled
by secular bureaucrats”. To begin with, secularism is clearly one of the
factors responsible for the gross indifference within Hindu society towards its
cultural heritage.
But secularism, in this context,
can be of three kinds: one, the goody-goody secularism of Mahatma Gandhi, which
was based on an extreme and distorted understanding of certain intrinsic values
in Hinduism, and which, although it succeeded in blinding Hindu society to the
true nature of its enemies by whitewashing them liberally, and thereby weakened
Hindu resistance, was nevertheless based on a deep pride in, and respect for,
Hinduism and its culture. Two, the arrogant secularism of Jawaharlal Nehru,
based on his westernised upbringing and perspectives, which combined the
colonial white man’s contempt for Hindus and Hinduism with the colonial white
man’s grudging admiration for some aspects of Indian culture. And, three, the
secularism of leftist intellectuals, based on a rabid and pathological hatred
for Hinduism and Hindu civilisation. This third kind of secularism has
gradually come to acquire a monopoly over the term, and today it dictates the
definitions and the contours of what is, and what is not, secular. Many
writers, myself included, therefore, generally club extremist secularists of
this kind as leftists, whether or not the term would be applicable to them in
respect of economic beliefs. It is this secularism which froths at the
mouth at the very idea that the Aryans could be natives of India, or that
Indian civilisation is basically Hindu civilisation and that this civilisation
contributed greatly to world civilisation, or that the Ramayana and Mahabharata
are national epics which should be made familiar to all Indians (ie. to the
younger generations), or that the Gupta period was a golden period in Indian
history, or that Vande Mataram is a patriotic song, or that Savarkar was a
great freedom fighter who deserves due respect, etc., etc.; and which is
intrinsically committed to defend and support any, simply any, ideas
derogatory to, or ideologies or forces inimical to, Hinduism or Hindu
civilisation. It is this secularism which has acquired such a deadly
stranglehold over the education system and the media that it has already
produced several generations of a Hindu society which is largely ignorant of,
indifferent to, and lacking in a sense of pride in, and attachment to, the
Hindu roots of its culture and civilisation and the greatness of Indian culture -
a society which is, therefore, very susceptible to forces out to destroy this
culture.
The very lethal role played by
this peculiarly Indian brand of secularism in the Indian body politic, very
like the role played by viruses in the human body or by computer viruses in
computers, has to be recognised as a fundamental factor in rendering Hindu
society, civilisation and culture weak and defenceless against its
enemies. But, at the same time, while this secularism is undoubtedly inimical
to Hindu society and civilisation, it will be misleading to conclude that
secularism is also inimical to Indian culture as defined in this section,
and to rest satisfied with this conclusion:
Secular governments, from day
one, have done a great deal for Indian culture by establishing institutions and
awards, and organising periodic festivals and other activities, to promote
different aspects of Indian culture.
A survey of eminent people active
in different fields of culture - whether actual participants like dancers, musicians,
etc.; or scholars engaged in studying, recording and filming different aspects
of culture; or activists fighting to preserve our environment, wildlife,
forests, cuisine, dances, musical styles and musical instruments, art forms,
handicrafts, architectural styles and monuments, old manuscripts, etc.; or even
lay people who appreciate or support all such activities - will
show a very fair representation, perhaps even a preponderance, of secularist
people. It is, perhaps, just such people that Sita Ram Goel, quoted at
the very beginning of this section, has in mind when he talks about Hindus who
are legitimately proud of different aspects of Indian culture, but who fail to
realise that all this culture “will die if Hindu society which created it is no
more there to preserve, protect and perpetuate it”.
In some fields, indeed, it is not
just vaguely secularist people, but even outright leftists, who are active in
the task of preserving aspects of Indian culture, particularly when it comes to
aspects of tribal, folk or regional culture. This may be simply because
much of their support base comes from the more marginalised, or less
westernised, strata of society, or it may be because they see it as an
ideological strategy to promote the “Lesser Traditions” of Indian culture,
perceived to be in opposition, or at least intended to be propped up as
such, to the “Greater Tradition” of Vedic or Classical Hindu civilisation,
which is perceived to be promoted by the elite classes, or upper castes, or by
Hindutva organisations. Similarly, we find outright leftists engaged in
fighting issues of environment, wildlife conservation and deforestation. This,
again, may be merely because of the issues of socio-economic ideology
involved. But, whatever the reasons, the fact is that they are
doing their bit for Indian culture.
We find leftists even in the
fields of classical music and dance, and in the arts. That the leftist version
of secularism is bitter, rabid and vicious in its hatred of Hinduism and
everything connected with it is undeniable, but even, for example, in the
notorious TV serial “Tamas”, which exemplifies these traits so well (I wrote an
unpublished article detailing the many ways in which every scene in the serial
exudes ugly anti-Hinduism and false leftist propaganda), we find soul-stirring
music and songs steeped in authentic traditions of Indian music - to
be contrasted, for example, with the pedestrian, pop varieties of Indian music
we find in serials like Ramanand Sagar’s “Ramayana”, so dear to the hearts of
Hindutva organisations.
Of course, let us not get carried
away by the above facts: rabid hatred for Hinduism and Hindu civilisation is
certainly not a factor likely to foster a love for Indian culture or a desire
to preserve, protect and perpetuate it. And, there is no dearth of doyens of
secularist practice who throw secular tantrums over even such perfectly
innocuous Indian cultural acts such as lighting a lamp, or waving an aarti, to
inaugurate a function. Moreover, the leftist concern for tribal or folk
cultures, referred to above, does not, for example, prevent most of them from
giving their unstinting support to the activities of the greatest enemies of
these cultures, the Christian missionaries. Indian leftist secularism is an
extremely sick and perverted ideology, which ever takes on newer and more sick
and perverted forms, and the rule is that the sickest and most perverted form
sets the standard. As rabid, and unreasonable, hatred knows no limits, it would
be premature to presume limits to the depths to which secularism could sink, or
to give any certificates to it.
Nevertheless, all said and done,
if the greatest and richest culture in the world is in real and active danger
of being set on the downward path towards extinction, it would be futile to be
satisfied with merely laying the blame at the doors of secularism. In the
particular case quoted by Tavleen Singh, for example, if the powerful aarti at
the Vishwanath temple is in danger of dying out, it is not so much because the
temple is controlled by “secular bureaucrats” - just “corrupt
bureaucrats”, “indifferent bureaucrats”, or even simply “bureaucrats” would
suffice.
In fact, with due respect to
Tavleen Singh (whose thought-provoking articles have often inspired me with
respect, even when I have sharply differed with many of them, since it is
obvious that Tavleen Singh is at least genuine and true to herself in whatever
she writes), it is not secularism (though secularism very definitely
prepares the ground for it) which is responsible for the aarti at the
Vishwanath temple, and literally millions of other cultural treasures, dying
out. The true culprits are the very forces which Tavleen Singh supports in her articles (the article quoted
by us profusely here is part of a series of articles in defence of the BJP
government and its economic policies): the forces of American “globalisation”.
Ancient India
classified all worldly priorities or activities into three categories: Dharma,
Artha and Kama (a fourth category, Moksha,
referred to an other-worldly priority). Kama, enjoyment of pleasures of all
kinds (physical, mental, physiological, psychological and social) was the first
priority of mankind; Artha, production and acquisition of wealth and
possessions of all kinds, was a second priority necessary for the fulfillment
of the first; and Dharma, Duty (towards any and every conceivable entity) or
Righteousness (not in the sense of a holier-than-thou attitude, as the word is
generally used, but in the original sense of doing what is right), was the
guiding principle above both, regulating the production and acquisition of
wealth and the enjoyment of pleasures, besides setting the standards for all
other actions.
American Imperialism, or
“globalisation”, has its three arms, corresponding to the three priorities
(rather like the situation in many mythologies where there is an evil
counterpart corresponding to every good entity), Proselytisation corresponding
to Dharma, Capitalism corresponding to Artha, and Consumerism corresponding to Kama. It is these three arms of American Imperialism
(backed by America’s
economic and military clout) which are responsible for India’s
cultural crisis.
Now Dharma, Duty or
Righteousness, does not mean religion, which refers to a belief system. In that
sense, Hinduism is not a religion, but a veritable Parliament of religions or
belief systems. We have already described the range and variety of belief
systems which are included in the Hindu ethos: there is simply no single
belief, ritual or custom, which can be cited as constituting the common factor
between all Hindu groups, the absence of which places any group outside the
Hindu pale. [Some people try to postulate caste as such a common factor, also
because this serves to divide some particular offshoots of Hinduism from the
rest; but this fails to explain many things; for example, whether large
sections of Christians in the South, who still function, after decades or even
centuries of conversion, as brahmin Christians, dalit Christians etc., are to
be treated as Hindus who have never converted to Christianity, or as
Christians.] This raises two questions: how, in the absence of a common factor,
do we decide that some particular religion is outside the Hindu pale? And what,
in the context of our discussion here, do religious conversions have to do
with dharma?
Actually there is a common
factor in that all Hindu groups follow belief systems originating in India. The
Indian constitution, also, recognises this as the distinguishing point when it
puts only those Indians outside the definition of Hindu, who follow religions
which originated outside India.
[There is a further distinction among the Indians who follow religions
originating outside India,
not mentioned in the constitution: these Indians include both non-Hindus (eg.
Jews and Zoroastrians, who were never Hindus; whose ancestors were
non-Indians who sought refuge in, or migrated to, India in the past) and ex-Hindus
(eg. Muslims and Christians, who were originally Hindus; whose ancestors
were converted to Islam and Christianity in the past).]
And religious conversions have
everything to do with Dharma: whatever the meaning of the word in other
contexts, it means religion when used in phrases like Hindu dharma (“Hindu
religion”) and dharma parivartan (“religious conversion”). Moreover, even in the
regular sense of Duty or Righteousness, a conversion from any Indian religion
to Islam or Christianity represents a change in Dharma, since in every case it
represents a change to the world-view of an intolerant, imperialist religion,
and amounts to abandonment of basic concepts of Duty (towards ancestral
traditions, religion and culture, etc.).
Conversion to Islam or
Christianity inevitably leads to a process of total cultural de-Indianisation,
which I have described in detail in my book “The Aryan Invasion Theory and
Indian Nationalism” (p.29-31), and I will only repeat the conclusion here:
this cultural de-Indianisation “is not only in respect of names, languages
and scripts, music, dance, and architectural styles, but even in respect of
aesthetic and philosophical concepts, and social manners and styles (from
styles of greeting to styles of eating). It must be remembered that ultimately
every religion is rooted in the cultural and environmental ethos of its land of
origin. If Hinduism uses rice, coconuts, bananas and plantain leaves,
arecanuts, tulsileaves, turmeric, etc. as the materials for its religious
rituals, these are all Indian materials….This same rule applies to the
entire range of customs and rituals…”.
Muslim Proselytisation on any
significant scale is a thing of the past (despite some much publicised
incidents like Meenakshipuram, since Arab money alone, in the absence of other
necessary factors, cannot bring about mass conversions; and conversions, if
any, of stray individuals to Islam are, like the conversion of any stray
individual to any belief system, a matter of personal conviction, not to be
confused with organised Proselytisation), but Christian Proselytisation, backed
by unlimited media power and finances from America, is going on at a more
furious pace than ever: large scale conversions are going on all over the
country, not only in new tribal areas like Arunachal Pradesh (till now the only
non-Christian tribal bastion in the North-east, Christians have multiplied from
less than 0.5% in 1961 to nearly 19% in 2001, not including
crypto-Christians, and the figure is rising steadily), but in vulnerable
rural and urban poor areas throughout the country, particularly in Orissa and
in the South, and even in Kashmir:
the Indian Express, 6/4/2003, carries a detailed news report about the
large-scale conversions of Muslim youths to Christianity by American
evangelists in Kashmir. It is clear that Christian Proselytisation is not just
as sinister a threat as ever, but a very much more sinister threat than it ever
was before.
Now, most Muslim communities in India are
communities which converted centuries ago. The same is the case with Christian
communities in certain, particularly coastal, areas. Their culture
(de-Indianised or otherwise) is, therefore, in many ways, an intrinsic
part of our modern Indian ethos, and these communities are an intrinsic
part of Indian society. But the same very definitely cannot be said about the
neo-convert Christian communities, springing up all over the country, who
deserve absolutely no quarters. Proselytisation in this day and age is totally
unacceptable and unforgivable, and deserves to be fought with the same
ruthlessness with which it functions: absolutely nothing is unfair in the
war against Proselytisation. And it is for the traditional Muslim and
Christian communities in India
to decide whether they want to reciprocate the Hindu attitude of live and let
live, or whether they want to identify themselves with, and support, the
Imperialist forces of Proselytisation in their offensive against Hinduism.
In this context, the report in
the Indian Express, referred to above, mentions certain significant
facts worth noting: more than 12,000 Muslims have been converted to
Christianity recently, and the report tells us: “Though conversions have not
encountered any resistance from Muslim organisations, it has led to tensions
between Kashmir’s native Christians - a miniscule community of
650 -
and the enthusiastic evangelists. The native Christians are increasingly getting
vocal against the outsiders. ‘This type of conversions aren’t good for local
Christians who have shared a cordial relationship with Muslims here for
centuries…’, says Pastor Leslie Richards, a native protestant living in Braen,
Srinagar…”. This raises certain questions: first, when Kashmir is supposed
to be in the throes of Islamic terrorist activities, and yet there is no
reaction, from either Muslim organisations or the Islamic terrorists, to the
large-scale conversion of Muslims to Christianity, what does it say about the
Islamic nature of the terrorists, their real target, and the identity of the
real bosses who control, and finance, both the missionaries and the terrorists?
Second, when will Christian communities and organisations in the rest of the
country learn to emulate the reactions and attitude of the native Kashmiri
Christians? And, third, when will Hindus learn, from the above situation, to
appreciate the sinister threat posed by Proselytisation in this country, and
the need for Hindus to cultivate an image of themselves which will motivate
these communities and organisations to do so?
Conversion is one of the main
destroyers of native culture: it automatically cuts off sections of Indians
from their cultural roots, and, in the case of Christianity (and Islam), there
are specific ideological doctrines which demonise the cultural ethos of the
converts’ former state, and require that they be systematically abandoned or
drastically modified. But all this applies only to the converts, not to Indian
society in general. The other two ideological arms of American Imperialism,
however, strike at the whole of Indian society.
Ancient India
recognised Artha (pursuit of wealth) and Kama (pursuit of pleasures) as two of
the three priorities in life, but only when regulated by the third priority:
Dharma. The American ideologies of Capitalism and Consumerism, however,
represent the unbridled pursuit of wealth and pleasure respectively. Dharma, by
any definition is passé: neither morals, principles or ethics, nor sentiment,
respect for ancestral traditions, consideration for contemporary mankind in
general, or concern for the heritage of the future, has any value whatsoever:
all are “outdated” concepts which cannot be allowed to stand as obstacles in
the path of the acquisition of wealth or the enjoyment of pleasures.
Capitalism, or the ideology of
the unbridled pursuit of wealth, is destroying culture on an unbridled scale,
on three fronts: at the level of cultural activity, at the level of actual commercial
activity, and at the level of Authority.
At the level of cultural
activity, to begin with, countless cultural activities, seen to be
non-lucrative or less lucrative, are being abandoned all over the country.
Others are being severely compromised in order to keep, or make, them
lucrative: compromise in materials or techniques used, shoddiness in
workmanship or performance, short-cut methods, etc., which are resulting in
loss of natural spontaneity, cultural authenticity, technological expertise and
performance satisfaction, which, in turn, gradually leads to the degeneration
and further abandonment of cultural activities. All this is affecting various
fields of culture: musical forms and styles, musical instruments, dance forms,
architectural styles, art forms, handicrafts, traditional crops, culinary
items, etc.
At the level of actual commercial
activity -
businessmen, industrialists, traders, etc. at all scales and levels - the
destruction of culture for profit is more to be expected: large-scale
exploitation and destruction of forests; large-scale driving of India’s faunal
species to extinction by the destruction of their natural habitats as well as
by poaching and killing for commercial gain; pollution of rivers, environment,
etc.; destruction of beaches for sand quarrying and mountain systems for stone
quarrying; destruction of architecturally important heritage structures, sites
and areas for commercial construction, etc.
But it is at the level of
Authority (ie. the elected representatives of the people from local to national
level, the bureaucrats from top to bottom, the police, the judiciary, etc.),
where major decisions, and action, can be taken both for the preservation and
development of culture as well as for the prevention of its destruction, that
the evils of capitalism - or Money as God - have taken on the most
destructive forms. Today, if big business, industrialists and traders, can lay
the country to waste for profit, it is because those in authority, at every
single level, have become completely purchasable. For the appropriate price,
not only are blatantly destructive illegal activities winked at, but laws are
even changed to accommodate these activities: reserved forest areas are
dereserved, restrictions on construction activities in specific areas (coastal
areas, wooded areas, ecologically sensitive areas, urban areas reserved for
cultural activities, urban heritage areas, etc.) are officially withdrawn, and
so on. In fact, governments also function as big business, in the name of
Development, or in the name of increasing `government revenues, by way of big
hydro-electric or other projects (like the Tehri and Narmada projects at the
moment, or the much publicised, and fortunately aborted, Silent Valley project
in Kerala in the past) or outright commercial activities (like Mayavati’s
aborted Taj Corridor project, or the Mufti government’s amusement park project
in Pahalgam), and India’s flora, fauna, ecological and environmental ethos, and
architectural heritage, continue to be wiped out with (as the Times of India
report, 10/10/2003, on the amusement park in Pahalgam, puts it)
“Terminator-like efficiency”.
Moreover, those in authority have
always been responsible for the protection and preservation of culture: this
was the role played by kings and rulers in ancient India, who patronised and
encouraged cultural activities of all kinds. Even after the advent of Islam,
and all that it entailed in matters of the ruthless destruction of infidel
cultures, many Muslim rulers, including most of the Mughals, did a great deal
in preserving and perpetuating many aspects of Indian culture, for which they
often received the flak of Islamic theologians. In many cases, in fact, they
developed such a deep respect and attachment for some aspects, that they even
tried to appropriate credit for them: in respect of Indian music, for example, Alain
Danielou (“The Ragas of North Indian Music”, p.5) points out that “Amir
Khusrau (AD 1253-1319)…wrote that Indian music was so difficult and so
refined that no foreigner could totally master it even after twenty years of
practice”; and the Muslim attachment to Indian music grew to such an extent
that it led to the invention of stories about “how the various styles of
Northern Indian music were developed by musicians of the Mohammedan period…Under
Moslem rule, age-old stories were retold as if they had happened at the court
of Akbar…Such transfer of legends is frequent everywhere. We…find
ancient musical forms and musical instruments being given Persian-sounding names
and starting a new career as the innovations of the Moghul court”. The sum
of it is that many Muslim rulers also contributed in the preservation and
perpetuation, and even the enriching, of many aspects of Indian culture.
The British rule in India,
which did introduce many negative factors (such as a system of education,
which, in the words of A.C.Scott in “The Theatre in Asia”, p.51,
led to “the rise of a class of young prigs for whom it became the done thing
to denigrate everything Indian in an attempt at blind imitation of the customs
and attitudes of western people”, whose effects on Indian society have only
deepened and multiplied with the passage of time), also consciously did a great
deal in preserving arts and crafts, monuments, old manuscripts, etc., and
encouraging scholars engaged in the detailed study and meticulous recording of
different aspects of Indian culture. Official British records, and the works of
western scholars from the colonial period, are even today an incredible source
of information in diverse fields.
The dawning of independence
from British rule in 1947, and the accession to power of “secular” rulers eager
to demonstrate their distance from anything “communal” (ie. Hindu) did not
change the picture very greatly, since many of these rulers did have some pride
in Indian culture, or at least those aspects of Indian culture which were
perceived as not likely to attract the “communal” label, and consequently did
quite a bit for those aspects of Indian culture, eg. they established institutions
and academies for the study, recording, preservation and popularisation of
those aspects, instituted awards to honour eminent people and scholars in
different fields, organised festivals, etc., to encourage and popularise those
aspects, etc. That many of these facilities became the preserve of leftists,
and became hotbeds of politics rather than of cultural activity, is a different
matter; but institutions such as Akashwani, Doordarshan and Films Division did
a truly wonderful, Herculean job in recording and popularising India’s
immeasurable wealth of music, dance, etc.
However, the concept of Money as
God has now changed all this: for perhaps the first time in India’s long
history, there is now no real official support for Indian culture.
In the last decade or so, perhaps coinciding with the advocacy and adoption of
new policies of economic “reforms”, it is now passé for governments to do
anything concrete to protect, preserve, record or perpetuate India’s
traditional culture, or even to aid and encourage individuals or organisations
doing so. Institutions established in the post- Independence era are being
literally starved for funds, or funds are being used for any purpose but
to achieve the original aims and objectives, or, simply, the very aims and
objectives of these institutions are being changed; in any case no new
activities, except occasional pedestrian “cultural” projects of a political
nature, are being undertaken: the institutions are being slowly transformed
from cultural to commercial institutions, in line with the “changing times”.
What is infinitely worse is what is happening to the detailed records of the
research, documentation and collection undertaken by these institutions, in the
not so distant past, to preserve, popularise and perpetuate different aspects
of Indian culture: these archival records - print, tape, or film; or
actual physical objects - are suddenly becoming an eyesore or an embarrassment,
or simply a financial burden, to a cash-conscious leadership with a “reformist”
eye on the “globe”. A standard sequence now is as follows: state-funded
museums, libraries and archives - or
at least the records in them - slowly become rare or inaccessible, in different ways,
to the (lay or scholarly) public eye; often “constraints of space” force the
authorities to remove these records from their protected environments and dump
them in ill-maintained godowns, to rot and decay, unseen and forgotten; and,
occasionally, mysterious fires break out in the places which house these archives,
destroying invaluable and irreplaceable records (including those pertaining to
the golden age of Indian movies), then to be forgotten forever - all
these events, incidentally, make available valuable land and funds for more
lucrative commercial purposes. The persons in authority are too busy saving, or
making, money -
for themselves, or, if they are to be believed, for the public coffers - to
care.
Capitalism, or the ideology of
the unbridled pursuit of wealth, would be only half as effective in destroying
Indian culture down to its roots, without its sister ideology, Consumerism, or
the ideology of the unbridled pursuit of pleasure:
Consumerism is, in a sense, an
anti-ideological ideology. The very essence of this ideology is that
ideologies, principles, morals, ethics, sentiments, etc. don’t matter: pleasure
is the only thing that matters. But pleasure can mean many things. The Bhagawad
Gita classifies most things into three basic categories: satvik, rajasik and
tamasik. Satvik pleasure is the pleasure a person gets by doing good things
which give pleasure to, or relieve the pain of, other people, or which are for
the general betterment of the world. Rajasik pleasure is the pleasure a person
gets by doing things, good or bad, which give him pleasure or relieve
his pain, without reference to its effect on other people or on the world in
general. And tamasik pleasure is the pleasure a person gets by doing bad things
which give pain to, or destroy the pleasure of, other people, or which are to
the general detriment of the world.
Here, at the moment, we are
concerned with the effects of the pursuit of pleasure on culture. There appears
to be no particular way in which the pursuit of satvik pleasure can pose a
threat to Indian culture. The pursuit of tamasik pleasure can pose a threat to
anything and everything: in respect of culture, it takes the form of vandalism,
of any kind or description, of monuments, heritage sites, the environment,
manuscripts or other records, etc., or deliberate sabotage of cultural
activities, or of attempts to protect those cultural activities, purely for the
perverted pleasure it gives. This is clearly perverted or criminal activity,
and has little to do directly with the ideology of Consumerism.
Consumerism is the unbridled pursuit
of rajasic pleasure. The ideology closest to it, in the annals of Indian
history, is the philosophy or ideology of Charvaka, the ancient Indian sage,
whose philosophy can be summed up in his principle rinam kritva ghritam
pibeta, “borrow money and drink ghee” (somewhat similar in sense to the
English saying, “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die”), and who
believed that the main purpose in life should be to maximise pleasure and
minimise pain (a view shared by the mainstream philosophies, as well, which
considered Kama to be one of the main priorities in life), without the constraints of Dharma (which were
required by the other philosophies). He rejected the idea of any afterlife,
heaven and hell, or rebirth, and held that existence began and ended with this
one single life on earth. [Of course, it is possible to reject the idea of any
kind of afterlife, and yet to believe in the need for some kind of constraints,
if for no other reason than for the smooth working of the material world].
Consumerism is even more of an
opium of the people than religion. And it is much more powerful than Charvaka’s
philosophy could ever have been, since it is being propagated by media, more
immensely powerful than anyone could ever possibly have imagined in the past,
which can enter right into the homes of people in the most remote corner of the
world (shades of Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-four”), and dazzle them with visions
of pleasures to be enjoyed in the form of sensual entertainment and material
possessions of every possible kind. The brainwashing potential of this
psychological bombardment is total: today, increasing numbers of Indians, in
their millions, are becoming so increasingly obsessed with the pursuit of - and
addicted to the unceasing enjoyment of - forms of sensual
entertainment and material possessions which (their minds have been conditioned
to believe) provide pleasure, that they are as likely to have the time, energy
and inclination to bother about what is going on all around them, as a drug-addict
would. Consumerism, in the first instance, is therefore a powerful tool
of Capitalism in the destruction of culture: while money can only buy outward
allegiance, psychological brainwashing can sap resistance and demotivate
opposition more fundamentally and effectively.
But, Consumerism is not merely a
neutraliser of resistance and opposition to the Capitalist destruction of
culture. As an arm of American Imperialism, Consumerism in its own right
is as powerful as, or perhaps even more powerful than, Capitalism, as a
destroyer of culture: the forms of entertainment to which Indians, from the
most tender and impressionable age, are becoming addicted, and the material
possessions which are becoming objects of obsession, are not just characterised
by their sensual and material nature or their ability to obsess, they are
characterised by the fact that they represent American culture and ideas of
culture.
Today,
American music and dance; American clothes, styles and fashions; American food
and food culture; American lifestyles and work-culture; American ideas of art,
humour, morals, etiquette and entertainment; and all things American (or Indian
clones of all these aspects of American culture, or Americanised caricatures of
aspects of Indian culture), are being marketed, or brainwashed into the brains
of Indians, all over India - and not just among elite sections of urban society, as
in the past, but among all classes of people in every remote corner of India,
due to the ever-increasing reach of the all-pervasive media. [American culture
here means western in general, but American in particular; and includes
anything and everything, whatever its origin, which is accepted as an approved
part of American culture, or becomes the fashion there: whether African musical
instruments and styles; Chinese, Mexican or Lebanese cuisine; or Spanish pop
songs. Even Indian personalities, ideas or things become respectable when they
acquire the stamp of approval of America: as Tavleen Singh puts it
in her oft-quoted article, “Young Indians have taken to yoga because it has
come back to us from the West and because Madonna swears by it.”]
The lethal effects of this
brain-washing are evident everywhere. To take the popular and influential field
of Indian film music: films in Hindi, as well as in regional languages, at
least till the late sixties (though very rarely after that), produced great and
immortal music directors, singers, and poets, who did great work in tapping all
kinds of musical sources to produce a beautiful and vibrant new genre of Indian
music. However, there has literally been a Dr.-Jekyll-to-Mr.Hyde transformation
in this field. Now, not only are poetry and melody a thing of the past, and
vulgarity, hype and noise the order of the day, but there is a determined trend
of westernisation in every respect: western tunes are lifted or copied almost
note for note; western, and electronic, musical instruments have almost edged
out the Indian instruments from the race; western forms and styles of music,
and methods of voice production, dominate the landscape; and natural voices
(and even the falsettos which had become the bane of Indian film, and light,
music in earlier decades) are being replaced by voices with artificially
cultivated, blatantly western accents. And even classic songs from the
Golden Age of Indian Film Music are not spared: “remix albums” present versions
of old hits, so grossly westernised and vulgarised as to be blasphemous.
And it is not just film
music (or similar modern genres of popular music like the bhavgeet genre in
Marathi music): today, the westernising trend is evident everywhere. The
literally thousands of varieties of traditional ensembles of musical
instruments, all over India, used for accompanying processions and to grace
festive occasions, are rapidly becoming a thing of the past, replaced by
western or electronic bands. The traditional dandiya-ras programs, with which
the whole of Gujarat, and Gujarati-present
areas all over India,
reverberated during the Navratri festival, are being replaced everywhere by
“disco-dandiya” programs; and the Bhangra of the Punjab
is giving way to “Bhangra-rap”. Vande Mataram is known, not in the solemn Akashwani
version, or the stirring version in the old Hindi film Anand Math, but in the
ghastly, westernised version composed by AR Rahman; and we find similar ghastly
westernised versions of many other national or regional patriotic songs, and
even of bhajans and devotional songs (especially among elitist classes, and
among the followers of the many young, westernised, modern swamis and babas
mushrooming everywhere). The list is a long one.
Today, an ever-increasing
number of Indian children are becoming more familiar with the latest western,
or Indian “remix”, hit or “album”, than with their own traditional music and
dance: a glance into any house, almost anywhere in the country, will very
likely show the smallest child avidly watching, and imitating, the gyrations,
gestures and expressions of the performers in some “remix number” or the other.
The effect is depressing: to narrate a personal experience, my sister is a
teacher in an English medium school in South Mumbai
managed by a Gujarati trust, and with a predominance of Gujarati students. When
she joined the school around eleven years ago, she was fascinated by the way in
which even the smallest Gujarati children were capable of performing the most
complicated and intricate group dandiya-ras performances, almost like
professionals, as a matter of course and at the shortest notice. Rejoining the
school again after a gap of a few years recently, she finds a sea change in the
present stock of Gujarati students, who seem as unfamiliar with the art as any
normal group of non-Gujarati students anywhere else.
And it is not just music and
dance: an ever-increasing number of children and youth, all over the country,
are becoming more familiar with the different aspects of American, or western,
culture, than with those of the traditional culture of India, or even of their
own particular communities: pizzas, Chinese food, tacos and McDonald’s burgers;
the latest American slang, the latest western mannerisms and expressions,
styles of eating and greeting, and of expressing emotions and sentiments
(“yessss” with clenched fist upraised, special “days” of the year for different
categories of loved ones, bouquets and cards for every occasion, etc.); the
latest western clothing, fashions and styles; the latest Barbie-dolls and
western toys; the latest western trends in cars, films, TV serials, cartoons,
partying, sports, hobbies, destinations, and anything else; and the latest, or
even the traditional, heroes and icons of the western worlds of music, sports,
films, fashion, business, history, politics, etc. If some of these aspects are
current only among elite classes, they have produced Indian clones which cater
to the other classes.
All this progressive
westernisation (or Americanisation) and de-Indianisation of greater and greater
numbers of Indians, and particularly of the younger generations, is slowly
leading to the demise of more and more aspects of India’s culture. Several people,
including western scholars, have repeatedly expressed their acute distress at
the fatal neglect of their rich culture by Indians. For example, Dr. James
O’Barnhill, retired Professor of Theatre Arts, Brown University, USA, in an
interview to the Organiser (5/3/1989), lamented: “I am sad to note
that Indians know very little about their folk arts or the artistes…using
this medium (TV) to destroy one’s own originality and to spread foreign culture
is dangerous…the intellectuals…should recognise the fact that
their own culture is dissolving like delta in the sea”. [This, it may be
noted, was in the days of Doordarshan, when private and foreign TV channels had
not yet arrived on the scene]. When he had visited Gujarat
some years earlier, he had met a Bhavai folk drama artiste who knew 200 plays.
But, this time, the oldest Bhavai artiste knew only 65 plays: “Between two
generations, 135 Bhavais were lost! Nobody bothered to record them. They were
lost forever”. This was in 1989. What must be the fate of the traditional
Bhavais today, in 2004? And what will be their fate in, say, 2014? And it is
not just a question of one particular form of traditional folk theatre, it is a
question of literally millions of aspects of Indian culture which are being
allowed to die out, or being systematically decimated, at a break-neck pace.
The question may be asked:
does all this really matter? After all, change is in the nature of
things, so why bother about what may be part of a natural process of change?
And there are many more important things to achieve, and problems to solve, in
this world; so why interfere with what may be part of the process of progress
and development?
Well, the facts of the case
have been set out, in short but (I hope) comprehensively, in the above pages.
To sum up, we have two basic facts: one, Indian culture is the
greatest and richest culture in the world, and also the culture which
represents the oldest continuous civilisation; and, two, this culture is
being systematically decimated, or callously allowed to die out. So, the
answer to the first question is: yes, it matters. It matters very much, and
it matters almost more than anything else in the world. On a personal
level, of course, it is natural, and perfectly right, for every
individual to be more concerned with problems that beset him personally. But,
on a larger level, this matters more than anything else.
As to the second point, it
is true that change is a part of nature, and this applies to culture as well.
No-one lives his life, in every way, exactly in the same manner that his
grandfather lived before him - and, nor must his grandfather have done so before him.
But such natural cultural changes (apart from purely technological
changes) take place in the culture of a society over the course of time, during
which (apart from desirable changes wrought by internal processes of evolution
and refinement) the natural influences of other cultures are assimilated into
the native ethos. Culture everywhere has been, and should be, a process
of give and take; and even as Indian culture has contributed more to the world
than any other culture, it has received a great deal from the world as well: to
take just a single example, consider the extremely important position of
potatoes and chillies, natives of the American continent, in Indian cuisine.
[But even in these natural circumstances, a conscious and self-respecting
society, with a rich culture of its own, should see to it that this leads to
the enrichment, and not to the replacement, abandonment or pollution, of
any aspect of its culture. And where, for some reason or the other, some aspect
of culture dies out, it should be recorded in detail for future reference and
use. The tragedy of Indian culture is that, in spite of the fact that the
aspects of its culture, which are being callously allowed to die out,
are so rich and beautiful, no efforts are made to record them for posterity.]
But, what we are seeing here
is not a natural process of change as described above. We are seeing the most
powerful forces of Imperialism that the world has ever seen, the forces of
American Imperialism, out to transform the world in its own image, and in the
process destroying all other cultures with the help of its powerful ideological
weapons (Proselytisation, Capitalism and Consumerism), and the world is too
overwhelmed, by the psychological force of these weapons, to resist, or even to
care. There is nothing “natural” about it.
As to the final point, there
are many very important (as distinct from more important)
things to be achieved, and problems to be solved, in this world; but surely it
cannot be anyone’s contention that they will be achieved, or solved, by
destroying rich cultural traditions, or allowing them to be destroyed? And why
should the destruction, of rich, and beautiful, cultural traditions, be, in any
possible way, a part of the process of progress and development? Or, again, why
should cultural westernisation, or Americanisation, be equated with the process
of progress and development?
In the past, much evil,
injustice and damage has been done in the name of religion; but even more evil,
injustice and damage has been done, and is being done even now on an
ever-increasing scale, in the name of progress and development. As a result of
many of the half-baked, ill-thought of, or plainly mercenary, things which take
place in the name of progress and development, the world not only becomes
vastly poorer of large parts of its rich heritage, which is lost forever, but
it often has to pay a heavy price for it (the lethal effects of deforestation,
industrial pollution, and mega-urbanisation, for example, are already apparent;
and will become so clear in the days to come, that even the most determined
opponent of social and environmental concerns will be compelled to note them;
by when, of course, it will be too late, since some things become irreversible
after a point of time), and the results, even otherwise, are often pathetic,
tragic and depressing:
An article by Soutik
Biswas, “Modern Cultural Clashes” (Asiaweek, 5/3/1999),
details the results of a decade of efforts, by governmental agencies, at
“improving the lot” of the Andamanese tribals, by way of social and welfare
policies and programs. The government, in the initial days, had followed a more
or less “hands-off” policy: regular contacts with the, till then practically
isolated, tribes began in 1974, but they were sporadic and primary. After 1990,
the contact expeditions became a regular affair: “In one case, Indian
politician BP Singhal led a parliamentary committee to the tribal heartland,
met some people wandering on the trunk road, offered them toffees, suggested
giving them raincoats, and asked them to pose for photographs”. In 1997, “officials
brought a young tribe member to the capital of Port Blair for medical
treatment. He spent three months convalescing in the hospital, where he was put
up in a separate cabin outfitted with a TV. Doctors and authorities lavished
him with attention and gifts, they took him on drives, gave him special food.”
This boy “carried back the tales of the good life in the city to other tribe
members”. The article describes the results: within one year, from October
1997, more than 2000 tribals had migrated out from their habitats, lured by the
fairy tales; and a sordid sequence of events, described in the article, took
place over the next one-and-a-half years, as the tribals stepped out from
backwardness into the modern age. The article, published in March 1999 (already
more than five years ago), concludes: “Now it may be too late to ensure
the tribe members live in a protected environment. Recently, those who landed
in Shantanu village were wearing dirty donated clothes, eating fried snacks and
rice, and singing popular Hindi ditties they had learned from watching
television. On the trunk road that cuts through their heartland, others were
stopping vehicles to ask for food. ‘At this rate’, says Acharya [head of
the Port Blair-based Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology], ‘they will
turn up as beggars and servants and prostitutes.’ That would surely be a sorry
epitaph for one of the world’s proudest hunter-gatherer tribes.”
The tragedy, described above is
so great that no words can even begin to describe it. It will not be an
exaggeration to say that the day on which the last of the Andamanese tribals
breathes his last breath will be one of the blackest days in our modern human
history, in more ways than one. Indian culture will be very much the poorer, by
one of its three native races and by one of its six native language families,
apart from the different other aspects, most of them probably unrecorded, of
Andamanese culture (although I recall seeing a Films Division documentary, “Man
in Search of Man”, long ago on Doordarshan, which provided some glimpses of
Andamanese culture, including some strains of their music). But, apart from
that, it will show how “progress and development” can be as ruthless as
“religion”: if the natives of Tasmania were ruthlessly wiped out from the face
of this earth, in mediaeval times, in the fanatical name of religion, the
natives of the Andaman islands will have been ruthlessly wiped out from the
face of this earth, in modern times, in the mindless name of progress and
development. Moreover, it will also show how far the world has progressed since
those mediaeval times: the world, today, is just as blissfully ignorant of, or
(even if it were to be brought to their notice) callously indifferent to, the
fate of the Andamanese, as it was, then, to the fate of the Tasmanians.
The tragedy in the Andaman islands is a pointer to what is happening to India’s tribal
and folk cultures, and even to the tributaries of the mainstream classical
cultures of India.
Even if the analogy may not be an exact one for many reasons, the sight of
millions of Indians abandoning their glorious culture, and striving to become
pathetic clones of the west, is not very different, in principle and substance,
from the pathetic sight of the Andamanese tribals “wearing dirty donated
clothes, eating fried snacks and rice, and singing popular Hindi ditties they
had learned from watching television”.
If Indian culture faces the
same fate as the culture of the Andamanese tribes, it will be a historical
tragedy of indescribable proportions. The only thing which can avert this
tragedy is Indian society in general waking up to a consciousness of its roots,
and deciding that the survival of Indian culture, in all its richness, really
matters more than anything else. Even the survival of Indian society as
Hindu society, in my opinion, is incidental to the survival of Indian culture
in all its richness: if Hindu society is willing to let it die out, or be
polluted or decimated, and prefers to itself survive, howsoever richly and
prosperously, as a cultural clone, even a “proudly Hindu” one
(whatever that may mean under those circumstances), of whichever society
(currently it is western society in general, and American in particular) is
dominating the world at the moment, then Hindu society itself deserves to
perish “unwept, unhonoured and unsung”.
What India requires
is a Nationalist ideology in which the need to protect, preserve and perpetuate
Indian culture, in all its richness, is a central point of faith and action. As
pointed out in the very beginning of this section, Hindutva without Indian
culture as its very basis is a meaningless exercise. As I pointed out even
earlier, in the Voice of India volume, “Time for Stock Taking” (1997,
pp.227-8), a true Hindutvavadi should feel deep pain and impelled to take
strong action, not only when he hears of issues of conventional Hindutva
discourse, but also “when he hears that the Andamanese races and languages
are becoming extinct; that vast tracts of forests, millions of years old, are
being wiped out forever; that ancient and mediaeval Hindu architectural
monuments are being vandalised, looted or fatally neglected; that priceless
ancient documents are being destroyed or left to rot and decay; that
innumerable forms of arts and handicrafts, architectural styles, plant and
animal species, musical forms and musical instruments, etc. are becoming
extinct; that our sacred rivers and environment are being irreversibly polluted
and destroyed…..”. [Incidentally, even as I was typing this out, I noticed
a truly, and incredibly, macabre coincidence: the above volume was published in
October 1997; the introduction is dated 16 October 1997. The Asiaweek article (dt.
March 5, 1999) quoted earlier, relates that the very first incident in which
the Andamanese tribals started migrating out of their isolated habitats, to
their eternal doom, took place on 21 October 1997.]
Hindutva is not a narrow
ideology. As I clarified in an interview to the Free Press Journal, 5/5/2002: “Indian culture
being the greatest and richest is not a narrow or chauvinistic idea; it is a
demonstrable fact. It would be chauvinistic if it acquired an imperialist
tinge: that other cultures are inferior and Indian culture must dominate over
or replace them. In fact, I am opposed to even internal cultural imperialism.
The idea that Vedic or Sanskrit culture represents Indian culture and that
other cultures within India are its subcultures and must be incorporated into
it, is wrong…..all other cultures native to this land: the culture of
the Andaman islanders, the Nagas, the Mundas, the tribes of Arunachal Pradesh,
etc. are all Indian in their own right. They don’t have to be - and should
not be -
Sanskritised to make them Indian”. Vedic and Classical Sanskrit culture, is,
of course, the pan-Indian representative face of India’s ancient civilisation, and
that fact is not negated by the equally valid fact that all other native
Indian cultures must be given their due. [I will go further here. In my 1993
book, “the Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism” (p.33), I have,
rightly in that context, criticised the secularist media for the “calculated
glorification of Urdu, of Lucknowi tehzib, of the Mughals, of gazals
and qawwalis, etc.”. But the truth is that all this is also a part,
and a rich part, of our modern Indian ethos. In fact, it is old classics, which
depict this culture, that I most look forward to when old Hindi film classics
are shown on TV channels!].
And it is not only in the negative
sense -
of not being cultural imperialist - that Hindutva stands out
against cultural imperialism. In the above volume (“Time for Stock Taking”,
p.227), I put it as follows: “Hinduism is the name for the Indian territorial
form of worldwide Sanatanism (call it Paganism in English). The ideology of
Hindutva should therefore be a Universal ideology:…[it] should spearhead
a worldwide revival, rejuvenation and resurgence of spiritualism, and of all
the religions and cultures which existed all over the world before the advent
of imperialist ideologies…”. Perhaps a rather ambitious idea, when the
going is increasingly getting tougher, by the day, in India itself - but,
nevertheless, that must be the ultimate dream of Hindutva.
Finally, Hindutva is not opposed
to any other particular culture as such: it is opposed to cultural
imperialism which leads to the imposition of one culture to the detriment
of others; it is opposed to the destruction and extinction of rich, diverse and
beautiful aspects of the rich cultural heritage of mankind. Western, or even
American, culture, are not, in themselves, enemies of Hindutva: they have
assumed that position today because (religious and cultural) Proselytisation,
Capitalism and Consumerism are, today, the weapons of American Imperialism; and
the havoc and the destruction they are causing, to the cultural heritage of
India and the rest of the world, is lethal and irreversible.
The true cultural spirit of
Hinduism is encapsulated in the following words of Mahatma Gandhi: “I don’t
want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want
the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But
I refuse to be blown off my feet by any”. The tragedy today is that the
culture of only one land is being allowed to blow about; and it is not a
wind, but a whirlwind; and it is being allowed to blow everyone off their feet,
never to stand up again. The aim of Hindutva should, therefore, be to
see to it that India remains firmly and proudly rooted in its own richly
diverse culture, even as the cultures of all lands (including America as
much as every other) blow freely about in the true Hindu spirit:
Hindu individuals, thinkers and
activists, should: (1) take up the task of identifying the different fields of
culture, and (2) set up well-funded and systematically organised apex
institutions, one in every single field (eg. music, dance, cuisine,
architecture, wildlife, environment, games, etc.), (3) which will draw up
detailed action-plans to gather, classify, record, and document in detail
everything concerning that particular field of culture, from every part of
India and every possible period, (4) take measures, and conduct campaigns
to arouse the conscience, and culture-consciousness, of Indians everywhere, (5)
and take steps to see to it that every single aspect of the culture of every
single part of India is protected, preserved, popularised and perpetuated as
part of a living heritage (and where that is not possible, at least
documented and recorded in detail, and kept alive in the national memory),
and that, in every field of culture, ample scope is made available for
inspiration and further development from within India’s diverse sources.
But, while the inspiration
and ideology behind the above exercise should be Hindutva, the apex
institutions should function not on the basis of vote-bank politics or
pedestrian jingoism, but on the basis of a purely objective and academic
outlook. For example, in all the activities connected with the field of music,
politicians and political considerations of any kind, should be severely
kept at arms length, and only musicians, musicologists, passionate music
lovers, and considerations of Music as an end in itself, should have the first
as well as the final say in every matter.
As pointed out earlier,
there are countless committed activists in the fields of ecology and
environment, wildlife preservation, folk or tribal culture, music and dance,
handicrafts, etc. who may be ideologically indifferent, or even hostile,
to Hindutva. There are also numerous scholars, Indian and foreign, who do
serious academic research, or film-makers who make documentary films, on
different aspects of Indian culture (in their personal capacity, or for
different organisations, or for Films Division, or even for foreign TV channels
like Discovery or National Geographic). There are many people, in their
individual capacity, doing wonderful work in diverse fields: eg. Sunderlal
Bahuguna, who initiated the Chipko movement, Avinash Patwardhan, who has
invented a flute which plays the 22 shrutis of ancient Indian music (Indian
Express, 16/5/1999), Pandit Nikhil Ghosh, who has taken up the mammoth project
of preparing a complete Encyclopaedia of Indian classical music (The Times of
India, 18/12/1990), Dr. Jayant Narlikar, the well-known scientist, who has
taken initiatives in encouraging scientific studies on the engineering marvels
incorporated in Indian architecture, etc.
Any person, who, in effect, does
anything to genuinely protect, preserve or perpetuate any aspect of Indian
culture, deserves respect and gratitude for it (at least to the extent
called for by the extent of his contribution); and, at least to that extent,
that person must be regarded as a benefactor of Hinduism and Indian culture,
and therefore also of Hindutva - regardless of his ideological leanings, or his
attitude towards aspects of culture other than the one he is interested in, or
his attitude towards Hinduism or the Indian ethos as a whole; and even if he is
a bitter opponent of Hindutva - more than any avowed supporter of Hindutva whose ideas
of Hindutva are restricted to the world of vote-bank politics.
But it is time for genuine
Indians, who are proud to call
themselves Indian, to take up the task. And it is even more imperative for
genuine Hindus, who are proud to call themselves Hindus, to take up the task on
a war-footing.
III. SOCIO-ECONOMIC NATIONALISM
It is absolutely necessary that
Hindutva must have a socio-economic ideological agenda for the nation. Apart
from the obvious point that Hindutva would be only half a nationalist ideology
if it has nothing to say on national socio-economic issues, there are three
compelling reasons why it is imperative to have a clear-cut Hindu Nationalist
socio-economic ideology:
One: today, after the demise of
the Soviet Union, the USA is the sole
super-power in a “uni-polar” world. We have already, in the previous section,
referred to American Imperialism, with its three ideological weapons
(Proselytisation, Capitalism, and Consumerism) backed by the military and
economic clout of the USA, and the destruction being wrought by it all over the
world. The destruction described was in the fields of the cultural heritage of India, as of
the rest of the world. But, it must be realised that the motive behind this
destruction is not cultural vandalism: the destruction is merely an incidental,
if inevitable, result of the spread of the ideologies of Christian
fundamentalism, Capitalism And Consumerism. And if the USA is propagating these
ideologies all over the world, it is not because the thinkers and philosophers
in America sat together and concluded that this was the ideal way to spread
peace and happiness all over the world, but because the over-all effect of the
spread of these ideologies is the tightening of the political and economic
stranglehold of the USA over the rest of the world. In short, the ultimate
motive is Profit: all imperialisms ultimately boil down to Economic
Imperialism. In these circumstances, a Nationalist socio-economic ideology is
necessary to safeguard India’s
economic interests from economic imperialism from any quarters, and to realise
the dream of a rich, prosperous, peaceful and happy India. And to protect Indian
culture, as well.
Two: in the present world, which
is getting more and more ruthless and cynical, idealism of any kind is becoming
a rare commodity. People usually become concerned with the larger issues that
affect the greater good, or future, of humanity (or the nation), or which
pertain to matters of high ethics or ideals, in only any one of two
circumstances: either when they are personally affected, and stand to
gain or lose personally from them (even perhaps have a personal axe to grind in
the matter), or when they are genuinely motivated by noble intentions,
compelling ideals or passionate dreams, or consumed (to whatever degree) by a
passion for Truth and Justice. But, even in the latter case, physical, mental,
emotional, financial or social tensions or injustice are factors which can
seriously affect the enthusiasm, commitment and outlook of even the most enthusiastic
idealist. The erstwhile idealist can become an anarchist; or he can lose all
his enthusiasm and idealism and become a cynical “realist”, either losing all
interest in his former ideals and “outgrowing” idealism as such, or learning to
use his erstwhile ideological platform for personal gain. For the sake of
idealism -
any idealism, not just Hindu nationalist idealism - an
equitable and just socio-economic order is imperative. Every Indian must
feel free to dream of a better world, and to strive hard for it, with his mind
free of oppressive tensions, and his head held high.
Three: the ultimate basis of any
ideology must be Truth, and the ultimate aim Justice. And, all issues of
Justice can be broadly classified under two heads: Cultural Justice and
Socio-Economic Justice. But, the fact is that vested interests, throughout
history, have always conspired to place these two categories in mutually
antagonistic slots: to put it in simple (even simplistic) terms, the advocates
of cultural injustice have always positioned themselves as champions of
socio-economic justice, and the advocates of socio-economic injustice have
always positioned themselves as champions of cultural justice. The conflict,
which should have been between Wrong and Right, has been converted into one
between Left and Right: forces supposedly fighting for the oppressed are
motivated more by a pathological and rabid hatred for Hinduism, and forces
supposedly fighting for Hindutva are motivated more by deeply entrenched vested
interests and rabid antagonism to ideas of socio-economic egalitarianism. There
is always an unspoken agreement between the two sides to maintain this state of
affairs; and genuine thinkers, idealists and activists have to ultimately fall
in line, on this side or that. It is time for Hindutva to break out of this
vicious circle, and to start representing Right against Wrong, rather than
Right against Left.
In short, it is time to evolve a
Hindu Nationalist socio-economic ideology which will try to be a model and
inspiration to the rest of the world, and to future generations of the human
race; and which will take mankind as a whole further on the path “from untruth
to truth, from darkness to light, from death to immortality” and from
animalism to divinity. True evolution is to be measured, not in
terms of technological and material progress and development, which are taking
place at a breakneck, and continually accelerating, pace, but are only
converting humans into a more and more organised, powerful, sophisticated,
technologically advanced and materially evolved species of ruthless,
selfish, self-centred, cold-blooded and mechanical animal, but in terms of
spiritual progress which will make humans more and more humane, considerate,
thoughtful and compassionate divine
beings. [To put it in a different way: tomorrow, if a race of aliens, infinitely
superior in comparison to the most advanced section of earthlings of that time - as
proportionately superior, in the sense of technologically advanced, materially
rich and militarily powerful, as, say, the present-day Americans are in
comparison to the present-day Andamanese people - were to arrive on earth
(admittedly an extremely hypothetical situation), how would we expect to be
treated by them? Would we respect them, as genuinely superior and advanced
beings, only on the strength of their technology, material wealth and
power, if it were accompanied by their treatment of us with the same
ruthlessness with which man treats other animals, conquering humans treat
conquered peoples, masters treat slaves, the pigs on Orwell’s “Animal Farm”
treated the other animals, Big Brother’s System treated the citizens in
Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, or, indeed, Jehovah of the Old Testament
treated mankind in general or the Jews in particular? Or would we respect them
if they also proved to be spiritually advanced: infinitely more
humane, considerate, thoughtful and compassionate than human beings?].
It is not my claim here that
I am any authority on Economics or Sociology, or am in any other way qualified
to try to provide a blueprint for a Hindu Nationalist Socio-Economic Ideology.
In spite of that I am going to express my strong views on the subject.
To begin with, what should be the
model for such an ideology? To be truly Hindu, it may appear axiomatic that it
should be in some way derived from some Hindu model. But, the central aim
should be to formulate objective norms of Socio-Economic Justice, and not to
dig out precedents in Hindu texts or Hindu history. Such precedents, if
any, would obviously be most welcome, but they would not be a prerequisite.
In any case, while countless
useful points can be picked up from our ancient texts - when even a text like the
Bible can provide some gems, the number of useful quotations and hints that could
be culled from our Sanskrit treasure-house of texts is beyond count - what
do we have by way of general models that could be held up as ideal? There are
firstly the models presented by the various Dharma Shastras (the most well
known of which is, of course, the Manu Smriti), further illustrated in the
myths and legends in the Puranas and the Mahabharata; there is the model
visualised in the phrase “Ram Rajya”; and, finally, there is the model
described in the Artha Shastra. But how valid are these models? An examination
of these models in detail shows that all of them without fail give
importance to the supremacy of Laws rather than the supremacy of Objective
Justice. And, there is very little egalitarian or just, either in the laws
themselves (many of which have obviously been established by deeply entrenched
vested interests), or in the principle of the absolute supremacy of Law which
lies behind them.
But, at the same time, in
spite of all the inegalitarianism and injustice which permeates the laws and
the stories which illustrate the application of these laws, there is a thread
of basic humanitarianism which runs through the gamut of Indian civilisation,
which makes India appropriately qualified to show the path to the rest of the
world at this crucial juncture in human history - not on the basis
of Hindu precedents, but on the basis of this basic humanitarianism developed
to its full potential. [AL Basham, incidentally, has the following to
say about the Indian ethos: “At most periods of her history India, though a
cultural unit, has been torn by internecine war. In statecraft, her rulers were
cunning and unscrupulous. Famine, flood and plague visited her from time to
time, and killed millions of her people. Inequality of birth was given
religious sanction, and the lot of the humble was generally hard. Yet our
overall impression is that in no other part of the ancient world were the
relations of man and man, and of man and the state, so fair and humane. In no
other early civilisation were slaves so few in number, and in no other ancient
lawbook are their rights so well protected as in the Arthasastra. No
other ancient lawgiver proclaimed such noble ideals of fair play in battle as
did Manu. In all her history of warfare Hindu India has few tales to tell of
cities put to the sword or of the massacre of non-combatants…There was sporadic
cruelty and oppression no doubt, but, in comparison with conditions in other
early cultures, it was mild. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian
civilisation is its humanity.” (pp.8-9)].
The basic foundation of this
Hindu Nationalist Socio-Economic Ideology must be based on the philosophy and
principles of Mahatma Gandhi, which best represent this basic humanitarianism
developed to its full potential. [Incidentally, a phrase “Gandhian Socialism”
was cooked up by the erstwhile Jana Sangh, when it broke away, in 1980, from
the Janata Party formed in 1977, and formed the Bharatiya Janata Party. It
evoked plenty of derision even among its supporters, and rightly so: the BJP
is, was, and will always be, bitterly antagonistic to any and every form of
socialism, and its intrinsic incompatibility with Mahatma Gandhi is an open
secret; and there is no doubt whatsoever that whatever things the BJP would
have done, in the name of Gandhian Socialism, would have been neither Gandhian,
nor socialist, in any sense of the terms. The phrase was clearly just one more
cynical vote-catching gimmick, and was abandoned with alacrity when it failed
to deliver the goods in 1984. I myself, at the time, was biased against Gandhi,
and, consequently, was ill-disposed to examine his philosophy with an open
mind. But, a rational and objective approach shows the perennial relevance of
Gandhian principles, at least in the formulation of a just and equitable
socio-economic system.]
The basic principles of this
Gandhian socio-economic ideology may be summarised as follows:
1) Primacy to the spirit of (humanitarian) Justice over, or
even in opposition to, the letter of the (religious/social/traditional/statutory)
Law.
2) Swadeshi, or economic nationalism.
3) An administrative system which governs the least, and
with the least interference; and which provides public utilities at the least
cost to one and all; and which provides full protection, security and aid to
every citizen -
regardless of race, religion, caste, sex, profession, or any other mark of
identity -
from fear, terror, injustice, insecurity, crime and oppression, from hunger and
want, and from diseases and natural disasters.
4) Simple Living [a) Simple lifestyle. b) Curbs on
wastage, extravagance and ostentation in public and personal life. c) Principle
of small is beautiful. d) Proximity to nature, and conservation] and High
Thinking [a) Idealism. b) Open, free and honest society. c) Emphasis on hygiene
and cleanliness, and civic-mindedness. d) Sense of Duty. e) Dignity of labour.
f) Compassion towards, and love for, all living beings].
5) Primacy to the interests of the poorer and more
oppressed persons in society, and to the benefit of the greatest number.
Today, every single one of the
basic principles, mentioned above, is rejected outright by the intellectual and
political powers that be; or else these principles are followed only in the
breach as hypocritical leaders and intellectuals continue to speak in terms of
all-round progress and development, and socio-economic justice, even as they
advocate and follow socio-economic principles, philosophies and policies which blatantly
violate those concepts.
Let us examine, as briefly as
possible, the relevance of the above basic principles, or the different ways in
which the present set-up and trends are moving in the direction opposite to
these basic principles:
1) The first basic
principle, enumerated above, is the primacy of the spirit of Justice over the
letter of the Law. This is important because Law has not always been synonymous
with Justice in this world. A blind belief in the sanctity of the Law, and in
the power of Authority to enforce the Law, has always been fostered by
different entities (eg. by different kings, governments, civilisations,
religions, priesthoods, etc.) to establish, and maintain, their stranglehold
over their followers or subjects. Every Authority, the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan as
much as the democratic government in the USA, believes, or claims, that its
system of Law is the best in the world. But the truth is that most laws are
formulated, established and enforced by vested interests, and, throughout
history, laws have, more often than not, been used more to perpetrate injustice
and exploitation than to establish Truth and Justice. Even the seemingly most
impartial and objective laws are susceptible to willful technical
misinterpretations. The western or “modern” system of Justice, as much as any
other, is notorious for its great capacity for manipulation and injustice.
[There is an American serial on the Star World channel, “The Practice”, which
depicts the gross injustices that take place in the American system, where
heinous crimes -
murder, serial killings, rape, cannibalism, to name a few - go
unpunished because the judges, lawyers and juries conclude that even
open-and-shut cases do not merit convictions if there are technical -
sometimes incredibly, trivially technical - grounds for acquittal;
while even openly innocent people are convicted on equally technical grounds.
The serial, incidentally, defends and justifies such a system]. Similarly, in
India, rules and laws (and, especially in modern contexts, “discipline”) have
always been, at the very least, instruments for the victimisation of sincere
people, for the benefit of vested interests, and for the legitimisation of
unjust or wasteful systems and activities.
There is no doubt that a lawless
society cannot be an ideal: laws are absolutely necessary for the smooth
running of society; but only when they are formulated, and administered,
on the principles of Truth and Justice, and guided by logic, common sense, and
principles of common humanitarianism. There should be no place for blind and
unthinking dogmatism. Gandhi always believed in following the inner voice of
conscience over the letter of the law. He led agitations against unjust laws
(the salt satyagraha is a case in point) and unjust legal systems, and, in
spite of his known conservatism, strongly rejected accepting even the authority
of scripture “if it is in conflict with sober reason or the dictates of the
heart…when it supplants reason sanctified by the still, small voice
within”, if it is “opposed to the fundamental maxims of morality…[or]
opposed to trained reason”: according to him, “in Hinduism, we have got
an admirable footrule to measure every Shastra and every rule of conduct, and
that is Truth” (quoted by Arun Shourie in “Hinduism - Essence and Consequences”, ch.11).
The most, if not only, objective
way of judging, from the point of view of the inner voice, whether a law is
just or unjust, or, on any point of conflict of interests, which side is in the
right, is by placing oneself in the place of the affected person, or of both
the conflicting sides in turn (even when one of the two sides is one’s own
self), and applying the principle (often attributed to the Bible, but found in
many other places, among them in the sayings of Confucius and in the
Mahabharata): “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Of course,
this principle must be applied honestly and objectively, and it must be
clarified with the addition “if you were in their place”, else it is perfectly
possible for people to justify unjust acts while claiming that they are
applying this principle. This can be illustrated by the well-known fable about
the fox and the stork: the fox calls the stork for supper, and serves the food
(porridge or soup) in a flat dish, and the fox merrily laps up his food while
the stork stays hungry. To pay him back, the stork then calls the fox for
supper, and serves the food in a thin, long-necked pitcher, and this time it is
the fox who starves while the stork enjoys his meal. In this story, however,
the fox could always claim that he was following the above principle: he
would have liked to be served in a flat dish, and so he also served the stork
in a flat dish, and therefore he did unto the stork as he would have had the
stork do unto him! This is, obviously dishonest logic: the fox, if he had
placed himself in the place of the stork as a stork rather than as a
fox, would have realised that the stork would want his food in a thin,
long-necked pitcher. The same kind of dishonest logic is demonstrated by
missionaries when they strive to convert Hindus, for example, to Christianity:
if asked whether they would like to see Christians being converted to Hinduism,
they would naturally reply in the negative; but if asked whether they would
have liked to see Hindus being converted to Christianity if they themselves
had been Hindus, they would reply in the affirmative on the ground that
Christianity is the only true religion, and conversion to Christianity is
salvation from hell-fire!
It is inevitable that, human
nature being what it is, there will always be dishonesty in the application of
principles. The point here is that the spirit of impartial and objective
Justice and Truth are more important than the letter of blind Law. And this
should be the most fundamental principle of any Hindu Nationalist
socio-economic ideology.
2) Swadeshi should naturally
be the cornerstone of any national socio-economic policy, leftist or rightist.
But, today, this basic mantra of our pre-Independence era has been thrown to
the dogs. An article by Jay Dubashi, entitled “Into Foreign Hands”
(The Times of India, 17/1/2002),
puts it in a nutshell: “For India, independence meant transfer of power from
an alien to the local political class….But things are different now. The
state is in retreat everywhere, and power is being transferred from the
political class to the business class….first to the Indian business
class and through it, to foreign business led by multinationals. The transfer
of power to the foreign business class has been going on for the last ten
years. I call this reverse transfer of power. Power, which was wrested from
foreigners 50-odd years ago, is passing back into the hands of foreigners once
again, with the active collaboration of our new political class….Ten
years from now, maybe five, almost everything that is currently in the name of
the Indian state will pass into the clutches of the international business
class, through their intermediaries in India….Everything that is Indian
will cease to be Indian. Indians will serve their new foreign masters as
diligently as their fathers and grandfathers served the British before….The
real story is that India and Indians are being betrayed by this new class just
as they were betrayed by another new class fathered by Thomas Babington
Macaulay two centuries ago. This time the new class is being fathered by
multinationals and their agents, the World Bank, IMF and WTO, the new tribal
leaders of Globalisation. India is being colonised once again with the help of
our new political class and history is repeating itself with a reverse transfer
of power, first as national betrayal, and then as a colossal national tragedy
in the making”. Dubashi names banks, insurance, steel, power, petroleum,
airports, ports and harbours, railways, highways, “and finally defence
industries”, as some of the major areas which will pass into the hands of
foreigners. But the virus has spread even further: the media and education
system, retail trade, the fishing industry….foreigners and foreign firms are
even sought to be appointed on the Planning Commission, and (as per reports in
the Times of India, 28/9/2004)
islands in Lakshadweep and the Andamans are to
be leased to “private and international operators”. The country and its people
are being sold into economic slavery with a thoroughness and a completeness
which would have shamed the proverbial Jaichand, Mir Jafar or Quisling.
The other aspect of this
anti-swadeshi trend is that import duties and restrictions are being
increasingly reduced or eliminated, and foreign goods are flooding the market.
The general effect of this trend is that Indian industries are having to face a
situation not unlike the one they faced during the days of British colonial
rule, when goods from the British manufacturers were allowed to flood the markets
while the ruling (then British, now “Indian”) administration did its best to
maim and cripple the local industries to eliminate competition for the imported
goods. Indian industries are slowly but surely being wiped out. As Dubashi
points out in another article, the common people, and particularly the middle
classes, dazzled by the vistas of imported goods flooding the market, and
consumed by the consumerist frenzy, see no reason to oppose this new
colonisation: it is only when the effects of this flood start taking a toll on
their own particular jobs and means of livelihood, and render them unable to
enjoy the consumerist goodies, that they wake up, at least to their own plight
if not to the larger issues involved; but by then it is obviously too late.
The increasing foreign
invasion, in the name of “liberalisation” and “reforms”, is also taking a toll
on public utilities and services that are enjoyed by the common man. To take an
example, the nationalisation of banks in India was an important step in
opening up the services of banking to the poorer and common public. Savings
were encouraged, and banking came within the reach of the common man. By
allowing foreign and private banks full entry into the market, and allowing
them to pull off the cream of the deposits and business, fully free of any
social obligations, the task of public sector banks has been made doubly
unenviable: today the totally unencumbered foreign and private banks are
cornering all the profitable and elite business, making it indispensable for
public sector banks to shed their social obligations and become elitist in
their own turn, in every way, if they want to stay alive without conking out, even
while they continue to be handicapped by crippling political chains which they
are never likely to be allowed to shed (political interference, caste-based
reservations, etc.). The results: firstly, banking is becoming an
increasingly complicated and elitist activity. Even opening a bank account
(earlier, all that was required was an introducer and the minimum amount) is
becoming more and more complicated and expensive, and the number of charges and
costs, and red-tape and rules, that a bank is, increasingly, having to impose
on account-holders, is making the holding of a bank account increasingly
difficult for the common man. Secondly, banks have long since ceased to be a
source of employment. And thirdly, poorer and lower middle class customers are
increasingly being driven into the arms of co-operative banks, and the security
of their bank deposits is no more a matter of certainty. This is the case not
only with banks, but with all public activities, where the entry of foreign,
and elitist private, entities is taking many services out of reach of the
common man, closing down employment avenues, and generally making life more and
more complicated and insecure for him.
Dubashi, in the above
article, writes: “Surprisingly, very few Indians are aware that a transfer
of power on this scale is taking place. They think that the economy is only being
liberalised, without realising that it is being globalised too, for the two go
together…”. However, Dubashi is wrong here: actually, the economy is only
being globalised on a war footing, it is not being liberalised; and the
two, liberalisation and globalisation, do not necessarily go together.
It is time, first of all, to stop the blatant misuse of certain words: just as
everything cultural originating in, or accepted by, America is treated as
representative of “the times” (and automatically makes other things
“outdated”), so also everything economic dictated by America through its puppet
world bodies is treated as representative of “liberalisation”, and every
kowtowing to these dictates is treated as representative of economic “reform”.
But “liberal” means “free”, and “reform” means “make better”. Is it axiomatic
that the things that are happening today, in the name of liberalisation and
reform, are making society, or the people who constitute that society,
economically freer or better off?
What is happening, as already
pointed out, is that the economy is being made liberal in India only for
foreigners: foreign business interests, backed by massive resources,
unencumbered by political chains and crippling bureaucratic procedures, and
with the active collaboration of the political classes, are eating up their
local “competition”, killing or taking over local industries, and creating more
and more unemployment. This is certainly not making Indians economically freer
or better off. Incidentally, apologists of the system in the media, and there
is no dearth of them, often provide examples, such as the recent hue and cry in
the USA, and the west in general, over the issue of out-sourcing of IT jobs to
India, to show how this globalisation can be made to turn to our advantage if
pursued in the right manner. But this, in fact, illustrates the point being
made here. The industrialists and big businesses in the west, which are
outsourcing jobs to India,
are not doing it out of love for India or Indians - they
are doing it to improve profits. The losers are the common people among the
western population, and the gainers are the more elitist and “upwardly mobile”
sections among the Indian population. In essence, it is simply an illustration
of the capitalist maxim, “elites of the world, unite! You have everything to
gain”. The common people among the western populations, moreover, have less to
lose, when the law of the jungle is made universally applicable, than the
common people among the Indian population.
Indians fail to realise the
dangers of what is taking place, because they are hypnotised by the American
economic model. But the American economic model is based on the principle of
the law of the jungle (as depicted in phrases like “the survival of the fittest”,
“might is right”, “the winner takes all”, “history is written by the victor”,
“fish eats fish”, “it’s a rat-race”, “someone has to sacrifice”, etc). It
represents an economic lifestyle which is possible only in a grossly
unequal and inequitable world, where the overwhelmingly major proportion of the
limited wealth and resources of the world is necessarily enjoyed by a
small minority of people, and which, therefore, actually rationalises,
ideologises and glorifies gross inequality and inequity. The vast majority of
the population is kept drugged and brain-washed with the opiums of religion,
politics, entertainment, and traditional vices; or kept in check by the power
of establishmentarian intimidation, by “the rule of Law”, or by plain selfish
greed: the ultimate dream of any individual in this controlled, and
thought-controlling, world, becomes, not to work for a just and equitable
world, but to work to be on “the right side” of the dividing lines of an unjust
society and world -
to join, gate-crash into, or be co-opted into, the ranks of the privileged few.
The “upwardly mobile” sections among the middle classes have few objections to
the developing scenarios within India, since, apart from sharing in the general
capitalist dream of themselves being part of the privileged few in an unjust
and unequal world, “the ultimate aim of this greedy new class [as Dubashi puts
it] is a job in New York or London”.
A Swadeshi ideology which
places the economic interests of India and the common Indian at the
top of its agenda has to be the basic cornerstone of any Hindu Nationalist
economic agenda.
3) The issue of what is truly
“liberal” goes deeper: to be truly liberal or free, the state should allow
every citizen to live his life as he wants; and all economic activity (within
the country) to take place freely, and wealth to be created without
hindrance or bureaucratic controls, red tape and interference, subject
to only the following conditions: that nothing criminal takes place, that there
is no injustice done to anyone (ie. that everyone’s rights are protected, and
no-one’s rights are violated, whether of the individual or of the society or
nation in general) in the process, and, of course, that the state gets its
reasonable share in the wealth that is created, in the form of increased
revenues. At the same time, the state should concentrate on providing
efficient public utilities and facilities to one and all at the least cost, and
to make life as free, smooth, easy and simple as possible.
On the contrary, the modern
economically “reformist” state is actually becoming more and more illiberal and
totalitarian, more and more like the Big Brother state in Orwell’s “Nineteen
Eighty-four”, where every single citizen is identified, numbered and
classified, and a sharp watch and surveillance, and control, is kept on every
action and activity. No individual can start out on any economic activity,
even the most simple activity for the basic purpose of earning his livelihood,
without the express permission of the state in the form of licences,
registrations and permits; and this is followed by a permanent process
of meaningless, endless and mandatory paperwork, red tape and procedures, with
all the attendant bureaucratic hassles, harassment and corruption, even as
the state tightens its vice-like grip over every aspect of his life. At the
same time, the state increasingly shrugs off its responsibilities in respect of
providing public utilities and facilities to the common citizen, on the ground
that “it is not the business of the government to do business”.
As already pointed out, one
way for totalitarian forces to keep the general populace in a state of
submission is to keep them drugged and brain-washed with the opiums of
religion, politics, entertainment, and traditional vices. But that is one half
of the strategy: the other half is to keep them in a permanent state of
harassment, which will leave them too tired to care about anything except
getting back to their opiums. Hence, for example, the emphasis is not on
increasing tax collections, but on creating newer and newer taxes (the
latest is service tax, an earlier one was TDS, and the next one in line is
MODVAT) -
with more and more complicated rules, formalities, forms and procedures;
complicated calculations to be made; official red tape to be gone through;
books, records and files to be maintained; official deadlines to be met,
professionals to be paid and officials to be appeased, etc. - and
on bringing more and more people into the “tax net”: hence also the emphasis on
having everyone acquire a PAN (a permanent Income Tax account number) and file
returns, even if they are salary earners whose tax gets deducted at source, or
if they are people whose income is so far below the taxable limit as to be
negligible.
Apart from the Big Brother
angle, the other motive behind making procedures more and more complicated, and
the reach of the state more and more intrusive and all-pervading, is to
increase the scope for unlimited corruption. Corruption is a worldwide
phenomenon, but India
is among the nations where blatant corruption has become an accepted part of
life. Any position in any government office is a passport to wealth: not just
in revenue departments (income tax, sales tax, customs, octroi, excise, land
revenue, etc. etc.), but in any office connected with any central
or state government, or local municipal or village level, administrative
activity. In any of these offices, there is a long line of people to be paid
before the smallest and most trivial job can be done. And the whole thing is so
open as to practically be the official procedure. Positions, postings and
transfers in the more lucrative departments and areas are, therefore, purchased
and sold for prices which can, in many cases, go as high as crores of rupees.
Needless to say, no
criminal activity, however heinous, is out of bounds in a society where
corruption is so blatant, and governmental agencies are so all-powerful and
purchasable. Far from providing freedom, security and aid to one and all,
the administration is itself the biggest source of fear and terror to the
common man: a common piece of wisdom is that it is better to climb the steps of
a funeral pyre than to climb the steps of a police station, a court or a
government office. Nothing strikes terror in the common or middle class man so
much as the sight of a policeman or other law-enforcing official approaching
him, or the receipt of an official letter or notice from any government agency:
these are recognised as greater extortionists and terrorists than the actual
criminal classes who go by those names. [The rare incorruptible or honest
person has to either change himself, or learn to keep his eyes and mouth shut;
or else be victimised or hounded out]. Apart from that, they are instruments of
terror in the hands of equally corrupt and all-powerful politicians, to be used
not so much against their political opponents as against the common man, or
against anyone else, who rebels against or exposes the system.
Even otherwise, the common
man who crosses a railway track, or who transgresses some minor rule, is more
likely to be caught and looted or punished by the guardians of the law, than
the gangster or mafia don, the trafficker in drugs or women, the adulterator of
food, medicines or other materials, or any other genuine criminal, who, more
often than not, would enjoy their protection. In such an atmosphere, in a
society where administrative corruption is accepted, by one and all, as
“natural” and inevitable, any kind of crime is not only possible but natural
and inevitable. And, today, crime of any and every kind flourishes in every
part of the country.
This is hardly surprising
when we consider that the rot starts from the very top: when some top leaders
in the last BJP-led government were caught on camera accepting bribes, the
entire force of the law-enforcing agencies was unleashed on the Tehelka news
agency which carried out the exposure; and in the present Congress-led
government, out-and-out criminals occupy ministerial posts. The commonest politician
is, at the least, a “karodpati”, and more often than not, he is not even a tax
payer. And the more criminal the leaders and rulers, the more draconian and
illiberal the powers they give themselves, and their government agencies, to
victimise, loot and terrorise the common man. Writing on one such new finance
ministry circular which authorises income tax officials to confiscate property
of anyone suspected of evading taxes, Tavleen Singh (“His Right to
Attach Property”, The Sunday Express, 10/10/2004), makes some sharp
observations:
“What the finance
minister has done is give petty, and usually corrupt, officials the right to
march into your home or mine and take it over if according to his assessment,
we haven’t paid enough taxes….we never before had a Finance Minister who
believes he has the fundamental right to trample upon our rights in the name of
tax collection. The most they did in the past was ‘raid’ those they suspected
of evading taxes. A barbaric enough practice in a country that fancies itself
as civilised, but baby stuff compared to what Chidambaram now orders his goons
to do….the Finance Minister has also decided that tax inspectors will be
held responsible if they fail to ‘attach’ in advance the property of a possible
defaulter. Draconian is too mild a word for what the Finance Minister is up to,
but we must remember that this is the man who once gave us TADA and the
Defamation Bill. There are other reasons
to fight for our right to property, and they concern the poorest of the poor.
Because Indians do not have the right to own property, policemen and municipal
officials routinely confiscate and destroy property belonging to pavement
hawkers, rickshawallahs and streetchildren. These are people who constitute
what our politicians like to call the ‘weakest sections’ of the society, so let
us have no qualms in acknowledging that the Prime Minister’s move to introduce
reservations for ‘weaker sections’ in private companies is for political and
not compassionate reasons. Had any Prime Minister one ounce of compassion for
the ‘weaker sections’, he would have arrested officials and policemen who steal
from pavement hawkers and rickshawallahs….Meanwhile, I have a
proposition for P Chidambaram. If he insists on going ahead with the mad idea,
then let us begin in Parliament. Let every Member of Parliament’s declaration
of assets be scrutinised not just by the Finance Ministry’s unreliable
policemen but us. Let us find out how men who began their career in politics
with a few hundred rupees to their name became owners of lakhs and crores worth
of assets. I am willing to bet that men who have declared themselves worth only
a couple of lakhs will be wearing watches that cost more than that. Let us set up a citizen’s tribunal before
which the MPs can appear and have their assets publicly scrutinised. Let us ask
them the sort of questions tax inspectors ask when they barge into people’s
homes: How much is that shawl, that pair of shoes, that bangle for? Who paid
for these things? Where are the bills? Can you prove they were heirlooms? If
not, we hereby attach your property. If our elected representatives are
prepared to go through with this kind of exercise and if our ministers and
wives also come forward to explain how they acquired their crores worth of assets,
then it would be fair for the Finance Minister to go ahead with the draconian
new measures. Otherwise, it is time he woke up to the reality that India is no
longer an economic dictatorship, and can never be. All he will achieve through
his madcap schemes is to widen the roads of corruption. The only people who
must be thrilled by his new measures are the tax inspectors. Does P Chidambaram
not understand this?” [An article in The Sunday Times, 17/10/2004, “Is the
raid-raj back to hound the taxpayers? The FM has provided corrupt IT officials
a opportunity to unleash terror”, lists four other new measures by the
Finance Minister -
an amended section 285BA to the Income Tax act, changes in the TDS reporting
techniques, a new section 277A, and changes relating to the Gift Tax , and
corollaries -
which can promote a reign of terror and corruption].
It is very clear, Tavleen
Singh’s expressions of hope or wishful thinking (“India is no longer an
economic dictatorship, and can never be.”) notwithstanding, that P Chidambaram
understands very well what he is doing and what it will entail: in the name of
“liberalisation” and “reforms”, India is steadily marching towards Orwell’s
“Nineteen Eighty-Four”, and while the ones who will suffer the most are
definitely the “poorest of the poor” and the “weaker sections of society”,
every other citizen who desires to work, earn and live in peace will become a
victim of perpetual state-sponsored terrorism, especially the
independent-minded citizen who has a conscience.
Can a state which promotes
perpetual terrorism against its citizens protect those citizens from other
terrorists? Not from the “Islamic” or “Pak-sponsored” terrorists, so dear to
the discourse of our politicians, but from the terrorists who more directly
affect the common man and make his life perpetually miserable: lower caste
people in remote villages from the dominant castes in their areas (read, for
example, Nalini Singh’s “Aankhon Dekhi - Booth-capturing viewed
from a BSP field office” in the Times of India, 18/4/2004); any
linguistic, religious, caste, or other minority in any area from the majority
in that area; women from predator men; children from predator adults; aged
people from ruthless youth; physically or mentally handicapped people from
other, “normal”, people; inmates of prisons, orphanages, old age homes, mental
asylums and boarding schools, workers in factories and offices, or even
residents of ordinary homes, localities or villages, from their various
tormentors; and the common man from injustice and insecurity, crime and
oppression, hunger and want, diseases and natural disasters, ignorance and
illiteracy, superstitions and oppressive traditions?
Providing protection,
security and aid, to one and all, from all these things, is not a part of any
“liberalisation” or “reform” agenda or program. But, it should be a very
important and basic part of any Hindu Nationalist socio-economic agenda.
4) Simple living and high
thinking is the key to the successful management of any economy, domestic or
national. But, in the consumerist and capitalist atmosphere prevailing in India today,
what we actually find is a prevalence of extravagant living and low thinking:
the emphasis is on mega-economics, on wastage, extravagance and ostentation in
public and personal spending, and on a self-centred way of life in which
morals, ethics, and civic sense have no place whatsoever.
The ideal way of life, as
propagated through the media - and brainwashed into the receptive minds even of mature
adults and old people, not to speak of the impressionable children and youth
primarily targeted - is the consumerist way of life, characterised by an
insatiable greed for material possessions and a “neighbour’s envy, owner’s
pride” philosophy. The enjoyment of pleasures, even the occasional splurge or
extravagance, is an absolutely essential part of life - after all, Kama is
one of the three priorities in life - but, apart from the fact that, beyond a point, the law
of diminishing returns applies even to the enjoyment of pleasures, the fact
today is that the very definition of “pleasures”, and the things which are
supposed to provide those pleasures, is dictated by the media and the capitalist
forces controlling the media. The use-and-throw culture of western consumerism,
with all the accompanying wholesale depletion of natural resources, wastage and
extravagance, and pollution of every aspect of the environment, is becoming
prevalent everywhere. Life, for the average Indian, has become a feverish,
competitive, acquisitive, exhibitionistic and expensive activity, and Indian
society is beginning to feel all the lethal ill-effects -
social, economic and psychological - of consumerist life, too
many and too complicated to be detailed here.
So far as the national
economy is concerned, India
today combines the worst features of the erstwhile socialist economy with the
worst features of the present capitalist-consumerist economy. The central characteristic
is financial inefficiency, mismanagement, wastage and corruption on a massive
and gigantic scale. To begin with, the very structure of the administration, at
every level, central, state, district and local, is unwieldy and
uneconomical: a very large proportion of the revenues received by the
administration from every source goes in paying the salaries, perks and other
expenses of the elected representatives of the people, the bureaucrats, and the
employees. Periodic wage revisions - at the central and state government levels, the
periodic Pay Commission reports; at the level of local bodies and public sector
undertakings, periodic bipartite agreements between the bodies or managements
and trade unions; and at the level of the elected representatives, periodic
legislations and bills passed by themselves - add to the spiraling
costs.
Secondly, inefficient and
senseless procedures, and endless red tape, cause incredibly massive wastage of
funds. There is the endless paperwork, which seems to serve no purpose except
to cause wastage of time, energy, money and space [Orwell, in “Animal
Farm”, parodies this very well: “There was, as Squealer was never tired
of explaining, endless work in the supervision and organisation of the farm.
Much of this work was of a kind that the other animals were too ignorant to
understand. For example, Squealer told them that the pigs had to expend
enormous labours every day upon mysterious things called ‘files’, ‘reports’,
‘minutes’, and ‘memoranda’. These were large sheets of paper which had to be
closely covered with writing, and as soon as they were so covered, they were
burnt in the furnace. This was of the highest importance for the welfare of the
farm, Squealer said”.]. An entire book could be written only on the subject
of bureaucratic paperwork. The endless costs - in salaries for the
paperworkers; costs of endless files, paper and printing; expenses of
maintaining premises and godowns for the endless papers; postal costs in
sending endless correspondence back and forth; etc., etc. - are
incalculable. Then there are the expenses incurred in the continuous transfers
of staff from one department to another, and one place to another - the
costs of travel, the disruptions in smooth working, the costs in transfer of
records, etc. -
usually on the basis of the whims, vested interests or political agendas of the
authorities, or on the basis of trade union rivalries or dictates. Then there
are countless committees and commissions, appointed to study or inquire into
various issues, which only end up draining public funds. And there are the
endless red tape activities, which result in massive expenses and losses, for
which there can be no logical explanation: to give just one example,
anyone familiar with the taxation scene in India will be aware of statutory
compulsions which result in people having to pay taxes of nominal sums like one
rupee -
in the last few months, literally lakhs of tax-payers have either received
communications from the Income tax department, asking them to pay tax
differences of one rupee, or else have received tax refund orders of one rupee:
the costs and expenses (printing, paper, procedural, postal) incurred in each
of these one rupee transactions must be at least between fifty to a
hundred rupees!
Thirdly, the political games
played by politicians, to create or consolidate their vote-banks, cause massive
wastages, losses or expenditure of public funds. This includes the expenditures
on wasteful public functions, including stone-laying and ribbon-cutting functions,
road renaming ceremonies, “symposiums” and “conferences” (usually just
extravagant jamborees), etc.; the endless public expenditures involved in
complicated political games involving caste-based reservations and facilities;
and the massive losses incurred by government bodies in the cause of political
gimmicks of various kinds, as for example the loan melas organised in the
aftermath of the nationalisation of banks, the continuous formation of new
districts (or renaming of old districts) or administrative offices, the
declaration of free power and water for “farmers” in various states, and so on.
Finally, there is the single
biggest factor: corruption in public life. Corruption has become practically a
religion in India.
The amount of corruption that goes on in India, at every level of the
elected representatives of the people, and at every level of bureaucrats and
government servants, is mind-boggling. The avenues for corruption are endless.
The elected representatives of the people, and bureaucrats, make full use of
public funds in their official capacities, to enjoy (along with their families
and friends) every possible perquisite, luxury and enjoyment in keeping with
their exalted positions. In addition, they govern the inflow and outflow of public
funds in many ways: thousands of crores of rupees are awarded for contracts
with the appropriate kickbacks; thousands of crores of rupees are spent every
year on public amenities and projects which exist only on paper; thousands of
crores of rupees, are allowed to be drained off from the public funds by
criminals (the fake stamps case which rocked Maharashtra in the recent past is
one prominent example), or are excused, adjusted or written off (eg. taxes,
bank loans, pending power bills, etc.), for the appropriate considerations;
etc., etc. Big projects are taken up, and laws, systems, and procedures, are
devised, solely to facilitate all these activities. Everything is more
or less clear and open and “natural”.
This all-round corruption,
which has percolated to every level of society, and the stoic acceptance of it,
by one and all, as “natural” and inevitable (anyone who fails to conform to the
pattern is considered somewhat abnormal), has another fall-out: it makes the
common man more and more cynical, self-centred, selfish, and indifferent to, or
wary of, anything and everything going on around him which does not directly
benefit or affect him. There is total civic apathy, particularly, but not
exclusively, in urban areas. As a piece by Jug Suraiya (not one of my
favourite journalists) puts it (Times of India, 3/10/2004): “Our mofussil towns are open
cess pits. Despite their glitzy malls and five star hotels, our metros look
like a bombed-out no man’s land. Rubble, garbage, scavenging dogs and cows,
humans spitting, defecating and peeing everywhere -
people reduced to biological functions, primal anatomy. Buildings, even new
buildings, are in a state of pro-active decrepitude, in terminal decay before
they are complete. Roads and pavements forever dug up, like a perpetual grave
the city digs for itself. Nothing works - traffic lights, bijli,
water, transport, public toilets. There is an air of irremediable squalor, an
entrenched inertia, as unremovable as the ‘paan thook’ that stains every
conceivable surface like self-generative stigmata”.
Suraiya continues: “We
add to this ugliness in our normal responses to each other. When was the last
time you smiled at a stranger you passed in the street, or he at you? … What’s
to smile about, anyway? Or say ‘Thank you’, or ‘Please’. Only sissies and
sycophants do that….We are even more beastly to animals than we are to each
other. Visit any zoo and try to figure out who should be behind bars - the
animals or the crowds who cruelly torment them? … We push and shove and
dhak and queue jump…. our ugliness has nothing to do with real or
imagined poverty. It has to do with a deep-rooted insensitivity to our
surroundings, which includes other people.” The deafening noise pollution
in urban areas, especially during festival seasons, when it goes on into the
early hours of the morning, is another feature of this civic apathy.
There is a general
atmosphere of cynicism, hypocrisy, corruption, civic apathy, selfishness,
ruthlessness, and disdain for any kind of idealism, morals, ethics, decency and
sensitivity. The primary task of any genuine Hindu Nationalist ideology
should be to change this picture, and to make Simple Living and High Thinking,
in every sense of the terms, the guiding principles of public as well as
personal life in India.
5) Finally, as emphasised
earlier, the primary aim of Hindu Nationalist socio-economic ideology should be
to represent Right against Wrong, and not to represent Right against Left: in
opposition to Capitalist ideology, and in keeping with Gandhian philosophy, the
aim should be to give primacy to the interests of the poorer and more oppressed
sections of society, and to the benefit of the greatest number.
In the last few years, in
the name of globalisation, liberalisation, and economic “reforms”, the economic
policies followed in India
have moved in the opposite direction: primacy is given, in every respect,
to the interests of the richer sections of society, and to the benefit of the
privileged few. Under the “reform” regimes, whether of the BJP or the Congress,
or even of the erstwhile “third front” which occupied the centre-stage for a
period, the rich are becoming richer and richer, and the poor are becoming
poorer and poorer, in leaps and bounds; and the economic chasm between the rich
and the poor is widening by the day.
The point is not that people
should not have the right to earn money and become rich. In fact, any society
or nation can truly progress and prosper only when every person has full
freedom and incentive to earn as much as he can, without interference
or hindrance from the state, so long as he does not indulge in criminal acts,
or destructive or anti-national activities, and does not infringe on the
legitimate rights of any other person. But, even when all these conditions
are fulfilled -
ie. even when we are talking about legitimate earnings, and not about the
illegitimate earnings of gangsters, scamsters, corrupt politicians, corrupt
bureaucrats, and criminals of every possible kind - there is something ugly,
indecent, and unethical about the kind of
disparity in earnings that we see around us today: on the one hand, we
see high profile personalities like an Amitabh Bachchan or a Sachin Tendulkar
earning in crores for an advertising assignment, or an MF Hussain earning
crores of rupees for a painting. Passing through different levels of earnings -
those earning crores of rupees per month, those earning lakhs of rupees per
month, those earning ten thousands of rupees per month, and those earning
thousands of rupees per month - we come right down to the millions of workers who work
themselves down to the bone, many for as long as ten to twelve hours per day,
or more, and earn only enough to keep their body and soul together. There are
people, even small children, working in such conditions in factories and
manufacturing units of all kinds, in fields, or as domestics in houses, all
over the country, for as little as a few hundred rupees per month, or less!
While the above situation is
undoubtedly unfair, it is not being suggested here that there should be a
French, or Bolshevik, kind of Revolution in India where the rich are caught and
slaughtered in the streets, or hung from every tree; or at least divested of
their personal properties and everyone brought down to one and the same level.
But it is at least legitimate to expect that government policies, or policies
of the state, should not be formulated for their special benefit, but for the
benefit of the poorer sections of society - the poorer the section,
the more slanted in their favour, and the richer the section, the less
slanted in their favour.
But, in the name of
liberalisation and “reforms”, the policies of the government are only becoming
more and more pro-rich and anti-poor by the day. Now, every budget sees
duties and taxes being reduced sharply on elitist goods and activities: luxury
cars, air conditioners, foreign liquor, luxury consumer goods (posh fridges,
TVs, etc.), laptops, high tech goods, foreign trips and foreign education, air
travel, etc., even as items of daily necessity for the poor and the genuine
middle classes become costlier by the day, and the common people are told by
each successive finance minister that they must be prepared to make sacrifices
in the interests of the nation and the national economy. [One example of the
trend is the continuous fall in the rates of international and long
distance phone calls in the last few years, even as local calls become costlier
all the time. Arguing in defence of the liberalisation and “reform” policies,
and in giving an illustration of how things are becoming cheaper, the editor of
a business journal, in a discussion on the NDTV news channel in the immediate
aftermath of the defeat of the BJP in the recent Lok Sabha elections, pointed
out that, if he wanted to speak to his cousin in London, a call which would earlier
have cost him eighty rupees, would now cost him only eight rupees. But
what he failed to point out was that just five years ago, a local phone call
from a public call box, operable with a one-rupee coin, lasted for five
minutes. Today, it lasts only for ninety seconds. So, for anyone wanting to
speak to his cousin, staying in another part of the same city, for around five
minutes, earlier it would have cost him one rupee, and now it
would cost him four rupees. And there have been further reductions in the rates
of international phone calls since the above discussion. In such matters, it
cannot even be claimed that an American model is being followed: in most parts
of the USA,
local calls are free! This example was about phone calls, but it is
illustrative of the “liberalised” official policy today, a la Marie Antoinette:
make elitist goods and services easier and cheaper, and the common man’s goods
and services more difficult and expensive; and as for the common man, “if he
cannot get water, let him drink coke”.].
Likewise, financial policies
are formulated solely with elitist industries in mind - namely, the entertainment
(films, “music”, fashion, cosmetics, cricket, elite journalism and media, etc.)
and info-tech industries, as opposed to basic manufacturing and farming
industries. These industries, which, even otherwise, are the centre of
attraction, for entrepreneurs and for the elitist and “upwardly mobile” youth,
for their glamour value and easy earning potential, are given special tax
rebates and concessions, and umpteen other facilities (all originally intended
for priority sectors, ie. for industries or areas in which investment and
activity was necessary for the progress of the nation, but in which
industrialists or entrepreneurs would not otherwise have been very
interested in investing or working). And the politicians in power are always
ready to demonstrate their sensitivity to the monetary concerns of the elites
in these industries: eg. the various special tax and duty exemptions given by
the finance ministers of the late BJP government to various karodpati test
cricketers, the special official concerns against video piracy, etc.
The step motherly treatment
to basic manufacturing industries (which, incidentally, is going to prove very
costly for the national economy in the long run), and the foreign economic
invasion, already referred to earlier, are leading to the closing down of mills
and factories all over the country. In combination with wholesale privatisation
of more and more public sector activities and institutions, wholesale
computerisation, and more and more anti-worker laws and policies (contract
labour, hire-and-fire, VRS and CRS schemes, etc.), there is massive loss of job
security and jobs for the poor and middle classes. If all this had been
accompanied by genuine freedom to work, earn and live according to their
talents and capacities, that would have been some compensation,
at least to the more enterprising sections among them; but as pointed out
earlier, there is genuine freedom only for foreigners, and for the elite
sections of society: for the rest, the official step-motherly treatment of
street hawkers (perhaps the oldest and most traditional examples of
self-employed people in India) and cottage industries (in urban slum areas and
in villages all over the country) today illustrates how “liberal” the Indian
economy is becoming for the common people.
All “developmental”
activities are concerned only with the rich sections of society in mind. In
Mumbai, for example, the extensive mill lands are being sold, and these
erstwhile centres of hectic industrial activity are being converted into posh
malls and elitist clubs, hotels, departmental stores and posh residential
complexes. In other parts of the city, as well, middle and lower class
residents, in their traditional areas, are being squeezed out by the powerful
builders-lobby (a mafia in itself, apart from its links with actual underground
gangs and with politicians). Massive public funds are spent on building
flyovers and constructing parking facilities for car owners, even as public
roads become increasingly car-friendly as well as hawker- and
pedestrian-unfriendly. In rural areas, massive projects are undertaken, in
which poor people are displaced from their traditional homes with little or no
compensation.
Is it any wonder that we
find, on the one hand, poor workers in urban areas committing suicide after
being thrown out of long-held jobs because the big industrial houses employing
them find it uneconomical to retain their services (the case of Anant Dalvi and
Akhtar Khan, ex-employees of Tata Power Company, in Mumbai in October 2003, for
example), and poor farmers in rural areas committing suicide after years of
drought and inability to repay their debts; and on the other hand, big
industrial houses and the rich and the powerful borrowing crores and crores of
rupees from public sector banks, failing to pay them back, declaring their
units which borrowed the money as bankrupt or otherwise getting their debts
“restructured” or written off, and continuing to enjoy multi-crore rupee
lifestyles as if nothing has happened: the Indian Express, 1/12/2002, in a
detailed investigation, reveals that such bad debts, owed by practically all
the big industrial houses, total Rs.11,00,00,00,00,000/- , which could “pay for
all our defence bills for two years, an expressway in every state, a school in
every village”.
The primary concern of
Hindu Nationalist socio-economic ideology should be to evolve an ideal model of
economic development: one which benefits all sections of society, but which
gives particular importance to the concerns and interests of the poorer, weaker
and more vulnerable sections; and which does everything to encourage initiative
and activity among all sections, but does not give unfair leeway to the rich
and the powerful to loot the public, or to loot public funds.
To sum up: we must evolve
a nationalist socio-economic ideology which will try to (1) make India a rich,
prosperous, peaceful and happy nation; and (2) see that, basically, for every
Indian, regardless of race, religion, caste, sex, profession, or any other
mark of identity, India truly becomes a land “where the mind is without
fear, and the head is held high”, in every sense of the term. The primary
guiding principle should be sarve bhavantu sukhinah, sarve santu niramayah,
sarve bhadrani pashyantu, ma kashchid duhkha bhag bhavet: “may all be
contented and happy, may all be free of pain and disease, may all ever see
auspicious times, may no-one be unhappy”.
In this respect also, as in the
case of Indian culture, it is time for genuine Indians, who are proud to call
themselves Indian, to take up the task on a war-footing.
I agree with every letter( except on Urdu) of Mr. Talageri in this brilliant essay. Humanism should be essence of Hindutva and it is great to see that we still have Hindu thinkers who care for egalitarianism and economic justice to downtrodden. Infact, apart from unprincipled ways in which BJP etc. deal with cultural issues( what it has done for Ram Temple) , a thing which really irritates me is that it is dominated by capitalists of worst hues. These people would talk about 'changes' and 'youth' and criticise any attempt at alleviating poverty or ensuring justice. American consumerism and crony capitalism are bane of 'Right Wing' ideologues in India as it shows our masses that they have nothing to gain from these people.
ReplyDeleteOn Urdu, I must say that while one might argue that Urdu is an Indian language but fact of the matter is that its impact is as ruinous as American consumerism. Not all people can be polyglots( not even one out of 100) and when our own native terms are pushed out by Perso-Arabic words in Urdu, it is deplorable. Bollywood has ensured that instead of 'Pratiksha' now people use 'Intazar'. Now I really do not think that Intezar is an 'Indian' word, Arabs who use this word are certainly not using an 'Indian' word. Here I would follow Bhartendu Harishchandra and Raghuvir.
Nonetheless, essay is brilliant, clear, coherent and calls for one of noblest forms of nationalism ever tried anywhere.
Really wonderful writing with some super analogies. Example: "...if asked whether they would like to see Christians being converted to Hinduism, they would naturally reply in the negative; but if asked whether they would have liked to see Hindus being converted to Christianity if they themselves had been Hindus, they would reply in the affirmative on the ground that Christianity is the only true religion, and conversion to Christianity is salvation from hell-fire!"
ReplyDeleteSome aspects need to be elaborated more, such as why preserving culture is so important. For a young reader, this is not as clear. Also what Gandhi may have said idealistically and what he actually was as a person are quite different things, and my bias is that he should not be referenced at all. There also seems to a pointed reference to "American" imperialism whereas it isn't actually just American.
The title of this essay feels incorrect to me. Also it would be good if another essay is written on what should be done to bring back or re-integrate converts to their original culture and how to do this in the most inclusive and respectful manner.
Overall, a worthy read.
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DeleteCulture is important because that is one's identity. As we see, Indian culture is the richest in the world in every respect. What would be "Indian" about us if we abandon this culture and become clones of other cultures, and what would we really have to be proud of if we allow this rich culture tobe impoverished?
DeleteEven a bad person may say something good: neither does it make him good, nor does it make those things bad. Hitler was a vegetarian: this neither makes him good, nor vegetarianism bad. We should take the good from everyone without falling into the trap of idolizing the person. Gandhi's sexual experiments (or "experiments with truth") even as he kept his wife in forced celibacy (and I have read somewhere that he even made the young people in his ashrams indulge in these weird acts), his destructive pro-Muslim and pro-Pakistan policies, his many hypocrisies and idiosyncracies, etc., are facts. But if the best model for a perfect socio-economic system, at least in fundamentals, can be derived from some of his ideas, that is also a fact. I need not be a fan of the Quran to appreciate the Quranic verse that, in doing charity, we should not let even the left hand know what the right hand is doing. And I do not have to be an enemy of Rama to criticize the Ramayana stories about Sita's exile and Shambuka's slaying. Personal opinions (however justified on other grounds or in other matters) should not stop us from appreciating or accepting what is good and condemning what is bad.
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