The all-consuming debates on Indian national identity started well before the country’s independence and they have continued since but under the primeministership of Narendra Modi these dialogues have become sharper and occasionally so toxic that it is threatening the very foundational values of the Indian State. The Hindu extreme right groups, Modi’s most vocal supporters, also termed ultra-nationalists, fervently believe that India’s natural destiny is that of a Hindu nation, repudiating the holy grail of diversity, pluralism and the syncretic culture enshrined in the country’s constitution.
A more benign view of this churn can be that India, a relatively young nation forged out of an old civilisation is likely to go through these growing up pains. A nation carved out of a civilisation that claims it is timeless and rooted in a philosophy that says the concept of time is both linear and cyclical, and that all of life repeats itself in endless loops will face formidable challenges. A civilisation birthed in a sacred geography, is bound to encounter existential threats when it collides with the concept of a modern nation state.
Diana Eck’s India: A Sacred Geography says: “Considering its long history, India has had but a few hours of political and administrative unity. Its unity as a nation, however, has been firmly constituted by the sacred geography it has held in common and revered: its mountains, forests, rivers, hilltop shrines. For Hindus, as also for many Indian Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, India is a holy land. The actual soil of India is thought by many rural Hindus to be the residence of divinity and, in villages, across India, is worshipped as such the body of the Goddess. The features of the Indian landscape are understood to be her physical features. Her landscape is not dead but alive, and littered with tirthas, crossing places between different worlds, “linked with the tracks of pilgrimage”.
This ongoing identity crisis is better sensed from a recent happening in Delhi when the Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma abolished the name of the Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi and decreed that it be repainted with the name of a less offensive Muslim — Aurangzeb is denigrated in India as a religious fanatic who sought to violently oppress Hindus in contrast to his predecessors — the late Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam. The culture minister then went onto say “I don’t think Aurangzeb was an ideal person, so Aurangzeb Road has been named after a great man, who, despite being a Muslim, was a nationalist and a humanist”. This set off a firestorm among the secularists and those schooled by Macaulay historians; these writers are also mockingly labelled as Marxian and Nehruvian historians by the Hindu right for they are deeply offended by Nehru’s expression ‘Discovery of India, implying that ancient India never existed. They also believe notions like composite and syncretic culture are artificial constructs, a dog whistle, to appease the Muslims: put simply, history writing dominated by left leaning intellectuals has been self-serving and bent to serve the vote bank politics of the Congress Party. These nationalists also take umbrage when chroniclers assert that modern India is essentially a post-colonial creation: And that ideas like democracy, and universal rights of man are all imports from the West. This is anathema to the Hindu right who affirm that ancient India was the repository of all knowledge and wisdom.
Eck’s book lends credence to some of this thinking though not to all of it, namely that this sacred land called Bharat, the ancient name of India and named after the great emperor from the Puranas-pre-historic times — existed from time immemorial and this land lying to north of the ocean and the south of the snowy Himalayas has been inhabited by the emperor’s descendants since antiquity. And that the emperor had conquered all of Greater India and united it into a single political entity, therefore all those who reside in this land — Bharat — owe their lineage to the emperor. Ergo belong to his faith; ergo are Hindus; ergo people of other faiths are either outsiders or converts. This is precisely what the nationalists have been clamouring for years with the secularists accusing them of peddling snake oil to ferment sectarianism.
Meanwhile read what Jawaharlal Nehru, the ultimate secularist, writes “The Himalayas have always dominated Indian life, just as they have dominated the Indian landscape …. The earliest Sanskrit texts makes it clear that the Himalayas formed the frontier of India …. and reference to the Himalayas is in the Rig Veda …. It states that the Himalayas symbolise all mountains …. and the Puranas speak of Uma the daughter of the Himalayas”. As per Eck, Nehru is ‘asserting scriptural sanction for the antiquity of India’s northern border’, she then goes onto say ‘He was, in one sense, thoroughly secular in his orientation, yet his sensibilities were significantly grounded in the symbolic sacred geography of India.
Perhaps the Nehruvian historians need a closer reading of Eck’s book and unyoke Indian history writing from Marx and Macaulay. Equally, ultra-nationalists need a closer reading of Nehru. In Modi’s India, denigrating Nehru is in fashion and so it is worth remembering his famous line ‘India is an ancient palimpsest, on which successive rulers and subjects had inscribed their visions without erasing what had been asserted previously’.
The evolving Indian identity is undoubtedly at a cross roads, whether it be centred in a syncretic culture or immersed in a Hindu nation. And this desire for a monochromatic identity and acceptance of a streak of authoritarianism is driven by India’s middle classes. They believe disruption of social harmony and a little loss of liberty is the price to be paid for attaining a world power status; oblivious to the fact that the country is ranked at 131 on Human Development Index, below war torn Iraq. And that social harmony is a public good more valuable than gleaming motorways and bullet trains and absolutely critical if it has to improve its HDI ranking.
Ravi Menon is a Dubai-based writer, working on a series of essays on India and on a public service initiative called India Talks.
