The Hindu civilization is different from other great civilizations – Christian-Western and Arab Islamic – in one significant respect. Unlike them, it is virtually confined to one geographical area – the present-day India. And since the Hindus happen to be in an overwhelming majority in that area, it can, indeed must serve as the basis of an Indian national community and identity.
This proposition is, however, not widely accepted, the general view being that the Hindu civilization has not served such a role. This view finds expression in the talk of Hindu communalism and Hindu backlash on the one hand and of a Hindu Rashtra on the other. Whether we realise it or not, these are two faces of the same coin. If the first proposition implies that the Hindus have taken, or are about to take, to sectarianism which would exclude the followers of other religions from full membership of the Indian national community, the second suggests that the Hindus have been deprived of their rightful place in “their own country”, in the same name of secularism.
Commentators have, by and large, been divided into two rival camps on this issue. While the “secularists”, Hindu or non-Hindus, have spotlighted the supposed danger of a Hindu backlash, the Hindu “communalists” have been tireless in their condemnation of Nehru who, in their view, imposed secularism on the country and thereby denied the Hindus their due. To the best of our knowledge, no one has disputed the validity of the two propositions simultaneously. Yet this is precisely what needs to be done, if we are to gain a proper perspective on modern Indian history.
Hindu Creation
Independent India is essentially a Hindu creation and, as any honest observer will concede, it seeks to be a liberal-humanist order which is committed not to discriminate against the non-Hindus. Thus both cries of a Hindu backlash and a betrayal of the national heritage are misplaced. The Hindus are not about to engage in a systematic persecution of the minorities and they have not been denied, indeed they could not have been denied, an opportunity to shape India according to their genius.
To establish the proper context, in which this debate can be meaningful, we have to go back to the 18th century. This period, extending into the 19th and even the 20th century, witnessed developments of great importance in our country, which it is virtually impossible to discuss in this article. Here we can only mention some of them.
This period witnessed the disintegration of the Moghul empire and the emergence of a revivalist movement among the Muslims (the two coincided), the assertion of Hindu power on a regional basis (the Marathas in Western India, the Bhumihars in the Banaras region and the Jat Sikhs in North-Western India, for example), steady expansion of the East India Company’s political and military power leading finally to its complete ascendancy in the sub-continent, and reform movements among the Hindus at once exposed them to Western (including Christian) ideas and ideals and enabled them to protect themselves against Christian proselytisation.
The Muslim chieftains played a major role in bringing about the downfall of the Moghul empire. But this fact is not particularly relevant for a discussion of subsequent developments. We are principally concerned with the Hindu reassertion, the steady decline of Muslim hegemony, cultural and political, the accompanying revivalist-fundamentalist movement among them, the triumph of the British East India Company and the difference in the Hindu and Muslim response to the consolidation of British power and the ideas and ideals that come with it.
Thus while the Muslim elite tended to withdraw into a shell and to emphasise its religious-cultural character, a section of the Hindu elite, such as it was, took to Western ideas and ways with some enthusiasm. Similarly, unlike among the Hindus, there was no reform movement among the Muslims which sought to introduce them to Western ideas and ideals and to persuade them to adjust themselves to the new dominant world culture. The Muslims later took to Western education but in a spirit of defensiveness. Their behaviour took an aggressive form vis-a-vis the Hindus, leading to the country’s partition. But vis-a-vis the West they remained on the defensive.
Power Realities
Nothing like an all-India Hindu community or elite existed up to the later part of the 19th century. The Hindu challenge to Muslim power was regional in character. It is doubtful whether they could have prevailed on their own, if the British had not moved in, to take over the governance of India and whether one united India could have emerged as a result of the Hindu assertion.
The all-India Hindu elite, as we have known it for over 100 years, emerged as a result of developments listed above; being the product of Western education and social reform movements this elite looked forward, rather than backward, for self-fulfilment; if it did not disown its ancient heritage, it initiated and welcomed radical changes in the Hindu social arrangement; it sought to justify these changes in terms of India’s own heritage, but the changes were, without question, inspired by Western ideas and practices. Finally, the Hindu elite sought salvation for itself and the Hindu society in the Western concept of a modem nation-state and not in a return to a mythical golden age. In other words, the Hindu elite sought to make a political community out of the Hindu society. The Indian National Congress was to be the principal instrument for achieving this goal.
These developments defined the power realities on the ground, but not the debate. The issue towards the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century was, therefore, not whether or not the Hindus and the Muslims had co-operated to forge a composite culture, or the extent to which the Hindu environment had continued to influence the lives of those who had got converted to Islam. The power balance had shifted in favour of the Hindu elite and against the Muslim elite. The issue, therefore, was whether the Muslim elite was willing to accept not only the new West-inspired idea-value system, but also the leadership of the Hindu elite.
For the Muslim elite, the two issues of modernisation (westernisation) and acceptance of the Hindu elite leadership were not interlinked. Indeed, Sayyid Ahmed Khan, the ideological father of separatism, leading to the formation of Pakistan, proposed that the Muslims modernise and cooperate with the British in order to be able to resist the Hindu elite leadership and demand for the right to self-rule, which to him was synonymous with Hindu rule. The dominant view among the tradition-bound ulemas, on the other hand, was that they resist modernisation and British power and cooperate with the Congress. As we know, the modernisers won, and the traditionalists lost the battle among the Muslims, in the political realm but only in the political realm. A reversal of fortunes, too, would have created serious problems for the country’s political order. But that is a different issue, which does not concern us in this article.
Be that as it may, the ascendancy of modernised Hindus was, in a sense, a natural product of the new power configuration arising out of the decline of the Moghul empire and the consolidation of the British rule. The British, as is well known, tried to frustrate this ascendancy. They conceded separate electorate to the Muslim League with that end in view, in 1906 and subsequently took a number of other steps. But they failed.
The reasons for this failure of the British design have not been investigated in India, because we have not even recognised that the British failed in their design. We have been so traumatised, quite rightly, by the fact of partition, that we have not paused and asked ourselves whether a worse fate would not have overtaken us, if, instead of being polarised along religious/communal lines, the country had been organised by the British on the basis of language and its political evolution directed along those lines.
Partition Trauma
The Government of India Act of 1935 could have promoted developments along those frightening lines, if World War II had not intervened and unleashed a chain of events which cumulatively overwhelmed the 1935 Act. Surprisingly though it may appear, Jinnah’s role was perhaps crucial in this regard. In the negotiations for the transfer of power, he blocked the so-called Punjab solution, whereby provinces were to be grouped on a religious basis and given the right to secede and whereby the Centre’s powers were to be severely restricted.
The partition, however unfortunate and fearful in its consequences, could however, have only placed the ascendancy of the Hindu elite beyond challenge and Nehru’s concept of secularism, however defined, could not have undermined it. In fact, it has not been undermined. Nothing could illustrate this point better than the fact that the politically relevant divides in the country – the Dalits versus the non-Dalits, the so-called backward castes vis-a-vis the “progressive” castes and Hindi versus English as the link language – are intra-Hindu divides and not Hindu-non-Hindu ones.
It is possible that Nehru could not overcome the trauma of the partition and that he, therefore, thought and acted defensively. Alternatively, he either failed to recognise the simple truth that nationalism can never be culturally neutral or that he sincerely believed that India’s cultural traditions were too diverse to serve as the basis of Indian nationalism. Anyway Indian nationalism remains un-rooted which is what gives the self-conscious Hindu a feeling of deprivation.
The Times of India, 12 November 1986