It is possible to take the view that Nehru put aside the issue of the pre-eminence of Hindu civilisation because he was convinced that Hindus needed first to overcome the weakness resulting from their lag in the field of science and technology. Nehru, it may also be recalled, spoke frequently of the need to overcome “superstition” and to cultivate the scientific temper. He did not identify Hindus as his target audience. But they were his target audience.
It is inconceivable that Nehru was not sensitive to Muslim resistance to modernisation and secularisation. Indeed, it can safely be assumed that he left them alone in respect of their personal law precisely because he was aware of the depth of their opposition. Perhaps he expected that their attitude would change in course of time under the pressure of forces unleashed by the spread of education, economic development and the democratic political process. Alternatively, it is possible that he was too busy managing the affairs of the state of India to be able to pay attention to this problem.
Action Programme
Nehru spoke often of the need for “national integration”. But if he ever defined what that called for by way of change among Muslims in practical terms, I am not aware. The addresses quoted earlier do not contain an action programme. He denounced communalism. He was particularly harsh on what he called Hindu communalism on the ground, as he explained in a letter to Dr KN Katju, at one stage his home minister, that it would be far more dangerous in view of the power of the Hindus in independent India. In reality his perspective provided for nothing nobler than co-existence between Hindus and Muslims. His was basically a programme which would help avoid riots which understandably revolted him as they did other sensitive Indians.
It is beyond question that no issue occupied so much of Nehru’s time and energy as Kashmir. This was clearly an obsession with him so much so that it would be no exaggeration to say that he allowed his whole foreign policy to be heavily influenced by it.
As is well known, Nehru effectively used the Kashmir issue to silence his critics. It is truly remarkable that as India’s position in the state became precarious, necessitating the overthrow and imprisonment of Sheikh Abdullah and maintenance by New Delhi of one corrupt regime after another in Srinagar, the more successful was Nehru in using the Kashmir card at home.
Clearly the Indian people acquiesced in this self-deception. The psychology behind this acquiescence needs to be explored. It, however, seems to me that our presence in Kashmir served as a substitute for the cultural self-assertion for Hindus, especially for the Western-educated elite engaged, albeit unconsciously, in a desperate search for a phoney substitute. In plain terms, Nehru or no Nehru, we have not been ready for a genuine cultural self-affirmation.
The Nehru order, however, did not rest on the secular pillar alone. Instead, it has stood on five pillars in conceptual terms – nationalism, democracy, socialism, secularism and non-alignment – and these concepts have been inter-linked. Nehru’s was an integrated world view. As such, it is only logical that if one of them becomes dysfunctional, the other four must get into trouble. In my opinion, they have.
Socialism was dearly central to Nehru’s world view, for it shaped his views on nationalism, democracy, secularism and non-alignment as well. Nehru was the first Congress leader to define nationalism in terms of anti-imperialism and link anti-imperialism to the Soviet leadership’s effort to fight capitalism both at home and abroad.
No significant non-Marxist Congress leader bought this proposition when Nehru began to propound it in the ’twenties because they were opposed to socialism at home. But they could not product an alternative definition of nationalism for the simple reason that they could not explicitly link it with the country’s cultural past for fear of offending the Muslims. So finally Nehru’s formulations prevailed.
The triumph became complete when he came to dominate both the ruling party (after Sardar Patel’s death in 1950) and the government and gave an anti-Western tilt to the country’s foreign policy in the name of non-alignment.
For Nehru, freedom was meaningful mainly if it paved the way for economic growth. He said so publicly again and again. Similarly, for him, democracy was meaningful if it facilitated movement towards economic and social equality. His was a commitment not so much to liberal democracy which prizes liberty more than equality as to democratic socialism which reverses the order of priorities. Nehru did not play havoc with the Constitution in his search for socialism. He was too imbued with the spirit of liberalism to do that.
But by emphasising equality and in the process undermining the concept of the liberty of the individual, he created an atmosphere in which it became possible for his successors, Indira Gandhi foremost among them, to play with the Constitution and the constitutional arrangement. The emergency would have been inconceivable if demagogues, sired by Nehru, however unwittingly, had not prepared the ground.
Socialism was dearly the linchpin of the Nehru system and that the system cannot possibly survive the disappearance of this linchpin. The linchpin has disappeared.
The collapse of the Soviet system and state and the opening of the Chinese economy to multinationals would by themselves have settled the issue. As it happens, the threat of bankruptcy as a result of the mismanagement of the economy has forced the government of India to execute a volte face. It has abandoned all the dogmas and shibboleths of the Nehru-Indira Gandhi era.
Ideological Debris
This inevitably raises the question as to what kind of India is likely to emerge out of the ideological debris. An attempt to answer this question must involve recognition of the fact that India has not been master of its destiny for a whole millennium. Since the beginning of the raids by Mahmud Ghaznavi in the 11th century up to the time of the raid by Nadir Shah in the middle of the 18th century, developments in India were, for instance, deeply influenced by what happened in the Muslim world.
Similarly, the rise and expansion of Europe from the beginning of the 16th century and the consequent retreat of Muslim power determined in substantial measure the course of Indian history from the 18th to the middle of the 20thcentury. As it need hardly be noted that from the time of independence in 1947 till now, the cold war had made a deep impact on our fortunes. It follows that events outside India will influence the course of events in our country in the coming years and decades.
With the end of the Cold War, a euphemism for globalisation of the struggle for dominance and submergence in it of local and regional conflicts, the latter are likely to re-emerge. Ethnic differences would figure prominently in these conflicts. Civilisationsal differences which had been pushed into the background by the East-West ideological conflict would to tend come to the fore again. As such it would not be possible for the Indian elite to sidestep the question of the cultural content of nationalism.
(Concluded)
The Times of India, 15 November 1991