We did not need the latest riots in Aligarh, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad to show that our ‘secular’ order is in deep trouble. This has been evident for years and, indeed, decades, even if many of us have refused to recognise the reality and come to grips with it. For instance, we witnessed terrible riots in 1961 when Nehru was still around and the Chinese had not yet delivered their stunning blow. That came in November 1962.
It is possible to apportion blame now, as it has been in the past. In fact, the exercise is on. But I regard that essentially futile and even counter-productive. For it only helps divert attention from the central issue which should occupy our attention. That central issue, as I see it, is whether or not the Nehru order as a whole, not just its ‘secular’ aspect, is in good shape. Or at least in good enough shape to be salvaged, or whether we need to rethink its basic premises.
For me, the latter is the case. As I have written more than once in recent months, the existing order is in a state of decomposition. It cannot be salvaged and restored to health. It can, of course, linger on, but only to our peril.
I regard ‘Nehru order’ and ‘existing order’ interchangeable on two counts. First, Nehru presided over the construction of the post-independence polity; surely no one will seriously challenge this proposition. Secondly, his approach has dominated the Indian scene ever since. While his successors may not have lived up to his standards in terms of personal rectitude and respect for norms in both the private and the public domain, they have, broadly speaking, operated within the parameters laid down by him.
Like Marxists and Communists, we too can engage in hair-splitting. But they have been overtaken by events and we face a similar danger. For them, it is no longer pertinent to argue whether Lenin was true to Marx and Stalin to Lenin. The collapse of the system has rendered such debates meaningless. So for us too, it is a waste of time and effort to discuss whether Indira Gandhi was true to Nehru and Rajiv to Indira Gandhi. Like the Soviets, we are facing the moment of truth. The Nehru model has exhausted its potentiality for good.
The Nehru structure has stood mainly on four pillars in conceptual terms – democracy, socialism, secularism and non-alignment. That much is obvious enough to be beyond dispute. But what is not equally obvious is the fact that these concepts have been inter-linked. Nehru’s was an integrated worldview. As such, it is only logical that if one of them becomes dysfunctional, the other three must get into trouble. In my opinion, they have.
Parliamentary democracy as such has, by and large, been regarded as given and has, therefore, not attracted much sustained criticism. Jayaprakash Narayan was unhappy with the way it was functioning in respect of the needs of the common people and looked for an alternative. That exercise, however, ended in smoke so much so JP himself later came to concentrate his attention on the single issue of corruption in public life. Similarly, there has from time to time been talk of the need to change over to the presidential system. But that too has petered out every time.
Even so, it cannot be disputed that the quality of our democracy has deteriorated to a point where it has become common to speak of criminalisation of politics and point out at the number of legislators, especially in Bihar and UP, with criminal charges against them.
It has been recognised for long that the licence-permit raj of which C. Rajagopalachari, first and last Indian Governor-General, spoke so eloquently, has been responsible not only for much of the corruption in our public life and enormous expansion of the bureaucracy but also for the slow rate of economic growth. This, in turn, has aggravated social tensions and imposed enormous burdens on the state apparatus. Thus, there have been demands for reducing controls and liberalising the economy.
But the point is not generally recognised in our country that behind socialism, however it is defined and practised, stands the concept of an interventionist state charged with the task of remaking society, yes, nothing less. Such a state cannot, by definition, be a liberal state because in liberal state the emphasis has to be on the liberty and the inalienable right of an individual to property and prosperity and not on social transformation a la the Mandal Commission report.
Mandalism is not a bastard child of Nehru’s socialism; the former is a legitimate offspring of the latter, even if an unwanted one, just as the primacy of the politics of counting of heads over that of genuine liberalism is the inevitable product of the sudden adoption of adult franchise.
The interventionist state is also the unsuspected link between socialism, of whatever variety, and secularism. Secularisation of the mind and therefore of life and politics has doubtless been a ‘natural’ process in the West; it dates back at least to the Renaissance in the fifteenth century, if not to the twelfth when Christian theology came to be deeply influenced by a newly rediscovered Aristotle; and it could not have succeeded if the European man had not come to take a mechanical (Cartesian) view of life and if science had not taken a wholly materialistic turn.
In an India not only not exposed to the same type of developments but not liable to be so exposed in view of the surviving strength of its civilisation, secularisation could occur naturally mainly among the Westernised and alienated intelligentsia.
Despite all his talk of the need to cultivate the scientific temper (read secularisation of the mind on the European pattern as he was not even vaguely aware that non-European civilisations too, were rational in their own different way), Nehru, however, baulked at the first obstacle he ran into. While he pushed the Hindu Code Bill through Parliament, he did not dare enact a common civil code for all Indian citizens because the Muslims would not accept it.
In its ill-conceived enthusiasm for ‘social reforms’, the Hindu intelligentsia has taken a dim view of Muslim resistance on this score. I for one have not shared and do not share this view. I have believed and I believe that Muslims are entitled to adhere to the Shariat in respect of their Personal Law.
Indeed, on reflection, I have come to take the view that resistance to intervention by the state in social matters has come from Muslims because they were not pulverised by the British colonial state and that upper crust Hindus yielded tamely to Nehru because they had been so pulverised by Muslim rule that they were more than willing to be seduced by the British and their ways.
Of course, there had arisen before Partition a Westernised intelligentsia among Muslims too. But, as we know only too well, they had opted for the concept of Muslim nationalism, won Pakistan and gone there. And may I add that they have not prevailed there over the mullahs.
Traumatised by the fact of Partition, Hindu intellectuals have not been willing to recognise, even in retrospect, that Westernised Muslims, led by Jinnah, could not have mobilised their brethren except on the twin slogans of ‘Islam in danger’ and the need for a ‘Muslim homeland’. This point is pertinent because implicit in this is also the failure to realise that modernised Muslims could not command mass support among the Muslim populace in independent India and that, as such, they could not, together with the Hindu intelligentsia, serve as a bridge between Hindus and Muslims.
There are, of course, educated Muslims who are reasonably comfortable in both environs, but they are certainly more comfortable in the Hindu environment than in the Muslim one. In the deepest psychological sense, their situation is tragic.
Nehru and his successors have, of course, not pursued the logic of their ‘commitment’ to secularism in the positive sense the Soviets did till recently. Indeed, they have taken the absurd position that secularism need not involve secularisation of the mind and interpreted it to mean equal respect for all religions. But thereby have they pursued the logic of their ‘commitment’ in the negative sense, perhaps without being aware of it. By establishing parity between all religions, they have denied the primacy of Hindu civilisation in predominantly Hindu India.
This too is an intervention in the natural order of things, and it has been a pretty dangerous intervention in that it has denied us a link with our past, which every society needs for self-definition, self-respect and self-promotion. Surprising though it may appear, this has been particularly bad for Muslims.
In view of the negation of the civilisational framework, they have not known what is expected of them. Or else, they would not have countenanced mass conversion of Harijans to Islam by mullahs, flush with petro-dollars, in Meenakshipuram in 1981 and much else subsequently.
To return to the integrated nature of Nehru’s worldview, his concept of non-alignment was not the product of just his desire to stay out of the Cold War. Indeed, that desire itself was not only an expression of a specific Indian need in the given situation of the East-West competition; it was much more. Nehru was looking for a via media between what he thought were capitalism and communism.
The concept of non-alignment was as much the result of this search as that of socialism which admitted of private enterprise even if a controlled one.
That is one reason why he could not abandon it in 1962 when, contrary to the Marxist theory of imperialism, a socialist country (China) attacked another (India), and Asian leaders of the non-aligned movement – Nasser and Sukarno – failed to extend moral support to non-aligned India in the hour of her need.
It is neither possible nor necessary to speculate meaningfully on the likely course of events if a conventional, genuinely liberal polity had come into existence in our country in 1947 and allowed to operate as such. Not possible because the variables are too many to cope with. Not necessary because the “ifs” and “buts” of history cannot change the existing situation. Which is what concerns us.
Surely no Indian can find much solace in it. That India faces the kind of peril it does is commentary enough on the order which many of us are still seeking to perpetuate in the name of secularism and social justice.
No, the present order cannot be restored to health. The era to which it belonged is itself over. The first and fullest embodiment, the Soviet Union, lies prostrate in a state of coma waiting to be rescued by those it had set out to bury.
A new order has to arise if India is to survive and prosper. The question, therefore, is whether the intelligentsia is prepared to participate in its creation and thereby help reduce the pain and agony that inevitably accompany a new creation. Right now, it is stuck in its old ways of thought and action. It parrots worn-out slogans even when the evidence of their irrelevance, and worse, lies scattered in the shape of burnt homes and shops, mutilated bodies and acts of self-immolation all over the land.
Sunday Mail, 16 December 1990