It is not particularly surprising either that ‘secular’ nationalism and ‘Hindu’ nationalism should be treated by a number of Westernized intellectuals as if they were polar opposites or that their hostility towards the principal exponent of Hindu nationalism, the Bharatiya Janata Party, should have become unusually sharp and bitter in the context of the current controversy over the Ram Janambhoomi issue.
I have followed the writings of some of these intellectuals over the years and, if my memory serves me right, I have seldom found them cognizant of the self-evident proposition that nationalism cannot, by definition, be culturally neutral; that it must, of necessity, bear the impress of the culture of the dominant majority: that it is precisely when an old cultural tradition is distilled through the complex process known as secularization that a society is ready to become a nation, and that in the final analysis, secularization and culture-based nationalism are complementary rather than antithetical.
It is also evident that many of them have not cared to pay even passing attention to the Arab example, though they have been enthusiastic supporters of Arab nationalism, particularly during the Nasser era. Or else, they would not have displayed the kind of attitude they have towards the very concept of Hindu nationalism. So it would be in order for me to quote a couple of paragraphs from A History of Islamic Societies by Ira M. Lapidus (Cambridge University Press). Lapidus writes: … “Islam still plays a substantial role in the identity of Arab peoples. Arab consciousness is still bound up with Islam. Arab nationalist thinkers of 1920s and 1930s stressed the virtual identity of Arabism and Islam. The vocabulary of Arab nationalism is infused with words such as Umma (community of Muslims) and milla (religious community) which have strong religious overtones but are used to express national solidarity. Furthermore, they equated the ideals of Islam with the ideals of Arab nationalism; Muhammad was regarded as the founding father. Even Christian writers considered Arabism and Islam to be two expressions of the same ideal…
“The common people follow the nationalist thinkers in identifying the Arab nation with Islam. For them to be an Arab is still primarily to be a Muslim, to share the revelation of the Quran and the glory of the Arab conquests. In this loyalty there is a strong instinct to defend Islam against Christianity… The rhetoric may be nationalist but the emotional identifications are Islamic…”
Arab nationalism is, of course, not another name either for pan-Islamism or for revivalism and fundamentalism. On the contrary, Arab nationalism was born in the struggle against Ottoman (Muslim) rule and it has faced opposition from the ulema, other religious functionaries and advocates of a return to early Islamic ideals and practices. Indeed, it has meant the disestablishment of Islam insofar as the critical issue of the application of the Sharia is concerned. To quote Lapidus again: “Even when Sharia principles continue to be accepted they have been profoundly modified by new legal procedures. Eclectic combinations of Sharia law codes with Western criterion for evidence, cross-examination, and appellate jurisdiction have changed the actual administration of Sharia law. The effect of legal reform is to accept the modernist view that law is not eternally fixed and that it is subject to reformulation in terms of contemporary circumstances and state interests.”
By the logic of the Arab example, Indian nationalism has to be Hindu nationalism in effect. There are, of course, significant differences. Hinduism, for example, does not need to be ‘disestablished’ in the cause of nationalism since Hindus do not possess either a tradition comparable to the Sharia which binds them together in anything like an umma, or a body of pandits a la the Muslim ulema anxious and in a position to enforce it; indeed, codification of Hindu laws on the basis of Manusmriti is a British handiwork; the Hindu approach to law is essentially contextual. Indeed, in the wake of the establishment of British rule arose among Hindus a large number of lawyers with a stake in the extension of British laws and practices; these men were to play a leading part in the rise of Indian nationalism.
Hindus had barely been able to cope with the Islamic-Muslim problem, and that, too, on a region-to-region basis and substantially on Muslim terms in that dominant groups in north India and western India had taken to Muslim ways of behaviour, when they came to be confronted with the Western-Christian challenge. If the rise of British power meant a steady relegation to the background of the hitherto ruling Muslims and of Islamized Hindus, it also meant the emergence of a new class of men who owed their personal fortunes to that power and came to be inclined to think more in Western terms than in traditional terms. Men like Raja Rammohun Roy, the Tagores and others associated with what is called the Bengal renaissance belonged to this new class.
Books and articles enough to constitute a sizeable library have been written on this and related issues which it would be absurd for me to try to sum up in this article. That is just not possible. Pertinent for the purpose of the present discussion is the striking parallelism in the Hindu response to the Muslim and the British conquest and rule. They at once sought accommodation with the fact of British power by taking to British ways and asserting themselves gradually, accepting broadly the status of a junior partner. More often than not, the two tendencies coexisted in the same individual. They were to constitute two faces, as it were, of nationalism in India.
After the consolidation of British rule all over the country with the collapse of the ill-organised rebellion in 1857, Hindus found themselves faced with two struggles – a new one with the British and the old one with Muslims. While some of their leaders emphasized the importance of one, the others gave priority to the second; quite often the same individual gave priority to one goal at one time and to the other at another. Lala Lajpat Rai, for instance. It would be in order to recall in this connection that the movements for cow protection and replacement of Persianised Urdu by Sankritised Hindi arose at about the same time as the Indian National Congress and they grew alongside the Congress up to the twenties when the party leadership, especially Jawaharlal Nehru, produced a culturally neutral and wholly economic definition of nationalism.
Muslims too found themselves locked in a two-way struggle with Hindus and the British. While it would be patently wrong to suggest that, in course of time, all Muslims opted for reconciliation with the British since men like Maulana Azad and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan stuck to the Congress in its anti-imperialist struggle, it is impossible to deny that by the turn of the 19th century the dominant trend among Muslims was one of seeking cooperation with the Raj and concentrating on the fight with Hindus, leading finally to partition in 1947.
Hindus did not, and indeed could not possibly, take a similar decision. They had to get rid of the British if they were to come into their own and affirm themselves. This involved them in an endless effort to rewrite the history of Muslim rule and to win over Muslims. The effort failed, as it had to fail. The British, of course, pursued a divide-and-rule policy with particular ruthlessness during World War II when the Congress opposed them and they built up Jinnah. But it is less than honest for us to go on pretending that this was the sole cause for partition. Indeed, they tried to arrange a compromise “solution” which would, in my view, have surely been a worse disaster than partition for Hindus. Contrary to the deliberately fostered and widespread impression, the unity of Bharat Varsha is a vital constituent of the race memory of Hindus. They would have gone to any length to preserve this unity before independence so much so that the Congress accepted the principle of parity with the Muslim League for the formation of the interim government in 1946 and decided to opt for partition only when the experience of working with the League convinced its leaders that it was a hopeless enterprise.
Unity of what remained of Bharat Varsha in 1947 has remained an article of faith for Hindus ever since. As before independence, they have been willing to go to any length to accommodate Muslims and other religious minorities. The concept of secularism has provided the framework in which this effort has been made.
This worked reasonably well so long as the Congress party’s hegemony in the political life of the country was assured, though even then it ran into trouble in Punjab where the Akalis demanded, to begin with, Khalistan and then in Jammu and Kashmir where Sheikh Abdullah had to be overthrown from the office of Prime Minister, as the Chief minister there was then called, and arrested (1953). Since 1967 when the Congress hegemony first broke down, the approach has not worked well. Now it appears as if it has exhausted its possibilities, thanks at least partly to V.P. Singh’s wholly opportunistic and unprincipled approach to power.
The concept of secularism and the secularization process have not been a Hindu monopoly. Members of other religious groups have also pursued it but essentially as individuals. Muslims as a group have certainly shunned the concept as well as the process to the extent they can in a larger modernizing and therefore secularizing society. This is evident from the rapid expansion of traditional mosque-attached madrasas, opposition to one common civil code and adherence to the Sharia. Faith can never be a private affair for most Muslims. As such, political parties and leaders have to woo them as Muslims. This has inevitably produced a backlash of which the Ram Janambhoomi issue has become one major expression.
I do not criticize Muslims for their reluctance and even refusal to take to the secularization process. Nor can I applaud Hindus for their participation in this process. For while the spirit of liberalism and pluralism which the West represents are alien to Islam as it has developed since the 11th century when orthodox ulema triumphed over philosophers, Sufis and other kinds of innovators, they are in conformity with Hinduism which revels in plurality. But this divergence creates a serious problem for both, which the self-proclaimed secularists have refused steadfastly to face.
This escapism is not a post-independence phenomenon; it has dominated Congress politics since the twenties when Nehru made the astounding statement that “the whole basis and urge of the national movement came from the desire for economic betterment, to throw off the burdens that crushed the masses and to end the exploitation of the people” as if British rule would have been acceptable if it did not involve economic exploitation, as in fact it did not on a significant scale after World War I when the British capacity to invest in India declined sharply.
But this escapism was understandable in the pre-independence period. It has not been equally easy to appreciate its logic since. It is, however, unfair to criticize Nehru or any other individual for it. By and large it has, for much of the post-independence period, conformed to the dominant view of the dominant section of the Hindu elite. The real, as Hegel said, is rational. Things are what they are because in the given interplay of forces they could not possibly have shaped differently. And, it is the correlation of forces that shapes history and not ideology. On the contrary, an ideology itself is a product of those forces.
Indian nationalism did not become culturally neutral just because Nehru defined it in that way. Indeed, he himself was not culturally neutral; his Discovery of India bears testimony to an intense longing for his roots; that finally he failed to find them and own them up is a different matter. But the definition and the policies flowing from it have created grave difficulties which are threatening to overwhelm us all, Muslims as much as Hindus.
Finally, as Arab consciousness is tied up with Islam, Indian consciousness is tied up with Hinduism. Arabs need to be consciously modern to be able to accommodate Christians. To Hindus such accommodation comes naturally. By way of example I might mention the fact that one of the two dvarpalas (gate-keepers) in scores of temples to Draupadi in the Gingee region in Tamil Nadu is clearly a Muslim figure. He is offered a non-vegetarian meal and even sports a Fez cap in certain places.
Sunday Mail, 18 November 1990