>"I don't believe so much in Gandhi's policy of just showing the other
>cheek," said Pachiasia, a 47-year-old Montessori teacher. "I think now
>Indians are more aware that we should have fought for our freedom. I
>see how the Americans celebrate the Fourth of July. Mentally, we are
>still in the chains of the British Raj.
This is imaginary Gandhi and imaginary freedom struggle. Take a look at the following piece "Fighting With Father" for an assessment of another historical figure, Nehru and his secular credentials. :)
Ulhas
HindustanTimes.com
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Fighting with Father
The Big Idea | Ramachandra Guha
June 14
A recent issue of the National Review, the new political monthly published from New Delhi, carried interviews with both Lal Krishna Advani and Ashok Mitra. Here are two men united by history but divided by politics. Both come from parts of India that now lie in other countries:
Advani from Hyderabad in Pakistan, Mitra from Dhaka in Bangladesh. Both are men of intelligence and austerity, both widely read and passionate about their beliefs. Both joined politics to implement their ideas, rather than to make a name or career. And both have clung steadfast to their early beliefs, standing out for their consistency in a world in which other politicians change colours as readily as a chameleon.
There the parallels end. The events of the Forties, culminating in Partition, affected both men very differently. Advani joined the RSS, and after 20 years of dogged service in its ranks, was seconded to the Jan Sangh. That party has since changed its name, but all through, Advani has been widely regarded as the most 'hardline' among its leaders.
Where the war years made Advani into a religious Rightist, Mitra emerged from them a secular Leftist. To begin with, however, he chose an academic rather than a political career. After doing a PhD in the Netherlands, he returned to India, to work for many years as a professional economist, writing books and papers. It was only after the victory of the Left Front in the West Bengal assembly elections of 1977 that he joined politics. For more than ten years, he was finance minister in the state government. His resignation, and subsequent distancing from the inner circles of the party, was widely believed to be a consequence of what he saw as the CPI(M)'s departure from classical Marxist principles. Like Advani, Mitra is also a purist; both men are, in the dictionary (that is, non-pejorative) sense of the word, 'doctrinaire'.
I think that the political lives of Advani and Mitra would make a wonderful diptych - a double biography that would so richly illustrate the history of our times. This idea struck me while reading their respective interviews to the National Review. Consider thus these statements, quoted, word for word, from those aforesaid interviews:
Advani: We are opposed to Nehruvian secularism. We accept Gandhian secularism. Nehru started off with the assumption that all religions are wrong. For Gandhi, all religions are true, and they are different paths to the same goal. We thought many of Gandhi's political policies were not sound, but we accepted his idea of secularism.
Mitra: Nehru turned the meaning of secularism upside down. Secularism, he thought, was embracing each religion with equal fervour. And which he exemplified by frequent visits to mandirs and mosques, to dargahs and gurdwaras, to churches and synagogues. But once you embark on this slippery path, you end up identifying the State's activities with religious rituals such as bhumipuja and breaking coconut shells to float a boat built in a government workshop. This was inevitable because since Hindus constitute the majority of the State's population, Hindu rituals came to assert their presence within State premises.
Now which of these assertions is correct? Did Nehru hate all religions equally, as Advani suggests? Or did he love all equally, as Mitra claims?
At first glance, both interpretations have a superficial plausibility. As an intellectual, Nehru did think, along with most science-minded people of his generation, that religious faith (or what some of them chose to call 'superstition') would disappear with modernity. And as a politician, Nehru was clear that no one religion could, or should, be identified with the State.
This is why he so insistently opposed the formal association of the president of India, Rajendra Prasad, with the reconsecration of the Somnath temple. For Nehru feared that if he and his colleagues were not more vigilant, India might become a theocracy, a sort of Hindu Pakistan.
>From both political and philosophical points of view, Nehru saw merit in keeping religion at a distance. At the same time, as the
prime minister of a country in which multiple faiths were multiply
practised, and where the vast majority of citizens were believers, he could not reject religion altogether. And so, as prime minister, Nehru was in the habit of (occasionally) visiting places of worship. There are pictures extant of him visiting the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Bom Jesus Cathedral in Goa, the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai, and the Jama Masjid in Delhi - all shrines which were at the very epicentre of social, not merely religious, life in their respective cities. In each case, a visit to the
shrine was a sign of the prime minister seeking the common touch, of his wanting to bridge the distance that otherwise existed between him and the public. In none of these places, however, did Nehru go to worship. The photographs that we have do not show him with eyes closed, in reverential prayer before an idol or altar.
Thus, in Nehru's life there does exist evidence to buttress both the opposed positions held by Advani and Mitra. But, of course, both these good men are reading such evidence entirely to their advantage, that is, very selectively indeed. Nehru's main point was not that 'all religions are wrong', but, rather, that no religion should influence the policy or practice of the State. And while Nehru did sometimes enter and dignify places of worship, he certainly did not embrace any religion, much less all religions, with 'fervour'.
Neither Advani nor Mitra, then, represents Nehru's views on religion accurately. But, as I have suggested, perhaps the question of historical truth is not very material. Perhaps these invocations tell us less about Nehru and more about the politics of Advani and Mitra. And about their personalities, too. Thus Advani considers Hindutva the most promising political movement in modern India - and worries why it has not progressed further. Whom does he blame? Nehru. On the other hand, Mitra considers Hindutva to be the most pernicious political movement in modern India - and is angry that it has progressed so far. And whom does he blame? Nehru.
It would be intriguing to develop the Advani/Mitra contrast in other directions. Consider, thus, their likely views on economic or foreign policy. Advani probably thinks that the Nehruvian epoch was characterised by excessive State intervention; Mitra certainly believes that the State did not intervene enough. Advani holds that, in the formative decades of the Fifties, India aligned too closely with the Soviet Union; while Mitra must think that we did not cosy up to Moscow enough. Advani must believe that Nehru did not do enough to promote the cause of the Hindi language; Mitra probably holds that he did too much.
This, of course, is speculation, but not completely idle speculation. For it suggests that a whole book on the parallel lives of Advani and Mitra would provide a fascinating window into modern Indian history. But perhaps such a study should not be a diptych but a triptych - showcasing a radical on the Left, a radical on the Right, with Jawaharlal Nehru in the centre. And perhaps it should be authored not by a historian but by a psychoanalyst. For, lifelong political adversaries though they may be,Mitra and Advani are joined in a lifelong fight against a common enemy - Father.
© HT Media Ltd. 2004.