I wrote this article on the 'Right' discourse in India for India Foundation Journal.
You can read a version of the article below:
Bharat is not a defeated but a wounded civilisation.
Defeated civilisations cannot write their own history but ones those are
wounded have the stamina and zeal for it. The question is what path must a
wounded civilisation choose in its search of herself? How must it approach and
read history so as to find out herself? What should this approach be called?
And how do we reach such an approach?
Indian civilisational story is one of continuous evolution.
Even after facing many attacks in the last 2,500 years, India has stayed alive
simply because of its ability to survive and revive. At the precipice of
darkness, the country has always managed to rediscover itself. Those who have
faith in this past are billed as the Rightists. They are considered
conservative, status-quoist, fundamentalist, rigid etc. These terms have been
slapped on them by the Left-intelligentsia who dominate the social science
discourse of this country. To begin with, this group of ‘Rightists’ needs to be
identified and redefined, not in terms of its detractors but in terms of its
own salient features. The quest for a new term may seem like a cosmetic
exercise but it actually reflects the true spirit of those who want to build
the future with an approach of ‘India First’, keeping in mind the agony of the
present and the glory of the past.
Often dismissed for being outside the existing academic
discourse, the vantage point of this intellectual-cultural tradition is largely
unexplored. To take this forward, we need to arrive at a set of ideas that are
not static in nature and which provide theoretical and scientific solutions to
the problems of the existing world. There is also a need to identify factors
that define or come close to defining the quintessential ‘spirit' of this
civilisation.
We must also relook at thinking within the framework of
Right and Left. Dattopant Thengdi (RSS Ideologue and Trade Union Leader) talks
about the ‘Third Way’ which is neither Right nor Left but talks about
indigenous knowledge system and national interest. Conversely, going by popular
intellectual discourse, we can say that in the 1990s, RSS-BJP were culturally
Right but economically Left. It was a time when RSS-BJP were raising issue of
Ram temple on one side and advocating Swadeshi and opposing GATT and WTO, on
the other. Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh and Bharitya Kisan Sangh (Trade Union and
Farmers Union associated with RSS) had almost same views as Leftist Trade
Unions. Even today, many policies of Modi government cannot be classified under
the ‘Economic Right’. C. Rajgopalachari was the guiding light of the ‘Economic
Right’ in independent India and advocated free economy. He left Congress when
Pandit Nehru declared in 1955 that Socialistic pattern of the society will be
the official policy of the Congress in Avadi Session. Rajgoapalchari founded
Swatantra Party which along with Bharitya Jan Sangh (BJS) and Lok Dal was
instrumental in the defeat of Congress party in nine states in 1967 elections.
Four Points of Reference
In my understanding, there might be four points of reference
which should be kept in mind for better understanding and reformulation of
ideas what is known as Indian Right. First, India i.e. Bharat has to be studied
and understood as a civilizational-state and not just a constitutional-state or
nation-state. The idea of nation-state evolved only in the last 350 years after
the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 when the Papacy of medieval age was questioned
by the newly formed ‘sovereign’ states which were supported by the capitalist
merchants. On the other hand, India has existed as a civilizational unit since
several millennia. After the Independence, the idea of constitutional
nation-state came into being. The current history of modern Indian nationalism
also does not go back to more than 150 years which is said to be evolved after
the so called Indian renaissance during the time of Ram Mohan Roy and others
followed by the evolution of the Congress party. For India to be studied as
civilizational-state, we need to resuscitate the history of India of thousands
years.
Second, the study of India as a civilizational-state will
take back our civilisational march from Indus Valley to Saraswati Valley.
Traces of the existence of the civilisation will have to be rediscovered where
there have been no or negligible efforts since Independence. Recently, there
was a small report that Bhirrana in Haryana was claimed to be much older than
sites of Harappa and Mohanjodaro. Many more such discoveries need to be made to
fill in the existing gaps in India’s historical map.
Third, the history of last 1,300 years needs to become the
reference point to know about our freedom struggle instead of just 130 years.
While it is acceptable to study the history of Modern India from where modern
nationalism begins, but without the reference point of 1,300 years, our
understanding of Modern India can never be complete. We cannot brush aside the
critical context of King Dahir, who ruled over Sindh and whose defeat at the
hands of Mohammed Bin Quasim heralded a long phase of stagnation in knowledge,
culture and tradition. Instead of spiritual and mental battle, the country was
now fighting for its existence. Hereon, the caste system became rigid, women
were confined indoors and ill-practices proliferated. The chain of
philosophical tradition' set by the Upanishads was broken. One cannot
understand India just by studying history of last 130 years, for that we need
to take into account 1,300 years. While the history of the freedom movement of
modern India is a great educator, we also need to study the freedom struggle of
medieval India for a more comprehensive view. Moreover, our study of history
has to be both dispassionate and unapologetic.
Fourth, spiritualism is the mainstay of this
civilisational-state. This civilisation is not intolerant simply because its
essential nature is of assimilation and evolution. From Peshawar to Ganga Sagar
the plains between Indus and Ganges are as fertile as its culture and
tradition. Suitable climatic conditions and fertile land made life simple and
easy and this provided scope for inner quest i.e. 'chintan'. As a result, for
many millennia, spiritualism became the basic foundation of Indian
civilisation. Each time the civilisation stepped into decadence – Buddha,
Shankar, Mahavir, Tulsi, Soor, Kabir, Gynaeswar, Ramanand, Vivekanand, Gandhi,
Golwalkar and Ambedkar showed up and reignited the light of knowledge, making
India a ‘Sanatan' civilisation.
India is a spiritual entity which evolved in thousands of
years. The spiritual power of India is so immense that it accommodates everyone
and evolves without struggle and also without compromising with its core
values. The history is replete with instances of rulers (Kanishk and Milind)
who won in the battle field but were defeated by the spiritual power of this land.
India Today
Having set a foot firmly in the past we must now turn our
eye to the future. What we need is a new set of ideas, tools, symbols,
terminologies and methods to re-establish our civilisational march. So far we
have been working with those provided by our detractors. We might win a debate
or two with this borrowed armoury but we can never make a lasting contribution.
As we build our own bank of ideas, we also need to answer
some critical questions. What should be our vantage point - Harappa Valley
Civilisation, Chandra Gupta Maurya or 1947 or Ramayan and Mahabharata period?
Far from the line-up of Ashok ‘the Great’ and Akbar ‘the Great’, what about
Chandra Gupta Maurya, Rajendra Chola, Lalitaditya, Samudra Gupta, Rahtrakoot,
Pratihar, Marathas, Kanishka, Harsh and others. On the other hand, what about
the origin of caste based biases and women subjugation? Similarly, we need to
find the answers to the question ranging from territorial integrity, economic
policies to gay rights and other issues. By doing this we will be making
contemporary derivatives and linking our past to the present. Without this
connection we cannot claim our rightful place in the ideological streams of
India.
Three Ideological Streams
Three ideological streams have been in existence in India
for the last 100 years. First is of Congress inspired by the ideas of
Jawaharlal Nehru which says that India is a 'nation in making' started with
independence of India. The second is of Communists which say that India is not
a nation at all and there are many nationalities and they support all the
secessionist movement as a matter of principle in the name of
self-determination. Third ideological stream is of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh
(RSS) which talks about national reconstruction. It believes that India was a
glorious nation for a long time. It's glory, lost in the last 1000 years, needs
to be restored; hence there is a need to reconstruct our nation and society.
We currently study a distorted face of history where we are
taught that Aryans came from Iran and ruled India first. Later, it was Turks
and Mughals and then the British. The broad idea here was to establish the
civilisational superiority of the West and justify their invasion of this land
with narrative of ‘White Men’s Burden’; and to prove that caste and woman
subjugation has been an integral part of Indian society and philosophy. Two
hymns of Manu Smriti and Ram Charit Manas were used to build up an entire
discourse against this civilisation.
After the formation of the Modi government it was believed
that an ecosystem will emerge that will assist the creation of a new narrative
to understand the civilisational march of India. However, the idea that India should remember
and develop her own narrative is not is everyone’s interest. Hence, all efforts
are being made to block the growth of any such narrative. Since the Modi
government came to power, several attempts have been made to malign the image
of the government and raise issues like intolerance, fundamentalism and fear of
minority communities. Terms like "Hindu Pakistan", "forces of
intolerance", and the "situation worse than Emergency” have been
coined in the last 45 months. People campaigning on these lines are decidedly
anti-Modi and propounded these theories when the formation of a Narendra
Modi-led government at the Centre started looking imminent. Many of them had
even claimed at that time that they will leave the country if Modi became the
Prime Minister. Like true followers of Karl Marx, 'secular-liberal'
intellectual elites started with a conclusion and all their arguments now are
directed at proving it. Having lost the battle of ballots, they want to now
take the fight to academic institutions using universities as semi-liberated
zones.
Academia: The New Warfront
A world-renown artist like Anish Kapoor wrote that India is
ruled by "Hindu-Taliban" and an academic like Irfan Habib thinks RSS
is comparable to ISIS. The factiousness and monotone of these remarks makes one
question the sincerity of our present
intellectual scenario. The most obvious yet inconspicuous truth about the
academic and intellectual environment in India is that it has for years
remained overshadowed by Western and Leftist thinking while maintaining the façade
of ‘independent’ thought. Having accepted another's thought tradition as the
benchmark we forgot that each country has its own unique knowledge and
experience, in our case it was the Indic tradition.
Anish Kapoor and Irfan Habib are the products of an
intellectual sphere with strong imprints of the British and Marxist legacy.
British bureaucrat Lord Macaulay designed a strategy to make it easy for the
British to rule India. He advocated an education system which would produce
Brown British to work as loyal clerks under the regime. The key to this was to
make the "natives" disown everything Indian and covet everything that
was British. We were made to see how flawed and redundant our traditions were
and we were so grateful to learn the spelling of 'renaissance'.
The post-Independence India could not rid itself of this
mindset. Nehru-Indira governments gave ample space to Leftist-Marxist discourse
and institutions like Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) churned out thousands
of bureaucrats, academics, journalists and activists with ‘Leftist' leaning.
Over a period of time, the Left discourse elbowed out the Indic intellectual
ecosystem which was shunned as regressive and backward.
Even today the course on Indian philosophy is not taught in
JNU and the proposal for a centre on Sanskrit and Yoga studies is met with
stern resistance by Leftists including teachers and students. It is this
intellectual tradition that convinces people like Anish Kapoor and Irfan Habib
that the Indian civilisation has forever been exploitative and hence the need
is to stitch up a new system with no Indic traces.
According to ‘Left-Liberal’ line of thought Sanskrit is the
road to Conservatism and Brahmanical dominance. The theory of a terrible
Brahmanical regime thus comes to be accepted as a fact and often dangled as a
fearsome consequence of faith in the Indic system. No one, however, cares to
question that if the theory holds water, how was it that the two greatest
Indian epics were penned by Valmiki and Ved Vyas, both non-Brahmins. Does no
one wonder if it is possible for an exploitative civilisation to organically
survive for more than 5,000 years?
Liberal and Popular Discourse
There is no liberal discourse in our country but there are
only predominantly Left-liberals working in the field of media, academics and
development. When the intellectual class should have worked on developing an
‘Indian Left’ idea, they found it convenient to accept super-structures
dominated by Classical Marxism. The essential Indianisation of Marxism or Left
never happened and we created a false paradigm for our debates and discussions.
In the field of popular cultural discourse, Indian cinema is
one of the important media. India cinema has played a significant role in
developing understanding of our myths and history in the last half century.
There are more voices from the world of cinema that influence different issues
of national importance. There is a need of group of cinema and literary
personalities which can speak on issues of national importance but with a
different perspective and represent the counter-cultural narrative of the
current times which is now shared by millions of youth of this country and
which the outdated intellectual class want to brand as 'intolerant' and crass.
A peek into the time of Partition provides us valuable
insight into the Left leanings of the Indian film industry. That was the time
when actors like Dilip Kumar and the Lahore Writers' Group became a dominating
force of the "Bombay" film industry. Many from the Progressive
Writers' Forum (read Communists) also joined the film industry from time to
time like KA Abbas, Bhim Sahani, MS Satthu and others. Like the rest of the
country, the film industry too was deeply influenced by the wave of
Nehruvian-Socialism. The film circuit, as a result, was dominated by
Left-liberals and Congress-supporters like Nargis, Sunil Dutta, Amitabh
Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna and Shah Rukh Khan. During the Emergency the cinema
fraternity was asked by "Yuvraj" Sanjay Gandhi to organise musical nights
and create an environment in support of Emergency. The only dissenting voice of
that time was of Manoj Kumar who made patriotic films like Upkaar and Purab Aur
Paschim. Today, there are few cine stars like Anupam Kher who have broken away
from the old guards and taken a nuanced ideological position. We need more
Anupam Khers which can represent a parallel narrative which has the potential
to give birth to a new paradigm of intellectual-cultural tradition free from
old ideological shackles and representative of a de-colonised Indian mind.
In Search of Indic Tradition
Collective efforts are needed to search and work for an
Indic tradition. For Left-liberals, Indic is equivalent to Right-wing,
Hindu-centric, nationalist or Hindu-nationalist but actually it is more than
that. Indic comprises anything that originates from this land, blossoms in this
atmosphere and prospers in this geo-cultural territory. An Indic tradition can
lead to assimilative points of view, nuanced solutions and the creation of truly
‘new’.
Such an Indic ecosystem based on our civilisational values
can provide the adequate environment to discuss our civilisation background,
its legacy and relevance as well as its lessons. Today, when religion is a
major area of conflict, very few academic institutions conduct a comparative
study of religions. This is because of an academic-intellectual environment
that alienates and distances religions from each other. An Indic intellectual
environment will provide the necessary insight and compassionate approach
needed for such a study. Our ancient texts and writings of intellectuals like
Coomaraswamy, Yadunath Sarkar, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Vasudev Agrawal
can provide the ammo to start this intellectual spark.
Respect for local heroes, beliefs and modernisation of
Indian traditions would be the basic foundation of an Indic intellectual
ecosystem. It would take inspiration from the past, think about the present and
envision a prosperous future for all Indians. We can not prosper and develop
with a borrowed narrative. We need to have our own story, conceptualised and
narrated by our own people.
The creation of an ‘Indic' intellectual ecosystem does not
entail wipe out the Left-Marxist system, but simply balancing it out. It is the
responsibility of the academic and intellectual community to create a new
narrative that springs from their own intellectual rigour.
Conclusion
Mughals and Turks destroyed Indian temples and knowledge
centres but the British developed an education system that was meant to kill
India's faith in itself. As a legacy of that education system, the colonial
mentality still works in our mind obstructing our journey inventing or
discovering anything new or original. There is a dire need to rejuvenate our
civilisational discourse and develop an Indic knowledge tradition that will
help us and also benefit people all over the world.
We need to develop a theoretical foundation for Bhartiya
Drishti - an 'Indian Way' or Indic tradition to look at all the perpetuating
problems of India and the world. Before that we need to understand ourselves -
develop a vantage point of our knowledge tradition, study when and how it got
weak and how it could be revived. We can reform only when we know the form.
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