Afterthoughts — India After Gandhi
Arey yar, Sartre apparently just kept writing. For him editing, rewriting and waiting for the best piece is just hypocrisy. So I am like fuck it, that’s a good reason to post shitty content and not take responsibility🙇. Not like anybody is reading this shit.
Disclaimer: Before we get started lets address the elephant in the room — CAA. Some are for it, cool. I am against it. So if that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, then you can stop reading now. 😅
It was 26th of Jan. I had made a Facebook status(Something I usually make. Usually a joke, a little more ominous this time),
This Republic Day I have got 5 words for you: Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic. Let me repeat, Sovereign Socialist SECULAR Democratic Republic.
To which one of my friends replied,
We have lived a grand 1000 years with communal harmony, it’s just that few rotten eggs spoiling the Secular fabric of our country. Even now if these media people stop giving a religion to the crimes then again you find our country Secular.
My friend here, is absolutely right with the latter statement. I also partly bought into his former statement but that was before I started reading India After Gandhi. But there were a few nagging questions. Is it only the media to blame for the current state? Where we really secular for 1000 years?
With some anti-CAA sentiments boiling and fresh off a protest in Harvard Square, I started reading India After Gandhi to understand some post-independence Indian history. I didn’t know what I was signing up for. 😅 The book is a mammoth undertaking for Guha and the reader as well. With 900+ pages of history, politics and so on, the book in its sheer volume is intimidating. But thanks to some quality quarantine time reading I write this post with a pinch of pride in my understanding of the history of India and a slight sense of achievement after finishing the book. 😄
Ok, enough fluff. Where we secular for 1000 years? My answer and Guha’s answer would be no. The RSS likes us to believe there existed this concept of India or Bharat before the Mughals came. (Not my words. Those are Shourya Doval’s) May be this could have been a concept held by a handful few but India was mostly a feudal country before the 20th century. Riots were a common occurrence in this feudal times. The concept of secularism was adopted by the men leading the Indian struggle (Gandhi, Nehru, Vallabhai Patel, Ambedkar and the likes). The people who did not believe in secularism and instead chose the 2-nation theory are now in Pakistan(Yeah, literally 😉). So, this concept of secularism was beaten into us with years and years of concerted effort by the people who lead the way in transforming our feudal into a burgeoning democracy. So our secularism is just some 75 years old.
So what is going wrong? Is it the media? Umm, not really. Guha says there were 2 pogroms(Yeah, strong word I agree) in India. The 1984 riots in Punjab and the Godhra riots in 2002. Apart from that there have many many riots that have happened in the Indian hinterland. These riots were usually triggered by a small incident that eventually blew up. Of course, fake news is not new. But, it wasn’t just the media. It is still not. The ones wrecking homes in the streets of Delhi this Feb 2020 were not the people from media.
Does that mean we are going to the dogs? I don’t think so. In this I take solace in Guha’s writings from the book. After every decade, India as a democracy has been written off by the foreign and sometimes domestic media. In 1940s — it was the post partition riots, 1950s — it was the Kashmir and Nagas issue, 1960s — it was the China war and the food shortage, 1970s -the emergency, 1980s - the Sikh Riots and the 1990s with the Babri Masjid incident. Time and again India has come back stronger. The fact that I am taking pride in this because the diversity in our country is unparalleled! We are like the entire continent of Europe but more diverse and we will stay diverse and secular.(I am not saying the Europeans are not diverse).
What I would however accept is this — The ground beneath us has shifted to the right. This is a growing norm. The once quiet voices of the radicals is now finding more space in the mainstream. But, all that doesn’t mean we don’t stay centered and trade our values to conform to the norm. That would be betrayal. And I am not a one for betrayal. I still prefer KKR over RCB. See! 😉
PS: Stay home, stay safe and may the lockdown be with you. Peace ✌️
