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TALKING POINT: Past & Present

Homage to the homeland

Photo: The Hindu Photo Library

Tryst with Destiny: Jawaharlal Nehru being sworn in as Independent India’s first Prime Minister by Lord Mountbatten.

Eleven years ago, when I first began writing a fortnightly column in this space, Mohammed Azharuddin was captain of the Indian cricket team; he is now the Member of Parliament from Moradabad. At the time, the Naxalites looked down and out; they are now a rising force across the land, a threat to Indian democracy and a challenge to the ideals of the Indian Constitution. Even within the electoral system, parties powerful then appear to be quite marginal now. When I started writing for The Hindu, Chandra Babu Naidu was virtually unassailable in Andhra Pradesh, and J. Jayalalithaa was firmly in control in Tamil Nadu.

Whether one considers politics, cricket, culture or the economy, the India of 1998 is somewhat different from the India of 2009. But on the whole, this remains now what it was back then — that is to say, altogether the most fascinating country in the world. Were I a doctor or teacher, or the son of a farm labourer or factory worker, I should perhaps choose to live in some other country instead of this one. In Cuba I would get better healthcare; in the United States better education; in Australia a less polluted environment; in Sweden a less brutal police force. But as a writer, I would wish to live nowhere else but India. In Cuba I would be silenced by the State; in the U.S., irritated by the smugness of the country’s elite; in Australia, disenchanted by the shallowness of the nation’s history; in Sweden, bored by the wearying homogeneity of its citizenry.

Living in India, I am sometimes irritated and disenchanted. However, since this is (still) a democracy, I cannot be silenced. And I am never bored. For, the country I live in and write about is conducting a political experiment without parallel or precedent. India is both an unnatural nation as well as an unlikely democracy. Never before has a territory so large, and so diverse in terms of culture and ecology, sought to construct itself as a single nation-state. Never before has a citizenship so poor and so divided sought to elect its leaders through universal adult franchise.

Modern India is, in fact, simultaneously undergoing five major revolutions. There is the national revolution, whereby a formerly colonised society finds its feet as an independent nation-state. Then there is the democratic revolution, wherein a polity based on deference and hierarchy discovers the emancipatory language of equal citizenship. Third, there is the industrial revolution, through which an economy previously based almost wholly on land begins to diversify into factory production and services. Fourth, there is the urban revolution, through which more people are making their homes in cities and towns rather than in villages. Finally, there is the social revolution, where individuals seek to break free of the shackles of tradition and community, where women seek parity with men, and where the elderly have increasingly to make way for the young.

The key word here is simultaneously. For example, the United States became a nation in the 18th century; a major economic power in the 19th century; and a proper democracy only in the 1960s. China is also large and ex-colonial, and taking with relish to mass manufacture — but it remains a one-party State. The singularity and peculiarity of India is that it is becoming urban and industrial at the same time as it is becoming a democracy and a full-fledged nation-state.

These revolutions are imperfect and incomplete. I have argued elsewhere that India is perhaps 80 per cent a nation and only 50 per cent a democracy. The simultaneity of these five revolutions has produced many conflicts and much violence. There have been brutal reprisals against low castes who wish to assert social equality (as promised them by the Constitution); very many riots between adherents of different faiths; major insurgencies by groups or regions not entirely at home in India. For the citizens of this country, these revolutions have brought some redemption and much suffering. For the historian, for whom the redemption and the suffering are both fair game, India is the place to be. Here there are more topics to write about, and in far more interesting ways, than in smaller and stabler countries, or indeed in more homogeneous or more authoritarian ones.

Jawaharlal Nehru, a man who lived through these revolutions and also helped shape them, once remarked that India was home to all that is truly noble as well as truly disgusting in the human experience. It may be that in this column I have paid more attention to the light rather than the dark. That is to say, I have tended to focus on individuals or organisations that have furthered the inclusive and democratic idea of India associated with our nation’s founders, rather than on individuals and organisations that have subverted or denied it. Still, whether I have written to praise or chastise, I have sought to bring, if not new arguments, at least new materials that may not otherwise have been available to the reader of The Hindu.

For allowing me this space for so long, I would like to thank the editor who first commissioned me to write for this newspaper. I am also grateful to the remarkably self-effacing lady who, these past eleven years, unfailingly saw this column through the press; and to The Hindu’s splendid photo archive, from which have come the often arresting images that accompanied my words. But my greatest debt must be to the country of my birth and residence. As a citizen of India, I know it to be sometimes the most exasperating country in the world. As a historian, I know it to be at all times the most interesting.

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