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India is celebrating fifty years of its Independence. It is also a good time to
do some stock-taking. India's struggle for Independence started modestly. The
Indian National Congress under which it was fought was launched with the blessings
of the British rulers. It was intended to provide a safe channel for any
political unrest. Perhaps, it had to be that way at that time; it provided a
necessary protective cover.
But things were destined to turn out differently. Something was happening at a
deeper level. An ancient people were waking up from a long sleep.
Swami Dayananda, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo provided the initial
articulation to the movement. Gandhi continued the work and broadened it.
These pioneers were not politicians as we understand the word today. They were
philosophers and cultural thinkers. They spoke of Gods, humanity, larger life,
truth, sanatana dharma and of Ramarajya.
These pioneers also waged a long struggle but knew no rancour; they fought a
national battle without ceasing to be great humanists. They served the immediate
national struggle but they were also great futurists of humanity.
They differed greatly in temperament but they also had many things in common.
They were great reformers but their inspiration was their love and respect for
their people.
They were also great educationists. They wanted a system of national education
based on larger spiritual premises. Ananda Coomaraswamy pointed to the need of
liberating our education not only from direct or indirect control by any foreign
government, not only from the textbook racket, but also from the "proselytizing
fury of those who identify civilisation with democracy, and democracy with
industrialism and culture with scientific humanism - or conversely, religion with
Christianity."
The next important influences were those unleashed by a new, triumphant Europe.
Its power and presence were felt everywhere and in every thing. It could not but
impress our best people. Many of them were filled with a sense of inferiority and
self-alienation.
They sought self-rehabilitation by identifying themselves with the rulers. They
thought we would do great to ourselves by copying Europe. Even those who came to
reject the West's political domination accepted it as their political and economic
model. They argued, not without cogency, that even to survive we have to master
the secret of its technology and organisation.
While we debated the West claimed superiority in everything. For centuries, it was
at the top and its triumphs made it believe that it was the natural order of
things. Its philosophers and ideologues saw a great evolution at work.
This view, however, became popular in the East only in its Marxist garb. Marx
taught that Asia was primitive and that history had already written it off, that
Europe represented the future of humanity and to oppose it for any patriotic or
any such lesser reasons was reactionary.
Marxism provided a new format, a new way of looking at things and, as a result,
also a new conscience. It was attractive to the intelligentsia for it seemed to
explain everything. It appealed to many idealistic elements because it spoke in
the name of the people, the downtrodden; it also attracted many young men because
they could now be radical without taking part in the great national struggle. It
also justified their self-alienation - they had higher reasons for not being like
the rest.
By the time freedom came, the old way of looking at India was already in retreat.
In the new way of thinking, there was little place for India and even less for
Hinduism. In this format, foreign domination, both old and new, had an honoured
place. M. N. Roy found in Arab Empire "a magnificent monument to the memory of
Muhammed."
For various reasons, Marxists became very powerful after the country's
Independence. Although they were not important electorally, their ideas shaped
Indian politics a good deal. Their one important function consisted in providing
progressive labels to all reactionary and questionable politics. Separatism,
Balkanisation of the country and casteism became progressive politics.
Many old political parties including the Congress came under the influence of this
new ideology and adopted its slogans to improve their image - or so they thought.
They all became socialists and secularists. But the BJP was a latecomer and was
regarded with suspicion. It was shunned by them even when it tried to be like
them.
In its origin and development, the BJP had a different orientation. But it too
failed to withstand the pressure and power of the prevailing slogans. Like the old
Congress, it was already learning to take Hindus for granted. Though it still
finds it useful to play the Hindu card, it does it without any serious conviction
or commitment.
Great tasks are achieved by great hearts. Old Hindu awakening was based on great
ideas but the new Hindutva distrusts ideas. The BJP ideologues are even giving a
new definition for Hinduism: they define it as "geo-cultural". Sanatana dharma
was at the centre of the older definitions given by persons like Swami Vivekanand
and Sri Aurobindo, but that hardly finds any place in the new definition.
Sanatana dharma is made into a purely territorial phenomenon.
What India needs is not another political party under the same prevailing
ideological influences but an intelligentsia open to the deeper message of ancient
teachers.
India's Independence struggle was rooted in a Hindu renaissance and it could
properly be nourished also by the same source. Hinduism is the principle of
India's self-renewal.
This however means no exclusiveness, no blindness to new problems, no refusal to
learn from others. The task, in fact, requires modesty. We live in a world where
things happen to us rather than by us, where things are so complicated that our
very solutions become our problems.
(Ram Swarup 's most recent work is 'Hindu View of Christianity and Islam')
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