Introduction: Free People of Official Festivities
Two recent developments — the celebration
of Independence Day with massive public involvement in the north Gujarat
town of Patan and return of the ashes of the great patriot, Shyamji Krishna
Verma, 73 years after his death from Geneva — have provided new fodder
to secularists with which to attack Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.
But, in the process, the secularists have revealed how out of sync they
are with the national mood.
July 4 is America’s independence
day. And we see massive public celebrations. Our Independence and Republic
Day ceremonies, on the other hand, are formal occasions conducted by officials
and specified groups like schoolchildren, police or army contingents. The
people can at best participate from behind police barricades.
Narendra Modi has brought I-Day
celebrations from the level of officials to that of the people. One has
only to contrast the way we celebrate I-Day with the popular festivals
like the Kumbh Melas. The Nashik show was an outpouring of people’s faith,
with the officials expected to only keep order. It is a different matter
that they failed to do so, resulting in the death of over 40 persons in
the stampede. In spite of the tragedy, it reflected the soul of India,
somewhat chaotic but always deeply religious — not a show of uniformity
but that of diversity, variety, colour.
The one way in our culture to bring
lofty thoughts down to the grass roots is to seek to express them through
festivals which, of course, have a religious thread running through them.
But they are quite secular in the true sense of the term because they are
not exclusive and anybody is free to participate in them whether it is
Diwali or Christmas or Id. This year in Gujarat, August 15 became a popular
festival uncaged from the stranglehold of officialdom. And what better
place to hold popular celebrations than an ancient city with its monumental
historic and cultural legacy. Such exercises also help to bridge divisions
among people and create a sense of unity.
But the pseudo-secularist brigade
has been baying for Mr Modi’s blood from the time he decided to transform
the official I-Day function into a popular one with poojas, discourses
and aartis — the cultural forms in which India expresses itself. In fact,
it was the India of the yore embracing the India of today. Fortunately
for India, the soul of Gujarat quickened to Mr Modi’s suggestion.
The temple ceremonies did not prevent
other religious groups from expressing the joy of Independence in their
cultural terms also. Had the government asked them to hold similar festivals
in mosques and churches Mr Modi would have been accused of imposing himself
on the “minorities”. What Mr Modi has done is to give these national days
a truly popular expression through the culture closest to people’s hearts.
And finally, the people’s response
was so overwhelming that even the secularists admit that the show organised
at Patan with aartis was “filled to capacity with over 30,000 people” while
the counter- show by the Congress “turned out to be a lacklustre affair”.
Even Mr Modi’s efforts to honour
a freedom fighter like Shyamji Krishna Verma was decried in a section of
the press citing Verma’s opposition to Gandhiji. It would appear that anyone
who opposed Gandhiji’s means of achieving Independence or his other policies
at any time is suspect. Why is this so? Shall we disown our pre-Gandhian
Congress leaders like Bipin Chandra Pal, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat
Rai, Aurobindo Ghosh and M M Malviya because they were unapologetically
Hindu? Verma had raised the voice of India for Independence in the last
decade of the 19th century, a full 25 years before Gandhiji came onto the
Indian scene. It is regrettable that even 50 years after Independence,
the nation did nothing to honour this great Indian whose scholarship and
political activism are universally recognised.
In fact, even the idea of satyagraha
came from him much before Gandhiji developed it into political action.
He wrote in 1905: “It is not necessary for Indians to resort to arms for
compelling England to relinquish its hold on India... If the brown man
struck work for a week, the Empire would collapse like a house of cards...
If anyone refused to buy or sell any commodity, or to have any transaction
with any class of people, he commits no crime known to the law. It is,
therefore, plain that Indians can obtain emancipation by simply refusing
to help their foreign master without incurring the evils of a violent revolution.”
Thus there is no doubt that it
was Shyamji who first advocated non-violent means of getting rid of the
British and using withdrawal of cooperation with the colonial administration
as the most effective weapon for this purpose. Gandhiji built on this and
evolved satyagraha as a tool to oust the British much later.
It is reassuring to our conscience
that, at least now, after 56 years of Independence that we have recognised
this patriot by bringing his ashes back to India. It would be interesting
to study why we persist in ignoring those who contributed immeasurably
to the creation of independent India.
(The author is a Rajya Sabha MP
and convenor of the BJP Think Tank)